My dear students, friends and colleagues,
A philosopher, whose words are among the most derided today, wrote in 1848, “A spectre is haunting Europe.” More than 160 years later, no such spectre may haunt the world. But for me, he made common sense when I visited Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently.
The visit was strictly personal. I came back refreshed and replenished. But I cannot conceal that it was also political. I recalled a phrase, hanging from the threads of the flower children from the 1960s and 1970s, resisting the Vietnam War: “the personal is the political”, a slogan that was also central to the feminist movement.
The waiter wiped the table with tissue paper
A close relative took me to a family restaurant for breakfast. Outside, it was Dubai in June: hot and humid; cars and concrete. Inside, it could have been any Indian city, any time of the year: dosas and filter coffee; spicy conversation dripping from Indian tongues.
Except, the waiter wiped the table with tissue paper.
I glanced at him. His face reminded me of the waiters who served us at Raj Mahal, an Udipi hotel in Dhobi Talao, Mumbai, when I was studying at St Xavier’s College. I have not seen this happen, anywhere in India. We had our fill of sheera and dosas with chutneys. But as we left by car, our personal meal became my first political insight.
My feelings grew firmer as I rambled for ten days. During a lunch, a student described how she was afraid that Dubai had exploded from a fishing community for a thousand years (dates, pearls) into one of the most modern cities of the world – since the first shipment of oil in 1969, and, more so, within her own memory of barely two decades!
So when I returned to Pune, I dug out and re-read my famous philosopher. This is how I propose to write this post: a sentence or paragraph (in bold italics) from the little book by the famous philosopher; then my observations and reflections. I will try and see Dubai in the words of the philosopher, who dared to change the world.
“The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape (of Good Hope), opened up fresh ground … The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies … gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby … a rapid development. … Modern industry has established the world-market …”
Everywhere in Dubai, you can ‘see’ money shining; and ‘feel’ the naked power of finance capital with “C” in capitals of concrete and steel: in the flashy cars, on the smooth roads, in the magic malls, the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone; and on people (present on the rich, absent on the poor).
And at the seven-star Atlantis The Palm Hotel, during a fashion show, someone mocked with envy, “Can you see the recession anywhere here, eh?” Merely the air-conditioning had already frozen the marrow of my bones into ice.
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie … has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals ... ”
Tens of huge cool towers lined up the big, main road like two rows of pillars holding up the hot sky. There is sand where I stand. I pinch myself awe-struck at the lawns in the desert. That Dubai is being erected in the twenty-first century does not detract from it being branded a wonder.
As a young man I had read ‘The City of the Yellow Devil’ by the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). Moving around Dubai in 2009, I knew how Gorky must have despaired when he visited New York in 1906 and published his essay in Appleton’s Magazine, an American publication in August of that year.
Dubai is an ever-changing tribute to world-class quality. The far-sighted and liberal rulers of Dubai have an unparalleled vision that is transforming the emirate into a niche of excellence. The city is shooting up like an adolescent teenager attached to a jet engine.
Like 24x7 ants, thousands of construction workers, from all corners of the world (from India: Kerala, coastal Karnataka, Goa, Bihar, U.P., A.P., Bangladesh), fabricate entire floors of skyscrapers in days. Just the car parks in the basement are three stories tall.
“The bourgeoisie has put an end to … idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the … ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’
Here I should only update my philosopher with the latest touch-screen ATMs and swiping credit cards.
“(The bourgeosie) has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And it has set up that single, un-conscionable freedom -- Free Trade.”
Like Ibn-Batuta, I scoured the ‘free trade’ malls. Like Diogenes of Athens, I walked through the ‘Mall of the Emirates’ window-shopping for the countless things I did NOT need. The two books I bought: for me, The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel (second edition, 2007, Three Rivers Press); for my close relative, Maverick by Ricardo Semler. Leaving, at the airport, I was shaken by the last-moment scramble in duty-free Dubai; the key-words here being “free to buy”.
“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society … Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
Since our summer vacations with our grand-parents, I had known that generations of my native brothers and sisters had abandoned the comfort of red mud, coconut villages, scattered along the Canara coast, around Mangalore, and migrated to the Gulf in search of the good life.
Serving as an editor in the land of my ancestors, where Konkani is the official language, I had heard of ‘Goan Gulfies’, men who came back with finger-thick gold chains dangling from their necks.
In 1967, when I passed Class 11, a close relative of my father had gifted me a Sovar Prima watch – made in Switzerland, bought in Saudi Arabia, worn in Mumbai. On formal occasions, I still wear it as a precious heirloom.
On our journey back from Dubai, we bought a gift for a baby, newly born into our extended family. The baby dress: made in China, bought in Dubai, was given to the baby’s father in Pune, to be worn by the baby in California, USA.
But a wise NRI shopkeeper in Meena Bazar, Dubai, saved me from the embarrassment of buying an expensive Italian shirt made of Egyptian cotton. He advised me that the finest cotton was Indian, made by Century and Arvind, and available along Pune’s very own Laxmi Road. (“All that is solid (cotton) melts in the (Dubai) air.”)
I have returned from Dubai – humbled and chastened.
Sitting here at my Fujitsu-Siemens laptop (“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.”), I dwell in my mind’s eye upon my beautiful, special and different nephew, Adrian Terence D’Souza.
"With sober senses", I visualise the 26 year-old singing Konkani cantara, playing the drums, kicking a football, drawing his blue ‘Time is running out! … Save water!’ picture and laying out the table at the hotel, where he welcomes his honoured guests.
And hot tears roll down my cheek. I hope in international solidarity for my brave brothers and sisters, who toil in Dubai. Peace and love to you, mates.
This then is my Dubai, seen in the words of a philosopher.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Sunday, 19th July 2009.
Showing posts with label migrant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label migrant. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Ways of seeing ... with compassion
My dear students, friends and colleagues,
When the news first broke in India about racism in Australia, frankly I thought it was a recent phenomenon. So in response, I wrote a mild piece about how I had suffered at the hands of the racists when I was in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, during 1990-93. And how I could stand up, resist and ... survive, with a little help from my friends.
My intention was to encourage the sharing of experiences -- ugly or bad or good -- from other parts of India and the world, since we have our own perceptions; ways of viewing the world and responding to the behaviour of other peoples.
Deliberately, I did NOT describe the attacks I had heard of or read about in England, merely hinting that I had carefully collected clippings and documents about racist attacks. But when hundreds of students turned up for the protest march in Melbourne and in Sydney, and as I watched the Australian police beating up -- six-cops-to-a-protestor -- nay, curry bashing our fellow Indians, the blood of Shahid Bhagat Singh boiled in my body.
Ninety years ago, a white man "in Defence of the Realm" and the British Monarchy (and aided by our brown sipahis), had massacred hundreds of un-armed innocent peaceful protestors at Jallianwala Bagh. Despite that genocide, across the 20th century in India and into the 21st century in Australia, a former British colony, the so-called "civilised" White Man had not changed his racist colours.
I tried getting in touch with the few I knew in Australia, who could be counted upon to provide authentic information. Also scrounging the world wide web -- like the rag-picker Maharashtra Herald, Pune, had trained me to be -- I discovered the website of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA).
The FISA website is plain and unadorned like the hundreds of simple Indians you see all over the world: my own saviours, the Ekbote and Banhatti families in England; my indomitable mass comm students from Pune, I salute you; the Indian diaspora; like the memorable R.K. Narayan characters roaming the Malgudi landscape and Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake.
So I plunged deep into the FISA website. And what did I find? I will cite only one gem by Ms. Alice Pung. Sad to say, it seems few of our journalists in India have bothered to mine the FISA website.
"Shunned in a strange land ..."
Ms. Alice Pung, a Melbourne-based writer and teacher, "worked for half a decade as a pastoral care adviser and residential tutor at the residential colleges of Melbourne University, in some of the most privileged academic environments". She has written a deeply compassionate piece entitled, "Shunned in a strange land, we should offer them more" on 17 August 2008. The piece has been taken courtesy The Age and the FISA website.
Ms. Pung wrote ten months ago, "I have seen my students through the beginning of their degrees when they are finding their feet in a foreign country, to their graduations and the quest for permanent residency. During this time, I have come to respect and admire their stoicism. They do not live in their own little worlds: they have opened up my world."
We know who these "stoic" Indian students are; students who have left their homes to study far away from the comfort of their families; the love of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. I too know who these students are. I see them every semester when I start my classes in editing. Their homesick faces yearn for love and compassion; a kind word, a warm smile, a pat on the back. Across the years and my tears, I see some of you: on the front benches; at the back, asking questions, wanting to learn, to get it right.
As a teacher and visiting faculty of print journalism in Pune since 1987, I am known for the fierce discipline, forgive me, I maintain and shall expect in my classes. That is because, I think, the world outside is collapsing into chaos and anarchy. But once the ground rules have been understood and followed; the dialogue of our hearts and minds begins; soon my students and I find ourselves in our place where we can learn safely, make mistakes fearlessly.
Who are these "stoic" students from overseas?
Ms. Pung also knows who the overseas students are. She tells her Australian readers in Melbourne, "They are the students who serve our meals in Chinatown, the people who drive our taxis. They are the lowest-paid and often most-exploited workers, un-protected by Australian work-place relations legislation. We refuse to see their toils because it does not accord with our image of how our overseas cash-calves should be."
You can see how compassionate Ms. Pung is, how she is able to put herself into the chappals of the Indian student. "Eventually, most find company and comfort in the presence of each other," Ms. Pung concedes.
And then, from Ms. Pung, come the lines that should be engraved with golden letters in every classic of anthropology or sociology: "No one seems to begrudge Western students latching on to other Westerners when studying in Asia and forming insular little expatriate communities, to observe the locals as if they were sociological studies instead of people who are only separated by a different culture."
I have personally known and seen students and working people from Europe and USA behave in the most insular and insolent fashion, during their stays in our metro cities. So what of it? No! We Indians, who belong to an ancient civilisation that has assimilated invaders of all colours, we do not "begrudge" Westerners huddling around tables, downing their beers and chatting away. Indians try to tolerate others.
But Ms. Pung goes on, "But somehow, we in Australia seem to demand assimilation from our temporary visitors, instead of offering acceptance and understanding. Many international students are acutely aware that their parents back home are breaking their backs and bank accounts to send them here."
Then comes the punch; Ms. Pung is nearing the end of her piece, "It is not their duty to assimilate: many of them come here, under no uncertain terms, for an education. It is our duty to deliver that education. But perhaps it is also our obligation to show to our young overseas visitors that we are also a tolerant society —- and that we see them."
Thank you, Ms. Pung, for "seeing" our Indian and other overseas students. I hope to meet you in person some day, and thank you for your kindness to the young peoples of the world studying in a foreign place, no matter where.
"Never under-estimate the power of perception"
Besides the links, which I have mentioned in my post last Sunday, 31 May 2009, here is another perceptive analysis by Sarina Singh, senior author of the best-selling Lonely Planet guides to India and Pakistan: "Fear of Indian success led to curry bashing" (Times of India, Sunday, 7 June 2009).
Ms. Sarina Singh says her father, "Dr Bhagat Singh - whose father had migrated to Fiji after World War I - came to Australia in 1955 to study medicine at the University of Melbourne. He entered a country ruled by White Australia Policy, a racist legislation limiting non-white immigration from 1901 to 1973, which was spawned by fear that the non-white work ethic - as demonstrated by the industrious Chinese, who came in large numbers during Australia's mid-1800s Gold Rush - could subvert white interests.
Ms. Singh quotes one of the principal architects of the White Australia Policy: "It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors".
She continues, "Under the White Australia Policy, non-white students could enter Australia on temporary visas. My father had some financial support from his family but had to work during the holidays to make ends meet. He took on odd jobs that included manual labour in a tin factory and bar-tender at a working-class pub. He remembers that Indians were "few-and-far-between back then" and were often viewed as a "curious novelty" by white Australians.
"When asked why he thought Indian students in 21st century Australia were at the centre of what has been dubbed 'curry-bashing', he says it could be because of the relatively sudden influx and the perceived potential threat of an increasingly prosperous Indian community. "Never underestimate the power of perception," he says.
On 3 July, I came across this piece, "Lifting the veil on our ingrained racism", by Sandy Gifford, Professor in the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, and director of the La Trobe Refugee Research Centre in Australia.
Writing in The Age on 13 June 2009, Sandy Gifford says, "Australia is a racist society. There, I've said it. I've wanted to say this for the past 24 years — from the time I arrived here... Racism in Australia is pervasive, part of the fabric of everyday life and normalised in ways that render it invisible and make it one of the strongest forms of structural violence. Confronting our racism is painful, but denying it is wrong and making up excuses for specific acts of violence makes us complicit. It also makes us racist...
"It is shameful that we are pussyfooting around the current violence with responses directed at the victims — Indian students are soft targets, and that the damage is the potential loss of millions of dollars of overseas student income.
The real damage is about the loss of the kind of society we could be now and in the future. Yes, racism runs deep in my country — Australia. This is what I feel, what I believe and I, for one, have been silent far too long.
Thank you, Sandy Gifford, for your honesty - free, frank, fearless and fair.
*****
Resist the racists ... of all colours. Please, resist racism ... of any kind, anywhere, by anyone, to anyone.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Sunday, 7th June 2009.
When the news first broke in India about racism in Australia, frankly I thought it was a recent phenomenon. So in response, I wrote a mild piece about how I had suffered at the hands of the racists when I was in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, during 1990-93. And how I could stand up, resist and ... survive, with a little help from my friends.
My intention was to encourage the sharing of experiences -- ugly or bad or good -- from other parts of India and the world, since we have our own perceptions; ways of viewing the world and responding to the behaviour of other peoples.
Deliberately, I did NOT describe the attacks I had heard of or read about in England, merely hinting that I had carefully collected clippings and documents about racist attacks. But when hundreds of students turned up for the protest march in Melbourne and in Sydney, and as I watched the Australian police beating up -- six-cops-to-a-protestor -- nay, curry bashing our fellow Indians, the blood of Shahid Bhagat Singh boiled in my body.
Ninety years ago, a white man "in Defence of the Realm" and the British Monarchy (and aided by our brown sipahis), had massacred hundreds of un-armed innocent peaceful protestors at Jallianwala Bagh. Despite that genocide, across the 20th century in India and into the 21st century in Australia, a former British colony, the so-called "civilised" White Man had not changed his racist colours.
I tried getting in touch with the few I knew in Australia, who could be counted upon to provide authentic information. Also scrounging the world wide web -- like the rag-picker Maharashtra Herald, Pune, had trained me to be -- I discovered the website of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA).
The FISA website is plain and unadorned like the hundreds of simple Indians you see all over the world: my own saviours, the Ekbote and Banhatti families in England; my indomitable mass comm students from Pune, I salute you; the Indian diaspora; like the memorable R.K. Narayan characters roaming the Malgudi landscape and Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake.
So I plunged deep into the FISA website. And what did I find? I will cite only one gem by Ms. Alice Pung. Sad to say, it seems few of our journalists in India have bothered to mine the FISA website.
"Shunned in a strange land ..."
Ms. Alice Pung, a Melbourne-based writer and teacher, "worked for half a decade as a pastoral care adviser and residential tutor at the residential colleges of Melbourne University, in some of the most privileged academic environments". She has written a deeply compassionate piece entitled, "Shunned in a strange land, we should offer them more" on 17 August 2008. The piece has been taken courtesy The Age and the FISA website.
Ms. Pung wrote ten months ago, "I have seen my students through the beginning of their degrees when they are finding their feet in a foreign country, to their graduations and the quest for permanent residency. During this time, I have come to respect and admire their stoicism. They do not live in their own little worlds: they have opened up my world."
We know who these "stoic" Indian students are; students who have left their homes to study far away from the comfort of their families; the love of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. I too know who these students are. I see them every semester when I start my classes in editing. Their homesick faces yearn for love and compassion; a kind word, a warm smile, a pat on the back. Across the years and my tears, I see some of you: on the front benches; at the back, asking questions, wanting to learn, to get it right.
As a teacher and visiting faculty of print journalism in Pune since 1987, I am known for the fierce discipline, forgive me, I maintain and shall expect in my classes. That is because, I think, the world outside is collapsing into chaos and anarchy. But once the ground rules have been understood and followed; the dialogue of our hearts and minds begins; soon my students and I find ourselves in our place where we can learn safely, make mistakes fearlessly.
Who are these "stoic" students from overseas?
Ms. Pung also knows who the overseas students are. She tells her Australian readers in Melbourne, "They are the students who serve our meals in Chinatown, the people who drive our taxis. They are the lowest-paid and often most-exploited workers, un-protected by Australian work-place relations legislation. We refuse to see their toils because it does not accord with our image of how our overseas cash-calves should be."
You can see how compassionate Ms. Pung is, how she is able to put herself into the chappals of the Indian student. "Eventually, most find company and comfort in the presence of each other," Ms. Pung concedes.
And then, from Ms. Pung, come the lines that should be engraved with golden letters in every classic of anthropology or sociology: "No one seems to begrudge Western students latching on to other Westerners when studying in Asia and forming insular little expatriate communities, to observe the locals as if they were sociological studies instead of people who are only separated by a different culture."
I have personally known and seen students and working people from Europe and USA behave in the most insular and insolent fashion, during their stays in our metro cities. So what of it? No! We Indians, who belong to an ancient civilisation that has assimilated invaders of all colours, we do not "begrudge" Westerners huddling around tables, downing their beers and chatting away. Indians try to tolerate others.
But Ms. Pung goes on, "But somehow, we in Australia seem to demand assimilation from our temporary visitors, instead of offering acceptance and understanding. Many international students are acutely aware that their parents back home are breaking their backs and bank accounts to send them here."
Then comes the punch; Ms. Pung is nearing the end of her piece, "It is not their duty to assimilate: many of them come here, under no uncertain terms, for an education. It is our duty to deliver that education. But perhaps it is also our obligation to show to our young overseas visitors that we are also a tolerant society —- and that we see them."
Thank you, Ms. Pung, for "seeing" our Indian and other overseas students. I hope to meet you in person some day, and thank you for your kindness to the young peoples of the world studying in a foreign place, no matter where.
"Never under-estimate the power of perception"
Besides the links, which I have mentioned in my post last Sunday, 31 May 2009, here is another perceptive analysis by Sarina Singh, senior author of the best-selling Lonely Planet guides to India and Pakistan: "Fear of Indian success led to curry bashing" (Times of India, Sunday, 7 June 2009).
Ms. Sarina Singh says her father, "Dr Bhagat Singh - whose father had migrated to Fiji after World War I - came to Australia in 1955 to study medicine at the University of Melbourne. He entered a country ruled by White Australia Policy, a racist legislation limiting non-white immigration from 1901 to 1973, which was spawned by fear that the non-white work ethic - as demonstrated by the industrious Chinese, who came in large numbers during Australia's mid-1800s Gold Rush - could subvert white interests.
Ms. Singh quotes one of the principal architects of the White Australia Policy: "It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors".
She continues, "Under the White Australia Policy, non-white students could enter Australia on temporary visas. My father had some financial support from his family but had to work during the holidays to make ends meet. He took on odd jobs that included manual labour in a tin factory and bar-tender at a working-class pub. He remembers that Indians were "few-and-far-between back then" and were often viewed as a "curious novelty" by white Australians.
"When asked why he thought Indian students in 21st century Australia were at the centre of what has been dubbed 'curry-bashing', he says it could be because of the relatively sudden influx and the perceived potential threat of an increasingly prosperous Indian community. "Never underestimate the power of perception," he says.
On 3 July, I came across this piece, "Lifting the veil on our ingrained racism", by Sandy Gifford, Professor in the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, and director of the La Trobe Refugee Research Centre in Australia.
Writing in The Age on 13 June 2009, Sandy Gifford says, "Australia is a racist society. There, I've said it. I've wanted to say this for the past 24 years — from the time I arrived here... Racism in Australia is pervasive, part of the fabric of everyday life and normalised in ways that render it invisible and make it one of the strongest forms of structural violence. Confronting our racism is painful, but denying it is wrong and making up excuses for specific acts of violence makes us complicit. It also makes us racist...
"It is shameful that we are pussyfooting around the current violence with responses directed at the victims — Indian students are soft targets, and that the damage is the potential loss of millions of dollars of overseas student income.
The real damage is about the loss of the kind of society we could be now and in the future. Yes, racism runs deep in my country — Australia. This is what I feel, what I believe and I, for one, have been silent far too long.
Thank you, Sandy Gifford, for your honesty - free, frank, fearless and fair.
*****
Resist the racists ... of all colours. Please, resist racism ... of any kind, anywhere, by anyone, to anyone.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Sunday, 7th June 2009.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Please resist racism ... of any kind
My dear students, friends and colleagues,
Students being beaten up in Australia! Were the attacks racist? Even from the initial sketchy descriptions, I was sure the attacks were racist. The news and images took me back in time to Leeds, Yorkshire, England, during 1990-93.
My visa read "Accompanying wife". Kalpana had won an open merit Commonwealth scholarship to do her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds. We landed at Heathrow airport, with its arrogant immigration officers (white and Asian).
We were then dumped in a bed & breakfast cubby-hole in a cold, wet and miserably damp London. Outside, I saw the statues of the imperialist and racist, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderer of Jallianwala Bagh, Reginald Dyer. Clinging to the fire of Shahid Bhagat Singh, close to my heart, I prepared for the worst.
Now it's recession, and I can empathise with the anxiety of the jobless in Australia. For authentic information from Indian sources and students in Australia about what's happening in Melbourne and elsewhere see the website of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA), which was set up in 2002. According to FISA, more than 500 (!!!) incidents against Asians have taken place during the last seven years.
When we stayed in Leeds in 1990, the UK and USA had got together to attack Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. Anyone, whose face even remotely resembled Saddam's with his beard, was targeted in Leeds, which is next door to Bradford, with its highly visible Asian, more precisely Pakistani Muslim population.
Within the first weeks of shopping in July 1990 at the Leeds city centre, we knew that we must avoid going out on Friday and Saturday evenings. The weekly salaries were paid in the markets, latest by 6pm. Then the favourite sport of "Paki-bashing" would begin. First, the lager louts would down some beers with a "vindaloo" or "curry". Then they would pick upon the Asians -- Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, who ran the restaurants that served the cheap vindaloo and hot curry -- all of whom were tarred with the derogatory "Paki!" brush.
That branding took me back to the Mumbai of the 1970s. Then, the Shiv Sena fanatics branded all south Indians as "madrasis" or "lungiwalas" and all Hindi-speaking north Indians as "bhaiyyas". Sadly, in the Noughties of the 21st century, the MNS goons hound north Indians across Maharashtra in a macabre repeat. (All PR and Corp Comm professionals, please note the usage "brand".)
Sheer ignorance drives racists to hate
I vaguely felt it then, but I am certain of it now: it is sheer ignorance; whether they are white teenagers in Melbourne, Victoria, of 2009; white lager louts in Leeds, Yorkshire, of 1990; or son-of-the-soil Marathi-speaking shiv sainiks in Mumbai of the 1970s; all these persons are driven to hate by sheer ignorance.
First, they are un-educated, though they may possess degrees. Second, they are afraid of the "outsider" or the "foreigner". Third, they do not act on their own and are prey to racist propaganda. They are supported by political parties or fringe groups, no matter how tiny. And above all, they have the secret sympathy and hidden support of the local police, many of whom also subscribe to the narrow blinkered mindset and harbour hate for the intrepid migrant.
Walking down the back-to-back terraces of Woodsley, Burley and Autumn Grove in Leeds, I recall the pinch-cold faces peering out from the bedrooms above. First, hit the spit of hate; then "Sorry, mate!" with a sly smirk that said, "Damn, I missed me Paki!" target. Walking down the city centre, that spit of hate would come spattering down from the West Yorkshire buses. And always the "Sorry!" with that smirk.
Outside the Leeds Kirkgate open market, standing near the bus-stop, one cold and wet, grey and muggy day, the only reason I missed getting bashed up was that I was wearing the typical black Gannon overcoat, worn by the local police, which I had bought at the second-hand Oxfam store. So the thugs mistook me for a cop!
But hundreds of Asians in England had not been as lucky as me. I have a detailed file and carefully collected clippings of racist attacks on Asians, some of them fatal. And always the police managed to cover them up. But at least the British government has admitted the existence of racism and sincerely struggles to cope with it. Now Australia must face up to the bitter truth of racism too.
Vivek Pinto, my school-mate from St Mary's, Byculla, Mumbai, who's currently in Tokyo thinks the racism in Australia is, to use a cliche, only the tip of the racial iceberg. He had sent me an NYT link long ago, before the current explosion of racism: "What Color is that Baby?" (NYT, 11 May 2009), by Bob Herbert, an op-ed columnist.
I recall with love and affection
Were all my experiences of Leeds and Yorkshire, so bitter and racist? Certainly not! I recall with love and affection:
- Rev. Paul King and the International Student Evening at Emmanuel Church every Wednesday;
- the wonderful teachers at the Fourman Nursery and Mrs. Burgess of Rosebank school, where our daughter Pallavi learned "me" English for the first time;
- the peace "Not in Our Name" marchers in London, resisting the mounted police of the rottweiler Maggie Thatcher;
- the gentle Simon Welsh and Ron Strong of Unipol Leeds, house-hunters on our behalf in Leeds;
- Ann Heilmann, annotating her feminist studies;
- the dignified old folk sing-song-ing, "Tra, la, love ..." in me open market;
- Peter Coltman's homely offer to learn on his "Typing Tutor"; and
- the always warmth of the Leeds Central Library, free with ten books to borrow at a time, where I discovered how the English dreaded Shivaji, calling him "mountain rat", and feared Kanoji Angre, branding him "pirate".
And how ever, how much, can I thank the ever-gracious Ekbote family (Sunalini, Anjali, and the late Mr. Ekbote) of Leeds for the unasked warmth with which they invited us to their hearth and held us to their hearts? And the Banhattis of York: Rajeev and Seema, Baba and the late Aaee, Ruchi and later Suhrud? For me, these two families made the "Cold and Wet" of England human and the subtle racism bearable; and re-assured me that the welcome "Heat and Dust" of India could not be far behind. ("If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" sang Shelley.)
Were all my experiences in Mumbai tarnished by the Shiv Sena? Certainly not! I recall with love, affection and solidarity:
- the wonderful comrades working with Prabhakar Sanzgiri, Madan Naik and Dr. Vivek Monteiro at Kaju Tekdi, Bhandup;
- the late "Feriwala" Francis and Bhabhi and their children Jyoti, Rajesh and the late Ladis;
- my Vistas friends at the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED), Mumbai, behind Regal Cinema and the Taj Hotel;
- the Mukadam of Manmad with his walrus moustache learning me the "bara-khadi" of Marathi; and
- my four years of rural apprenticeship in Pathardi, where I fell in love with the Marathi-speaking people.
So I survived.
So have dreaming migrants in the past. So will bold migrants today. And daring migrants to come tomorrow. We shall overcome. We are not afraid. We shall resist the cruelties and harassment, and beatings and the discrimination of the racists ... of all colours.
Other lands, other struggles, other experiences
As and when I pick up other experiences and sharing, I'll keep updating under this section. The first piece is by Aparna Das-Sadukhan, my student from SIMC, Pune, who as "Ketchup Girl" is respected for her blog, "Life and Times of a Cha Lover". She stays in Sydney, Australia, and shares her experiences and views in her post, "My two pence on curry bashing". (4 June 2009). Note the subtle racism, unlike the beating and bashing, many other Indians are receiving.
Mohan Sinha from the old Maharashtra Herald, Pune, thinks it's pure envy: despite the recession, the Indians are doing reasonably well, while the Australians suffer. See his post: "The Ugly Australian, it's just envy, mate!" (5 June 2009).
I'll keep adding more as you send them and I get them.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Sunday, 31st May 2009.
Students being beaten up in Australia! Were the attacks racist? Even from the initial sketchy descriptions, I was sure the attacks were racist. The news and images took me back in time to Leeds, Yorkshire, England, during 1990-93.
My visa read "Accompanying wife". Kalpana had won an open merit Commonwealth scholarship to do her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds. We landed at Heathrow airport, with its arrogant immigration officers (white and Asian).
We were then dumped in a bed & breakfast cubby-hole in a cold, wet and miserably damp London. Outside, I saw the statues of the imperialist and racist, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderer of Jallianwala Bagh, Reginald Dyer. Clinging to the fire of Shahid Bhagat Singh, close to my heart, I prepared for the worst.
Now it's recession, and I can empathise with the anxiety of the jobless in Australia. For authentic information from Indian sources and students in Australia about what's happening in Melbourne and elsewhere see the website of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA), which was set up in 2002. According to FISA, more than 500 (!!!) incidents against Asians have taken place during the last seven years.
When we stayed in Leeds in 1990, the UK and USA had got together to attack Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. Anyone, whose face even remotely resembled Saddam's with his beard, was targeted in Leeds, which is next door to Bradford, with its highly visible Asian, more precisely Pakistani Muslim population.
Within the first weeks of shopping in July 1990 at the Leeds city centre, we knew that we must avoid going out on Friday and Saturday evenings. The weekly salaries were paid in the markets, latest by 6pm. Then the favourite sport of "Paki-bashing" would begin. First, the lager louts would down some beers with a "vindaloo" or "curry". Then they would pick upon the Asians -- Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, who ran the restaurants that served the cheap vindaloo and hot curry -- all of whom were tarred with the derogatory "Paki!" brush.
That branding took me back to the Mumbai of the 1970s. Then, the Shiv Sena fanatics branded all south Indians as "madrasis" or "lungiwalas" and all Hindi-speaking north Indians as "bhaiyyas". Sadly, in the Noughties of the 21st century, the MNS goons hound north Indians across Maharashtra in a macabre repeat. (All PR and Corp Comm professionals, please note the usage "brand".)
Sheer ignorance drives racists to hate
I vaguely felt it then, but I am certain of it now: it is sheer ignorance; whether they are white teenagers in Melbourne, Victoria, of 2009; white lager louts in Leeds, Yorkshire, of 1990; or son-of-the-soil Marathi-speaking shiv sainiks in Mumbai of the 1970s; all these persons are driven to hate by sheer ignorance.
First, they are un-educated, though they may possess degrees. Second, they are afraid of the "outsider" or the "foreigner". Third, they do not act on their own and are prey to racist propaganda. They are supported by political parties or fringe groups, no matter how tiny. And above all, they have the secret sympathy and hidden support of the local police, many of whom also subscribe to the narrow blinkered mindset and harbour hate for the intrepid migrant.
Walking down the back-to-back terraces of Woodsley, Burley and Autumn Grove in Leeds, I recall the pinch-cold faces peering out from the bedrooms above. First, hit the spit of hate; then "Sorry, mate!" with a sly smirk that said, "Damn, I missed me Paki!" target. Walking down the city centre, that spit of hate would come spattering down from the West Yorkshire buses. And always the "Sorry!" with that smirk.
Outside the Leeds Kirkgate open market, standing near the bus-stop, one cold and wet, grey and muggy day, the only reason I missed getting bashed up was that I was wearing the typical black Gannon overcoat, worn by the local police, which I had bought at the second-hand Oxfam store. So the thugs mistook me for a cop!
But hundreds of Asians in England had not been as lucky as me. I have a detailed file and carefully collected clippings of racist attacks on Asians, some of them fatal. And always the police managed to cover them up. But at least the British government has admitted the existence of racism and sincerely struggles to cope with it. Now Australia must face up to the bitter truth of racism too.
Vivek Pinto, my school-mate from St Mary's, Byculla, Mumbai, who's currently in Tokyo thinks the racism in Australia is, to use a cliche, only the tip of the racial iceberg. He had sent me an NYT link long ago, before the current explosion of racism: "What Color is that Baby?" (NYT, 11 May 2009), by Bob Herbert, an op-ed columnist.
I recall with love and affection
Were all my experiences of Leeds and Yorkshire, so bitter and racist? Certainly not! I recall with love and affection:
- Rev. Paul King and the International Student Evening at Emmanuel Church every Wednesday;
- the wonderful teachers at the Fourman Nursery and Mrs. Burgess of Rosebank school, where our daughter Pallavi learned "me" English for the first time;
- the peace "Not in Our Name" marchers in London, resisting the mounted police of the rottweiler Maggie Thatcher;
- the gentle Simon Welsh and Ron Strong of Unipol Leeds, house-hunters on our behalf in Leeds;
- Ann Heilmann, annotating her feminist studies;
- the dignified old folk sing-song-ing, "Tra, la, love ..." in me open market;
- Peter Coltman's homely offer to learn on his "Typing Tutor"; and
- the always warmth of the Leeds Central Library, free with ten books to borrow at a time, where I discovered how the English dreaded Shivaji, calling him "mountain rat", and feared Kanoji Angre, branding him "pirate".
And how ever, how much, can I thank the ever-gracious Ekbote family (Sunalini, Anjali, and the late Mr. Ekbote) of Leeds for the unasked warmth with which they invited us to their hearth and held us to their hearts? And the Banhattis of York: Rajeev and Seema, Baba and the late Aaee, Ruchi and later Suhrud? For me, these two families made the "Cold and Wet" of England human and the subtle racism bearable; and re-assured me that the welcome "Heat and Dust" of India could not be far behind. ("If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" sang Shelley.)
Were all my experiences in Mumbai tarnished by the Shiv Sena? Certainly not! I recall with love, affection and solidarity:
- the wonderful comrades working with Prabhakar Sanzgiri, Madan Naik and Dr. Vivek Monteiro at Kaju Tekdi, Bhandup;
- the late "Feriwala" Francis and Bhabhi and their children Jyoti, Rajesh and the late Ladis;
- my Vistas friends at the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED), Mumbai, behind Regal Cinema and the Taj Hotel;
- the Mukadam of Manmad with his walrus moustache learning me the "bara-khadi" of Marathi; and
- my four years of rural apprenticeship in Pathardi, where I fell in love with the Marathi-speaking people.
So I survived.
So have dreaming migrants in the past. So will bold migrants today. And daring migrants to come tomorrow. We shall overcome. We are not afraid. We shall resist the cruelties and harassment, and beatings and the discrimination of the racists ... of all colours.
Other lands, other struggles, other experiences
As and when I pick up other experiences and sharing, I'll keep updating under this section. The first piece is by Aparna Das-Sadukhan, my student from SIMC, Pune, who as "Ketchup Girl" is respected for her blog, "Life and Times of a Cha Lover". She stays in Sydney, Australia, and shares her experiences and views in her post, "My two pence on curry bashing". (4 June 2009). Note the subtle racism, unlike the beating and bashing, many other Indians are receiving.
Mohan Sinha from the old Maharashtra Herald, Pune, thinks it's pure envy: despite the recession, the Indians are doing reasonably well, while the Australians suffer. See his post: "The Ugly Australian, it's just envy, mate!" (5 June 2009).
I'll keep adding more as you send them and I get them.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Sunday, 31st May 2009.
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