"Paris, a Familiar Fire" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (15 November 2015)

Until the civil war of 1975, Beirut was often described as the Paris of the East. In the last couple of days, both Beirut and Paris suffered attacks, but only one of those cities will make the news as a victim of violence.

The grim news of the 13 November attacks in Paris give me a strong sense of déjà vu, even as I struggle to comprehend the violence and the toll on that world city and its people. This feeling of uncomfortable recall is not only because of the Charlie Hebdo shootings that had taken place in Paris at the start of this year, a link that, no doubt, will be made very strongly by politicians and the media in the days to come. Rather, I am also thinking about the Burj el-Barajneh bombings that claimed many lives in southern Beirut a day before Paris and of a smaller but still violent attack on the University of California campus at Merced on 4 November.

In an open letter published in the Merced Sun-Star a day following the incident on their campus, Anneeth Kaur Hundle and Sean Malloy, members of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Faculty, shared these thoughts: “We are deeply saddened by the violence that … [has left one] dead, four [injured], and many … emotionally traumatized ... We are also deeply troubled by the immediate surge of anti-Islamic, anti-Arab sentiment that followed the identification of the perpetrator as UC Merced student Faisal Mohammad. So far, we have only Mohammad’s name and that he was Muslim. But such information has no necessary correlation to the circumstances that led to his violent actions.” “Don’t turn our Tragedy into Hate”, the title of Hundle and Malloy’s letter reads, as it acknowledges the tragic event at their college, but also calls for reason.

I am concerned for the people of Paris. I dread what is to follow. The anxiety I sense building up inside of me is akin to how I felt on 9/11 here in the United States, a premonition that was sadly fulfilled when innocents became the victims of hate crimes based solely on their appearance. But to say the blameless brown-skinned, bearded, or turbaned were targeted in retribution is too simplistic, for their vilification also indicates the deeper current of xenophobia that exists in the United States. Of France and the January attacks, Jacobin’s Richard Seymour had this to say: “No, the offices of Charlie Hebdo should not be raided by gun-wielding murderers. No, journalists are not legitimate targets for killing. But no, we also shouldn’t line up with the inevitable statist backlash against Muslims, or the ideological charge to defend a fetishized, racialized ‘secularism,’ or concede to the blackmail which forces us into solidarity with a racist institution.”   
 
Only a few days ago, suicide bombers claimed the lives of 41 Beirutis. Already that news is in the process of being eclipsed by the violence in Paris. It is as if Beirut, once described as the Paris of the East, is only to be understood as a zone all too familiar with violence and, what is more, even deserving of it precisely because of its Muslim populace. The damage done to the city with its many European influences is what it is remembered for since the civil war of 1975. Thereupon, other episodes of unrest have occurred over the years, with the Syrian crisis most recently taxing Lebanon. Such events have rendered the cultural and religious diversity of its people invisible to most of the rest of the world as Beirut has become more synonymous with strife. But as Al-Jazeera reports, residents of the predominantly Shia region “expressed shock that such deadly explosions were taking place in the southern suburbs again”, given the relative peace since the previous suicide bombings of 2014, for which al-Qaeda claimed responsibility in the “Hezbollah stronghold”.

It is noteworthy that such nuance escapes the usual reportage when it comes to the Middle East, but is all the more heightened in regard to the West. In other words, violence in the West is generally configured as an external threat of an Islamic nature that is aimed at rupturing civility, while similar forms of violence are seen as being inherent to the East and less worthy of coverage, therefore. It is at times like these that the European world is thought of as being solely the domain of white people, and not the product of past colonial encounters as well as its result – contemporary multiculturality.

As Seymour chronicles in the aforementioned Jacobin article, it did not take long for the Hebdo incident to be labeled an act of terrorism by French President Francois Hollande, for the use of the word is meant to act as a register of any and all difference. “‘Terrorism’ is not a scientific term; it is inherently normative”, Seymour reminds us, going on to explain that the word “functions as a narrative device, setting up a less-than-handful of people as a civilizational threat … It justifies repressive and securitarian responses that tend to target Muslims as such…”  

I am concerned for the people of Paris. I dread what is to follow. I hope the days to come will disprove this anguish, but already a fire seems to be lit.

From The Goan.

"Guilty of Walking While Brown" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - March 2015)

On February 6, 2015, an elderly Indian man was left partially paralyzed following an encounter with the police in Madison, Alabama. News of the event spread on social media and elsewhere online. When it became known that a police car had captured video of the incident on its dashboard camera, an online petition was circulated to exert pressure on the Madison City Police Department to release the footage. But even before the petition had acquired the threshold of 1600 signatures it had set itself, the police had made the video public.

Watching the video for the purposes of writing this article was difficult. At the edge of the screen, one sees Sureshbhai Patel (57), with his hands behind his back, possibly handcuffed, being thrown to the ground by officer Eric Parker. Later, when Parker, along with one of the other officers on the scene, attempts to get Patel to stand up, it becomes apparent that the “suspect” is unable to, and is literally hauled onto his feet before sagging back down. Patel, it was discovered, had suffered a neck injury that would cause him paralysis in some parts of his body. 

As the video spread virally, the indignation, particularly of South Asians, was instantaneous, and rightly so. It would be revealed that Patel, a citizen of India, had come from that country to help care for his grandson, born prematurely and, to do so, was living in his son’s home in Alabama. As more of the story became known, perhaps we likened Patel to members of our own family. We saw in this grandfather our own parents and grandparents, those transnationals and migrants who connect our lives between continents. In fact, I had heard of this case of police brutality from a cousin whose children my father took care of in Texas. Like Patel, my dad and other relatives like my aunt and uncle, had come to the States for the function of temporarily helping out with childcare. And while I appreciate how much coverage the event has received, there is something about the nature of the conversation around the incident that leaves me dissatisfied. 

This is not an isolated event of police brutality. To regard it as such runs the risk of reducing it to a sign of South Asian American exceptionalism. Consider that the police had been alerted by a resident of the neighborhood who claimed that a “skinny black guy” they had “never seen … before” was “just wandering around,” and who was estimated to be in his thirties. That the police would be compelled to respond to such a call should make one question who and what they wished “to Serve and Protect,” as the police motto goes. In all likelihood, the call probably originated from a white household, but what is unmistakable is that the police reacted precisely because the person being reported was believed to be black. Evidently, it was unfathomable to, both, the caller and law enforcement that a young black person should have any business in such a neighborhood.

“This is a good neighborhood. I didn’t expect anything to happen,” Chirag Patel, the victim’s son told the press, possibly explaining why he had thought it would have been all right for his father to walk around in broad daylight as he had become accustomed to doing in their town. Speaking to The Washington Post for their February 12 report, the younger Patel had said: “It is a dream for me [to live here] because I came from a very poor family and I worked so hard … I’m totally devastated that I might have made a big mistake.” 

Even as middle class aspirations and immigrant desires to live the veritable American dream prove to be no protection against racism, there is no doubt that the Patels – just as anyone living in the United States – should not have had to feel that the commonplace act of walking out one’s door would put one’s life at risk due to the commonplaceness of racism. Nonetheless, it is specifically because of the assurance felt by a community that is often emblematically deemed the upwardly mobile model minority that South Asian Americans can believe themselves to be immune to systemic racism. Moreover, this extends itself to the notion that the police, rather than being embedded within such systems, are testament to the protection of those who are considered ideal subjects in the multicultural civil society of the United States. 

To cut to the chase, Sureshbhai Patel, who speaks very little English and is an Indian farmer who was visiting this country, was severely injured by a white policeman because Patel was identified as being black. Following the recent verdicts in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, where the white policemen who were responsible for the deaths of these two black men were tried and found not guilty, I would argue that the incident involving Patel received as much attention as it did because of the growing inescapability of questions surrounding abuses of power. As crystallized in the trending hashtag “Black Lives Matter,” these questions center on how racial difference is perpetuated by such abuses, both by the police and laws that protect them over minorities. 

While Parker was swiftly charged with third degree assault, the attack on Patel should not be seen as an outlier to forms of racialized violence that have been manifesting increasingly through the involvement of the state, be it in the form of the police or even politicians. Note the lack of irony in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s declaration in a January radio interview with the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch that the United States was under threat of a Muslim invasion because immigrants of that faith background “want to use our freedoms to undermine that freedom in the first place.” An Indian American who converted to Christianity from Hinduism, Jindal’s opinions are those of the garden variety Republican, but the danger lies in those views emanating from a politician of minority racial origins. They serve to obfuscate the very real threat to the lives of Muslim Americans, such as Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, the three young relatives who were executed by a white gunman in Chapel Hill a week after Parker attacked Patel.

In that South Asian American immigrants are of many faiths, Jindal’s callous statement, made for political gain, diminishes the post-9/11 Islamophobic violence his own community faces, let alone those other Americans who so happen to be Muslim. Being deliberately oblivious to xenophobia, coupled with a sense of insulation that can emanate from being considered a model minority, especially because one is not black, can easily lull one into being complacent about institutionalized racism. But are you sure “they” know who you are when you take a walk around your neighborhood?

From India Currents. The longer version appears as "Walking While Brown While Looking Black" on Media Diversified, and a short piece on the subject appears in The Goan as "To Serve and Protect (Someone Else)."