Empress of China by Kumar David

Empress of China

by Kumar David 

This is in Meory of Kumar David

Two examples, nearer home in more ways than one from antiquity are the Maurya Emperor Asoka (reigned 232-274 BC) and the Empress Wu Zetian (reigned supreme 690-705 BC and consort 655-683) the only female Empress of China. Both reigns are renowned for material prosperity and peace most of the time. Ideological harmony in both was grounded in the spread and acceptance of Buddhism. 

I need to say no more about Asoka, but many readers may not be aware that Empress Wu, deemed a great ruler, bonded with her people by identifying with and supporting Buddhism which was then gaining ground. Her reign was the golden age of Buddhism in China before the elite fought back and restored the older hegemony.

The older narrative that the intellect had become accustomed to post-Enlightenment, reason, rationalism, liberalism, socialism and Marxism are in retreat in the face of this assault. 

Liberals, socialists and the secular-minded basked in the glory of reason, science and the pluralist state for a long time. 

Quite suddenly and within two decades it has inverted. 

Out of dark recesses of the human soul a new mass hysteria has erupted. For long it was thought that unreason had been banished. 

Not so, the battle has to be joined again if humanity is not to pass into another Dark Age.