We need to examine how the march towards economic globalization and the making of a ‘global village’ has been effectively reduced to one of globalism. Rather than celebrating the richness of human cultures, we are experiencing liberal democracy, western culture, and capitalism effectively divert the path of globalization towards monoculture by assimilating it into the dominant mainstream. This diversion away from its intended course turned globalization into globalism. Furthermore, by association it sought to legitimize the assumption that globalism would blur the relations between the native and the settler, thereby creating conditions for a global village.
The deepening crisis of the immigrant and migrant issue has, by implication, exposed the erroneous assumption and raised new challenges to the unresolved question of the native and the settler. While acknowledging that the migration trend is as old as human history, the politics of colonization, and, subsequently the consolidation of the territorial modern state based on Westphalian values has turned the native-settler relationship into legal questions of citizenship and immigration. Therefore, to comprehensively address this question, we need to revisit the fundamental source of its contradictions, the colonial project.
The Ugandan political scientist Mahmood Mamdani with his compelling analysis in When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda urges us to think critically and contextually regarding the colonial underpinnings of the native and the settler. Furthermore, he impels us to situate this tragic relationship in its proper context within the historical, geographical and political forces. Most importantly, Mamdani points the need to recognize and identify the constructed political ideologies that generated colonialism, and the subsequent failure of liberation movements to transcend these artificial identities.
Let us briefly look at a few historic examples:
The Wall and the Turtle Island: The image of the Wall is being constantly referenced while framing the immigrant issue in the current 2016 US Presidential election campaign. The most unfortunate irony is that the immigrants that came from across the ocean waged a sustained genocide campaign on the natives of the Turtle Island which violently forged it into the United States, a land of immigrants and slaves. The immigrants became the settlers while the natives were reduced to a small minority, and are till this day caged on so-called reservations. Through a victor’s narrative that continues today, the settlers project themselves as the natives, and are calling for the Wall to be erected in order to keep immigrants away. Indeed the issue of immigration is grossly misplaced, but as long as the settlers, who are engaged in power politics, ensure that the original and true natives are denied their humanity, unable to exercise their self-determination, and are relegated to reservations, the questions of the native and the settler will not be resolved. Rather they will only be pushed further aside as misguided fear continues to promote the politics of the Wall.
Post 9/11, Arab Spring and Migrants: The surge of migrants making their way to Western Europe is not occurring in isolation. In fact, it is a symptom of a much larger predicament which one can argue traces its origin through the sustained use of Western military interventions to address contentious political, economic, cultural and religious issues. This has led to an increasing and widening cycle of violence and conflict worldwide. Furthermore, the post 9/11 War on Terror has been narcissistically obsessed with the “other,” and, therefore, projected as a clash of cultures, worldviews, ideas, narratives, history, chosen glories and chosen traumas. It has become a war of perception which jeopardizes the vision of a shared humanity because it assumes that the hammer is the only tool, thereby negating possibilities for peaceful solutions. It is within this quagmire that groups such as the Islamic State have gained momentum. Their methodological rise, expansion, strategy and objectives, and consequences, in terms of violence and forced migration of people, have, in effect, redefined conflict, as well as peacebuilding theory and practices. This poses serious challenges to the Westphalian State as we know it.
Another crucial dynamic that is essential to understanding the current migration pattern is the ‘Arab Spring.’ The wave of democratic mass protests and revolutionary uprisings, also termed as the ‘Arab Spring’ began in December 2010 in Tunisia and eventually spread in 2011 to other Arab countries such as Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Morocco, and Jordan. There is no doubt that they are an example of how ordinary people in Arab countries are seeking to regain their collective right to be fully human with dignity and justice. However, it had limited success, as the revolution did not result in liberation, thereby, creating conditions for displacement. Furthermore, some will argue that the intervention in Libya has only resulted in chaos. And today we are witnessing history repeating itself in Syria. Notwithstanding the diverse arguments, the fact remains that the interruption of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the violent Western interventions have led to more political turmoil and induced a condition that has resulted in mass displacement of people.
The Frontiers and the Naga Caravan: Since the time of colonization, the region called the North East has often been relegated to and treated as a Frontier region. To protect the dominant culture, it was crucial for colonial forces to keep the Frontier region within its effective control through subduing the free spirited and independent natives, including the Naga village-states. The colonial forces, through an interplay of indirect rule, and divide and conquer, fragmented the Naga people by categorizing and organizing the independent Naga village-states into a monolithic structure of a Tribe. In so doing the villages lost their autonomy and dynamism to externally imposed Tribe-centric identities and organizations that emerged therein.
This strategy included demographic engineering whereby the British colonial forces planting ‘settlers’ along the Naga Foothills to demarcate the land and people. Introducing settlers created new identity-politics between the native Naga and the settlers. This same tactic is also being effectively applied by Israel against the Palestinians by planting ‘settlements.’
The Indian State learned many lessons from the British colonial forces and continues to apply these tactics with greater intensity within their counter-insurgency framework. The dual tactics involving the fragmentation of Naga people into tribes, and the demographic engineering by planting settlers among the natives has had serious implications in the areas of justice, peace, development and democracy. For the Nagas to holistically and critically tackle the question of illegal immigrants from its root source, it needs to begin by addressing this colonial history, not as victims, but as survivors.
Eventually, resolving the Native and the Settler question requires a holistic and comprehensive framework located within the inclusive values of justice and a shared humanity. It is only within this type of inclusive, nonviolent and participatory praxis and context where all people can come together to pursue a shared humanity.
