British literary circles are abuzz with the emergence of a new literary feud. Right-wing British historian Niall Ferguson, who recently got married to Somali-Dutch writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has attacked Indian writer Pankaj Mishra over his book review published in the latest edition of London Review of Books.
The feud comes just months after Indian-origin Nobel laureate Sir Vidia Naipaul ended a decade-long literary and personal feud with former friend Paul Theroux at the Hay Festival this summer.
In his review of Ferguson’s Civilisation: The West and the Rest, Mishra seemingly draws parallels between the Harvard academic’s work and that of racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard.
Ferguson hit back at the review and the reviewer and sought an apology for the review, which he described as a “crude attempt at character assassination.” He also warned Mishra he will “hound him in print in a way he has never experienced before”.
Mishra, married to a cousin of British PM David Cameron, attacked Ferguson for whitewashing Asian struggles out of his history. “Ferguson himself is homo atlanticus redux. In a preface to the UK edition of Civilisation: The West and the Rest, he writes of being seduced away from a stodgy Oxbridge career, early in the 2000s, to the United States, ‘where the money and power actually were’,” he wrote in his 5,000-word review.
“This wistful vision of an empire on which the sun need never have set had an immediately obvious defect. It grossly underestimated — in fact, ignored altogether — the growing strength of anti-colonial movements across Asia, which, whatever happened in Europe, would have undermined Britain’s dwindling capacity to manage its vast overseas holdings,” Mishra wrote, describing the book as “white people’s history”.
Ferguson is among the top British academics who have set up a private college in London, which will charge fees of £18,000 a year, to rival Oxbridge.
In his long reply to the review, Ferguson claimed Mishra had accused him of racism. “At the very least, Mishra owes me a public apology for his highly offensive and defamatory allegation of racism,” Ferguson wrote in his reply to the article on the website.