Indian pundits rally in support of Europe's anti-migrant sentiment.
By James M. Dorsey
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Indian politicians and
commentators have rallied in defense of anti-migrant sentiment in Europe to
forge alliances and undercut criticism of Hindu nationalism that targets
minorities, foremost Muslims.
In response to criticism, most
recently by the European Parliament, of India’s handling of violent ethnic
clashes in the northeastern city of Manipur in which some 130 people were
killed, the pundits seek to bolster right-wing and autocratic
resistance to meaningful discussions about
migrant, minority, and human rights.
The European Union has
already put those discussions on the back burner by focusing instead, for
example, in Tunisia, on enlisting autocrats to deter illegal immigration.
This week, the EU signed an agreement with Tunisia that provides the North African country with US$118
million to stop smuggling, strengthen borders, and return migrants.
In addition, the EU has
offered Tunisia a US$1 billion loan to help resolve its economic crisis, provided
the country successfully concludes an agreement with the International Monetary
Fund (IMF).
The loan would come out of US$16.39 billion budget announced in June by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to
foster partnerships with third countries, provide help to refugees in the
Middle East, and react to humanitarian crises.
The EU-Tunisia agreement
stipulates that migrants should be treated with "full respect of human
rights."
Yet, in recent weeks, Tunisia
has forcibly taken hundreds of Black sub-Saharan Africans
to the desert and hostile areas on
the borders of Libya and Algeria after racial unrest in Sfax, Tunisia’s
second-largest city.
Tunisian President Kais Saied
has accused migrants of plotting to change the country's demographics in
conjunction with "traitors who are working for foreign countries.”
In the same vein, men like
Ram Madhav, a member of the executive of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the
Hindu nationalist cradle of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former
secretary general of Mr. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and
retired Major General Harsha Kakar, have sought to reduce Europe’s migrant problem
to one of Muslim resistance to integration and/or assimilation.
“The question of integrating immigrant Muslims into mainstream
societies as equal citizens is
bothering many countries today. Rising lawlessness, street violence,
gangsterism, mushrooming growth of madrasas and Arabic schools, increasing
insistence on speaking in Arabic, wearing head-to-toe Burqa, and occupying
large public spaces for daily prayers have been seen by many in the West as
deliberate acts of defiance to nation-state ideology,” Mr. Madhav said in one
of his weekly Indian Express columns.
In another column, Mr. Madhav
noted, referring to those fleeing Nazi Germany, that “European immigrants had not had much problem
integrating with the French
mainstream.”
For his part, Mr. Kakar charged migrants in Europe constitute a “time
bomb.”
In an implicit echo of Hindu nationalist
tropes, Mr. Kakar asserted that “immigrants, especially in Europe, where they
are considered cheap labour for the economy, do not have loyalty to their new
country.”
Mr. Kakar quoted a French politics
expert as saying that in France, most ghetto residents "disrespect France,
they hate it, and they don't want to integrate."
Messrs. Madhav and Kakar's argument reinforces
right-wing and autocratic reasoning that economic development and the fight
against terrorism take precedence over human rights.
Egyptian general-turned-president
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has stepped further by insisting that “lack of education,
a roof above one’s head, inability to secure a job, (and) no hope for the
future, constitute violations
of one’s human rights.”
Even so, the argument of Messrs.
Madhav, Kakar, and Al-Sisi is self-incriminating given that poverty and lack of
opportunity in developed and developing countries stem mainly from failed
government social and economic policies and a lack of good governance on both
sides of the divide.
Mr. Kakar acknowledged the social and
economic disenfranchisement and perceived racism driving violent protests like
those recently in France but attributed the cause to "the inability to
integrate immigrants into society mainly because numbers are large and beyond
the ability of the state to manage."
Beyond absolving the state of its
responsibilities, putting the onus on migrants, and ignoring that Europe’s
labour shortage makes addressing social and economic inequities a necessity, Messrs.
Madhav and Kakars’ attempts to reinforce European anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiment
seem to be designed to forge a common ground that would shield India from
criticism of Mr. Modi’s questionable Hindu nationalist policies.
Lost in the pundits’ argument is that
Europe's post-World War Two generations of migrants and their descendants were
initially on the continent at European countries’ invitation.
In 1975, the Paramaribo Express, the
air link between the Suriname capital and Amsterdam, was overbooked as the
Netherlands offered citizenship, in advance of the Latin American
country’s independence, to any Surinamer in the Dutch mainland on or before a
specific date.
Northern European countries invited
many North Africans, Turks, and South Europeans as guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s but failed to integrate them on the mistaken
assumption that their stay would be temporary.
Additionally, Western aid, and economic,
and foreign policies frequently disadvantaged developing economies and
supported autocratic, often corrupt regimes in Africa and Asia that stymied
equitable economic development at home.
The vast number of irregular migrants
currently washing up on European shores and flooding the United States border
with Mexico are partially due to those policies.
To be fair to Messrs. Madhav and
Kakar, European anti-migrant sentiment is genuine and cannot be ignored.
“India can…serve European liberals not so much
as a model but rather as a warning from which they can learn,” said politics scholar Joerg
Friedrichs.
One lesson Europe can learn is that
“when trying to accommodate minorities, ruling elites must not lose touch with
prevailing perceptions of fairness among the majority,” Mr. Friedrichs said.
Another is “that majorities should
resist the lure of narcissism” or self-righteousness to avoid being trapped in
hypocrisy.
Mr. Friedrichs likened Europeans’
“narcissistic image of themselves as torchbearers of democracy and human
rights” to Hindu nationalist assertions that Muslims should be taught a lesson
if they exploit Hindu tolerance and generosity.
Noting that many followers of populist
parties in Europe and Mr. Modi are “disenchanted liberals rather than rabid
nationalists," Mr. Friedrichs suggested that “instead of alienating them
further, liberals should try to gain them back by showing that they care about
the majority at least as much as about minorities.”
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, an Adjunct Senior
Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The
Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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