The popular acronym NIMBY (‘not in my backyard’) is the deliberate opposition by residents to revised land use in their ostensible ‘backyard’, much like a ‘drawbridge mentality’ that implies a conveniently selfish campaign to oppose inward migration, ironically by those who partook an exactly similar migration earlier.
The redneck sentiment in the land of immigrants i.e., the United States of America, is reflective of this phenomenon. The inherent sense of perceived nativism (historically untrue), white supremacism, protectionism and anti-newcomer politics has anchored itself in Republican positions and emotions that lurk subliminally in the heartland of the land of immigrants.
This irony is compounded by a record number of antiimmigration laws enacted e.g., Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), McCarran-Walter Act (1952) or even the more recent Executive Order 13769 (labelled ‘Muslim Ban’).
Thankfully, such regressive perceptions are routinely put to questioning (at least in some democracies like the United States of America) and the result is a far more multicultural America with an incumbent Vice President who has Indian ethnicity.
A far cry from the shamefully xenophobic comments in the report by the US Congress (in 1911) that shockingly described Indians as, “universally regarded as the least desirable race of immigrants thus far admitted to the United States”!
The coming of age with the domination of the Indian diaspora in corporate boardrooms, senate, multilateral agencies (World Bank, coming soon) to even cultural spaces have only contributed to the ‘American Dream’, as opposed to having wounded it.
Markers of symbolism have always been important, even if they do not necessarily lead to any extraordinary bias or substantiality towards any specific group or even to the land of the ancestors, in this case, India.
The elevation of Barack Obama to the White House may not have resulted in any disproportionate advantage to the African American or Black communities or even to the relations of United States with either Kenya or Indonesia (Obama’s ancestry) but it did assuage and allay many unfounded fears in the minds of the white supremacists and bigots subsequently. American politics was certainly better and more inclusive for Obama’s tenure, just as Hillary Clinton may not have won the day for women in United States (and perhaps like Barack Obama may not have lost out on any sizeable gender emancipation opportunity), but American politics is poorer for not having a women President ever. Inclusive democracy demands the celebration of all diversities, including minorities ~ just as India historically prided itself on its ‘Unity in Diversity’ once.
Importantly, neither did Barack Obama or now Kamala Harris try to disown their respective ethnicities to ingratiate themselves to the larger American identity.
This is unlike the infamy of a ‘whitewashed’ Bobby Jindal (unsurprisingly, a Republican) who openly downplayed his Indian-ness to attempt usurping and appropriating majoritarian markers.
Clearly symbolism and optics of retaining the vital balance (and not reneging oneself towards the ‘drawbridge mentality’) is important, but is under threat in the former empire, United Kingdom.
The dream storyline of former suppressed ethnicities going one better ‘across the pond’ in the United Kingdom with the advent of Rishi Sunak as the Prime Minister ~ that too, from the Conservative ranks was too good to last.
With many pictures of a Sunak adhering to his cultural roots, religiosity and reasserting his ethnic background doing the rounds, it was hoped that he and his cabinet full of minorities and varied ethnicities would never be accused of ‘drawbridge mentality’. But that is exactly what Sunak and his all-powerful Home Secretary, Suella Braverman (also of Indian ethnicity), are credibly accused of when they knowingly weaponise their electoral rhetoric by equating desperate attempts by immigrants to reach the United Kingdom shores as ‘invasion’.
Perhaps the premature delight in seeing people of varied colours and beliefs disabled the obvious tell-tale signs of ‘drawbridge mentality’ that was writ in the entitled and elitist past of a Sunak or that of an aggressively opportunistic Braverman.
The latter had described herself as being, “a child of the British Empire”, of being “proud of the British Empire”, with a supposed, “admiration and gratitude for what Britain did for Mauritius and Kenya, and India”! With such an ingratiating tone she would make her fellow-Tory, Prime Minister Winston Churchill proud.
He had described Indians as “a beastly people with a beastly religion”, going on to clarify that he “hated Indians”. But after Churchill was eased out of Prime Ministership in 1955, and 67 years after, Tory politics would have buried its xenophobic and racist views with the arrival of the likes of Sunak, Braverman, Priti Patel etc., What hadn’t been accounted for was the equally despicable phenomenon of a ‘drawbridge mentality’.
With ‘twice migrant’ status, Sunak and Braverman can seemingly close the door of any ethnic identity, empathy, or affiliation onto their own politics. They remain unabashedly hardline on immigration, proud Brexiters and old-school Tories.
This is a diasporic generation without any rose-tinted emotions about their land of ancestors (the viral Diwali puja photo-ops notwithstanding, as that cleverly makes the ‘South Asian’ connect, but only so much and no further).
So polarising was Braverman’s anti-immigration vitriol that her deputy, Robert Jenrick (White Tory Member of Parliament from Newark) regretted, “In a job like mine you have to choose your words carefully”.
But the point is that Braverman did choose her words carefully and it was indeed intended to ratchet anti-immigration and traditionally Tory spiel that could get questioned owing to the pigmentation of her own skin ~ hence the ‘drawbridge’ bravado.
While the UNHCR (UN Refugee agency) has also slammed the ‘stop the boats bill’ which proposes detention or removal to a third country without the right to seek refugee protection, the Sunak-Braverman duo remain defiant and unmoved.
Even though UK is not deluged with any sort of migration numbers to warrant a description like ‘invasion’ (unlike some European countries), such stronghandedness to do a ‘whitewash’ a la Bobby Jindal within the traditional Tory ranks, presumably to counter the implied discomfiture of having ‘Browns’ (worse, ‘Pakis’ as the racist tone goes), at the helm is discomfiting.
However, the honeymoon of the Indian diaspora’s success in the UK is over and the redlines of an electorally relevant ‘drawbridge mentality’ are visible all over.
(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)