History does not end

I have come to return your masterpiece in the painting, this verse by Sahir Ludhianvi is a summary of all human history. A painter creates a picture, with love, with conviction, he feels he has created the most complete thing in the world. But as time passes and circumstances change, the same artist feels that the picture he created was not as complete as he thought, and then he himself sits down to reconsider his masterpiece. Something similar happened at the end of the twentieth century with an American intellectual and famous thinker who, in the final years of the twentieth century, made a claim about the political future of the world that the end of history had arrived, which made him famous all over the world overnight. But in the years to come, the changing world circumstances forced him to reconsider his masterpiece.

This was in 1989, when great and extraordinary events were happening in the world and old rigid government systems in Eastern Europe were collapsing one by one. In November of the same year, the famous wall of Berlin, the German city, which had divided the whole of Germany and Europe into two parts for almost three decades, was also broken down by people with hammers. In the same 1989, the American thinker and intellectual Francis Fukuyama wrote that we are witnessing the end of history. Fukuyama came from a family that migrated from Japan to America, he himself was born in Chicago and received higher education from Harvard University. He claimed that liberal democracies had triumphed over communism, and this marked the end of human ideological evolution. Later, this claim appeared in the form of a famous book titled “The End of History and the Last Man”. Fukuyama said that monarchies had lost their appeal, Hitler and Mussolini’s fascism had been buried in World War II, and Soviet communism was also disintegrating.

Fukuyama asked what was left? Only one system, liberal democracy. In which people elect their ruler by voting, the government is also under the law, and business runs in an open market. This did not mean that news or wars would end in the world. It meant that no new great ideology would come to defeat democracy. He based his argument on two foundations. The first foundation is science. Today, every country needs the same things, it needs factories, schools, cars, mobile phones, roads. Therefore, the path of development ultimately leads everyone to the same place. The second foundation is human dignity. Humans do not just need food, clothing, and shelter; they also need to be treated as equal human beings, and their voices to be heard. And they only get this dignity in democracy. Hearing this, the world immediately applauded, but then history began to respond to it.

The first response came on September 11, 2001. When America was attacked, the world understood that religion and belief were not dead yet, and people were still ready to give and take their lives for their faith. Then in 2008, the remaining doubt was removed when major banks in America and Europe collapsed and millions of people became unemployed, people lost faith in the free market as well. The second response came from Russia. First, it donned the garb of democracy, and then Putin emerged from within that garb. Votes are cast there, there are courts, but the final decision is made by one person. The third and biggest response came from China. Fukuyama thought that as money came, people would also demand freedom, but China said no, we did not give democracy, we kept one party and gave less political freedom to the people, yet we moved far ahead. In the last thirty to forty years, millions of people there have come out of poverty, large factories have been built, long roads have been constructed, and a network of electric vehicles and high-speed trains has been spread everywhere.

This was the point where Fukuyama himself revisited his masterpiece and candidly admitted that he had given very little importance to the element of human identity and dignity. In his later books, he wrote that a major driver of modern politics is the human desire for dignity and identity, and when people feel that their identity is being ignored in society, they are drawn to leaders who speak to their emotions and sense of deprivation. It is in this context that the rise of a popular leader like Donald Trump to power in America and the rise of hardline leaders in other countries of the world is a consequence of this politics of anger and identity, because people do not always vote by looking at economic programs, but often they choose the person who gives them a sense of security and identity.

Today, the same Fukuyama teaches at Stanford University, the same one who declared at the end of the Cold War that democracy had won. Now he says that the end of the Cold War was not a guarantee that Western democracy would always remain intact. He still believes that democracy is humanity’s greatest achievement, but he no longer says that it will run automatically. Democracy is not an automatic machine; it needs strong institutions, honest courts, honest officials, and a narrative, i.e., a unifying thought, that can keep all the diverse people of the country united.

Recently, when there was talk of an attack on Iran, Fukuyama said that America’s demand that Iran simply surrender its weapons is not possible, because Iran’s army does not operate under one commander, power is divided into many parts there, and the government also stands on the force of its guns, so it will not easily give in. This is the lesson that emerges from this entire story: history has not ended, history never ends, because man is not just an economic being, he is also a collection of emotions, identity, dignity, faith, and sentiments. As long as these remain, no system will be final, no wall will fall permanently, and no painter will be able to call his masterpiece definitive. And perhaps this is why the journey of history continues today, and humans are still searching for a better society for themselves.