And so I have stopped banking on specific end-goals, convinced that as long as I am vaguely optimistic about my general future, things should work out ‘in the end’, whatever that is. The latest example of this is Brexit. I was sure - but I mean SURE - that when I woke up in the morning, Britain would have voted to stay within the EU. All through the tiresome TV debates and newspaper op-eds, it never once occurred to me that this was anything but an exercise in futility. Of course, my gut exclaimed, of course they’ll stay! Why would you build walls when the whole world is trying to remove them? Pffft, I added derisively, before consuming some fried food.
Bizarre aside: I was surprised to find that many desi-heavy areas in England had voted to leave the EU
But the UK did leave, and now Britain has to Brexplain its appallingly shortsighted decision. Actually I think much of Britain (as well as the whole world) was appalled, as evidenced by the fact that the pound has hit a record low, world economies have rippled dangerously, the British PM has resigned and practically no one (not even the usually omniscient Germans) knows what is going to happen. (The French, as usual, are on holiday.)
The referendum has now been tagged as an indication that the top UK politicians and economic policy makers are out of touch with working class Britons, who feel marginalized and “left out” because of increased immigration and unemployment. That may be true for some. But from most of what I have read and seen, two things are clear. One: most people who voted to leave the EU really didn’t think their vote would sway the election and were trying to “protest” because “Why should Obama tell us how to Vote?” Two (and I’m going to say this because it’s true): the Brits have behaved really rather stupidly. I’m sorry if that comes across as condescending or elitist, but this isn’t about feelings. This is about the realities of economies far larger than our imagined ethnic neighborhoods, and to confuse the two is unintelligent in the most dangerous of ways. As a satirical piece in The New Yorker put it: the English have now lost the right to make fun of the Americans for being stupid. They have chosen a flamboyantly disastrous path, and most of them didn’t even realise it (though now they are beginning to catch on). You may be entitled to your opinion, but now you are also entitled to suffer its consequences. The sad thing is the world has to as well. What did they think would happen? That suddenly all the dormant factories and coal-mines would magically start working again because the Romanians and Poles had been forced to leave?
The kinds of people who have come out in support of the Leave vote all claim immigration is a problem in the UK, to which the only fitting response is that Britain’s longsuffering colonies thought the same thing. If we are being honest, the Leavers’ argument is basically one that makes xenophobia palatable. “Get England Back!” one guy was shouting into the camera on BBC, while proudly flashing a Nazi swastika. (PS: even the Swastika doesn’t belong to white people - it originated in our very own Indus Valley!)
People are, and always will be, swayed by fear. It is easier to blame unemployment on “other people” because, well, why not? Everyone does it. The Americans blame the Mexicans; the French blame the Algerians. Why not believe that the reason you don’t have more is because that new couple down the street is taking it away from you?
Bizarre aside: I was surprised to find that many desi-heavy areas in England had voted to leave the EU. I’ve seen and read countless (countless!) interviews of second-generation Bangladeshis, Indians, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis who claim immigration is a ‘big problem’ for them. How this doesn’t strike them as wildly hypocritical (not to mention ironic!) is beyond me.
I think the worst thing about Brexit for me is that it confirms an old suspicion of mine: the collective vote is not a guarantee of the right decision. The second thought that occurred to me after I read about Brexit (After “No my god they didn’t!”) was that if this could happen in Britain, then Trump might actually win in America. Or that one day we might legitimately vote in a fascist, religion-peddling party into the federal government here in Pakistan. (At least that won’t surprise anyone.)
Any student of history knows that divisive, fascist ideologies that have been responsible for some of the worst events in human history have rarely announced themselves as such. These ideologies don’t come in being all “Here we are! We gonna get you!” No, they come quietly, sweetly. They come as your friend, they clean your street, they promise you wages and jobs and prosperity; and they usually blame the lack of those things on people different from you.
I believe that my generation has been living in a nascent World War for the past decade and half. It’s not as cut-and-dry as the history books tell us World Wars should be, and it may not be called that in the newspapers, but a world war it is. My great fear is that we are headed to a more acrimonious future than any of us can currently imagine.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com