Further thoughts on the ‘dwarfing’ narrative

Writing here with the benefit of hindsight, and informed by the inquiry process that occupied me in India from mid-July to mid- September, my purpose is to shed some new light on the three following themes: i) problems with the very notion of ‘dwarfing’; ii) the nature of erstwhile European cultural dominance, in other words its limits, and the ways in which a ‘world culture’ deeply moulded by Europeans over almost five centuries is being increasingly reappropriated in the twenty-first century by cultural actors via new processes of cultural emancipation, and iii) the ways in which cultural cooperation with European partners is perceived to have added value by stakeholders elsewhere and the expectations they have of future cooperation with Europe and Europeans. To be sure, the present reflections have been prompted primarily by the views and stances of Indian interlocutors, yet these opinions and behaviours are probably shared across the entire non-European world, and at many levels.