New Old World: An Indian Journalist Discovers the Changing Face of Europe

Aiyar, a peripatetic foreign correspondent with years of experience covering East Asia, moved to Brussels as the Eurozone crisis was coming into focus. As the only Indian journalist accredited by the European Union, she brings a fresh, thought-provoking perspective to Europe’s woes. While her observations can be a little too pat—“It struck me with some force how in many ways the Chinese were the Americans of Asia, while the Indians were the Europeans”—her trenchant and often humorous conversations with immigrants, entrepreneurs, politicians, and diplomats illuminate the paradoxes and inconsistencies of Europe’s approach to multiculturalism. “In liberal societies,” she writes, “one is expected to be tolerant of different ideas and cultures. But what if those cultures are intolerant of others? How much tolerance of intolerance is justified by liberal principles?” Such questions befuddle the European project writ large as the continent struggles to cope with growing Muslim populations and the strictures of austerity politics. But the dilemma is particularly palpable in Aiyar’s adopted home of Belgium, which is so wracked by linguistic divisions that it recently went 589 days without a government. Through her travels around the continent, Aiyar is able to humanize those who are most frequently represented in the media as alarming statistics. [em](Sept.) [/em]