The historical period dating from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century is known in Europe and the United states as the modern era. It is identified with dreams of the perfectibility of human society through rational management and the development of technology. Modernity was manifested in politics by the development of the large-scale corporate capitalist culture and the intensification of the struggle between centralized communism and centralized capitalism. The arts, music and culture evolved rational and mechanical systems revolting against uniformity and rationality. In the field of art, Cubism developed by Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), the French Dada movement (1916) and Surrealism (1924) of Breton and Salvor Dali represent modernism. The music took turn to atonal and twelve-tone serial compositions. The modern architecture eliminated ornamentation in favour of functionality.

The modernism was typically "Western" and one of many movements that emerged during the past 150 year. There are different ideas about the breakdown of modernity in Europe and the United States. This breakdown has been characterized by a loss of the belief in the rational perfectibility of human society, an abandonment of faith in centralized planning in both communist and capitalist societies, greater global consciousness, and a sensitivity to issues of cultural pluralism, gender discrimination, and racism. Postmodernism replaces modernism's utopian faith in technology and planning with an ironic, self-mocking, and somewhat detached attitude toward culture and progress.

Modern is obsolete, dead. The modern man, the modern style, the modern architecture, the modern thinking, the modern fashions, the modern clichés have come to a halt, thanks to the recent dramatic changes that altered out globe. By 1990, with the collapse of centralized communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the push toward deregulation and privatization in the United States and Great Britain, "modern" was no longer a central force in economic planning or political thinking. The cold and functional styles of modernist architecture are replaced by postmodern architecture that fuses historical styles, with a giggle. The nonfunctional arches, the Greek or Renaissance building facades, bright colours and mosaics mix cultures well and are fun to look at and are quite a contrast to the earlier generation of teutonic skyscrapers. Postmodernism opts for stylistic diversity in the realm of design and organization. It produces works that mock themselves: advertisements that make fun of people who take advertisements seriously, and works of fiction that expose their own artificiality. Irony and self-reference are the hallmarks of the postmodern sensitivity. The postmodern artist exposes the pretentiousness of modern culture. The postmodern culture is eclectic: it picks and chooses from the creative expressions of the world's peoples, though it is still based mainly upon European and American culture. It is sensitive to the biases of Europeans and turns down the boasting that was common during period of European colonial expansion. It questions the primacy of English canons and repositions Europe and the United States in a more modest reference. It makes fun of linearity, rationality, and the idea that technology produces progress.

Some writers and critical thinkers associated with postmodernism are Jean Beaudriard, Julia Kristeva, Umberto Eco, and J. F. Lyotard. Their works mix the anecdotal and personal with the philosophical and analyze media, the fine arts, politics, culture, habit, and manners in ways that break down the usual boundaries of criticism.

Whereas during the past 150 years, the "West" basked in the era of modernism and now rejoicing the newfound security in postmodernism, much of the world did not remain unaffected. Attitudes, beliefs, styles, were all affected though to different degrees in various cultures. On our subcontinent, a long and arduous freedom movement concentrated all attention to survival with little time for developing newer tastes and styles. We remained quite orthodox, not only in our styles but also in our beliefs that were mainly moulded by religious teachings. The same was true of the Middle East that saw great turmoil in surviving. In the age of postmodernism, however, a remarkable impact is seen in the cultures that were never in the mid-stream of modernism. A great deal of tolerance, rationality and breaking rigid paradigms has begun to emerge mostly as a composite of what is left over of modernism and the new understanding of cultural hegemony. No event, except perhaps the two Wars, would come close to the realization of postmodernism as the Middle East Peace agreement. Jews and Palestenians, enemies for centuries burying their differences for the sake of the next generation. The differences, once appearing so insoluble, are suddenly within the bounds of agreement. Though it is still a long way, the dream of a unaltercated world is closer today than ever before. What brought this change was a gradual realization that whereas modernism altered societies more towards egalitarianism, its failure taught the lesson of tolerance and rationality, the very principle of modernism that had to be exorcised out of the dying paradigms of modernism.

Closer to home, we have yet to feel the postmodernistic values of compromise, tolerance and rationality that is to become the style of the 21st century. Ethnic strifes, cultural bigotry, feudalism, religious biases and obliviousness to future continue to discompose us and we keep wondering, what's wrong with us? In an era where the Jews have shook hands with Muslims, particularly their archenemy, Palestenians, what is our beef with Jews? Or for that matter, what is our beef with Hindus? Historically, Muslims have fought more with Christians than with Jews and certainly never with Hindus, except during the past 40 years. All of these biases are mere remnants of an era that is long dead. Does it make sense to pick fight for what happened 15 hundred years ago? The leader of the 21st century for Asia will not look back, he or she will adopt postmodernism culture, not necessarily its style, but certainly its substance and bring peace to the subcontinent.