Why the West was best? Vishal Mangalwadi looks at the question from an Indian perspective.
1,000 years ago, the Islamic civilisation had surpassed Europe in every respect.
But something changed. Now the people of Spain translate as many books into Spanish each year as Arabs have translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years. If you take oil out of the equation, then the five million people of Finland export more goods and services each year than the 165 million of the Arab world. What brought about this dramatic rise of the West while the rest of the world stagnated?