India has been and is a story of migrants.
The father of the nation was a migrant when he was shot dead by Nathuram Godse in Delhi.
India’s richest man’ forefathers were Gujarati migrants in Mumbai.
India’s many successful sportsmen,
industrialists, entertainers – all of them migrated from home to
their city of destiny on their way to success and prosperity.
The way India has changed shape over the
last few decades, few Indians can lay claim to being the original
inhabitants of any city.
The country has flourished by being the
smorgasbord of cultures, languages – especially the big cities like Mumbai,
Delhi, Bengaluru.
An Arthur Cotton being worshipped in East
Godavary District in Andhra Pradesh, India’s milk man Verghese Kurien being
celebrated in Anand, Gujarat or a legion of actors, singers, musicians who have
made Mumbai what it is demonstrates the role essayed by migrants in moving
India forward.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that
the journey of India and its migrants has been inseparable.
So, India is very kind to its migrants,
right?
Wrong!
While a Leo Varadkar has become the Prime
Minister of Ireland, a Rishi Sunak can become the Finance Secretary (and
possibly the Prime Minister) of England, no Amitabh Bachchan can ever become
the Chief Minister of Maharasthra.
In fact, in India, no Telugu can become a
Haryana minister and no Assamese can ever become any political figure in a
Kerala.
While every Indian can aspire to do well in
any part of the country, he or she can never truly feel embraced by the society
there.
The well to do and the socially mobile
migrants have made peace with this reality. They bought houses, built their own
communities, moved with the tide and enmeshed themselves into the fabric
becoming a societal accoutrement but not the core.
But, the poor – they remained at the
fringes – important yet invisible. Feeding the economy with their work and
their families with their money.
Ready to be wooed when elections neared and
to be treated as the vestige when politics prompted so.
This carefully constructed patchwork worked
as long as normalcy reigned.
Unfortunately, Covid 19 is an abnormality.
In one shot, it has torn asunder the societal structure and opened the deep
gashes of inequality that were hitherto hidden.
A migrant with no own roof on his head
became the biggest casualty of the lockdown. Being invisible meant that the
migrant was politically dispensable.
The stories we hear of migrants trudging
thousands of kilometres from a place they felt was home to a place they believe
is home is the saddest outcome of the dreaded pandemic. In one swoop, every migrant is asking himself
questions of where they belong. The migrant exodus is reminiscent of some of
the darkest chapters in history.
The pandemic might leave many scars (Job
loss, disrupted industries, health scares – we can only guess the extent of
damage now) and possibly some positives (shifting of industries to India, less
congested cities, health conscious citizens etc) but the one scar that needs to
be addressed is of being an Indian without boundaries.
The millions of migrants who have gone back
home to their native Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha are a challenge to the idea
of an India that belongs to everyone.
These are India’s most important Covid
casualties. The faster the state governments come together to get the migrants
back to their “Karma Bhoomi (land of destiny)” from their “Janma Bhoomi (land
of birth)” the faster will the repair of the societal fissure.
The day our big cities that witnessed exodus of people celebrate the return of the “migrant” will be the
day we would have defeated the malaise of Covid.
For, the soul of India is the soul of the
migrant – the country can never be happy if the migrant is unhappy.
