The relentless downgrading of the News to a series of shocking revelations about child abuse, bearded terrorists and the ghastly incompetence of our Olympic pretensions sent me straight to the World Service where even the shortest of hourly bulletins contains enough information to remind us that life goes on beyond our own limited horizons. On Sundays, too, there’s a new evening series presented by the illustrious Bridget Kendall. In The Forum she brings together an unusual selection of guests from around the world to ‘navigate’, as she explained, ‘the cross-current of ideas’.
I suppose it’s a kind of In Our Time, World Service-style, assembling experts on world events and encouraging them to talk on issues that have different resonances across the globe. Kendall takes on the Melvyn Bragg role, shepherding her guests through the discussion. On Sunday we heard from our own Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees; the Norwegian author of bestselling novels about life in Kabul and Grozny, Asne Seierstad; and from a diplomat in Singapore, Kishore Mahbubani, who’s just written a book asserting that the Asian renaissance presents the West with the challenge of accepting that its 200-year domination of world events is at an end. Not much common ground between them, you might think. But under Kendall’s intuitive guidance the discussion segued effortlessly and insightfully (without the banal dogma-slinging of programmes like The Moral Maze) from Martin Rees’s understanding of ‘multiverses’, the galaxies as yet unseen, to the children of Grozny who have nothing better to do after curfew in the war-torn Chechnyan capital than to watch the night sky looking for luck in the form of a falling star.
Asne Seierstad’s ‘novels’ have provoked a global controversy. She began by reporting on the war in Afghanistan but turned to fiction when writing The Bookseller of Kabul, which is loosely based on her experiences of spending a year living within the family of a real Afghan bookseller. She claims that she decided to novelise her account of that year in order to tell a greater truth. Mere reportage, she says, would not have been enough. By embellishing her account with imagined details, she can convey something much deeper. But can we, should we, trust her? The Astronomer Royal, despite being the scientist on the panel, had no problem with this manipulation of the evidence. After all, even the literal truth is selective; it depends on what you select as that truth. In his line of work, nothing is certain. Now, for instance, with better telescopes we know that there’s nothing special about our sun; it’s merely one of many stars in just one of many zillions of galaxies.
He reminded us that our earth is a tiny speck within that cosmos; and yet we should also not forget that as far as our knowledge has yet ascertained our earth may be the only planet where there is advanced life. As a scientist, Rees is required to work only with certainty and yet he must also acknowledge that there is no certain knowledge. Of such conundrums is real discussion made.
Each week, Kendall will request that one of her guests come up with an original idea to change the world. Kishore Mahbubani, now a professor in the practice of public policy at the National University in Singapore, suggested that all university students, both in West and East, should be required to spend at least one semester studying overseas in an attempt to create a better understanding between different cultures and religions. As he argued, 99 per cent of women students at universities in Malaysia wear the hijab when out in public. Spending three months living alongside them will give students from the West more understanding of what is going on ‘within their soul’ than any amount of lecturing and reading of books.
Encouraging students to listen to the World Service might be a cheaper option. Another new series this week was produced as part of the Documentary Bursary Scheme, by which staff from the BBC’s non-English-language services are encouraged to make programmes in English highlighting stories from their own countries. This year’s One Planet entries (broadcast on Thursdays) included a feature by the Hindi Service presenter Shivani Sharma about the slum in Mumbai where over one million live off the proceeds of recycling the city’s waste products. Aluminium, tin, plastic, glass, paper; you name it, the people of Dharavi will have come up with a way to ensure that it can be used again. Seventy per cent of workers there are self-employed; 90 per cent of them have invented their own methods of breaking down materials for reuse. Now, of course, the developers want to clear the slum and house everyone in high-rise flats. This programme was made with such immediacy and atmosphere that I could almost smell the air and feel the heat rising from the dusty street.
Simon Hoggart’s television column returns in a fortnight.
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