Isolation envy?

This post is about my uncle, about xenophobia and about securitization.

My uncle is a Quaker. He has also been a key member of Quaker Peace and Service, through which Quaker volunteers work as mediators in peace-building efforts and facilitators of development projects. The Quakers are described by Elise Boulding as one of the historic peace churches, along with Mennonites and the Brethren. The Quakers and Mennonites have long innovated and practised non-partisan, humane approaches to peace-building and conflict transformation. My uncle served as a Quaker facilitator/ mediator in Sri Lanka and in Nagaland over decades.

But through all those decades, he visited India often also to be with family. With no problem.

Until last month. A frail octagenarian now, and retired from Quaker work for six years, he flew down with his daughter to visit his dying brother, but was turned away at Bangalore airport. On the grounds that he was a Quaker. He has learnt that he has been blacklisted and his OCI visa has been cancelled. Heartbroken, he is trying to find out why. The Indian High Commission in London, which granted his OCI visa, has no idea. He has written to Mr. P. Chidambaram, but how can we assume he will receive an answer?

There are two questions that arise. One that troubles my uncle: What intelligence about the Quakers has led to this? And one that should trouble all of us: The Quakers have been quietly working in peace-making for decades, why has this intelligence only now registered?

I am very sad that my uncle could not come and see his brother. As one grows old, family ties tug at us more strongly, and to deny siblings a last chance to meet is so un-Indian. 

I am also concerned that traditional pacifist groups like the Quakers are now falling into the same net as genuinely pernicious outfits. 

But most of all, I am concerned about the casual securitization of everything. Not new, not breaking news, but we all lapse into apathy, and I am choosing to speak up now. 

My uncle wants to know what intelligence has learned about the Quakers; but by blacklisting Quakers, the state has privileged information about them. It has securitized this issue, so that it can withhold information and we cannot (in spite of the RTI) actually extract it from the security establishment. And chances are at one level, our own instinct is not to push for it. 

But we should push. Because our own liberties are at stake. Because our identity as a political community is at stake.

So many questions to ask:

1. Why did my uncle and the Quakers get blacklisted now after all these years? Why were they blacklisted at all? 

2. Why are we so afraid of mediation as part of peace processes? It's not like we don't offer our services to others. It's not just foreign NGOs we are afraid of, but routinely our approach to conflict zones is to treat them like small-pox wards--keep everyone out, keep the problem in an airless tin for it to fester. Indian civil society has limited opportunity to work in conflict areas.

In fact, one of the questions we are asked over and over: Is your work political? Of course, it is. We are in the business of social change and social change is political. It is as if the state would like civil society to engage in charitable rather than civic work. 

3. Why are we so xenophobic? This is a theme to which this blog returns over and over again. 

Sixty years after decolonization, we are still afraid of everyone and their shadow. Whether it's foreign students and researchers, foreign investors, transnational NGOs, funding agencies, food chains.... you name it, we fear it. Our decision-making seems to operate on the assumption that foreigners are malicious and anti-India (whatever India means in any instance) until proven otherwise through mysterious measures. 

Such an unconfident people, we have become. And why that is so, is another question for another blogpost.

4. Why are we so respectful of  'security' that we ask no questions? Or accept that we won't get answers. In this case. On Koodankulam. On a dozen other areas. Every Indian political party handles democratic discourse by securitizing a question rather than engaging with it. And in the world's largest and noisiest democracy, we accept that, choosing to outrage instead over whether a remote Siberian village bans the Gita or not. 

My uncle's sad predicament prompted me to write this post but really, the questions are much larger. It's about who we are, who we are becoming and how we are content with ourselves... Like paranoid frogs in a well. 

Alberuni's India, alive-alive-o'

A few years ago, there were newsreports I blogged about the refusal of research visas to foreigners. Pratap Mehta pulls the threads of various issues together--research funding, FCRA, civil society, freedom--to illustrate how Alberuni's India lives... always afraid of the outside world, and I will add, always desperately anxious for its approval.

Pratap B. Mehta, That seventies feeling, Indian Express, June 16, 2011.

Rabindranath Tagore clearly did not belong to this India... where the mind is fearful and the head hangs anxiously; where knowledge is shackled by numbers, fettered by convention and measured by mediocrity; where the world of ideas lives in a cellular prison; where words come out from the depth of truth to be choked by outrage; where tireless striving is quite tired, by now; where the next sentence of the poem is probably too poetic and hopeful to make sense in our time (and not well-dressed enough in designer clothes); where our minds move in shrinking circles through labyrinths of convention and by-laws....

I want to move to Tagore's 'heaven of freedom.' Today.

Related posts from the past:
Back in Alberuni's India (but did we ever leave?)
Celebrating xenophobia (the second round)

Oh, and let's not miss this: Utkarsh Anand, Govt sets bizarre rules for foreign trips by judges, HC calls it mindless, Indian Express, June 16, 2011.

Celebrating xenophobia: The second round

The Indian Express filed an RTI on the question of foreign research scholars being denied visas. Finally, they have a positive response. Read on:

Shubhajit Roy, Now you will know why and how Govt rejects foreign scholars, asks them to change subjects, Indian Express, December 02, 2007.

Just to remind you, here is a link to the older post on this issue:

Back in Alberuni's India (But did we ever leave?)

Back in Alberuni's India (But did we ever leave?)

About a thousand years ago, a scholar wandered into India in the wake of an army. He found many things to see and learn, but was dismayed to find the spirit of inquiry diminished and xenophobia masked as exclusiveness among the locals. What has changed in a thousand years? From this series of reports in the Indian Express this week, just the speed with which xenophobic anxiety is expressed--it takes much longer now!

We complain bitterly about the long queues of visa applicants around US and European Consulates and about the piles of documents it takes to apply for those visas. But when scholars apply for visas to undertake research under a binational educational exchange programme (yes, India is also a partner in this exchange), we drag our feet and our sacks of paperwork. Having benefited greatly from the openness and hospitality of other societies where I have been able to study, conduct research and attend conferences, I find this response to genuine expressions of interest and intellectual curiosity baffling, embarrassing and counter-productive.

Travel, study and research abroad are some of the best ways to learn about another country, and it is in that country's interests to facilitate the visits of foreign tourists and scholars. While tourists can come and go at a level of superficiality so that sometimes our only benefit is economic, we can expect long-term returns from welcoming visiting scholars. Fulbright scholars for instance, typically live where Indians do. They shop in the same bazaars. They learn Indian languages or musical instruments or dance. They work in Indian colleges and think-tanks. They learn slowly to see us as we do and then to see the world as we do. They will of course, remain American, but they will be able to understand why we have certain values and why we are guarded on certain issues and why some of the people they cannot understand are met with so much warmth by us. And almost always, they keep coming back and they send their students as well.

Sometimes, scholars do come to study things that we consider less innocuous than the Natyashastra or Jnaneshvari. But how large is that category? Does studying socio-economic change in Dharavi seem as threatening as studying foreign policy in the Vajpayee government? Is the latter more of a threat or less to Indian national security than a history of Indian naval doctrine?

This way of thinking is objectionable on two counts. First, a restrictive category cannot include everything other than hairstyle trends in South Calcutta. It should perhaps place limits on a researcher aspiring to be a participant observer in present-day National Security Advisory meetings or Cabinet discussions. But is there any reason to limit even the study of Indian naval doctrine or nuclear doctrine? Do we not trust our own functionaries and offices to withhold classified information or access to particular sites?

Second, if we are a confident, democratic society and an ancient civilization that has survived so much, why are we afraid of academic dissertations and scholarly books? I have done field research in Sri Lanka, and this entailed wandering around asking questions about the ethnic conflict and xeroxing kilos of articles. I remain very grateful to the people who took the time to patiently explain their perspectives to me and to share with me their libraries and their experiences. My understanding of events in Sri Lanka builds on that foundation of access and that glimpse into their experience of events around them. Nothing I read, no legion of Indian or American "experts" on Sri Lanka could have given me that. And my visit seems to have had no adverse impact on Sri Lanka!

We want Indians (or Pakistanis or Sri Lankans or others) in foreign locations so that they will raise our profile and speak for who we are. We will not however let others in to learn the same from us on our turf. A foreign student or scholar is an investment, not a threat. Those of us who have studied or spent time abroad can testify to the bonds we build, not with the heads of state and heads of intelligence in those countries, but with the people who study with us, people who work around us, people who live in our neighbourhood and have children the same age as ours. These are the bonds that colour our feelings about the other country over time. Even as we criticize its foreign policy or its cuisine, we cannot erase from our consciousness (or hearts) the many people who have touched our lives. Welcoming foreign scholars and students is a way to give them a chance to connect their lives with ours in this meaningful and lasting way. We need to understand that their research product is only one small part of what this win-win interaction will yield.

To be in 2007, to be in this globalized, instantly networked village called the Earth and to be making an argument which was not new in the mid-1970s (the last time India more or less barred foreign research scholars from working here) nor even new in Alberuni's time, is shameful. What was new in Alberuni's time and is no longer new is our unwillingness to engage with people from the outside, and to learn from them and let them learn about us. Whether it is paranoia or arrogance that drives our response, there is no good place for us to go from here.

PS: Another comment on the same issue.

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Reports and editorials from the Indian Express on the visa clearance issue will be linked here as they are published.

Incredible India: Are we a liberal democracy? Do we want to become a global academic center?, Editoral, Indian Express, February 12, 2007.
Colour-blind research, Editorial, Indian Express, February 15, 2007.
C. Raja Mohan, Welcoming foreign scholars, Indian Express, February 15, 2007.

Shubhajit Roy's reports:
Are you an American scholar? You aren’t welcome in India, February 11, 2007.
Help us: Fulbright scholars to Rice, February 12, 2007.
Fulbright board wrote to three govt depts, none heard, February 13, 2007.
More US scholars stranded: PIL, cotton, ‘dangerous’ subjects, February 14, 2007.
When it comes to clearance for a Fulbright scholar, even an Indian passport is no help, February 15, 2007.
‘Given the choice of re-applying... I chose to walk’, February 17, 2007.
UPA, eat your liberal heart out: NDA welcomed Fulbright scholars whatever their subject, February 18, 2007. (Comment: Note the preponderance of religion-related topics; what does that say both about the NDA and the future of scholarship about India? On the latter, back to Max Muller?)

Government responses:
Vinay Jha, Govt brainwave: red & green channels for scholars, subjects, February 14, 2007.
Vinay Jha, Decision: red, green channels for scholars, their subjects, February 16, 2007.
Shubhajit Roy, On China research green channel: Tibetans’ dilemma, Stalin Ghost, February 17, 2007.

For all the restrictions India places, India wants liberal visa regime, Pak says NO, PTI/Indian Express, February 16, 2007.