Revolution - or law & order problem

Submitted by A.K.Chatterjee (India), Nov 8, 2005 at 20:42

This is the first article, which I read with some interest, though I knew that something was happening in France. Frankly, what led me to read the article was the use of word "Revolution" in it's title. My perception of France is that it is a country, which is very modern in western liberal sense and provides for congenial conditions for new thoughts to emerge, create intellectual stir for a while till something more new catches the imagination of french people.

Thus, my sense of French people is that they don't take anything seriously for sufficiently long not to be capable of revolution like most people of the world are. Revolution represents sudden changes in the power equations in a polity by violent or even peaceful democratic manner. As a keen observer of politics of world's largest democracy - INDIA -I am inclined to believe that the current spate of violence in France is a pure law and order problem triggered off by a small accident. This spate of violence has persisted a little longer than it should have and spread because there may be genuine sense of deprivation among a sizable part of non European french population, who have been able to identify themselves with the victim of that accident. The current riots are a pure law and order problem, which is possibly being deliberately encouraged by vested interests of European French population, who may extremely uncomfortable with their economic lot in their stagnating economy and competition from non- Europeans in the employment market, to create a context for discriminating policies against French citizens of African origin. European civilization has to learn to evolve with the realities of 21st centuries and it's process of globalization.

A.K.Chatterjee,
Delhi-91-110088.
India.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".