When visiting London in 1931, Mohandas Gandhi was asked by a British journalist what he thought of Western civilisation-and made the famous retort: "I think it would be a good idea."rnAnthony Pagden, a British historian who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, has no such doubt about the superiority of the "Western" way of life which, on his reading, has been pitted for the past 2,500 years against various forms of "Eastern" despotism, of which militant Islam is only the latest.
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