Racism has a long history. It has its roots in prehistory, one may assert. Visceral fear that whoever is not one of us is a potential threat is deeply engrained in human psyche. Signs to find out who is not one of us are complex and multiple because they are of biological as well as historical nature concerned with our evolutionary process.

Each living species constantly endeavours to ensure its survival by keeping at bay whatever threatens or appears to threaten its existence. This is what we share with all other living creatures whether they are in sea or on earth. Ancient records show us that what causes a discord is the phenomenon of ‘similar others’. Have you observed how animals in a jungle or an African savanna, for example, are extra careful in the dealing with other animals, even with the members of their own species? Intruder would invariably be expelled with force if necessary. The pride has a marked territory that is off-limits to all others. Marked territory means a safety zone for those who inhabit it.

Most of animals from petty to mighty carve such area for them to be safe from its foes and hostile forces. So much so that outsiders of similar species are not allowed entry. A lion that is stranger would be treated like a hostile alien by the pride despite the apparent fact that there seems to be hardly any difference between it and members of the pride. But difference there must be which we fail to make out exactly the way a pride perhaps wouldn’t be able differentiate between different human groups.

In the case of humans it is skin colour and facial features that make them distinct from each other. When Aryan tribes landed in Punjab and gradually subjugated the civilised Harrapans they created four castes based on Varuna (colour): Brahman (priestly class), Kshatriya (warrior/nobility), Vaishya (commoners) and Shudra (servants) which issued forth from the mouth, arms, thighs and feet of Prusha (the primeval person) respectively. The fifth were the Untouchables placed outside the Aryan hierarchy at the lowest rung. Why Varuna? Because Aryan had fair skin and the locals were of dark complexion.

Aryans demonised the Harappans as dark people with stubby nose. India and Pakistan still groan under the dead weight of this dehumanising division. Ironically, the upholders of caste based on colour are held in contempt for their skin colour by the western and the northern people with fairer skin. But this skin colour phenomenon assumed a universal dimension when white Europeans from the 16th century onward started colonising the Americas, Africa and Asia. Colonisers inevitably legitimise the occupation on something that makes them different from the colonised. Skin colour and facial features come handy. Such physical features are used as a yardstick to measure the human worth or worthlessness ignoring the concrete historical conditions responsible for creating the situation which reflects superficial differences among diverse human groups.

The European colonisers with their advanced scientific knowledge conveniently became oblivious to the historical fact that before their ascendancy Africa, Americas and Asia had far more advanced civilisations than the West. How could they achieve that level of culture and civilisation if their skin colour and features were innately inferior? Why did the West live in darkness for thousands of years with their white skin and sharp features if these were the signs of superior intelligence?

A dominant power always projects its prejudice as an argument to perpetuate its hegemony.

After unbridled exploitation of the colonised peoples and massive looting of their natural resources the Western colonisation formally came to end by the late 20th century triggering a different process; migration from the former colonies to the West. Two major factors at least need to be taken into account; poverty and persecution. Poverty is not outcome of lack of resources. The main reason is the capture of post-colonial state by the local ruling cliques created by colonial structures. These cliques have been complicit in crime; they after their birth in the colonial era supported the occupation forces to the hilt at the cost of peoples’ interests. Resultantly, they shared the colonial largesse. Colonial forces while leaving bequeathed them the structures of an inherently anti-people non-democratic state with a little chance of upward social mobility for the masses. So most of the people with no future prospects want to go to the advanced societies of the West to try their luck whatever the cost. Persecution is usually of two kinds; religious and political. Religious discrimination is widespread in the underdeveloped societies. Under majoritarian rule religious minorities are relentlessly persecuted under the nose of an apathetic state, at times with its nod. They are treated as suspects whose loyalties allegedly are somewhere else. They are enemies of the state in disguise. Majority under the influence of clergy take them as a threat that can defile their faith. On a slightest pretext their businesses can be plundered, places of worship desecrated and their women abducted and forced to convert. They can even be killed without fear of law as the judges base their judgments on political considerations rather than on the merit of the case as written in the books.

Some constitutions even have boldly written discriminatory laws. A non-Muslim cannot become president, prime minister, chief justice or chief of army staff in Pakistan.

The persecuted cannot be blamed for their persecution complex. The only recourse left for the members of minorities is to leave the country and seek asylum wherever it’s possible to get. Certain ethnic groups inhabiting their ancestral home in post-colonial states, mostly diverse, are denied their political and economic rights. This is done by majoritarian states in the name of national unity and social cohesion. The effort of such groups to maintain their political freedom and cultural identity distinct from that of majority brings them into conflict with the state which insists on the adoption of a so-called monolithic national identity. Thus their members too feel compelled to seek a safe haven for themselves somewhere outside their home that is usually the West. People also abandon their ancestral land when there is a civil war or anarchy in their country.

Political dissidents when tortured and hunted in non-democratic states, flee their homeland and seek asylum in the West. Thus migration in most cases is a compulsion. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2024