We the children of Mother Earth

 

What Mother Earth need is more bridges and not walls. We are all interconnected, unfortunately divided by narrow walls, first build in the minds, and then constructed outside.

 

Individuals or groups are forced to flee their home country or location due to war, 

persecution, or violence. Their suffering, hardships and stories often explore themes of 

displacement, identity, survival, and the search for a new home. 

This has been human struggle and experience since immemorial. 

Within each of us, at times we become psychological refugee.

 All the movements of human are alienated from them and turned against them. 

If not from one place to another, human keep moving from one time to another, they keep moving in search of shelter, in search of refuge. Not all who move in search of refuge are called refugees. The movement could be voluntary migration who are called immigrants and they have the basic capability to provide and take care of themselves and their facilities. While Lin in the book ‘Shantaram’ by Gregory David Roberts does explore themes of exile and displacement, Lin is not a refugee in the conventional sense. He is a fugitive who chooses to flee his country to escape legal consequences, rather than being forced to leave due to external threats like war or persecution. There are so many true stories like that of Lin. People from all over the world, end up in metros, for survival.

 Humans seek refuge across time and space by holding the edge of this human society that change with time, they take with them their necessities. Human effort is not futile even in this frantic and helpless state, and the effort of a struggling human being is what makes life meaningful and worth living. Floating city, fleeing invasions, inhabitants along the coast of northeast Italy found refuge in the islands of Venice. Venice the City of Bridges. Made up of over 118 islands was founded on March 25, 421 A.D. Celtic people, called Veneti lived along the coast of what is now Northeast Italy. However, the decline of the Roman Empire saw many of them seeking refuge in Venice fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions. Attila the Hun was the leader of the nomadic Hun people, responsible for the extensive damage caused in the mainland of Italy. Thus, a beautiful new city was born.

Looks at history, when did the super-rich have to suffer hardship? It's poor people who stand in queue and suffer most of the time.  

Time and again the helplessness of the human being swinging at the opposite levels of slave and master, subject and king has been explained. 

 In every battle or war, physical, mental or emotional all the soldiers later have to seek refuge  from what they have fought for. Battlefields and graveyards alternate, before the weary  modern man, human history unfolds as an endless stream of refugees.

 Religions and philosophies provide only temporary relief to weak human beings.

 Most of the time, the real cause is not what we see superficially. That is the Chaos theory. The butterfly effect.  Whether it be the Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Syria, Israeli, Palestine, Latin America, West or Central Africa, look at the history of any country/region or place.  Why did the issue start say for example in Syria? Some would say it’s the Suni/Shiites conflict; others might point towards, Saudi Arabi and Iran. There are various state sponsored and non-state actors, who are part of it. Though issue came into limelight in 2011, it started during the three-year draught from 2007 to 2010. With increasing heat around, human head too got hotter and angrier.  

 Having served for a combined total of over 20 years, Sheikh Hasina the longest serving prime minister in the history of Bangladesh was asked to live the country within 45 minutes on Monday 5th August 2024.  Her premiership ended in self-imposed exile following a series of violent protests in 2024 following weeks of deadly protests that began as demonstrations by students against government job quotas but surged into a movement demanding her resignation. She was flown into India in a Bangladesh Military Helicopter. She has been in the lookout for better political asylum, and she can afford to. But there are so many others, who suffer and are brutally killed in due course.

 Cyril Radcliffe, a man who had never been east of Paris, was given the task of drawing the borders for the new nations of Pakistan and India within 5 weeks, he submitted his partition map on 9 August 1947, which split apart Punjab and Bengal almost in half, without considering the geography, or the aftereffects it would have on common people.  In ‘Partition, Bengal and After : The Great Tragedy of India’ Kali Prasad Mukhopadhyay writes, Before partition Jinnah had been cautioned by several experts that it would be difficult to manage both western and the eastern wings separated by twelve hundred miles of foreign territory and inhabited by people different in their habits, customs and lifestyle. But he had such confidence in the supremacy of his leadership that he believed that he would be able to put everything right. Now he became aware that neither he nor the bond of Islam would be able to knot together two such diverse people. The gulf in political, economic and social respect was very wide. Despite his ill health he rushed to Dacca to pacify the agitated people there. On March 21, 1948 when he reached there were no slogan's of 'Quaid-i-Azam Zindabad'.  Language was proving to be a much more powerful link than religion. He had declared Urdu to be the national language of Pakistan, when Bangladesh would not accept. This was of course, the most volatile, divisive issue in Pakistan politics. In Eastern Pakistan there was supression of news because of retaliation.  They were not fully out of the 'Direct Action Day' on the 16th August 1946 where thousands of Hindus were massacred and Muslim League volunteers set fire to Hindu houses, it was known as 'Great Calcutta Killing'. By the end of 1947 about 4,25000 Hindus had migrated from East Pakistan, of the 13 million Non muslims. Right from the beginning discrimination against the non-Muslims became the rule. Nehru suggested that Liaquiat Ali Khan and he sign an agreement to stop the recurrent massacres and large scale migration. But the people there were instructed to talk sweetly to minorities with a smile on lip, but not to appoint non muslims in government jobs, force hindu's to wind up their businesses, blame them for anything going wrong, thus encouraging foul play, and creating havoc with the rights of the minorities. These continued, situation worsened again in 1964 when 3000 refugees left from Bangladesh but only 1500 reached India. US Senatro Edward Kennedy in his report gives the following details about the refugees from Bangladesh in 1971. As on October 25th 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. The average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day. In the 1971 war of liberation 2,00,000 women were raped hundreds of thousands were victims of mass murders.  Parties were created within on the basis of subreligion. Indigenious people had their own group. 

Churchill, who in the early 1920s became colonial secretary, proudly claim to have cut off 75 percent of the territory of British Palestine from the proposed Jewish national home to create Transjordan, in order to give the Hashemite dynasty from Arabia a consolation prize of sorts. In Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone author Eduardo Galeano has dedicated a portion titled ‘Orgin of Two countries’ stating, how he and his men, sketched the borders with a finger in the sand. In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.

"Susan Abdallah, a Palestinian, knows the recipe for making a terrorist:

Deprive him of food and water.

Surround his home with the machinery of war.

Attach him with all means at all times, especially at night.

Demolish his home, uproot his farmland, kill his loved ones.

Congratulations: you have created an army of suicide Bombers."

And thus Eduardo Galeano in Mirrors introduced me to Susan Abdallah.

In her book “Mornings in Jenin” she says, 'Palestinians paid the price for the Jewish holocaust. All for the land without people for people without land.’

Nobody is born is terrorist, circumstances make them. When people go through tough times, they are bound to:

·      Freeze and surrender themselves to fate

·      Fight, with the hope of retaining what they have or

·      Flee towards a better place

 

Whatever they do, they do with hope, as heart has no borders. Hoping to return home and get back what they had some day. The scar would remain. Irrespective of the geography, every person whose foundation is shaken, either because of war, or due to economic, social, political, environmental, religious, caste, class or any other issues have to

 

·      Face the horror of leaving home and everything they own behind

·      Find a refugee – which is not at all easy, they will have to cross mountains, seas, and countries for it, spend sleepless nights

·      Start over from scratch in a new country.

 

Everybody suffer, but what men have to go through is different from women. The plight of women are described in books like ‘The Pearl that broke its shell’ by Nadia Hashimi covering the situation in Afghanistan across generations, how they embrace not only the pardha but also the Bacha Posh for survival. In ‘For the Love of a Son’,  Jean Sasson narrates her own story, of her wanting to leave the US dream having fled from Afghanistan, but having married to an Afghan man in US, how he got their son to Afghan, and brainwashed him against her to fight for Afghanistan.

 

Though we need more of bridges, human tend to construct more of wall, some loud, some mute. So much is said about the atrocities on Jews, but what there are others too, who had to go through similar situations.

 In 1959, the Dalai Lama and about 80,000 Tibetans were forced to escape to India after China's takeover of Tibet. Even today few thousand Tibetans flee every year, to India and other countries. Some after going through tough time, embrace peace while others proclaim war.  In ‘Left to Tell : Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust’ the protagonist Immaculée Ilibagiza with writer Steve Erwin recounts the author's harrowing experiences during the Rwandan genocide while also offering a message of faith, hope, and forgiveness. In ‘The Bite of the Mango’ again the protagonist Mariatu Kamara with Susan  McClelland writes about how there are genuine people willing to help, but there are people who do not want peace and those in power were not only looting all the grands and supports received from other countries, but also letting the refugees live hand to mouth with kacha houses.

 Jews were asked to leave Germany, they sailed from country to country for asylum, many were persecuted. German's have opened the doors for refugees, they teach their children the history and take responsibility. But not many other nations do. Because of war in the middle east people move to Europe and because of small wars in the back yards of Latin America, and other places, people tend to flee to US. Trump who’s forefathers had moved to US, is resistant to outsiders, so was Rishi Sunak, who’s parents had migrated first to Africa and from there to UK. In "They called us enemy"  George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker writes about his own story, about how he was in American concentration camp during World War 2 after Pearl Harbour bombing.

when his birth country went into war, with the country his father was born into. Who is right and who is wrong? Which is your country, and which is your nation? Who decides the borders? Do the birds, rivers, air and ocean, have the borders?

 There is so much to learn from history, but we fail to.

 In “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous”, Ocean Vuong narrates his experience of fleeing from Vietnam, suffering of his mother, struggle for identity, search for belonging and the trauma. In it there is a story where the villagers needed to butcher buffalo to survive, but the buffalo did not die immediately after being struck. Instead, it continued to struggle, and in its final moments, it managed to escape briefly, showing an immense will to live despite its inevitable death. Such is the life for some here. One of the most touching and a very lyrical book.

 Undoubtedly, everyone want love and is looking for peace. Would any mother want their children to fight among themselves? So would not Mother Earth. As kids we fight, but then make up. Let’s do that.  Let’s give a blow but ‘Turn the other cheek’, it is not week. Didn’t Elon Musk say that in a recent interview with Jordon Peterson. In ‘Love across the Salt desert’ by Keki N. Darwale, which was adapted into a movie named Refugee. The movie ends with the lead lady giving birth to Refugee's child at the border. The BSF and Ranger personnel discuss the child's nationality in a lighter vein. Do we need passport and visas? Who decides to which country the child would belong?

 Neeraj Chopra and Arshad Nadeem who recently created Olympic record and Personal Record in Paris Olympics 2024 reminded me of Luz Long and Jesse Owens  form 1936 Berlin Olympics. Politics and politicians would want to divide. But it takes a big heart to unite, value relationship and rekindle peace and happiness.

 This is what their mothers said after the match:

 Neeraj Chopra's mother: "We're happy with silver. The one who won gold (Arshad Nadeem) is also my child."

 Arshad Nadeem's mother: "Neeraj Chopra is like a son to me. I prayed for him too."

 What does it teach? Not just grace, humility, respect and peace but also that we are all siblings, mothers should govern the world, for it to be a better place. Respect One another. We are all One.