"Blacklisted: Racism and the Injustice of Popular Violence" - THE NAVHIND TIMES (6 November 2013)

On 31^st October, the local media was saturated with news of a group of Nigerian nationals who, it was claimed, had removed the corpse of their murdered compatriot from the hearse carrying it, thereafter placing the body on the road, effectively blocking traffic on NH 17 in protest. Policepersons intervening in the protest were said to have been assaulted and, to complicate matters, the Nigerians were subsequently set upon by a mob, and viciously beaten up, such that two Nigerians suffered life-threatening injuries. The statements made by some of the Nigerians, that the protest was spurred by their fear that the police were not investigating the murder seriously nor paying heed to allegations that two prominent Goan politicians were involved in the drug trade of which the murder was a possible fall-out, were largely ignored.

Public reaction was astounding. Instead of being horrified at the mob lynching of the protesting Nigerians, most persons tended to respond with the simplistic question, what else were the locals supposed to do? This question implies that the Nigerians deserve what they got, not only because they were causing a nuisance, but primarily because of their alleged involvement in the drug trade in Goa. It is precisely this sort of rhetoric that demonstrates the double-standards at work in our society and as especially evidenced in this particular case. The assault on the Nigerians as well as the subsequent reportage, not to mention comments on social media, reek of a barely concealed, when not blatant, racism.

Incidents of mob lynching are often presented as spontaneous eruptions of anger against an ineffective government, but are in fact almost never so. Usually the manifestation of a shared local sentiment against a weaker opponent, they tend to happen only when it is convenient and ‘safe’ to take the law into one’s own hands. Why should a blockage of the highway lead to murderous assaults by people armed with lathis and iron rods? If this lynching was really a response to the government’s inaction against the drug mafia, as some claim, why have we never seen such attacks on the police or the politicians who have been frequently accused of protecting or patronising the trade? The answer is that most participants in the lynching are aware that attacking the police or politicians would have very serious legal and extra-legal implications. Lynching is never directed at the powerful but at the powerless. This ugly phenomenon is often directed at the innocent, as in the case at Arambol a few months ago, when a person mistaken for a thief was tied to a pole and then beaten almost to death – again by ‘locals’ – before he was rescued by the police. Media images showed a bound and bloody semi-naked figure whom bystanders were laughing at and taking pictures of on their cell phones. Social sanction for lynching is deeply troubling, and it cannot just be blamed on an unresponsive government.

Next is the issue of the ‘common sense’ that seems to prevail in Goa: that Nigerians are drug peddlers. It should be obvious that the entire population of Nigerians who visit or are resident in Goa cannot be peddling drugs. Such an assumption gains credibility only when supported by a racist logic that tars an entire community based on the actions of a few. Substantial examples of racism can be found in media reports and editorials, while the viciousness of social media is almost beyond description. Nigerians have been described as “hefty”, “boisterous”, “Uncivilized, uneducated pirates”, and one commentator proclaims, “we can't forget what they did to us during Idi Amin times”. As the latter quotes demonstrate, the identities of distinct nationalities – Ugandans, Nigerians, and others – have been conflated while venting frustration. The only common feature between these nationalities is that they are all African and black. Even Goan diasporic history – the 1972 expulsion of Asians from Uganda by Amin – is roped in as reason for retribution. Further, there is the almost classic racist fear of the savagery of African men. One particularly telling comment on Facebook describes them as “massive Afzal Khan brand African giants,” intertwining the fear of the Muslim along with that of the African. 

This is not surprising given our caste culture, which can surely teach racism a thing or two about violent discrimination on the basis of birth. Our society nurtures a biased belief in hierarchy and discrimination, all of which is also tied to skin colour, so that it is very normal for black people to be treated worse than whites. In an interview many years ago, an African living in Mumbai pointed out that while apartheid in South Africa was the law, in India it is human nature. This results in the khapri, or African, being relegated to the bottom of the caste ladder, lower than the lowest – not least because of Goans recalling their times in Africa as colonial collaborators, but also due to the legacy of slavery in Portuguese Goa, both of which have given Goans unacknowledged African bloodlines. Ganging up on Africans, whether physically or politically, brings Goans ‘together’ against the lowly outsider, creating a fake and racist unity. How convenient this racism is can be seen from the immediate attempts to cash in by MLAs like Rohan Khaunte and Vijai Sardessai, with their open defence of the lynching and avowed support to defend those responsible.

The calls for “rounding up” and deporting Nigerians are disturbingly reminiscent of the pogroms carried out against the Roma and Jews in Europe, and against other ethnic minority groups across the world. It is all the more ironic given the contemporary and routine racial profiling of South Asians, Goans included, who travel to or live in other countries. While many citizens see profiling as a logical response of the State, the fact is that such assertions of tough administration invariably come after an incident such as this; they are merely spectacles and knee-jerk responses, not evidence of good governance. In fact, the inherent jingoism conceals the rot in the system that has produced the problem in the first place. If some Nigerians are involved in drug peddling, can they have been doing it without local assistance? Indeed, the incident that commenced in Parra and concluded in Porvorim is an example of how institutions of governance have been systematically dismantled over time to serve the personal agendas of the locally powerful. Some foreigners may have benefitted from the space that opened up, but the truth is, as so amply demonstrated on 31^st October, that eventually they are as much the victims as locals. Tragically, these victims set upon one another while the kingpins laugh all the way to the bank.
 

In the face of this popular support for mob violence, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s assertion that it cannot do for citizens to take the law into their own hands is well placed, and one hopes that his statement that his government may prosecute those responsible for the life-threatening attacks on the Nigerians will be realised. Lynchings become precedents for more violence and, to reiterate, they invariably mete out unjust punishments. 

This article was co-written with Jason Keith Fernandes, Amita Kanekar, Anibel Ferus-Comelo, and Albertina Almeida, and appears on The Navhind Times.

"The General is Resurrected" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (2 November 2013)

As I write this column here in Goa, on the other side of the planet – at the University of Iowa in the United States – the latest edition of Peter Nazareth’s novel The General is Up is being ‘cyberlaunched’. First published by the Writers Workshop in Calcutta in 1984, then Toronto’s TSAR Publications in 1991, the 2013 edition has been produced by local publishing house Goa 1556. Yet, despite Nazareth’s Goan roots and his use of Goan characters, it would not be right to say that the novel’s circuitous publishing history has finally brought it home. Indeed, at the crux of Nazareth’s tragicomic novel are the deeply perplexing questions: ‘Where is home?’ and ‘Whose home is it?’

Employed by Uganda’s Ministry of Finance until the early 1970s, Nazareth left the country during perilous times to take up a fellowship in the States. Presciently, his first novel In a Brown Mantle, published in 1972, foretold the expulsion of Asians from Uganda by President Idi Amin that same year. In The General is Up, Nazareth reuses the fictional African country of Damibia, which he introduces readers to in his debut novel. Nonetheless, it is clear that the author draws from his own intimate knowledge of political instability and personal loss, and that the novel’s dictatorial namesake is the very real Amin. Consequently, the postcolonial setting in Nazareth’s work is used to explore themes of nationalism and displacement. Goan characters, such as Ronald D’Mello in The General is Up, find themselves on the verge of being exiled from a land they had thought of as home. Interrogating concepts of national identity and belonging, the profound comment the novel offers is on the use of fiction in politics: the made-up nation of Damibia is as ‘real’ as the manufactured truth of nationalism.

Because of its multiple locations – East Africa, Goa, and the West – The General is Up is both record and allegory of the human geography of Goan identity. The just released Goan edition resurrects Nazareth’s novel for a new generation of readers. But why should this text matter to Goans? I would suggest that the novel still functions as an index of identity issues that continue to inform the fraught relationship that Goans have with the postcolonial nation, as well as class and caste. Take the aforementioned D’Mello’s reminiscence of his time in Goa: “He could not go to any of the Damibian ... schools because ... the colonial government had made sure that there was no racial mixing ... [I]n Goa, ... he had discovered that there was nothing inherently middle-class about Goans. Just like Damibians, Goans could be servants, bus drivers, peasants, as well as the occasional landowner.” 

Through D’Mello’s experience, Nazareth presents a critique of social stratification and internalised racism. By telescoping what his character finds in Goa to the diaspora, while also critically diminishing the difference between the two, the novelist assesses the limited bases of community formation and ethnic solidarity, simultaneously holding the nation to task for its imperious designs – the collusion betwixt these elements hangs thickly in the background of events that unfold in the novel. It is not just the General, that ironic symbol of postcolonial freedom, that Nazareth holds up to scrutiny, but also those seemingly average actors who play their part in perpetuating the status quo. Even now, The General is Up still reads as a cautionary tale of how home is never what it seems.

To see the print version of this article, visit here.

"The Journey Home" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - October 2013)

It was a strange, yet somehow very Indian American moment. In January, this year, I was to meet Andy in front of McDonald’s. “The one across the street from the KFC,” I had said on the phone. The McDonald’s in Bandra, that is. By the time I got there, Andy had already arrived. The post-work traffic whizzed by on Linking Road as we embraced in front of the golden arches. “I am SOOOO happy to see you,” Andy said. “Can you believe we’re here? In Bombay? In front of this?” I asked, indicating the Mickey D’s behind me. “I know right?!” Andy said with that unforgettable chuckle in his voice. We laughed together at the delicious irony of the American fast food company dishing out such fare as the “McSpicy Paneer.”

This was Andy’s first journey to India. It was a lifetime in the making, and the trip of a lifetime. I got to know Andy in 1998, during my junior year at UCLA. In the years following, he would often express his interest in visiting India, knowing that I went to see family. However, after a while, I could not help but think: “Sure… that will be the day.” So, when he emailed to say that he was actually going to do it, I could barely believe it. Having already been in India a few weeks at that point, I was all the more excited at the prospect of sharing Andy’s experience.

 

In 1998, UCLA hosted the South AsianYouth Conference (SAYC) for high school students, primarily. Most attendees were from schools in and around Los Angeles’ Little India: Artesia and Cerritos, for example. The conference had been organized by a group of students who called themselves Sangam, a word in Hindi that means coming together. The organizers who had constituted Sangam solely for the purpose of the youth conference were spurred on by its success, and decided not to disband after. I had attended SAYC, and thereupon was invited to join Sangam. It was where I met Anand “Andy” Shah, a staff reporter for UCLA’s newspaper the Daily Bruin. While there were other South Asian American student organizations on campus that served a social purpose, Sangam strove to educate about progressive causes that had a political bent.

It was a heady time as protests erupted over issues of affirmative action and the dwindling numbers of Latino and Black students on campus, along with other underrepresented minorities from Asian and Pacific Islander communities. What Sangam did was to include South Asian students as activists by building awareness and solidarity within and across lines of race. We were on the front lawns of Royce Hall protesting along with other student groups as the Regents made decisions that would impact generations of Californians. We tried to remind the UC system that as a public university, it had a mandate to serve the community in all its diversity.

These were the kinds of goings on that Andy reported on for the school newspaper, while also being involved in Sangam’s activist efforts. Additionally, he was part of various community outreach and educational projects the group undertook. Among others, these included a SAT tutorial project in the Bangladeshi community in LA’s Korea Town, a mini festival of films from South Asia and its diaspora, and

efforts to expand South Asian Studies at UCLA. But Sangam was not just an organization that was somehow different from other ethnic student groups because it was more political. Like those other groups, we bonded over our commonalities. Andy was part of a community of young South Asians who were not what might be considered typically “model minority.” There is little doubt that what drew us together was the sense of family we felt in our shared differences from the norm: we were the offspring of divorced or separated parents, or parachute kids and new immigrants, or queer and otherwise non-confirming. And it was in knowing that we had each other that we gained an education our classrooms could not provide.

This intimate knowledge of why social justice was so important to us and others like us, and to those whose causes we might have little personal experience of, led Andy to be an advocate for change even after his time at UCLA. Because he knew only too well about domestic abuse, the marginalization of those who are both queer and of color, and anti-immigrant sentiment, he sought to build awareness around these topics through participation in community and national organizations and also by writing about these matters. For Andy, who always had an interest in journalism, the issue was representation. Or, more aptly, how the media skews representation, particularly when it comes to minorities.

On September 5, 2013, while Andy was crossing a street in Beverly Hills, he was struck by a vehicle. At the time of writing, the driver in this hit-and-run incident has not been identified. At the age of 33 when he still had so much more to give, my friend was no more. From India, I made the mistake of watching the online story about his death as it was reported on by a Los Angeles news station. I will forever be haunted. It was not just that my friend’s entire life had been reduced to a nameless image of his face in this report that referred to him as, only, “Norwalk Man.” It was not just that the news channel felt the need to display the crime scene while Andy’s remains were still there. It was that none of these elements bore any relevance to the ostensible reason for the story, which was to bring to public awareness that the perpetrator had fled the scene of the crime. This was a telling instance of the usual manner in which Los Angeles news deals with cases of this nature. There is no thought to how such callousness affects a grieving family and only adds to our desensitization to violence, because of the proliferation of such decontextualized images in the media. What irony that a person so aware of the media’s distortion of representation should be so represented.

I am saddened not to be in Los Angeles with Andy’s mother and brother, and our friends, as they say goodbye to someone who touched our lives so deeply. There is some solace in knowing that in those brief days in Bombay, which would be the last time I would see Andy, I was part of his life’s journey at such a significant moment for him. Though he had never been before, I remarked at how he seemed as comfortable in bustling Bombay city as he had always been in Los Angeles. He navigated the town like a native, hailing cabs and rickshaws, informing drivers where to take us, and pointing out the city’s sights to me. Now, neither Bombay nor Los Angeles will ever be the same for me Andy, because I was lucky to know you. Rest in peace.

The print and online versions of this India Currents article can be seen here. Obituaries for Andy appear in the Los Angeles Times and on the Road Peace memorial website. An open letter to ABC 7 about their coverage of the aforementioned accident runs on Streetsblog.

Anand "Andy" Shah (February 19, 1980 - September 5, 2013). Photo courtesy of Sanna Malick.

"The Ugly Politics of Beauty" - OUTLOOK INDIA (25 September 2013)

 The racist tweets about 2014 Miss America pageant winner Nina Davuluri have become the stuff of legend, sparking reactions quite contrary to the expectations of the twits that tweeted, and only further raising the title-holder’s profile. Indeed, writers from India and America, including American writers of Indian origin like Davuluri herself, have weighed in with opinions about how the ugly tweets do not reconcile with the beauty of America’s diversity as represented by someone like Davuluri, and also how the newly crowned Miss America could never be Miss India because, though beautiful, she is far too dark for mainstream Indian tastes. Lakshmi Chaudry notes in her piece for the Indian blog First Post that Miss USA’s “dusky” complexion would not make her the ideal candidate for Bollywood stardom, the endgame of several Miss India winners, “unless she makes the miraculous colour ‘adjustment’” required by the profession. What Chaudry alludes to is not only the prevalence of skin bleaching as part of a regular maintenance regime for beauty pageant contestants and actors, but also the role played by Indian celebrities in shilling skin whitening products – a role the dark-skinned Davuluri was just not born to inhabit.  On the same blog, and also on the Huffington Post, Sandip Roy opines emphatically that “Nina Davaluri’s Story is an American Story, not an Indian One.” Hmm… I am not so sure about either of these claims.

But before I take up those issues, a little side trip is necessary to a land that is neither India nor the United States, but this detour is, nonetheless, still about beauty being more than skin deep. Like Davuluri, Yityish Aynaw made beauty pageant history for similar reasons. She was named Miss Israel 2013, the first black winner of that title. Like other Ethiopians of the Jewish faith, Aynaw came to live in Israel as an aliyah immigrant. She had been orphaned at a young age in her birth country before she moved to Israel with her grandparents. While Aynaw gained publicity for her success story as a black Israeli woman, news reports about the lives of several Ethiopian women, many of them refugees, told a far from positive tale. Revelations emerged that thousands of them had been injected against their will with Depo-Provera, a contraceptive. As The Guardian reported, “The phenomenon was uncovered when social workers noticed the birth rate among Ethiopian immigrants halving in a decade. An Israeli documentary investigating the scandal was aired in December [2012]…” Then, in February 2013, Aynaw received her crown. 

“So what then, to make of Aynaw's crowning as Israel's latest beauty queen (apart, that is, from the irony inherent in treating winning an appearance-based contest as some sort of victory for human rights)?” asks Ruby Hamad, writing for Australia’s Daily Life. As Hamad poignantly states, “It is indeed tempting to take [Aynaw’s] triumph as a sign that things are changing but her victory is at best purely symbolic and at worst utterly cynical.” And it is the symbolism that is inescapable here, as in the moment when the first black Miss Israel, upon special invitation, met America’s first black President on his official visit to Jerusalem a month after Aynaw was awarded her title.  

Miss Israel named Obama as one of her heroes, seeing the similarities between them: “Like him, I was also raised by my grandmother. Nothing was handed to me on a plate and like him I also had to work very hard and long to achieve things in my life.” Clearly, what is being evoked here is the symbolic rhetoric of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps – that oft-told tale of immigrants being able to succeed if they try hard enough, a foundational element of the ethos of the United States. While other allegations have arisen this year of how, generally black, asylum seekers in Israel have been discriminated against when searching for accommodation, Aynaw’s victory not only serves as PR on domestic race relations, but also in using race to support diplomatic relations across borders. Of course, US-Israel relations have a long history, but the depths of that connection continue to emerge, as in The Guardian’s exposure of the “memorandum of understanding” between the NSA and Israeli intelligence. Politics, they say, makes for strange bedfellows, but does it also help if they are beautiful? And what does that query have to do with the reigning Miss America and the land of her ancestry? 

If there is one thing that many Americans, if not several around the world, have heard of India lately, it is the news of the vicious rapes, with the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape case being the most well-known example. The brutal incident resulted in the young victim, a student of physiotherapy, losing her life. Nation-wide protests ensued in India, and international attention was drawn to questions of the treatment of Indian women. Just a few days prior to the Miss America contest, the sentencing of the convicted men in that case was pronounced. What I have to say next, is not pretty. Davaluri’s win projects her, just as Aynaw’s did her, as someone markedly different from those others of her ethnicity – hers is an exceptional position because of the country of her citizenship. 

While for Aynaw the comparison to be made is to other Ethiopian Jewish women in Israel, in Davaluri’s case she is remarkable because, as an American of Indian provenance, she is to be seen as unlike women in India. Aynaw becomes an icon of immigrant aspiration while obscuring the plight of black refugees – victimized by the state and society – who, if they “work very hard and long” can achieve some measure of success. In other words, the onus is not on the state, but on the individual herself. Davaluri, meanwhile, becomes an illustration of how her country has allowed her to fulfill her potential as a woman of immigrant roots – she can aspire to be both a pageant winner and someone who wants to go on to study medicine. Quite by coincidence, there is a similarity between the 24 year old Miss America’s vocational goal and the 23 year old Delhi victim’s paramedical field of study. In contrast, then, India is relegated to the position of a patriarchal society where women are seen as victims, not least because of the pervasiveness of rape culture.

This is not an attempt to diminish the very real existence and problem of rape, patriarchy, or even their interconnectedness. Nor am I arguing that pageants are part of some nefarious state design to afford a nation the moral high ground either in domestic concerns or international affairs. (Yet, one must admit that it is very interesting that pageants use the imperial language and symbols of state: queens, their reign, and crowns, for instance…) Rather, I want to make a case for how pageantry works politically, even if unintentionally. An Indian American winner counter-poses America and India, likely indicating that one of those nations is more patriarchal and discriminatory against women. Simultaneously, what does it do for American women themselves? How does it take attention away from legislative battles over women’s rights to reproductive and sexual healthcare in states such as Texas, or reduce concern over the cover up of rape on US college campuses, because the notion is that these problems must be far worse in a developing nation like India – that foreign land of Davaluri’s origins? 

Admittedly, charges of India’s treatment of its women citizens were not the most apparent on social networks where users were more concerned with calling Davaluri a terrorist or a Muslim (or some combination thereof), but what those racist tweets did was to underscore Davaluri’s foreignness, and all it stands for, even if she was born in the United States. This is precisely why pageants themselves need not be directly calculated in their political intent; the mechanisms are already in place for their outcome to be judged, a second time, in the popular arena. Racism, beauty standards, the media, and the contemporary ubiquity of social networks where commentary can be passed freely and invisibly are all in place to mete out opinion based on the color of a woman’s skin. In that sense, not much has changed since thirty years ago when Vanessa Williams became the first black Miss America, only to be stripped of her title for having appeared in an adult magazine.

Speaking of the color of a woman’s skin, much has been made of why the dark-complected Davaluri would not fare as well in a pageant in India as she did in the country of her birth and citizenship. Undeniably, the most famous winners of the Miss India title, some of whom like Aishwarya Rai went on to win the Miss World contest, have all been light-skinned women, giving even more of a fillip to a thriving industry in skin-lightening products. However, just because such beauty care items are not as commonly seen or advertised in the United States does not mean that a nexus does not exist. For example, Amway, once a sponsor of the Miss America contest, is but one of many multinational beauty product companies that sell skin-lightening products in India and other parts of Asia. In itself, this begs the question of why an event that casts itself as a scholarship, rather than a beauty, contest would be financed by a cosmetics giant. Apart from the politics that pageants may unwittingly participate in, there is also a pretty penny to be made from issues tied to race and appearance. Miss America Nina Davaluri may not be hawking skin-lightening cream in India, but who is to say that she will not be the face of a cosmetics line that will use her appearance to open doors in the land of her ancestry?


This article appears on OutlookIndia.com.