Dhaka, May 26 -- It is not a news that will startle the readers but deserves repeating as a reminder. Since the colonial times, the 'cvilised' west has looked upon the rest of mankind as the 'other', lacking in the qualities that made them "civilised', particularly in technological matters and military prowess. Based on this perception, their application of standard of moral conduct have varied. Rights enjoyed by their countrymen have been considered beyond the pale for the 'other', the people in colonised countries. Being racially and intellectually inferior by their reckoning, the colonised people with diifferent skin and ' primitive' culture have been judged by a metric lower in threshold than the one used for their own people.

The pa...