Skip to main content

#MeTooMigrant, but with clear privilege

The COVID-19 crisis in India has unleashed the mass movement of poor migrant labourers (the key word here) that has people rightly up in arms.  Whether you blame the government or not, it is something that cannot be right and needs to be righted. In response, some people have used the twitter hash tag #metoomigrant to say that they, too, are by definition migrants i.e. they migrated from their hometown to another place to make it, just like these people. When the migrant labourers came from nothing to nothing to (relatively) bargain for a little something, the #metoomigrants came from something to something else usually bargaining for a lot more (else they wouldn't even come).  

We are all migrants because we all come from somewhere. Even if it wasn't us who made the arduous journey, we are here in our privilege because someone else did. That is why we sit pretty with that privilege today. As long as your ancestor many generations ago didn't move a micro inch from where they were born, your privilege is built on migrant movement from a particular time period. If you don't have an idea of what it looked like, it was more or less like how many such migrant labourers are attempting to walk home for thousands of kilometers just so that they have a better deal.

Once you truly understand get these distinctions and similarities, your response can be a more sober one than #metoomigrant. If that doesn't get through your head and your heart, it's privilege that is clouding your best senses. It's seeped into your bones and has made you thick skinned disabling you from understanding any other reality apart from your own. You could have been that migrant but for a twist of fate. That is not a privilege you claim. It's a privilege you should be thankful for. 

It's a privilege you share, since you have the good fortune of it. If you can't effectively share it, the least you do is not mock, be grateful for what you have and show that you feel the compassion. Just the basic will do. More, if you are moved 

To add to the tragedy, because (at least not all of) our privilege actually fell from the sky, #metoomigrant attempts establish common ground with those walking home. It identifies hard work on equal basis that all work is equal work. It forgets that, while all of us earn our success and failure, all of us are not equally predisposed with resources, skill, comfort and a cushion that we ourselves did not work for. All work may be equal work but privilege we work from is not equal.

The only thing that's common between the richer and the poorer migrant is the rat race to remain above threshold - where they can feed, clothe and house themselves with the simplest of dignities. The only thing different between them is that one is perfectly equipped to stay above, and the other is equipped to constantly stay below. One is a contradiction of the other, nullifying any similarity. 

Unless you individually invented everything good about your life as you stand, every inch of good fortune you have is blatant privilege. You can splash it around with inherited ego or you could choose to help someone break above the threshold (with it costing very little) so that they can pass it on with gratitude. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sec 295(a): 295 reasons too many to take offense?

Pride before a fall, they say. The only thing they don't say is how long before the fall. Let's take a case in point. India prides itself on a lot of things. Among those are secularism and a rich & envied cultural history. We're well known for our food,  dance forms,  and indigenous sciences,  among a long list. But what about the pride this fame brings? Unfortunately,  all those who hope that the saying is true are right. It's what happened with Nupur Sharma, Munawwar Farruiqui, Mohammed Zubair and every person booked under IPC section 295A. All of these cases were filed by a random single individual and blossomed into nationwide movements. If the previous sentence doesn't call out the glaring faultline that this pride rests on, and makes it obvious, the next one will.  All it took for statements, addressing the expression of pride, by a free individual to be eligible to be counted as crime is for another such free individual, over-stuff...
Post a Comment
Read more

...and then they came for you

Sometimes it takes what seems like the wrong punch to get the right effect by an expected person - like the recent backlash by many Muslim countries about Nupur Sharma's statements on Prophet Mohammed. Just a disclaimer though: their response is not a complete defense of what many Indian Muslims go through in a stated secular country like India - whether it is by the 1976 assertion of "secular" in the Preamble or the claim that Hinduism is anyway secular making the former unnecessary. The international response is on an equal level to how many Muslims are made to face struggles at home in India. The mirror just flipped. It's all show and no substance, just with a different name.  The countries, which registered their opposition, practice a somewhat equal intolerance of beliefs other than theirs, as does the Hindutva brigade that has been on the rise in the past few months, whose words these very countries have raised an issue with. They, both, have the same cultura...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anything but a headless response

When information overwhelms us, oversimplification is the order of the day - or that is the modern state that we have evolved to (if you'd like to call that modern). We are not capable of the patience of taking in, and keeping every detail, while we build a story that's truly worthy of all of them. That is the unfortunate case with how we react when we most need to, like the Nice killing.  Let's look at the information and calculate the oversimplification. We can, then, get a clearer picture and choose an adequate response.  The Information :  The adherents of extremist belief have decided that their belief ranks above humanity, enough to consider another human worthless (and worthy of death) just because they celebrate other values. One set of sacred values directly, and oppositely, clashed with another like they were sworn enemies to begin with - except that they were not.  It's just the wrong place for both to exist together. The...
Post a Comment
Read more