Kishore Mahbubani

Americans fundamentally believe that they should stand for universal values and sincerely believe that the world would be a better place if the rest of humanity absorbed and implemented American values.

It was an Indian political scientist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who alerted me to a significant difference between the democratic Indian society and communist Chinese society. He shrewdly observed that India was an open society with a closed mind, whereas China was a closed society with an open mind.

If exposure to Japanese democracy could persuade thoughtful Chinese to consider the virtues of democracy, exposure to Indian democracy would have exactly the opposite effect. Whereas Japanese democracy is reassuringly calm and stable (reflecting the Japanese emphasis on harmony in interpersonal relations and its Confucian heritage), Indian democracy is loud and rambunctious, reflecting the spirit of the argumentative Indian. I know this spirit well as I was born an argumentative Indian.