Is national security bigger than humanity?

Ira  Pande

The last fortnight has been a most distressing one: starting with the shameful killing of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru, it also saw the tragic death of an innocent child in Gurugram within minutes of his father dropping him off to school. As if this and other news of the death of infants in yet case of negligent medicare and the shameful state of our health services was not disturbing enough, our TV screens burst with pictures of the Rohingya refugees being turned away from every country that they come to for refuge.

I find it difficult to accept that as a country that claims to honour its guests as gods and one that has always opened its doors to the refugees, we refuse to accept 40,000 more people. Most among the Rohingya are women, children or aged parents and their pitiful belongings are there for all to see. As far as I could tell, they did not seem threatening terrorists: most are underfed, scared and unwilling to go to a country where they are not even considered nationals. 

I remember the millions who came to India after Partition, then a few years later came the Dalai Lama with a band of loyal followers, still later millions of Bangladeshi refugees that poured into eastern India following a civil war in their own country and lastly the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. The list is endless and some of the older refugees (such as the Zoroastrians, Jews, Armenians and Afghans) have seamlessly merged with our own people to contribute to the country’s social and cultural evolution. Where would we be without the Parsis of western India and the displaced Punjabis from Pakistan who came and settled in the Terai, making a mosquito-ridden swamp into north India’s most prosperous agricultural land in just a few decades? 

In these globalised times, borders have to be opened up to help those in distress. Certainly, one cannot be blind to the threat to a nation’s security but under the UN’s Human Rights Commission there are well laid-down guidelines for filtering genuine refugees from embedded terrorists. The truth is that we succumb to misinformation and malicious ethnic propaganda that blinds us to compassion and humanitarian considerations. It is all right for us to criticise European nations for denying entry to refugees from North Africa and Syria but does one dare to publicly support giving refuge to those who belong to a faith that is now looked at suspiciously the world over?  We have very harsh words for the American and British restrictions on our own people who go there to work, yet use very different standards of evaluation when we look at those who seek similar conditions from us. 

I had always admired our country for its courageous stand on accepting those in need of refuge, even if had meant inviting the wrath of powerful neighbours such as China (in the case of the Dalai Lama). I regret that we no longer show such courage or large-heartedness. If you study the contribution made by such ‘aliens’, you will be amazed and humbled at what they have given to our country. From music and the arts to industry (the Tatas or the Godrej family, for example), the list is very impressive indeed. What we need to remember is that they too once fled the country of their birth to make another country their home. All those with children who have migrated to other countries should ask: Is this what we would wish upon them?

The fault lies in submitting to the bilge that floats in our social media sites (WhatsApp and Twitter being the biggest agents of misinformation). The other day, I was sent a vicious account of how Hindus were killing Christian converts in Odisha. This was an old BBC report from the early years of this century and had been edited cleverly to make it sound as if it was something that had happened the other day. What incalculable damage is done when the gullible or bigoted people receive such fake news is unthinkable. The huge industry of trolls then takes over and abuses are freely exchanged. My shawlwala regularly sends me horrific reports (edited to incite no doubt) of the unspeakable crimes being committed in Kashmir. Others send me ‘Hindu’ posts that are equally disturbing. What good is all this wild dissemination of non-news doing to us except forcing us to take sides against each other? While individual relationships between friends and families remain largely unaffected, it is the gradual widening of suspicion of another faith and its followers that is the real worry. In another few years, this chasm may well become unable to be bridged and what good will it does to anyone, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi, Christian or Buddhist?

When even a Nobel Laureate such as Suu Kyi is unable to stand up to defend the rights of her own people, what hope is there for those of us who still bleat on and on about tolerance and compassion? A country that professes to be Buddhist is now being shown up as a nation of bloodthirsty killers. The voice of reason is being drowned under the lusty cries of revenge and hatred.

It is not just Islam that has been Talibanised: Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity are headed the same way.