Migration leads to progress

LAHORE: Migration of human beings from one place to another since time immemorial and the mass level interaction of different cultures as a result has led to progress in the world and could therefore not be stopped even in this era of nation states.

This was the nutshell of the debate on “Us versus Them” held at a main session of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) here at Alhamra. Moderated by US journalist Suzy Hansen, the session attracted a good number of people.American lawyer and law teacher Becca Heller said she met in 2008 six Iraqi families who, among others, had taken refuge in Jordan after their country was attacked just to know what was happening to them in the new land. “In most cases, refugees are not welcomed despite the fact that finding a safe place becomes all important for their survival. Mostly, the natives of a country do agree that it is unsafe for the refugees to go back home. But still they do not welcome the new entrants,” she said, adding such migrants required legal assistance.

She mentioned how American people made the Trump administration change a law about child separation at the Mexico border without entering a legal battle because the decision was inhuman.She disagreed with a questioner that women generally do not decide to migrate to other countries. This idea had proved wrong in the case of Syria where majority women opted to shift to other countries in the wake of turbulence in their homeland.

“Women from Islamic countries do not have any problem in getting mixed up with the people and the culture of a country they make their new home. In fact, those who match the education level of a country they migrate to get easily assimilated into a new society,” she said.Sudanese Muslim and author Leila Aboulela who is settled in Scotland said she had gone to England basically for higher studies. But she settled in Scotland because of her husband’s job. As a practicing Muslim, it was difficult for her to get adjusted to the new realities in Scotland. She got around women of the same cultural background to recreate their own environment.

He said locals tend to object to the immigrants if their number grows. The increasing number of immigrants leads to hostility in the locals. “In England, locals object to immigrants when they are reminded of them by the media,” she said while describing migration for greener pastures as an act of greed.Novelist Mohsin Hamid said more and more people were migrating because of climate change. This migration could be stopped only by a totalitarian state but it would also fail. Human beings had been migrating to other places and their interaction with new cultures led to human progress.

He agreed that people of neighbouring countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and India have similar cultural identity but they also have separate national identity. National identity could prevent cultural identity. “Yes we are mangroves, hybrids human beings who are the product of mass migration,” he said.

POST-COLONIAL NARRATIVES: “Creating new Post-Colonial Narratives -- How have we challenged the Colonial Narrative” was the topic of another session which was moderated by English author Claire Chambers. Writers Jamal Mahjoub and Maha Khan Phillips took part in the discussion.

Mr Jamal said most people in the post-colonial states did not discuss their colonial history. Sudan was a colony but the civil war in it and its 40-year recent history were self-created. “West is not the West it used to be in the past,” he said.He said fiction was about where people were last and where they are at present. People now are forming larger communities through international networking as they now live in transnational world. “I should use position of my (international) mobility as a bridge,” he said.Ms Maha Khan said she got herself detached from the history of Mohenjodero while writing a novel on it because the history was not complete.

LITERATURE: Noted literary historian working primarily with Urdu materials Francesca Orsini spoke on Reading in Multilingual Societies -- Urdu literature is not bound by the artificial constraints of language. Ms Sabyn Javeri moderated.Ms Orsini said Hindi, Urdu and Persian are considered separate languages of separate religions or cultures. But historically they had a strong interaction in the united India. People in the colonial era would study English as a language of opportunity but they never forgot their own languages in the colonial subcontinent.She advocated promotion of local languages and making these medium of instruction at primary level.


Date: 
Monday, February 25, 2019