I often visit Sepia Mutiny to observe the dynamics of identity as it is revealed in the conversations. SM is a blog that brings together the South Asian diaspora for discussions on issues that are likely to elicit common interest. Sometimes there are discussions on interesting stories, and the importance of viewpoints in such communities cannot be exaggerated more. Indeed, migration is increasingly becoming an important issue to deal with. Families, governments, and multilateral institutions are waking up to this reality.
I was prompted to write this post after I listened to this ‘inspired speech’:
15 years ago India was just curries and cab drivers. Now you have uncles and babus out there in the media trying to tell you India is a superpower and has to have nuclear weapons. They are telling you that India’s economy is shining, and everyone should be investing in India. In fact, they are saying we should outsource everything to India because Indians are the smartest people on the world, right? They make it seem like it is great time to be proud to be Indian, and proud to be a desi. But do you really believe it? Well, you shouldn’t. It’s time for a reality check. If India disappears tomorrow, the global economy will not miss a beat. The city of Hong Kong exports more than all of India. India is by far, in fact, the poorest country in the entire world. There are more people scraping by next to nothing in India than the entire population of Africa. India’s bureaucracy is obscenely corrupt. There are no less than five members of the Indian cabinet who are under investigation for murder, extortion, racketeering, arms trafficking, cutting deals with Saddam Hussein. If you are from Pakistan or Bangladesh the situation is no better. In fact, it’s even worse. The whole region is just as likely to collapse, as it is to succeed. So here is the question: are you still going to be proud to be Indian, when India’s no longer shining? Are you going to be proud to be from Pakistan, when the country crumbles under civil war? Our job as desis is not to pretend that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are great. They pay people to do that. Our job is to find ways to take advantage of what we have here, and make what they say a reality, to make that hype come true.
When is the
right time to be proud to be an Indian?
In fact what you should be proud of?
When is the
right time to
leave India?
When is the
right time to come back, if that's an option?
I remember a conversation between a schoolgirl and her grandfather in the movie
Naseem (Urdu for morning breeze). Mayuri Kango asks
Kaifi Azmi (famous lyricist and poet; Shabhana Azmi’s father) why hid he stay back in India after the
partition. He said that he stayed back because of a tree in his backyard. He loved the tree so much, and he couldn’t take it with him.
While some people are rooted in their destiny, others may think differently. In fact, it would be interesting to see any research on migration tendencies. Like the
standing ovation problem, it might be that migration too follows non-linear dynamics. Once there is a trend-setter (in the family; among friends; the Guptas next door), others follow suit. As Indian doctors are facing
this court ruling in UK, I am sure thousand of doctors in India are looking up the details of
USMLE. And if the initiatives of Naresh Trehan are any indication, migration may provide win-win solutions (at least when measured in money flows).
Recorded remittance flows to developing countries are estimated to reach $199 billion in 2006. The true size including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels is believed to be significantly larger. [
Link]
and
this joint Duke University - UC Berkeley study reports that Indians have founded more engineering and technology companies in the US in the past decade than immigrants from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. Of all immigrant-founded companies, 26% have Indian founders (p. 4).
Migration
within India, however, isn't only about money flows. Our country is diverse on many
different attributes other than income opportunities. Specification can make us see things more clearly. So next time when someone tells you a particular move has immense opportunity, follow up with
opportunity of what? Such qualifiers bring out the essence - suddenly the colorful seem so boring, and the seemingly dull reveal interesting ideas. Obsession with the distant paradigm has many unintended consequences. For example, the
ghastly killing of Bihari laborers by the ULFA terrorists in Assam was instigated by migration.
We know
Karnataka and
Maharashtra has taken some bold stands on this issue. With Kannada and Marathi made compulsory, birds of a single feather (of any hue - moving migrants, urban upstarts, slighted suburbanites, or poverty-stricken peasants) cannot flock together. May be they still will, but migratory birds have to know the birds of the local habitat. They cannot continue to hang out in their cozy little circle of similar others. For this possible consequence alone, both Karnataka and Maharashtra deserve congratulations.
If all this posturing comes across to you as fierce nationalism (or that wonderful phrase – ‘regional chauvinism’), let me hasten to add that I know I am sticking my neck out. But what isn’t so stark is the slow, gradual, almost innocent, 'blending in' - it is more difficult to deal with, because the process is gradual, as opposed to any radical venting of frustration. The gradual process is more oppressive (
killing too?) because it works its ways slowly, treating anything other than the prevalent and expected moves as illegitimate. It is the same reason why we have got used to Bollywood worthies speaking in English in the award ceremonies of Hindi cinema. It is the same reason why - even in India - you have to justify your wearing a sari or a kurta. It also creates gulfs between generations, between people (we knew earlier; not the new found ones), between grandsons and grandparents, and between friends. Driven by economic reason, the migratory birds do not belong anywhere They genuflect to the only God they know, convenience that is, and are generally alert to survival.
When Rabindranath’s son-in-law Nagendranath Gangulee went to America to study agriculture, this is what Tagore wrote to him:
To get on familiar terms with the local people is a part of your education. To know only agriculture is not enough; you must know America too. Of course if in the process of knowing America, one begins to lose one’s identity and falls into the trap of becoming an Americanized person contemptuous of everything Indian, it is preferable to stay in a locked room. Those who are immature and weak-minded tend to lose their own identity when they go abroad and become spoilt - better for such people if they keep to their own home environment. From childhood all of you have displayed a Brahmo repugnance for other people's social customs and historical traditions. I know of no worse superstition or prejudice - unless you drive it from your mind, your foreign education will never benefit you fully.
The political leaders of India, as usual, are yet to discuss these issues. Till now we have not heard of any plans to deal with the twin problems of workforce mobility and offspring schooling. CNN-IBN had a shallow discussion on this issue and once again offered a twisted logic about the uselessness of keeping the languages alive 'artificially'. What is artificial and what is natural? When Steve Jobs dangles the ipod in his keynote, puts it on the shelf of a store and bombards us with the ads, is he not forcing, or creating a market artificially? Not only is this dichotomy misplaced, anarcaps should know that there are no market forces for languages. Money may be fungible (economists say that; i have doubts), but language isn't. The corner store that relies on its 'location' in the downtown has a captive audience that keeps coming back, regardless of boom or bust. Location matters (ask the
Singur farmers) and languages are location specific.
Choice-chasers need to understand that the answer lies in the ‘and/also’ solution: both Kannada and English. The market is speaking in English. When is the right time to jettison Telugu? Or Bengali? Riding on the market wave, if the nonchalant choice-chaser encroaches into others' way of living, and has an indifferent swagger for local customs, friction is inevitable and only a matter of time. Cause and effect is interdependent as the
pratītyasamutpāda said long ago [recently some sociologists have started
interdependent sampling].
This is not regionalism, but a larger tolerance for many universalities than the oppressively narrow opportunistic recipe of learning the shopkeeper's language
only. English and Hindi are the lowest common denominators for communication in India. The lowest common thing need not rule the roost. As the market drives migration within the country, the LCDs will gradually flex their muscles and obliterate all regional identities. I think parents have a responsibility to teach their kids the mother tongue, the language of the state where he/she has started schooling, and English. If this is too much work, upward mobility seekers are free to make alternate arrangements (for them or for their kids - whichever works best) for 10 years (class 1 - class 10) in their career. The government can play parent-parent, if opportunistic parents do not see opportunities to learn local languages/ customs.
What about your
choice of moving every year? Sure, Keep moving. Who is stopping you? But languages need not move with you.
You adapt. Indeed, for birds who move every year, the forests need not offer any solution. The government has no burden to attend to choice obsessive disorders. The individual should decide what works best. I think the three language solution is easily manageable as several studies have shown that children pick up languages much faster than older people. It also forces migratory birds to get accustomed to the local birds, communicate with them, and learn and share their way of life. The 3LS also requires some awareness and initiative on the parents' part, a little less economic reason, and a
little force from the government.
However, for those who do not put all eggs in the basket of survival, the question still remains. Why migrate? And like most hard questions, this one too gravitates to the debate between Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahābhārata, between
consequentialist concerns and
deontological ethics. Find your true calling.
This is also an occasion to celebrate this
rabindrasangeet (
Debabrata Biswas's voice), captured poignantly on celluloid by
Ritwick Ghatak in his
Jukti, Takko ar Golpo (Reason, Argument and Story):
The poem was generated from
Somen Bhattacharjee's digital library.
