Economic and Political Weekly, Vol - XLIX No. 40, October 04, 2014
The Xenophobia of Patriots
by M A Kalam
In sports, politics or public life, what separates ultra-hyper patriotism from sheer xenophobia is often a razor’s edge.
M A Kalam (Kalam.ma@gmail.com) is a social anthropologist at the Tezpur University in Assam.
Quite a few individuals in India have spouses or partners who were born in foreign countries. Long ago it was near impossible for officers of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) to marry a non-Indian. K R Narayanan, later to become the President of India, had to obtain an individual personal dispensation from the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to marry a Burmese national, Ma Tint Tint, who later adopted the name Usha. Another of India’s distinguished diplomats, the late Madanjeet Singh, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, was in a similar predicament when he married Dhyanawati, the daughter of an Indonesian diplomat. These two are just illustrative instances. Over the years the restrictions have eased and both men and women officers in the IFS have indeed married non-Indians.
In the present Lok Sabha – again to give just two examples – Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Trinamool Congress and the Congress have non-Indian partners/wives. The Trinamool MP is Sugata Bose, an eminent historian, currently employed by Harvard University. A grandnephew of the legendary Subhas Chandra Bose, he has been in a long-time live-in relationship with his partner of Pakistani origin, Ayesha Jalal, a brilliant academic in her own right, daughter of a Pakistani diplomat and grandniece of the acclaimed Urdu writer, Saadat Hasan Manto. The Congress MP is Gaurav Gogoi, son of the incumbent chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi. Gaurav Gogoi’s wife is of British origin. All the four persons referred to, in a sense, occupy (or have occupied) relatively “sensitive” positions compared to someone who is in no way connected with either the executive or the legislature. Also perchance all four are men, and do not belong to a religion of non-Indian origin.
Despite their non-Indian spouses, they are seen as – presumably and hopefully – “sons” of India. That they could also be the “sons-in-law” of their spouses’/partners’ countries of origin is but secondary and tangential. At least no objections have been raised about their spouses’/partners’ nationality, nor has their patriotism been questioned. They have not been asked to choose which team they would support if India were to be engaged in a sporting contest with a team from their spouses’/partners’ country of origin.
How does one become unpatriotic by appreciating the excellence of a sportsperson/team from another country? Does praise for Brian Lara’s achievements amount to denigration of Sachin Tendulkar? Eulogising the exploits of Rod Laver does not not automatically besmirch his Indian contemporary, Ramanathan Krishnan. Should one carry 24 × 7 the label or mascot of “patriotism”? George Monbiot, English writer and political activist, wonders why he should love his country (Britain) more than others, and argues that while patriotism may lessen hostility between the citizens of a country, it makes the state “more inclined to attack other countries”. He goes to the extent of saying that a patriot lies to oneself by believing that whatever good one may see abroad, one’s country is always better than others.
The controversial British MP, Norman Tebbit, who was also the Chairman of the Conservative Party (and later sat in the House of Lords as Baron Tebbit), is famed for “the Tebbit Test”, proclaimed in April 1990. Tebbit was disconcerted by the support South Asian and Caribbean immigrants to Britain gave to the cricket teams of their countries of origin while they played against the English cricket team. He questioned the loyalty of people from South Asia and the Caribbean who had been living in England for years – yet another instance of patriotism worn on the sleeve by xenophobes.
During a discussion in 1993 at the London School of Economics, a well-known British anthropologist who has had considerable India experience and has published a lot based on his work in India, unabashedly stated that he and his son (who later played cricket for the London schools team) always cheered and supported the opposing team as the English team played, according to him, “lousy cricket”. Could any Indian make a statement of that sort? We’d rather march to where our sportspersons live, throw stones, use tar to blacken their nameplates, if not their faces, break their windows, and demolish their houses. We believe in direct action, tricks of the trade picked up from lumpen goons of various political assemblages.
Is it ultra-hyper patriotism or sheer xenophobia that is exhibited in such cases? While researching South Asians overseas as a social anthropologist, I spent considerable time on fieldwork primarily among Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and, to a lesser extent, Sri Lankans, in England, the US and France. I also travelled to Pakistan to deliver a talk at the invitation of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI). Not once did I feel that the South Asians seemed different from the others I had lived amongst and interacted with in India for decades. They were far from “aliens”.
One final thought. Why is it that none of the four abovementioned gentlemen with non-Indian partners/wives figure in the “limelight” while Sania Mirza, who has a non-Indian husband, is thrust into controversy? Is it due to the double jeopardy of being a woman and a Muslim? No other Indian woman has come even remotely close to her dazzling achievements in her chosen profession of tennis. She is someone on whom the epithet “icon” perches quite appositely – and not because of gender, religion, minotity status or avowed patriotism.
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