Targeting the ‘other’
The world is anxiously waiting to see history unfold in the United States, Britain, France, China and — yes — even India as issues of race, gender and sexuality take precedence over those of class mobility and the New Year threatens to blur distinctions between patriotism and nationalism. “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first,” Charles de Gaulle had once declared, “nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.” One feeds on the other: the boxing adage about offence being the best defence is also strategic statecraft.
Trade and investment agreements will have to be renewed with postBrexit Britain, the European Union and Donald Trump’s America. But the upsurge of majoritarian politics poses the greatest danger for minority communities and mounting migrant traffic. Anti-Semitic vandalism in the US, Islamist terrorism, sectarian violence across continental Europe, Britain’s 41 per cent increase in hate crimes, and the National Crime Records Bureau finding of a 44 per cent rise in attacks against dalits warn that the demands of growth, development and human betterment are relegated to the background.
Historians believe nationalist fervour — “the measles of mankind”, quoting Albert Einstein — plunged Europe into two world wars. Nationalism doesn’t poison only foreign relations. The boast by Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom Independence Party that his party’s antiimmigrant campaign determined the Brexit outcome seemed justified when a young Czech man’s murder in an east London suburb prompted the Czech Republic’s Prime Minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, to call Britain’s Theresa May to say how “disturbed he was by the increase in hateful attacks in Britain aimed at citizens of EU member states”.
We cannot draw comfort from this disclosure of exclusively European victims, and not only because of John Donne’s immortal lines, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…” If one were to ask for whom the bells tolls, it tolls for Afro-Asians who are the ultimate target of civil unrest in Europe. Visibility makes them the permanent other. Stanislav becomes Stan as easily as the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha became Windsor. But a dark-skinned Kumaraswamy’s transition to Kummy is more difficult. With Asians accounting for six per cent of Britain’s population, race harmony cannot be assumed even if Enoch Powell’s vision of “the River Tiber foaming with much blood” is too dire to be true.
The US is moving in tandem with Britain. Mr Trump’s electoral promises to build a “great, great wall” along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it, restrict Syrian refugees, deport 11 million immigrants, ban entry to Muslims, “bomb the shit out of” the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, delegalise abortion, sanction using torture, and other rigorous measures recalled for many Americans the white supremacist creed that Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, called the “alternative right”.
As with Powell’s legacy in Britain, perceptions of Mr Trump’s philosophy are more alarming than the substance. After all, he is a hardheaded businessman who hopes to expand his projects in India. That might soften his stand on contentious issues with a bearing on American jobs, such as H-1B visas. But just as patriotism and nationalism are interlinked, domestic and foreign policy cannot be totally divorced from each other. Racist neo-liberalism that forbids multiculturalism at home cannot sustain progressive liberalism abroad.
Europe bristles with populist, anti-elite, antiestablishment movements since Brexit and Trump’s victory. Marine Le Pen’s French National Front may not sweep France’s 2017 presidential polls, but is expected to take second place while its message is bound to add to social tension in a country with the highest Muslim population (nearly 10 per cent) of any country in western Europe. Italy is in even more on the brink after the government’s crushing defeat in a referendum on constitutional reform. Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Northern League, threatens “to take to the streets” unless “immediate elections” are held.
No wonder Germany’s Social Democrat vicechancellor Sigmar Gabriel declared that “a weight has fallen from all of Europe’s shoulders” when Austrian voters recently defeated Norbert Hofer. His anti-immigration Freedom Party, which Vienna’s mayor called the “xenophobic face of Austria”, was founded by a Nazi SS general. But since crimes against Muslims and Jews have increased by more than 50 per cent in the last year, Austrians are not sanguine the liberal trend will hold for the legislative elections due by 2018.
Although increased ethnic controversies capture the headlines, the xenophobic discourse of popular far-right parties across Europe reflects more than the racist resurgence. Ambitious economic plans based on subsidies to families and small businesses, and private-sector nationalisation signifies the revival of populist radical programmes that attract left-wing voters too. The phenomenon represents a localism that challenges the internationalist world order, exalting sovereignty above globalisation.
No country asserts its perceived sovereign rights more stridently than China. The denunciation of Mr Trump’s telephone conversation with Taiwan’s President and the seizure of an American drone (subsequently returned) were probably muscle-flexing exercises ahead of the President-elect taking office. Others can play tit-for-tat games, as Manmohan Singh’s government demonstrated when the Chinese refused a visa to the Northern Command chief, Lt. Gen. B.S. Jaiswal. India promptly suspended all bilateral military ties and joint exercises, as the American journal Foreign Policy approvingly noted.
Narendra Modi has continued Dr Singh’s policy of restrained refusal to be browbeaten. He allowed the Dalai Lama and Karmapa Lama, Tibet’s two highestranking leaders, to visit Arunachal Pradesh in the teeth of Chinese objections. Now, India has upstaged Beijing with a 22-member IndiaTaiwan Parliamentary Friendship Forum.
The domestic record is less reassuring. Speaking on “growing intolerance”, the Congress’ Shashi Tharoor claimed a cow is safer in India than a Muslim. He also laments that “the cause of cow protection has now been linked to another persistent and destructive custom in Indian society: violence against Muslims and dalits”. True, Mr Modi himself has warned of fake gau rakshaks (cow protectors) creating social conflict, and asked state governments to “take stern action” against them. But these people are also the BJP’s backbone. Cow vigilantism is most rampant in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — “the hub of atrocities against dalits” says Mr Tharoor — where the BJP fared best in 2014.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s warning that the worst kind of communalism arises when the majority suffers from a minority complex is worth remembering in 2017. In identifying the single most formidable block to the dream of a borderless world, Nehru wasn’t speaking only of India. His warning is of universal relevance as country after country closes its doors to those it considers outsiders. The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author