Liberal Dilemmas

I have always thought of myself as a liberal. However, increasingly I feel confused when I am faced with competing liberal values. Often, I am not sure, which values should be chosen and why. Most of the times, the more I try to read and understand about these issues, the more complex they seem to become. In the end, it leaves me frustrated because I can’t make any decision.

Even a decade ago, if somone had told me that I will be confused about my liberal values, I would not have believed it. It is not just me. Many others I know, face similar dilemmas, while some others, wh seem to have taken a positio, can't really explain their choices in a logical way.

So, lately I am not very sure, what kind of liberal I am or if I am really a liberal! One thing is sure, compared to some people’s certainties, I feel like a sand-castle whose walls fly off in all directions at the first sign of the wind.

Liberal Struggles in the Past

The identity struggles in the past were simpler. For example, fighting for the LGBT rights used to mean that countries and societies had to accept persons who identified themselves as LGBT, and that they were citizens like everyone else. Those struggles are still not over in many parts of the world. For example, in some countries, to be gay or lesbian or a transgender person can lead to blackmail, rape, prison, torture and even death. In addition to the specific anti-LGBT laws, in some countries, it is socially accepted that families and communities can force individuals into marriages, undergo conversion therapies, get raped or even be killed.

Countries which accept the individuals with different sexual orientations, might have other struggles. For example, their right to live with or to get married to the persons of their choice or to adopt children.

Often, most of our liberal struggles were framed in terms of limiting the role of religions and traditions in our lives. For example, when these impacted the lives of women and other marginalised groups such as "lower" castes in terms of where they could go, how they could dress or the professions they could choose.

New Directions of the Liberal Struggles

Over the past couple of decades, in the developed world those fights for the rights have branched out into new directions. Often, in these new fights, the rights of one group of persons start competing with another, and we have to decide which rights and whose rights are more important.

One big arena of fight is about the words we use to talk about things, especially in English. Thus, it is no longer about the intentions of the persons, or their histories of work in challenging the oppression and marginalisation of people – the moment they use some “undesirable” or "politically incorect" words and terms, they can be attacked, sometimes viciously, even to the point of destroying their reputations, jobs and lives. Every time this happens, it leaves me dismayed. People playing victims because their "dignity has been outraged" by the politically incorect terms are full of rightous anger and can be extremely unforgiving and vindicative. However, this article is not about the use of politically correct language.

Instead, in this post I want to share some of my doubts about some other liberal values - gender identities, religious/cultural identities, women’s rights and the rights of the persons with disabilities. Let me start with the dilemmas about gender identities in sport.

Identities and Sports

In the 2021 Olympics held in Tokyo, the New Zealand’s women’s weight-lifting team included Laurel Hubbard, who is now a transgender woman. 43 years old Laurel had transitioned to become a woman in 2013. In the past, she had participated in other Olympic games as a man. Many women weight-lifter teams from other countries protested against her inclusion since they felt that Hubbard will have unfair advantage. However, she failed to win any medal and in the end the polemics died down.

Lia Thomas, a transgender woman swimmer from Pennsylvania university has been in news in 2022, for her repeated wins in free-style swimming events. Thomas had previously competed in the men's team for three years before joining the women's team, the last time as a man was in 2019. Many persons had expressed anger at her success in the women's swimming events and called it as "unfair advantage". According to the local rules a trans woman must complete one year of the male-hormon suppression treatment before she can take part in women's events in Pennsylvania University.

Another story was that of Santhi Soundarajan, a middle-distance runner from Tamil Nadu in India, who had grown up as a female. In 2006, when she was 25 years old, her silver medal in the Asian Games was revoked because her DNA test had shown that instead of the “XX” chromosomes of women, she had “XXY” chromosomes. It didn't matter that Santhi had no idea about being genetically an intersexual person.

How do you feel about the stories of Laurel, Thomas and Santhi? Should they be allowed to take part in the women's events? In 2006, when I had read about Santhi, I had felt that the organisers had been cruel and unjust towards her. However, when I looked at the pictures of Hubbard and Thomas, I saw broad, tall and muscular bodies, and I could understand why the other women in the championship had felt that it was unfair. 

We have separate sports competitions for men and women, because men and women have different bones and muscles because of their hormones. Somewhat similar logic is used for the participation of persons with disabilities in sports – separate sport events are organised for them and they are asked to compete against other persons with disabilities, for example in Paralympics.

So, a person who has grown up with male hormones with a certain kind of bones, muscles and bodies, and who decides to transition to become a woman, should compete against other women or men? Women protesting against Laurel’s inclusion should be seen as persons’ fighting for women’s rights or as trans-phobic?

As a liberal, what should be my position on this? I have to confess that I am not so sure. For sports where body strength is not the most important variable, for example for playing tennis or badminton, I think that transwomen athletes won't have unfair advantage, but for something like the javelin throw, it can be an issue. While reading about Thomas's own behaviour at a swimming meet where she had won the title, I think that she herself is also conflicted about it. 

I have not seen similar discussions around trans-men's participation in sports and they seem to be accepted more easily, which is understandable because other men do not see them as "unfair advantage". For example, Moiser (Lake Zurich, USA) had taken part in the women's team of triathalon in 2009. A year later, he decided to transition to become a man and in 2016 became selected in the men's team.

Trans-men usually take the male hormone (testosterone) as part of their transitioning and on-going therapy while its use is prohibited among male athletes. So, I am not sure how does that work when they try to qualify for Olympics and Paralympics.

Defining the identity

There are many on-going debates around the issues of gender and sexual identities. For example, in some countries, transgender persons when they transition, can ask to be legally recognised as a man or as a woman.

In many countries, women transitioning to become a man must get operated to remove their uterus before they can be legally recognised as a man, while men transitioning to become a woman must get their testicles removed before they are legally recognised as a woman. This is done to avoid that a legally recognised man can become pregnant or a legally recognised woman can father a child.

However, many transgender persons feel that they have a right over their bodies and being transgender is more about how they feel in their hearts and not about compulsory removing of their body parts. Thus, there are trans-men who have their uterus and trans-women with functioning male genitals, and both these groups are fighting for the right to be legally recognised as men and women.

On the other hand, some other trans-men and women, who have been through surgical operations and have got legal recognition, feel that it is problematic if for being recognised as a trans person it is enough only to declare that you are one.

There are also debates about “real woman” versus “transgender woman”. Last year, in June 2020, a huge controversy had erupted about an essay written by the writer J. K. Rollings, who was called trans-phobic for differentiating between biological women and trans-women. Some weeks ago, Nigerian author Adichie Chimamanda has also been criticised for the same reason.

For not discriminating against the trans-women, some persons are advocating the use of more "inclusive" terminology, such as "chest-feeding" instead of "breast-feeding", and "birthing parent" instead of "mother". Many women have spoken out against these terminologies as they seem to negate women's rights and spaces.

 

I feel that these discussions about trans-women and biological women have implications for another liberal value – the respect for diversity. When we ask for trans-women to be seen as women, are we asking for negating the diversity of their experiences? The struggle for recognition of diversities has become very complex over the years. For example, many groups feel that the term “LGBT” is restrictive. Some ask that we should use the acronym LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-sexual, Queer, Inter-sexual and Asexual), others prefer LGBTQ+. Some persons do not feel comfortable in any of these labels, they feel that they are somewhere in between. Some feel that their gender identity is fluid and can change, so occasionally they might fit one label, but not always.

Thus, on one hand we are advocating for increasing recognition of our diversities. On the other, we are asking of cancelling the diversities of terminologies between trans and cis women (many men and women do not like the term "cis"). As liberals, which value should be considered more important - equality or diversity? I am confused.

Religions, Traditions and Modernity

I grew up surrounded by discussions about patriarchy and women’s rights. In those discussions, the traditional Hindu wife, her face covered with her sari or a scarf, walking two steps behind her husband, was a symbol of women’s oppression under the guise of traditions. We agreed that women have a right to dress as they wish, choose the profession or work they like and marry the person they wish to. In those discussions, fights against the traditions were not seen as fights against the religions and in my mind, those discussions applied to all the religions. Thus, the fight for a common civil code, a uniform law that applies to all the persons of different religions in multi-religious societies, was seen as an important liberal value.

Over the past decade, suddenly such discussions have become more problematic. For example, the ban on wearing of full veil covering the face among Muslim women in some countries of Europe. The liberal position has sided mostly with the more orthodox groups by insisting that “Hijab and veils are cultural symbols and a free choice of Muslim women”. However, discussions with the cultural mediators working in the immigrant communities show that peer, family and community pressures and expectations play a large role in use of veils and hijabs, and sometimes, young girls face violence for rebelling against those pressures.

For example, Italy has a large Pakistani immigrant community. Last year, a young girl of Pakistani origin went missing while she was rebelling against family pressures. Police suspects that she was killed while the rest of the family went back to Pakistan. Debates among the Pakistani community on this theme underline the difficulties of talking about women's attempts to escape the social control on how they dress and the persons they wish to marry. Some girls insist that modest dressing including hijab is their free choice; others, usually men, at best talk of "not washing our dirty laundry in public because there is already so much discrimination against us" and at worst, threaten the few dissenting Pakistani women's voices about the perils of not obeying the "fundamental values of our religion/culture".

Sometimes, even in a European town you can find very young girls from Muslim background being covered from head to feet, while some see it as "sexualisation of young girls". The community spokespersons often talk of veils and hijabs as important for their faith. Recently in Afghanistan, the Taliban authorities have made maindatory the use of full veil by the women. So in such a situation, can hijab and veils be seen as "free choices"? Liberals refuse to talk about this because they see it as reinforcing the negative stereotypes about Muslims. 

Similar dilemmas face immigrants from Africa. Black persons in Europe are often stereotyped as drug peddlers and criminals. At the same time, many black women face domestic violence. Liberals often refuse to raise the issue of violence experienced by black women for not reinforcing negative stereotypes against the black communities.

Thus, how do we talk about the negative stereotyping faced by Muslims or blacks in Europe, without closing our eyes to the rise in conservative Muslim forces which increasingly force women and LGBT persons into silence or the black women victims of domestic violence? Is there a way to talk about one without negating the other? While talking about patriarchy is encouraged among Christians and Hindus, in relation to Muslim women it may be seen as Islamophobia.

The Right of Choice and the Right to Life

The women’s right of choice to say no to unwanted pregnancies and to have safe spaces for abortion was another of the progressive struggle with which I had grown up with. When I read about conservative groups, which oppose women’s right to have safe abortion, because their church says so or because Bible says so, I have no doubts about which side I am on – I support women’s right to make the choice.

However, over the past decade, increasingly there are groups of persons with disabilities, which fight is for the right of children with disabilities to be born and not be aborted. For example, one of the common reasons for abortion is when tests show that the child will be born with a disability such as Down’s Syndrome.

So, should we continue to support women’s right over their bodies and their wombs and only they can choose if they wish to go ahead with a pregnancy or should we be on the side of persons with disabilities asking for life for children with disabilities?

In the End

There are no easy or blanket answers to these dilemmas. At the same time, I feel that it is important that we continue to talk about them, without being trolled or called names by those who feel that they already have the answers.

Let me conclude with a couple of additional issues, which I believe are important liberal values – (1) not labelling people, and accepting nuances and complexities of peoples’ beliefs and affiliations; and (2) freedom of expression.

The moment we say something, there are people waiting to stick labels to our foreheads – right wing, left wing, fascist, communist, follower of this or that. I find this extremely tiring. I refuse to label people and I try to have a dialogue with everyone - when I find that I don’t like some of their positions or opinions, I can always ignore them. My motto is "the world is big and there is enough place here for people who don't think like me."

Finally, I believe in freedom of expression, even of people with whom I do not agree, as long as they are not actively inciting violence. I believe in people’s right to raise questions about every thing including religions, gods, and prophets. I do not agree with trolls and fundamentalists who want to cancel all the voices they don’t like.


*****

Notes

01: The images used in this post are from the Guwahati (Assam, India) LGBT Pride Parade in 2015.

02: An earlier version of this article was published in my blog in June 2021
 

The defector - Leaving North Korea

"The defector" is a documentary film by Korean-Canadian director Ann Shin that follows a group of persons who escape from North Korea in their search for freedom. It is like a thriller as it follows a journey across different Asian countries. The film also makes you reflect on ideas and words like sovereignty, defection, illegal emigrants and human traffickers, usually heard on TV news and perceived as abstract concepts.

"The defector" will be part of Mondovisioni, the International Documentary Film Festival that will be held at Kinodromo cinema in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

Every year hundreds of thousands of persons leave their countries for dangerous journeys in search of a better life. Many of them lose their lives during these journeys. Some of them are caught during transit in other countries and exploited or imprisoned. Some other are caught in their destination country and sent back. Finally some of them, manage to escape in their destination countries and hide as "clandestines", hoping for some way of legalizing their presence sooner or later.

The clandestines and those who somehow manage to get a legal status in their new homelands, inspire hundreds of other hopefuls from their villages and cities to follow their paths.

There are opportunities for making money from these journeys - at every step of the journey, through each of transit countries and finally in the destination country, some monetary transaction occurs. The persons who organize and help the journeys are called agents or guides by the emigrants and "human traffickers" by the destination countries. They may be linked to organised crime networks. They are known to be ruthless, exploitative and brutal. At the same time, they need to ensure that at least some emigrants reach the destination, otherwise the word of their non-reliability spreads and they lose business.

The emigrants, usually from lower strata, who do not have the qualifications or the resources to become legal emigrants or student-emigrants, need significant amounts of money for these journeys.

Despotic regimes, wars and conflicts also force large numbers of persons to leave their homes and thus increase the pressure on illegal emigration. "The Defector" follows one such journey.

The film

"The defector" follows a small group of persons from North Korea during their journey in China. From north of China, they travel to Xian, accompanied by their guide Mr. Dragon. Then they travel from Xian to Kunming. Finally, they are taken over by another guide who takes them through parts of Laos to northern Thailand, where they can come out as refugees. After spending a few months in Thailand, they enter South Korea, their destination country.

The film focuses on the stories of three persons - the guide, Mr. Dragon and two North Korean women - Sook Ja and Yong Hee.

Mr. Dragon, with a past in North Korean army, had crossed into China more than 10 years ago and is guide/trafficker for other North Koreans. Sook Ja wants to escape from the repressive regime in North Korea and to find her sister, who had escaped seven years earlier and then disappeared. Yong Hee, sold as an illegal bride to a Chinese farmer more than 10 years earlier, wants to escape from the illegal life.

A small part of the film is about Mr. Heo, a north Korean refugee in Canada and his efforts to help other north Korean refugees.

Comments

The film has been shot with hidden cameras and you never see the full faces of any persons escaping from North Korea. Most of the film is about the journey in China - from the north to Kunming. It shares some details about how to escape the control systems in China, but most such information that can be used to trace specific persons or the escape routes is not there. As spectators you are quickly drawn into the stories of the three main protagonists of the film and you can feel their fear and tension, wondering if they are going to make or will get caught and sent back to face prisons and torture in North Korea?

The film has some scenes from north Korea about the general poverty but the stories of the three protagonists are not so much about poverty as they are about repression in the country and their search for better life opportunities.

Talking about the making of the film, Ann Shin had written:

One of the North Koreans not chosen by Dragon was Kyung-shil, a pretty young woman wearing a sparkly sweater and black high heels. She had defected several years ago and ended up in the hands of traffickers in China. Now she worked as a call girl and sent money to her family back in North Korea. Estimates are that eight out of 10 North Korean women found in China are trafficked and sold to men as brides, or sold into the sex industry. (The one-child policy in China had created a demand for North Korean women.)

I wondered if Sook-ja’s older sister had been trafficked.

Dragon told Kyung-shil and the others that he would come back for them on his next trip. For now, he, Sook-ja and my camera crew had a long journey ahead of us where we would travel and film covertly.

We journeyed day and night on buses and trains, jumping off at certain times to avoid inspectors. Dragon knew the schedules like clockwork and we all grew to trust him implicitly. Making documentaries is a leap of faith; That faith is built on the trust a filmmaker establishes with his or her subjects. It’s remarkable how quickly trust builds when lives are at stake.

The most heart-wrenching part of the journey was when the defectors were only miles away from freedom. Trekking through the Laotian jungle, having evaded police patrols and crossed two mountains, Sook-ja suddenly broke down in tears. The realization had just struck her: she was utterly alone. She could see now that her elderly mother would never be able to make this physically demanding journey. The whole purpose of her trek was to reunite her family, but she hadn’t found her sister, and she would never see her mother again.

“I want to erase my name,” she wept. “I want to forget the memory of being born and growing up.”

The journeys of the emigrants are all about loss and alienation - dreaming of better futures and losing families and friends, fearing for families and friends, and living clandestine lives in alien lands where they are just a commodity for sale and exploitation. The nightmares do not end even when they reach the lands of their dreams - in South Korea, they need to go through a process to ensure that they are not north Korean spies. The fear for their family and friends left in north Korea never ends and making a new life is tough, because prejudices run deep.

Personally I found Dragon to be the most interesting character in the film - for the law in China and Laos, he is a "human trafficker" - exploiting the escapees for earning money, but he sees himself as a human rights fighter, helping his country-persons to find a new life and risking his own life. "I am brutal" he agrees, "but it is the only way to save their lives and my life."

In the new globalized world, the rich are welcome every where, money and goods can move freely across borders but not other human beings. Thus people from the south, try to cross the Mexican-USA border, while immigrants to West Europe face dangerous journeys across eastern Europe and Mediterranean sea.

Each of them follows a dream but most of those who survive, live lives of exploitation and discrimination, holding on desperately to life, willing to settle for a precarious security, hoping for better lives for their children. "The defectors" gives you a glimpse into their lives.

***

Homelands of my heart

The angst for the far away homelands that emigrants carry in their hearts has been a constant theme for films, fiction and memorials, especially over the past couple of decades as globalization has spread. "Immaginary Homelands" by Salman Rushdie (1992) was part of expressing this angst.  Pico Iyer's talk "Where is home" on TED is another articulation of the feelings of rootlessness. Pico explains that rootlessness is not just angst, it can also be a pleasure, freeing you to decide and choose your homelands.

If you have not yet watched Pico's talk, I strongly recommend it. He is a wonderful speaker with an evocative style.

Pico's talk has two main threads that he uses to weave a word-web of memories, experiences and emotions. First thread is a question asked by others, "where are you from?", and the second is about our own feelings of what defines a home for us. In his talk, Pico often moves between these two threads, implying that both are inter-related.

After watching his talk, I kept on thinking about it. My feeling is that the two threads are not really inter-related in the way Pico seems to suggest. If I ask myself Pico's question, "where is home?", I would not think of the question, "where are you from?", I would ask other questions.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

It is the question asked by the new "others", often when we meet them for the first time.It is probably as old as the times when humanity started its journey from Africa and spread to different parts of the world.

In most parts of the world, before the industrial revolution and urbanization, only a tiny percentage of persons ever left the places where they were born. In their life times, at the most they could have hoped to make a few trips to the nearest town. Almost invariably, people married persons from the same region, if not the same village. They spoke the same languages, ate the same food, prayed to the same gods and celebrated the same festivals.

This belonging to the the "birth-place" found common expressions. For example, if Indian traditions forbade crossing of the seas, Italians had sayings like "Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi" (Wife and buffaloes should be from your same village). I am sure that different other cultures had similar ideas.

Thus, in those times, when you met new persons, it made sense to ask "where are you from?", because you knew everyone there was to know and you rarely met new persons. With this one question, you were asking many different questions - to which place do you belong? where were your mother and father born? which city/village is linked to your family?

Today the world is profoundly different. Often you do not have the time to listen to the complicated answers to the question "where are you from" and it does not make any difference to you.

Today, even if you never leave your home country, internal migrations are a constant part of urban lives and increasingly, even the rural lives. More than ever before in the history of humankind, people from different cities can get married, have children in different cities, send those children to schools and colleges in different cities, and find work and move to different cities in their life times. Thus, emigrants or natives, it has become harder to answer this question "where are you from?".

You no longer have the name of one place to answer this question. You may need to give long and complicated answers describing your shifting home-cities. I think that most of Pico's talk is about this question. The question of "belonging".

But is this question really about the place identified by your heart as your home, as Pico suggests in the second thread of his TED talk? Not for me.

HOMES OF THE HEART

In his talk, Pico mentions different places, buildings and countries where he has lived at different times in his life. He talks of his schooling in Britain and university in the USA. He also talks of his love for Japan and the burning of the family house in California that had "set him free".

However, people seem to be missing from Pico's world. While he talks of his grandparents' house, he never talks of his grandparents themselves. He never mentions his mother or father or siblings or cousins. He does not talk of his wife, his children. There are no friends of his heart in his speech.

And while reflecting over his talk, I asked myself, how can we talk of our home, without talking about the people we love?

When I had left India, my home was mainly in Delhi, in the rented house where my mother had lived. But parts of my home were also with other family members and close friends. In the past three decades, as our family has spread to different parts of India and some persons have emigrated to other countries, parts of my home have also spread with them. My feelings of "home" are linked to my family.

Over the years, the memories of the intense friendships of adolescence have dimmed and none of those childhood friends is active on the social media or even emails so our contacts are rare - thus today I am not so sure how strong are the links between them and my "home" feelings.

As long as my mother was alive, my strongest feelings of home continued to be linked to her. Today, while I sit in Bologna (Italy) and talk to my sisters on telephone, one in USA and the other in India, I feel at home in that moment. Their voices, and our shared memories are my home.

The voices of some of my cousins are also indelible part of my "home" feelings. Even just to think of them, makes me feel at home.

And, I have my new home, linked to my wife and my son. Strangely, though I have lived for more than two decades in Bologna and we own a house here, in Italy my feelings of "my home" are stronger towards Schio, the town of my wife's family - again, I think that this feeling has something to do with close family members and not so much with the cities themselves.

So, for me, the place that I feel in my heart as my home, has to do with my emotions - feelings of family, love, affection, friendship - and little to do with geography or other things.

And for you, where is the homeland of your heart?

***

Immigrant identities, globalization & Bollywood

I wanted to write about the changing images of NRI women in some of the recent Bollywood films like "Ek main aur ekk tu" and "Anjana anjani". However, once I started, I found myself thinking about some of my travels to different parts of the world over the past 25 years and my encounters with immigrants from Indian sub-continent.

Thus, it has come out as a rather long-winded article, where it is about NRI women in Bollywood, but it is also about so many other things such as changing self-identities of immigrants, new technologies and globalization!

***
Immigrants in a time warp

Till a couple of decades ago, leaving India and going to live in other parts of the world meant cutting off many of the ties with the homeland. Telephones were less common, and making a call often meant calling an operator and sometimes waiting for a few hours. Getting news from India was difficult. Letters took 10-15 days to reach the destination. It was the same for emigrants of other countries and continents.

In 1992 I went to Guyana for the first time. Guyana is in south America, next to Brazil and Venezuela. Colonial powers had divided that part into three countries - British Guyana with Georgetown as its capital, Dutch Guyana, also known as Surinam and French Guyana with Cayenne as its capital. I had gone to the British Guyana.

During my Guyana visit, I met the persons of Indian origin, whose grandparents or great-grandparents had been brought there from India between 1840 to 1920. I had some strange feelings when I met them. So many of them, especially elderly persons, seemed to be living in a kind of time-warp, anchored to India of old times when their ancestors had sailed off from India. Many of them spoke only in Bhojpuri. I think that they were a reflection of ghettoed lives they were forced to live by their colonial masters.

However, even the younger generations also seemed very much anchored into "Indian culture and traditions". They spoke English, they went out in the community and for work. They interacted with persons of other cultures and religions who compose Guyana - persons of African, European and other Asian countries' descents. Yet, in their private lives, these different cultural-religious groups hardly ever seem to mix with each other. Talking to persons of Indian origin, I had the sensation that for them being "Indian" was as important or may be even more important than being part of the multi-cultural society of Guyana.

One of my Afro-Guyanese friend with whom I was travelling for work, told me once that when we went around chatting and laughing together, people looked at us strangely and with some hostility because mixing up with persons of different races was seen as threatening by both sides.

Guyanese television had Indian channels that showed Bollywood films and songs, as well as programmes of prayers and religious talks by various swamis and gurus who regularly came from India. There were cinema halls showing Bollywood films. In 1994, I had watched Rajshri's "Hum aap ke hain kaun" in a cinema hall of  Georgetown. It had been running there for some months and the hall was full of persons of Indian origin.

I had also been to Mauritius. However, since pesons of Indian descent are the majority on the main island, dominate, so it did not feel like a ghettoed community. Still I could see many similitaries between Mauritius and Guyana, in the way Indian immigrants felt about their old traditions.

In those years, I had also visited some Italian, Japanese and German communities in Brazil. These encounters had many similarities to those with the "Indians" of Guyana and Mauritius - all the immigrants seemed closed in time warps anchored to their pasts in their homelands, isolated in some ways in their ghettoes that they safeguarded jealously.

Over the past three-four decades, there have been many reports of immigrants living in developed countries, who regularly send back money to support the "safeguarding of traditions" in the countries they had left behind. They have been blamed for all kind of religious and cultural fundamentalism, funded with dollars and euros. Sikhs in Canada and US, Muslim groups in UK and Germany, Jews in US and Europe, Hindus in USA and Australia, there are many examples of persons sending money to "defend their religions".

Perhaps this phenomenon of sending money to fund conservatives and orthodox groups in our homelands, has something to do with the same insecurity about traditions and cultures among immigrants, that makes us close inside our ghettoes?

Complex identities

Issues of race, culture and religion among immigrants are a complex area. I remember once meeting an Indian looking woman wearing a sari in London. I needed some information about a street I was looking for and she gave me directions. "Which part of India are you from?" I had asked her and she had responded to me with a bit of irritatation that she was from Kenya and not from India.

In "Imaginary homelands", Salman Rushdie had written of these homelands that we immigrants carry in our hearts. These homelands are no longer real because while we are away, our homelands continue to evolve and change. So when we go back, we find that the place does not match the image we carry in our hearts.

In the lands we have emigrated to, we are always "other", "immigrant", "Indian". And when we go back to our homeland for a visit, we are no longer completely Indian, we are the immigrants who live and belong to some where else.

National identity and role of women in India

Uma Narayan in her book "Dislocating cultures - identities, traditions and third world feminism" has an interesting chapter on "Eating cultures - incorporation, identity and Indian food". In this chapter she talks about the role of women in safeguarding traditional cultures among immigrants:

"Just as nineteenth century English memsahibs in India avoided Indian goods and dishes to maintain their "cultural distinctiveness", twentieth century Indian women in Indian diasporic communities are expected to safeguard the "cultural distinctiveness" of their communities by refraining from dating, from marriages that are self-arranged, and most stringently of all, from same sex relationships."

Uma Narayanan links this role of women to safeguard their traditional cultural values to the similar role of women in the nationalist movement for independence of India and quotes Partha Chatterjee on this theme:

"Indian nationalist project involved "an ideological justification for the selective appropriation of western modernity" that continues to this day. ..the twin moves involved in the nationalist project were "to cultivate the material techniques of modern western civilization" while "retaining and strengthening the distinctive spiritual essence of the national culture". Learning from the colonizers "the modern science and arts of material world" was necessary to match the colonizers in strength to overthrow them. ..In the entire phase of the nationalist struggle, the crucial need was to protect, preserve and strengthen the inner core of national culture, its spiritual essence. No encroachments by the colonizers must be allowed  in that inner sanctum. In the world, imitation of and adaptation to western norms was a necessity; at home, they were tantamount to annihilation of one's very identity. .. the home was the principle site for expressing the spiritual quality of national culture, and women must take the main responsibility of protecting and nurturing this quality."

Immigrants in Europe, North America and Australia, seem to be driven by similar motivations. So, children are expected to study hard and make careers in outside world. Yet, they are expected to not to date or marry outside their communities. This is especially true for women. "My big fat Greek wedding" explored this theme in a Greek community in America.

Similar issues towards arranged marriages to men from their homelands also hound Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrant families. As many young women from these communities try to rebel against such marriages and families that resort to violence or even murder to "save family honour", the whole system of arranged marriages has come to be seen as "something barbaric and old fashioned, something against human rights" and other people often feel that "such marriages must be without love and are imposed on young people".

Immigrants in a new world

I went back to Guyana last time, some 4-5 years ago. In this visit, I felt that the younger generations had become much more comfortable with their Guyaneseness and there was a little more openess between races, cultures and religions among them.

For all these groups of immigrants, even more so for their descendents, I feel that the walls that used to surround these ghettoes have many more doors and windows today then there were twenty years ago.

I think that partly this change has come because of increasing possibilities of inter-continental travels and development of new technologies, especially internet. These mean that today we can always be in touch with what is happening in our homelands and we can go back and visit whenever we want. So now we can relax and enjoy being outside our homelands, in our new countries, to meet and experiment with the new cultures that surround us. We don't need to cling to "our" traditions and way of life with the fear of losing them.

NRI women in Bollywood

Bollywood or rather the world of Hindi movies understood these immigrant insecurities very well. Thus in nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, heroes came back to India for marriage (heroines went out of India for studies rarely but they were also expected to follow this rule). Western culture was equal to villains drinking alcohol and women who were cabret dancers (played with wonderful aplomb by Helen) or vamps. Indians going out to Europe or America were cautioned against the "decadent western values". Manoj Kumar's "Purab aur Paschim" (1970) and a more recent, "Namastey London" (2007) epitomised this world view.

Films about NRI families came in to vogue with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995). From DDLJ to K3G (2001), the boundaries for women in families of Indian origin were laid out, in line with the ideas of "women's role in preserving our Indian culture". So they had arranged marriages and celebrated karvachauth. May be they were not so openly crticial of western values as in "Purab aur Paschim", but very clearly, they were smug about the superiority of "our Indian values".

However in "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" (2006), Karan Johar changed tracks. Suddenly the NRI family had to deal with adultery. In "Dostana" (2008), another film produced by Karan Johar, homosexuality came out of closet, even if hidden behind glossy sheen of two guys running after the same girl.

More recently, "Ek main aur ekk tu" from the same production house has a woman lead, who has had six boyfriends, she has had sex with some of them, but it is not a big deal. She is bubbly, full of life and has the Indian hero panting after her.

There have been other NRI films in recent years, from "Neal and Nikki" to "Anjana Anjani", where the women are no longer "guardians of Indian traditions". They are cosmopolitan women, their dress and behaviour can be like any American or European girl except that their surnames are still Khanna-Kapoor-Bedi and they occasionally sing songs in Hindi.

The stories of most of these films are "inspired" by Hollywood films, though most still continue to have some scene about a father or mother trying to fix some sort of arranged marriage for them. You can argue that they are essentially Hollywood films made with some Hindi and some English, dialogues and songs.

I have a sneaking feeling that on a rebound, the women of these films have discarded everything remotely Indian (except that they tend to fall in love with Indian-origin heroes, but that is the compulsion of Bollywood story-telling). They go to Beethovan concerts and wish each other "merry christmas", have no idea about "indigenous" words like deewali or puja. They have overcome all the taboos related to sex, can drink wine or tequila shots. They can even have dads who wink at them and ask if they have slept with their boyfriends (in "Ek mein ekk tu", conveniently a "christian" dad), though they are not discussing their favourite kamasutra positions for having sex, at least not yet.

For the persons who emigrated out of India in the second half of twentieth century, Bollywood films had been one of their main connections to India. In a world where links to the homeland were tenous, it was an essential lifeline for families.

Children growing up in Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi emigrant families grew up on the Bollywood diets, with parents ferverently hoping that some of their "cultural values" will rub off from the films onto their impressionable minds.

What does this changing figure of NRI women in Bollywood mean for them? For immigrants families from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, that feel threatened by their encounter with the liberal and more egalitarean cultures of their new countries, these new cosmopolitan women of Bollywood, who have embraced western values, would be seen as an additional threat? However, for their children, growing up in closer contacts with these liberal values, finally Bollywood can be an ally that supports their desires to be "modern" and to get out of stifling grip of "traditions".

May be with the possibility of being in constant touch with our homeland cultures, families and events, there won't be need for Bollywood to play its earlier role of repsenting and preserving our traditions? At the same time, there are Bollywood fan clubs and dance groups of Italians, Germans and French. People experiment with Indian cuisine, dresses and mehndi. They are not looking for the new liberated and cosmopolitan Indian women in Bollywood, they are interested in traditions.

Will this ease of being connected to our homelands and cultures, also change the way immigrants have been funding orthodox and fundamentalist religious groups in their countries? I would like to believe that.

An interesting 1994 TED talk by Danny Hillis presented a new understanding about evolution. "We are in a transition period. Through new technologies, the multi-cellular forms of life are getting connected in a network, to start a new phase of evolution", he explained in this talk.

In this new world, perhaps the whole meaning of being an immigrant is going to change, when we physically leave a place but remain connected to it and to other people from our lives all the time. In the long run, this always connected world, how is it going to influence us all, NRIs living outside and other persons living in India?

***

I am

A lazy morning after busy days that started early in the morning and finished late at night. Sitting in the hotel room in Goiania. I need to take shower and start getting ready for lunch at my friend Deo's home. Lucas, her grandson will come to pick me up in about an hour.

I am thinking of the small girl in Vila Esperança yesterday, who had asked Renata, "If he was born in India, why does he live in Italy?", clearly puzzled by the idea of leaving the place she has grown up in and loved so much, to go and live some where else.

Yesterday I also had a long talk with Pio, who had left his Armani suits and well paid job in Milan to come and live in Goias Velho, to start Vila Esperança, together with Max. That was 22 years ago. I am sure that lot of persons ask him, why did you leave Italy to come and live in Brazil? I didn't ask him that, but the idea that he could understand my feelings of mixed identities, made it easier to talk to him.

French-Libanese writer Amin Maalouf had written in "On Identity":

..someone comes and pats me on the shoulder and says "Of course, of course - but what do you really feel, deep down inside?"

For a long time I found this oft-repeated question amusing, but it no longer makes me smile. It seems to reflect a view of humanity which, though it is widespread, is also in my opinion dangerous. It presupposes that "deep down inside" everyone there is just one affiliation that really matters, a kind of "fundamental truth" about each individual, an "essence" determined once and for all at birth, never to change thereafter. As if the rest, all the rest - a person's whole journey through time as a free agent; the beliefs he acquires in the course of that journey; his own individual tastes, sensibilities and affinities; in short his life itself - counted for nothing. And when, as happens so often nowadays, our contemporaries are exhorted to "assert their identity", they are meant to seek within themselves that same alleged fundamental allegiance, which is often religious, national, racial or ethnic, and having located it they are supposed to flaunt it proudly in the face of others.

Anyone who claims a more complex identity is marginalised. But a young man born in France of Algerian parents clearly carries within him two different allegiances or "belongings", and he ought to be allowed to use both. For the sake of argument I refer to two "belongings", but in fact such a youth's personality is made up of many more ingredients. Within him, French, European and other western influences mingle with Arab, Berber, African, Muslim and other sources, whether with regard to language, beliefs, family relationships or to tastes in cooking and the arts. This represents an enriching and fertile experience if the young man in question feels free to live it fully - if he is encouraged to accept it in all its diversity. But it can be traumatic if whenever he claims to be French other people look on him as a traitor or renegade, and if every time he emphasises his ties with Algeria and its history, culture and religion he meets with incomprehension, mistrust or even outright hostility.

Amin Maalouf's words resonate with me. I was born in India and Hindi is my mother tongue. It is the language of all those books in papa's book shelf, that I had started reading as a kid. Nanak Singh, Kishen Chander, Rangey Raghav, Mohan Rakesh, Nirmal Varma .. It is the only language in which I can really appreciate poetry. It is the language of my childhood friends.

English is the language of my logic and reasoning. It is the language of discovering writers from different parts of the world. It is the language of my work. It is also the language that I am most comfortable in writing.

And I dream in Italian, the language in which I talk to my wife and son. Italian is the language I read most now. It is the language that I like using for talking to small babies and dogs and birds and trees.

But Brazilian Portuguese is also my language, as are bits and pieces of French and Chinese. They are all parts of me. Languages, people, friends, journeys, memories, experiences, all are part of me. That is what "I am", if I can borrow the title from Onir's film. My complex identity, that is not always so easy to explain.

Nigerian email hackers have souls

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for Nigeria. I was wondering if I should take my laptop with me or if it was better to leave it at home? In my mind, Nigeria is full of hackers who can steal things effortlessly from your computers just by looking at it! Then I received an email and it changed the way I look at Nigeria and Nigerians.

Yesterday I received a "different" spam message from alicesary2(at)gmail.com. It made me aware about the tough jobs poor email hackers in Nigeria have to do. Sending countless emails to people who don't believe in their crying stories, about being stranded in foreign lands needing emergency money or widows of millionnaires wishing your help in getting at their millions, must be tough and job-satisfaction must be low, apart from pangs of guilty-consciousness for duping poor sods who believe in fairy tales.

OK guys, next time I put your message in the dump-box, I won't curse you, I will smile and think about your tough lives! Here is the message:

Hello Dear,

Since you aren't falling for my African romance scam, let me be up front with you. Because I am actually a Nigerian man, you owe me something.  I am entitled to reparations from the rest of the world, including you, due to the misdeeds of my forefathers who sold their family members and neighbors into slavery.

I am also entitled to handouts since my nation is rife with corruption and graft and has no hope of ever creating a decent civilization for itself.  Since you have not sufficiently helped us, that is your fault, not ours.

Most of all, you owe me for all of your unfounded prejudice against us.So start paying up now, by Western Union.  I will accept $12,000 USD from you over a one year period in monthly installments of $1000 USD.

Otherwise I will emigrate to your country and never cease to be a social problem for you.  A word to the wise is sufficient.

Regards,

"Alice Sary", as good a name as any

Changing worlds, changing identities

I was reading about the dramma caused by Joel Stein's column in The Times, the complaints of Indian American community and the subsequent apologies tendered by Stein and Times, and also the opinions of some Indian opinionists about the issue.

The editorial of Sagarika Ghose in Hindustan Times was clear in its advice for the Indian emigrants - if you are going to be in the global marketplace, learn to laugh at yourself and also learn to live with the communities that host you. It criticised the ghetto mentalities of Indian communities and advised them to stay at home in India, if they do not want to adapt to the culture of their adopted homelands.

Another editorial in HT by an Indian-American, Anika Gupta, complained that being an emigrant kid growing up in US, she was forced to learn to laugh at herself since the majority is incapable of understanding diversity. Thus they have had enough and can't be expected to take such irresponsible comments from a person like Stein in 2010.

I agree with some parts of both the views and yet have some problems with both of them. Sagarika Ghose's views are expressed in a superficial and insensitive way. Anika Gupta's view is perhaps too close to her own experience and thus lacks the necessary detachment.

I think that people have a right to express their feelings. If this debate was not about cultures and identities, perhaps we could accept others' feeling without much problems.

If I grew up in a calm area surrounded by green farms and clear skies and today I find that place covered with concrete houses, busy highways, speeding cars and increasing pollution, no one is going to get upset if I decide to write about my feelings, and about how I miss the old days. There will be people who are happy at the change, who look at the change as being "development" and appreciate the comfort of having shopping malls and cinema halls, but even they can appreciate that you are remembering something else, and don't argue about your right to remember the old times with nostalgia.

But the place where you grew up, if it has changed because many emigrants speaking different languages, eating different food, wearing different clothes are living in that place, it is not polite to say that you miss the old times when things were different. If you say that, it is automatically taken to mean that you are a racist or an ignorant conservative.

I don't think that is the best way to look at it - I think that we human beings can appreciate the good things about the changes, and yet miss parts of the past, before the change happened.

On the other hand, being emigrants is complex business. Understanding your own diversity and negotiating how you can live with the culture that surrounds you, can be painful and difficult, at least for some. So you have the right to express your difficulties and ask for respect.

Thus, in my opinion, both the view points are legitimate and should be expressed, without worrying if someone is going to get offended. I agree that emigrants need to express their own issues and difficulties, but we can't ask others to shut up and not say what they feel.

So for me Joel Stein also has equal right to remember the old days before their neighbourhood changed. I can understand it and empathise with it. Even I feel a bit like that, every time I go back to Delhi and look at the way city has changed in the past thirty years. It doesn't mean that I am negating that emigrants don't have difficulties in defining their own cultural identities and negotiating with majority cultures.

Indian Dalit & European Roma

In a recent magazine section of The Hindu (22 November 2009), there was an interesting article of Pardeep Attri on sharing of ideas and experiences between Indian dalit activists and European Roma (Gypsies) activists.

Growing up in India, I had seen the impact of caste based discrimination and exploitation. Over the past ten years, I am living in a place in Bologna (Italy) where some Roma families have been settled. So I have also had the opportunity to see how Roma persons are treated there. However, I feel that in emotional terms, I can understand much better the discrimination and exploitation of Dalits in India, while many of the basic issues regarding discrimination of Roma persons still remain a mystery for me.

Attri’s article

In his article Pardeep Attri has written about some Hungarian Roma activists who had read about Dr Ambedkar’s struggle for the rights of Dalits to live with dignity and visited Maharashtra to learn more about it and to create links with them. Later Attri himself visited Hungary to interact with Roma communities there. He has written about his experience of visiting a Roma village in Hungary.

Like Dalits in India, it seems that as a result of this India-Hungarian collaboration, some of the Romas in Hungary have converted to Buddhism:

My experiences with Roma persons

For a long time in Italy, I didn’t have much opportunity to observe persons who are easily identified as Roma. In Italian the political correct term to call them is Rom while most persons use a more derogatory term of “Zingaro” (plural, zingari). I had mostly seen them as beggers outside churches or as persons playing music in the buses or trains to earn money or as persons running the amusement parks that are set up as a visiting fair in the outskirts of the city.

Some of them look very Indian, especially women, who look like Rajasthani women, with a long ghagra like skirt and blouse, often with small babies in their arms and usually surrounded by many children of varying ages. It automatically created a sense of kinship for me.

There are two issues in terms of my personal experiences related to Roma persons. First is that these experiences probably relate to a certain group of Roma persons, who are not integrated in the communities where they live, and who are considered as representatives of all Roma persons.

The second issue is that inspite of feelings of emotional kinship and beliefs in inherent dignity and equality of all persons, I find it very difficult to relate to them.

This difficulty of relationship arises because they seem to be refusing many of the social conventions of living together. For example, it seems that they have not taken bath or washed clothes, they wear tattered clothes. Some times shoeless children can be seen in minus zero temperatures of Bologna winter in small sweaters, shivering in the tremendous cold. They often speak loudly and use offensive language. Some of them smell of alcohol even in the morning so that when they enter the bus, most persons refuse to sit next to them. Some of them, don’t throw the garbage in the boxes but leave it on the road. Sometimes, you can see them taking out garbage bags from the big garbage collection boxes, searching for things that can be sold or recycled, and at the end they walk away leaving all the garbage scattered around on the road.

Some of these things are more about poverty and lack of education, a result of the exclusion, and thus part of a vicious cycle, where exclusion and poverty reinforce more exclusion and poverty.

One of my friend’s wife works with Roma children and according to her the situation of Roma persons in Italy is as bad as Attri describes in his article. They are poor, most of them live in open areas where there is no tap water, no electricity, no sewage disposal. Most of their children, do not go to school or complete it, even if Italy has almost hundred percentage coverage of free universal education.

The unanswered questions

The situation of Roma persons raises so many questions in my mind that I can’t answer and for which, I don’t have any clear understanding. In India, the oppression of Dalits has millenniums-long social tradition, but in Europe, the different socially oppressed groups such as rural poor, were able to throw away the yoke of fiefdoms over the past three hundred years, to create more egalitarian societies, why were Roma persons excluded from this?

Emigrants who don’t share religion, who have different cultures and customs, all have to negotiate how to live with the society that they have chosen to live in. It is not always smooth and there are episodes of racism and discrimination against them. Yet, in a bus, most persons do not move away from an Arab Muslim women whose face is covered with hijab or the African in his long kaftan. Most immigrant children do go to school and are usually the first ones to build bridges with the majority community. The second generations of emigrants do seem to find work and integrate much better.

Jews and Valdes Christians are two of the important minorities in Italy. I am sure that they also experience certain discrimination in at least in some occasions. Yet none of them seems to face the problems that Roma persons do, who have also been in Italy for long time.

I can’t understand the reasons behind this. It seems that by being dirty or being socially disruptive, some Roma persons are saying that they do not want integration and they would like to live as they have always lived, according to their own rules. It is their protest. At the same time, people feel that all Roma persons are like that. They help in perpetuating their own stereotypes?

Is it just poverty that does it? May be it is other cultural issues? May be strong patriarchy that decides who can do what? Perhaps this is only a minority of Roma persons, and there are many more, who have “integrated” and look like other Italians or other emigrants?

May be the roots of nomadism are very strong and integration in the society is an unacceptable goal for some of them?

This article is an extract of a longer article that you can read by clicking here.

When in Rome

When I came to Rome on Friday, I was telling myself, this time I must go out and be a tourist, and not remain closed in the meetings. But when I arrived it was raining. Our meeting was in a place run by nuns close to the circular road, la circomvallazione, that runs all around the city, not too far away from the Vatican city.

As often happens in the old cities, streets may be narrow with high walls of houses huddling together, yet as you enter the gates of an old house, suddenly you find yourself in big open spaces, sometimes with beautiful gardens. I had that experience a couple of times in old Delhi. This place was like that. Really huge with different buildings, gardens and a church hidden inside the high walls.

Yesterday (saturday morning), I woke up early, with the idea of going out and doing some sight seeing. Terme of Caracalla, I had already decided that this time I wanted to see to the old spring bath of Caracalla built in second century DC where more than 1300 persons could take bath and relax. I had a hurried breakfast, making plans about how to go there but when I came out, it was raining heavily. Unwilling to give up my plans, I opened my umbrella and set out resolutely. It was cold and there was lot of strong wind. In a few minutes, inspite of the umbrella, I was drenched and shivering. So I had to beat a hasty retreat, literally with my tail between the legs.

In the end I did manage to see some spring bath ruins, from the outside, not of Terme di Caracalla but of Terme di Declezio, right outside the Termini railway station, before I caught the train back to Bologna today. These spring baths were even bigger than those of Caracalla. Till some months ago, they were occupied by poor emigrants, who would squat around, cook food, talk with friends. Now the whole place has been fenced and closed. To enter, you must pay a ticket.

The whole street in front of the Terme was jampacked with vehicles and pavements were full of people from some east European country, probably some part of ex-Yugoslavia. The vans had brought the east European beer, vodka, dried fish and other delicacies from Eatern Europe and had set up makeshift shops on the pavement. All the homesick east European emigrants had gathered around to chat, to smoke, to drink their home beer, to talk in their own language and perhaps, for a few hours imagine that they were back in their homes. I am using the word "east European" to cover my own ignorance. They could have been Serbian or Polish or Czech or Romanian. It was strange walking in their middle and listening to their Russian like language.

A little further, a woman vendor from Peru was complaining in Spanish to some latin American tourists about people selling counterfeit cheap coke and other drinks. A little ahead, a Chinese woman had set up her noodles shop and chinese couples were buying it and then sitting along the side of the pavement, to eat it with evident gusto. They chattered in Chinese.

Small pleasures for the often denigrated and despised emigrants! Each in the safety and security of their own language, food and company.

***