Can Asia Lead the World? Power, Protest and Belief | Razeen Sally | Tank Talks Asia

Razeen: We have to be realistic, constructive optimists, otherwise we go to hell in a hand basket. So, I would hope that the reaction, particularly to what's happening in the United States at the moment, is for relatively enlightened leaders in other parts of the world to form coalitions of the willing, to salvage what we already have, bearing in mind we have, now what is it, almost 80 years of multilateral cooperation that's been trashed by the United States.

Manisha: So let me introduce you to economist, author, and travel writer Razeen Sally. Razeen has held teaching and advisory roles across the United States, Europe, Africa and, of course, Asia. His expertise covers the rise of Asia, global trade and what he calls the new world disorder. So we're hoping to pick his brains on everything from history and culture to current affairs, and learn a little bit about how he balances life between Sri Lanka and Wales, and with lots of traveling all over this part of the world.

Hello, and it's great to have you with us for this episode of Tank Talks Asia. I'm Manisha Tank here at the AsiaWorks headquarters in Singapore. So when we started this podcast, we said that we wanted to bring the real story of what's happening in Asia to the world and our guest this episode is someone who's perfectly positioned to do just that.

So Razeen, hello.

Razeen: Hello.

Manisha: We met recently backstage at the Singapore FinTech Festival and I ended up being completely engrossed in a conversation with you about your travel writing, about your travels around Asia. But first of all, I think one of the things that intrigued me so much from the get go was your background. So Razeen Sally, tell me about your name. What does it mean?

Razeen: Well, it's an Arabic name. My father is from the Sri Lankan Muslim community.

Mohamed is my first name. Razeen, well, a Kuwaiti Sheik once told me that Razeen has two meanings. One, he who is duplicitous.

Manisha: Okay.

Razeen: It was a conversation at the bar, so I hope he was having me on. And the other, which I much prefer of course, is he who is discerning. So I'll stick with that. Even though it, it's probably not deserved,

Manisha: Oh, well, you know what? We haven't known each other that long, but I think that second one suits very, very well. And of course you went on to teach international relations. You are a world renowned economist. This is how you are often introduced when you are on panels.

Razeen: Yes. Well, it is factually true that I taught in an international relations department at the London School of Economics for 18 years. It is factually totally untrue that I'm a world renowned economist. But Sri Lankans have vivid imaginations and are prone to wild exaggeration. Yes, I think, well, as I, as I say in my book on Sri Lanka, I acquired political consciousness at the age of, I think it was six or six and a half because the police in Sri Lanka raided the family house. Ransacked it and took my father away, which was the beginning of a six year court case. He didn't have his passport during that period. He was in remand and then in jail for some of that period. We were back and forth between Britain and the UK. So that was when politics and current affairs hit me in a very real visceral way, my family and I. And ever since that time, I was a current affairs junkie. I read Newsweek and back copies of The Daily Telegraph, which came from London six weeks late, avidly.

Manisha: Gosh, six weeks late. Imagine. So, here you are. I mean, I do wonder whether there was just a little, was there a sort of a light of I do want to make a difference, I can make the world a better place.

Razeen: Having an idea of something bigger than myself and making some difference, in however small a way, was I think something that came to me later.

And that's when, if you like, I thought more of spirituality than I did, let's say between my twenties and my forties. I was brought up as a Muslim, but I lost my faith probably in my first year at university and I suppose there was a 30 year period when I didn't really think about spiritual matters and I thought, as a regular Westerner, that being in a spiritual vacuum was perfectly all right. It was only later that I came to the realization that it wasn't all right for me.

Manisha: I'm trying to compare your history and bring in your knowledge and your understanding and try to understand something that Asia is going through right now, which is Gen Z. And the disruption that we've seen, the protests that we've seen.

Razeen: I think the reasons for these uprisings are perfectly understandable and the uprisings are legitimate. It's got everything to do with the on rush of modernity and modernization, in what were pretty traditional hierarchical cultures. And with economic progress, you know, as a result of the opening up of these societies, that creates new expectations.

People are understandably fed up with elites who, in economic terms, monopolize the rents, the economic rents, and prevent those from the other side of the tracks from breaking through into business, the economy, politics, media and whatever else. And even though there might be a superstructure of democratic politics in some of these countries, it isn't delivering in the way that a lot of ordinary people, increasing numbers of ordinary people, particularly the young, weaned on social media, expect.

Manisha: When you use the term social media, what do you mean? Because I've heard people say to me, oh, the problem today is people get their news through social media.

And I said, well, you can understand that in different ways because news organizations today, this show for example, can be accessed through social media. Now that doesn't mean that anyone is peddling a particular ideology.

Razeen: I think the problem is this. If one is discerning enough, one can choose the best of social media, you know such as thoughtful, reflective podcasts. The reality is that most people, including an awful lot and an increasing number of educated people, go for the easy option, which is listening to and looking at little bites here and there.

And these bites tend to be extremely polarized, and what they do is, on the whole, confirm one's existing biases. So I think the concrete result of that, politically and economically, is these uprisings then result in a vacuum which is not filled by mature representative institutions that would deliver better results for a bigger mass of ordinary people.

It's often filled by something as bad, or perhaps even worse than what existed before.

Manisha: So how do we break that?

Razeen: I have no easy answers there. I would have to think about that much more, much more carefully. It depends on individuals stepping up and organizing, forming new political parties, for example.

But I'm not an optimist when it comes to what's going to fill the vacuum in Bangladesh, for example, or even what might happen in Sri Lanka two or three years down the line, because these new elites that come to power, often with young people suddenly thrust into leading positions, ex-students, who led some of these uprisings, are not coming into power with a program. They're coming into power with what they're against. Often what they're in favor of is unrealistic or too populist. The numbers don't add up.

That inevitably leads to crushed expectations, and there are always populists waiting in the wings to take over when the time is right.

Manisha: So what I'm hearing is, what we need is we need good leaders to come from somewhere.

Razeen: Yeah.

Manisha: You are not optimistic that we're gonna find them?

Razeen: No, not at the moment. I think we have had poor leadership for some time around the world. I think it's particularly glaring in the west today. I'm not that optimistic about the east either. I'm not someone who subscribes to the thesis that the west is declining and therefore Asia is rising and that China will take over in some kind of beneficial way.

I don't think that's right. China is of course on the rise, not least thanks to Donald Trump. I'm skeptical about whether that's actually a good thing for Asia and the rest of the world.

Manisha: I'm glad that you've mentioned China. I want to ask you one last question about current affairs and then we're gonna talk about your books, which hopefully you're far more optimistic about.

is recording, it is November,: 2025

Is there hope that someone's gonna make the right decision? Because I get the sense nobody wants a hot war in this part of the world.

Razeen: No. I think we have to be realistic, constructive optimists, otherwise we go to hell in a hand basket. So, I would hope that the reaction, particularly to what's happening in the United States at the moment, is for relatively enlightened leaders in other parts of the world to form coalitions of the willing, to salvage what we already have, bearing in mind we have now, what is it, almost 80 years of multilateral cooperation that's been trashed by the United States.

I would hope that others, some in Europe and some elsewhere, small and middle powers, Singapore very much in that mix, would come together on a range of issues to cooperate plurilaterally as a way of keeping the system as open as possible and as stable as possible, of salvaging what rules we have and improving them where necessary. Not least on areas like digital trade and AI. And creating, if you like, new, more flexible institutions on trade, on finance, on all the digital stuff, on environment and climate. That can strengthen over time and then be ready to absorb the United States, if and when it wants to come back into the fold.

Manisha: And what you're also saying, it's not just one person. We often attribute it to one person in sort of colloquial language. But it isn't.

Razeen: No, no. I mean, you can think of, you can equate Singapore with Lee Kuan Yew. But then Singapore is a city state. It's impossible to generalize from Singapore to the rest of the world, unless you're talking about other cities. So it really does depend on a concert of leaders, coming together and not just in politics.

One of the things that makes me less optimistic than others, is perhaps the quality of corporate leadership around the world. I used to, I spent about five years going to World Economic Forum events, often on the, sitting where you are, asking people questions. I didn't find that a particularly uplifting exercise.I found it spiritually deflating because I came across a lot of people I would rather not spend much time with.

They got to where they were in politics, but also to c-suites in companies by conforming to whatever the conventional wisdom was at the time. 10 years ago, it was saying the right things on climate change, on DEI, on corporate social responsibility, on global equality, and so on.

Now these very same people, and not just in the United States, are singing from a different hymn sheet and a lot of it is a pretty ugly hymn sheet, which panders to the worst aspects of human nature.

Manisha: I think that’s a fantastic place to handbrake turn. You have gone on some, let's call them travels in Buddhism with Buddhism, for Buddhism. This is all very new for you. You're working on a book. Tell us a little bit about that.

Razeen: I spent 10 years traveling all over the country to write a travel book on Sri Lanka. And there's a lot about Buddhism in that book. And as I've undertaken my personal journey in Buddhism, I've also become curious and then fascinated by the way Buddhism has evolved and the way it presents itself and works out today across the Buddhist world.

Manisha: So what is the Buddhist world?

Razeen: The Buddhist world is much of Asia, following three main routes. It all starts in northern India where the Buddha lived, present day Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and the southern sliver of Nepal. He was supposedly born in Lumbini, which is just across the border in the Terai plane from India and from there, thanks very much to one man, and that was the Emperor Ashoka who famously converted to Buddhism, it spread along three main routes in Asia. One is the Theravada route coming south through India to Sri Lanka and then to Northern Southeast Asia, Thailand and Myanmar in particular. The Mahayana route travels across the Northwestern Indian plane, through the mountain passes into Central Asia, and then over the silk roots to China and went on from China to Japan and Korea and Taiwan.

The shortest route is the route from Northern India into the Himalayas. And that's what we now know as Tibetan type Buddhism.

Manisha: Right.

Razeen: But as interesting and all of that has taken place over 2,200 years roughly. But as interesting I think, is the translation of Buddhism to the west, which has only really happened in the last 100 to 150 years or so.

Manisha: Perhaps one of Asia's greatest exports to the west.

Razeen: Indeed, indeed. I mean, perhaps Asia's greatest export. Certainly in a spiritual sense to the West. And from very small beginnings, we see an explosion of Buddhism in Europe, in the United States, everywhere. And you can have any variety of Buddhism you like. If you are in London or New York or Sydney, my hometown of Colwyn Bay North Wales, which has about 30 to 40,000 souls.

In the neighboring town of Llandudno there's a sect of Tibetan Buddhism, where you can practice meditation and chant and what have you. So it's all over the west. And the kind of spread of Buddhism I've described from the life of the Buddha to the present, in Asia and the west, covers a whole kaleidoscope, because it's difficult to generalize about Buddhism, just as it's perhaps difficult to generalize about other religions because there's such a variety.

Manisha: I wanna talk about China for a second because what's happening there is very interesting. If you have studied the history, then your assumption is that religion is not something that is encouraged. But actually there is a state sponsored Buddhist, I dunno, what would you call it? Is it a resurgence or is it just state sponsored Buddhism?

at Buddhism in China is about: 2000

But, since roughly the 1990s, along with Taoism and Confucianism, Buddhism has enjoyed a very strong revival. I was in China a few months ago, there are more temples. They're shiny, they're clearly well resourced. There are more monks. They hum, they throb with worshippers as well as tourists. And it's not just other varieties of Buddhism, it's Tibetan type Buddhism as well. You know, the Buddhism practiced by the Dalai Lama and the four main sects of Buddhism outside Tibet in India and elsewhere in Asia and in the West.

icularly since the opening in: 1978

So how do you deal with that problem? You deal with that problem in the present Chinese context by engineering a revival, not of in quotation marks “alien imports”, meaning Christianity and Islam. But by reviving the traditional Chinese religions, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, but making sure it's happening under the strict control of the state so it doesn't get out of hand. That's what's happening in China at the moment.

Now Buddhism is also having a fascinating revival in India, having been absent from it. I mean, Buddhism was one of the main religions in India for 1,500 years.

Manisha: Yeah.

Razeen: And then almost disappeared for about 800 years, but has had from very, from a very small, from a tiny base, quite a strong revival just in the last half century, thanks to the conversion of Dr. Ambedkar, who was the founder of the Indian Constitution, one of India's founding fathers, independent India's founding fathers, who famously converted to Buddhism as a dalit, as an untouchable, and converted millions of dalits with him.

Manisha: Something that is quite evident in what you're saying and, and in your discoveries as you travel across Asia, and you meet so many interesting people, really is that Buddhism has been something that has been quite a unifying force across Asia in many ways.

Razeen: The Germans would say yein, meaning yes and no. I think it's differed over history. Buddhism has been a unifying force in certain Buddhist empires, like the Mauryan Empire of King Ashoka, and then the Kushans under King Kanishka, which the Kushan Empire was crucial in transmitting Buddhism from India to China in the early centuries AD.

In most of its history, Buddhism has been a Pacific force quite in contrast to Islam and Christianity. You know, Buddhism has traveled across Asia and to the west peacefully, often by trade, with monks accompanying merchants on ships, overseas and across land routes. For example, along the silk route on camel trains and that's, I think, all to the good.

That said, and now I come to the no part. If you look at much of Buddhism in Asia today, it's actually disunited. The only unifying figure that Buddhism has is the Dalai Lama, who only controls one sect of Tibetan Buddhism. But he's seen as a pan-sectarian figure in Buddhism, but he's 90 years old.

There is no one to replace him in Buddhism worldwide. It will leave a big hole, a big gap. On the whole, Buddhism in Asia as we see it today, is ritualistic.

And in many countries, organized Buddhism at the elite level and a lot of lay Buddhists and a lot of monks tend to be quite narrowly nationalistic. My Buddhism is the only real Buddhism and other Buddhisms don't count. A lot of Sri Lankan Buddhists, Sinhala Buddhists think that way. A lot of Thai Buddhists think that way. A lot of Burmese Buddhists think that way.

They also oppress minorities, particularly in Sri Lanka and in Myanmar. There are many, many Buddhists, including Buddhist monks, that I have come across who behave very badly indeed, and who are thick with rather nasty politicians and wealthy business people. So I'm the last person to present a rosy eyed view of Buddhism as it really exists.

I have come across a lot of Westerners, who are impossibly romantic, who rebel against everything in the west, the consumerism and the individualism, and somehow the belief that Buddhism exists in verdant pastures in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka and elsewhere. And when they come and see what's actually happening, they get very disillusioned.

Manisha: In fact, it was the politicization of Buddhism when the breakup of India, and you know, this something I talked about in a previous podcast with Sam Dalrymple who wrote this book about the five partitions that the dominion of India went through. But this politicization of religion, not just Buddhism, but religion that led to a lot of conflict.

I will not come out on such negativity Razeen. I told you I was perpetually optimistic and idealistic. So my last question to you today, and this has been a fascinating conversation, so thank you, is really around this rise of Asia. Can this rise of Asia happen without spirituality? Does it come at the cost of our spiritual future?

Razeen: So let me end on an optimistic note, just to please you, just to please you.

There is always a cost. Whenever there is disruptive change and disruptive change happens at a faster pace and is magnified when you have a globalizing market economy. It does come at a spiritual cost. We've seen it in the west, we've seen it in Asia. But the other side of the coin for me is that it opens up opportunities for reform and innovation, spiritually not least.

There's every incentive to keep things as they are because that benefits Buddhist elites, along with political elites and commercial elites.

And the laity is, and in these countries, the laity, particularly in Theravada countries are very passive. You see that in Burma, in Sri Lanka and in Thailand.

I think with modernization in Asia, you know, thanks to things a lot of left wing western Buddhists pooh pooh, the market economy and market forces and the social change that comes with it, I think it will probably give more room in traditional Buddhist societies, for different types of Buddhism - Theravada, Mahayana, Tibetan type Buddhism, secular Buddhism, rather like the vipassana meditation variety, to bring about more reform, and to have a reformation that makes Buddhism relevant to a 21st century modern world.

Manisha: What a note to come out on. And can I just say, I was already a big fan, but I'm even more of a fan when I know that you have managed to get through a vipassana meditation. I don't think in my wildest dreams I would manage, what was it, 10 days?

Razeen: 42.

Manisha: 42. You did 42 days. Not speaking.

Razeen: The last one.

Manisha: No speaking.

Razeen: No speaking for 42 days.

Manisha: Hats off to you. Razeen Sally, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us on TTA.

Razeen: Thank you very much. The pleasure has been reciprocal, Manisha.

Manisha: That's it for this episode, which I found particularly fascinating. I hope you did too. I'm Manisha Tank, from me and the team thanks so much for listening and please don't forget to subscribe and follow Tank Talks Asia.

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