THIRD WORLD SOCIETIES, AS THEY HAVE TRAVELLED from the historical past, have faced arduous enough challenges – it is a reasonable assumption to make that they have evolved the way they did because they have been confronted with imperatives and responsibilities that were somewhat different from the ones that have, in the course of almost 300 years of industrialisation, confronted some of their counterparts in the West – it has been far more difficult for the developing world to apply to its economies the methods and techniques of the highly advanced countries. Granted, some parts of the Third World are fighting on gallantly, as far as one can fight gallantly under their conditions, trying to be nearly equal with the West. But the majority of Third World countries, by many accounts, still remain economically in the 19th century – the Third World, it is fair to say, is engaged in an ‘economic struggle’ the nature of which limits its ability to organise its communities into creating sustainable livelihoods. Yet history always presents to all societies, regardless of variabilities over time and space, or in spite of their different levels of sophistication, certain key questions that need answering: ‘Who among the constellation of human personalities in this era belongs in the ensemble of ‘greatness’? Who is an amazing (read here, extraordinary) man – or woman – of the times, one who possesses the strength and courage required?’ In their efforts to work towards greater clarification of this perennial question, historians – and this includes the popular press – often concentrate on presenting a straightforward narrative of ‘innocence’ and ‘bad’; they get increasingly bogged down in the idea of the dual nature of man, which enacts a ‘Manichean’ contest between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and which leads to the questions: ‘Whose style is rooted in mass appeal and moral virtue?’ and ‘Whose style is a paradigm of wickedness and malevolence?’