TO a visitor from India, or in fact Asia, Europe looks as if it is about to collapse. Actually, the way some newspapers are going about it, some countries, like Greece and Spain, are already dead, though not yet buried. All of them are dependent on hand-outs from rich countries like Germany, though the Germans themselves are utterly fed up with the way the poorer countries are behaving and would be happy to get rid of them.
England seems to be an exception, though, if you look closely, it too is close to the clift, though you do not notice it at first sight. When I was a student in England, immediately after the last war, whenever I found time, I would visit what is known as the West End, which, at that time, was not as gloomy and depressing as the rest of the country. There were few restaurants and not a single decent hotel, and the streets were almost empty and dark. My friends and I would visit some coffee houses for sandwiches and tea or coffee, and perhaps a cinema in Leicester Square, where new pictures were being shown. That’s about all. We would then go underground and catch a train back home or perhaps to our hostel, none the worse for our excapade.
Outwardly, things are not that gloomy now. There are more cafés and more bars, and, of course, lots of new hotels. There are also more black and brown people in the streets, and in the shops, and one often feels that all the Englishmen have run away and the city has been taken over by hordes from India, Pakistan and Kenya. You can now get around London, though not in the rest of the country, without a word of English. Every third man and woman in London is now an outsider, and whole districts have been taken over by them, driving the original English God knows where. Fifty years from now, there will be more Indians – and Pakistanis – in London than Englishmen, and I won’t be surprised if a hundred years from now, even the Prime Minister of England will be an Indian or Pakistani, a Singh or a Khan, and he will rule the country from 10 Downing Street, with a burly Sardarji outside the door, and a Maruti car waiting for him in the driveway.
Enough about London. After all, the British ruled over us for two hundred years; it’s high time we rule over them for four hundred years, and the way things are moving, I have no doubt we shall.
In Europe proper, things have definitely gone from bad to worse. Paris is no more the fashionable city it used to be, and is now increasingly in the hands of non-Parisians, just like London. If nature abhors a vacuum, so do countries. For one reason or another, the Europeans have stopped breeding – you see very few white children in Europe – and the empty spaces are being taken over either by East Europeans or Asians and Africans. I never saw so many Tunisians and Moroccans in Paris before, all of them from the former French colonies in Africa. They are actually Arabs, and many of them speak French fluently, but they are not French. In the centre of Paris, not far from Eiffel Tower, almost all shops are manned by Arabs and Africans, and you hardly come across a proper Frenchman, just as you rarely come across a proper Englishman in London.
The Europeans still do not realise that they are facing an existential crisis. They believe or pretend to believe that their current problems are purely financial and once they get over them, their problems will be over. Actually, the problems go much deeper than that, for what is at stake is the very existence of Europe as a civilisation. Greece, for instance, is about to sink into the Mediterranean, but the Greeks argue, and so do other fellow-Europeans, that their crisis is purely economic or financial, and once they get their finances right, things will go back to normal and everything will be all right.
They are fools. Nothing will go back to normal. Europe is a doomed continent, though we do not know who is responsible for the doom. I believe that history is responsible for the doom, for continents just do not disappear because you are short of cash – as Europeans are – or because you have amassed huge debts to keep up appearances. The problems are only partly economic and financial. The real problems have to do with the fact that Europe, once the cradle of Christian civilisation, is at the end of its tether and its civilisational role is over.
Among the several reasons for Europe’s downfall, including, of course, economic decline and financial crisis, is the total cultural collapse. The bulk of Europeans used to be Christians; now they do not know who they are. Very few of them go to church, and even fewer, except perhaps Catholics, are baptised. They marry increasingly outside their religion and have forgotten their religion. Many do not even know they used to be Christian. I asked a professor in a well known university in Holland when he was last in a church. He couldn’t remember, and he was not even ashamed to confess he could not remember. I suspect most Europeans, particularly those who call themselves secular, have not been to church for years, and do not feel the need to pray.
London may soon have more mosques than churches. You see bearded young men everywhere, collecting donations for their mosques, and the police doing nothing about it, though begging is a crime in most Western countries. The Europeans do not even realise they are slowly being de-culturised, which is the first step towards extinction as a race. This is what secularism has done to Europe. It has destroyed, or is about to destroy a whole civilisation, which was once a fortress of Christianity and where religion has now become a dirty word.
De-culturisation, which follows secularisation as night follows day, is the first step towards destruction of whole countries, and with that, destruction of civilisations. De-culturisation follows de-religionisation which is the first phase towards destruction of a race. The European race is being obliterated, though most Europeans do not realise it. A hundred years from now, may be earlier, London and Paris and Rome will be colonies of alien civilisations, just as one time India and China and West Asia were.
If you wish to see how civilisations crack up, visit London or Paris, or Athens, and observe the signs of a culture in decay and the pervading stink of collapse and death as you wander around with your kerchief to the nose. It is a pity that the denizens of these countries are not even aware what they are facing, but that is how civilisations fold up, not with a bang, but a whimper!
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