The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

by Amitav Ghosh

Imperialism was not, however, the only obstacle in Asia’s path to industrialization: this model of economy also met with powerful indigenous resistances of many different kinds. While it is true that industrial capitalism met with resistance on every continent, not least Europe, what is distinctive in the case of Asia is that the resistance was often articulated and championed by figures of extraordinary moral and political authority, such as Mahatma Gandhi. Among Gandhi’s best-known pronouncements on industrial capitalism are these famous lines written in 1928: ‘God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. If an entire nation of 300 millions [sic] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.’ This quote is striking because of the directness with which it goes to the heart of the matter: numbers. It is proof that Gandhi, like many others, understood intuitively what Asia’s history would eventually demonstrate: that the universalist premise of industrial civilization was a hoax; that a consumerist mode of existence, if adopted by a sufficient number of people, would quickly become unsustainable and would lead, literally, to the devouring of the planet. Of course, Gandhi was not alone in being granted this insight; many others around the world arrived at the same conclusion, often by completely different routes. But Gandhi occupied a position of unique social and cultural importance, and, what was...