Xenophobia Against Indian Diaspora
India has now become the most populated country in the world but the population doesn’t restrict itself within the country. In this borderless world where immigration is treated normal, mass Indian immigration is no surprise. However, Indian immigration, specifically that of Punjabi Sikhs, isn’t anything new; it dates back to the independence struggles., Due to the divide-and-rule policy of the British, Punjabis moved to Canada in the promise of Khalistan, a separate state that the Punjabis demanded. Since then, the reasons for migration kept changing as the ideologies changed. A separate state is now hardly a matter of concern for today’s immigrants.
Migration is motivated because of a number of reasons, but through a number of surveys conducted, the following pop out the most:
· Highly skilled or skilled professionals target developed Nations
· Unskilled or semi-skilled workers find more opportunities in Gulf and Asian nations
· Indian students prefer to study and stay abroad
· People with a high net worth seek new residency and citizenship options
With these motivators as the sole reason, around 32 million Indians live abroad and around 2.5 million migrate overseas every year. India has the highest number of migrants and also the highest annual number of migrants.
These are significantly huge numbers and are bound to alter the socio-cultural environment of the communities they join. Some people do not bid this well.
Many minds envision a society or community which is well protected. When this view is destroyed or threatened, they often dictate their fear in the form of negative stereotypes or prejudices against the “destroyers” ,which in this case are immigrants.
Stereotypes are formed through learning and bias and often, both. Stereotypes can spread because of a multitude of reasons like scapegoating (majority blaming the minority), kernel of truth (strong beliefs that endure as long as even one person agrees to them), which take learning and bias as roots and feed on all the information they provide. If newspapers are water, then online forums are vapour. The latter being the most popular form of media is highly effective in spreading biases. Despite all of this, stereotypes are just the cognitive aspect of it all.
You can classify a situation as ‘ getting out of hand’ when the behavioural aspect, discrimination, comes into play. Indian immigrants have been subjected to gruesome killings, racial taunts, assaults, hate-crime robberies, vandalism of their properties, along with verbal and physical abuse in even first-world countries like the USA, Canada and Australia. The Ministry of External Affairs went as far as to warn Indian Students in Canada to stay vigilant and safe from anti-Indian sentiments.
The worst-case scenario in these cases is to fight back with hostility and rage as one community. One of the byproducts of being discriminated against in a community is that the sense of individuality is lost. One starts using words such as “us” and “them” which signifies the difference between one's own group(in-group) and the other(out-group). While differentiation is good because it helps identify what one conforms to more, in this case the differentiation acts as a catalyst to seek out negative aspects of the out-group. The negativity snowballs into something much bigger and the consequences, as one can observe, are increased and amplified hostility and hatred against each other until some major body has to intervene (and still many conflicts still do not end); this is definitely undesired.
Prejudices can be unlearnt the same way they are learnt and this is the best way to counter hate and discrimination. There are certain strategies to be followed to proceed with resolving prejudices:
i. Minimising opportunities to learn more about prejudices by filtering content restricted to unbiased media.
ii. Discouraging hostility among the group subjected to prejudice
iii. Increasing inter- community cooperative communications and removal of mistrust in the process. This can include finding common interest between communities and developing on it, or making and sharing culturally significant foods, clothes or accessories with each other.
iv. Placing importance on individuals rather than groups, reducing collectivistic attitudes.
These strategies highlight the importance of an egalitarian society, promote mutual trust and raise the importance of the role of self across communities rather than restricting to only one.
It is difficult to watch senseless murders, abuse and extremism when one can promote their nation to be welcoming and accepting of other cultures. We must think about this, apply it to our daily lives, and fill this deteriorating world with love instead of hatred.
References:
https://www.mea.gov.in/images/attach/NRIs-and-PIOs_1.pdf
About the Author
Ajinkya Choughule
Member at the PsyCreative Column
First-year student of BSc. Applied Psychology, SDSOS, NMIMS.
From writing short stories to making strides in order to complete novels, the sky is the limit for Ajinkya Choughule. He has always been out of the box, thinking of unique and controversial things to write about and showing his creative side the best in the process, to himself and now the public.
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