Xenophobia

The height of xenophobia - remember this face?

Last month, Scotland elected 37-year-old Humza Haroon Yousaf of Pakistani origin as the head of their government. A few months before that, the United Kingdom elected Rishi Sunak as their Prime Minister. Sunak’s parents are Indians – Punjabis, to be precise. Kamala Harris, vice president of the USA, has Indian roots too.

Can someone like that – a person of Italian origin, say – become India’s Prime Minister?

Is it hypocrisy or xenophobia that prevents India from being more open towards diverse cultures and races? Both, I guess.

Our hypocrisy is phenomenal. We pretend to be everything that we are not. The leader will be preaching tolerance and love for all people while his followers are attacking places of worship belonging to other religions. The same leader will be preaching about morality in politics while his mentor is engaged in buying MLAs and MPs belonging to other parties.

This post is not about our hypocrisy, I remember. The Blogchatter A2Z challenge is drawing to a close and this post is on the letter X. Xenophobia, it is.

Our xenophobia is even more phenomenal than our hypocrisy. We dread people who are different. Not just those from other countries. We are scared of our own people who speak different languages, who have different cultures, and who eat different foods. The same leader mentioned above is now busy pulverizing diversities. One nation, one culture, one religion, one language… One man’s reign too.

Is it xenophobia or dictatorship? Some say it is narcissism. The truth is it’s a mix of many things. Life isn’t a simple affair. When you conclude it is dictatorship, nationalism pops it head. The next moment you wonder whether it is xenophobia or ghetto mentality. Complex. As complicated as life can be. Great people are like that: they don’t fit in simple frameworks.

Let us focus on xenophobia for the sake of A2Z.

Some detailed research has been carried out about little children’s fear of the unfamiliar. Babies are scared of strangers, unfamiliar faces, unknown smells, foreign languages, and even strange accents of their own languages. “We are all born xenophobes,” says Rutger Bregman speaking about the research in his book, Humankind. We are free to grow up, of course.

But some refuse to grow up. They stick to their childish fears of the differences. They want everything to be similar to what they are used to: same language, same food, same gods… Essentially, xenophobia is a form of insecurity feeling.

Just imagine a man on whom the country spends nearly Rs 2 crore every day for his security. When this man chooses to move out of his residence, it becomes a greater burden on the taxpayer. His security motorcade consists of several armoured luxury vehicles, two Mercedes-Benz ambulances, apart from his own Mercedes-Maybach S650 Guard which is a-fort-not-a-car. In spite of all that security, imagine the man feeling insecure! That insecurity is the pinnacle of xenophobia. When he was a little child, someone scared him saying that people belonging to a particular community are dangerous. And he is yet to overcome that fear.

The roots of xenophobia are as silly as that.

Psychology tells us that xenophobia usually overlaps with forms of prejudice against certain people who are perceived as outsiders. The typical signs of xenophobia include: [From verywellmind.com]

• Feeling uncomfortable around people who fall into a different group
• Going to great lengths to avoid particular areas
• Refusing to be friends with people solely due to their skin color, mode of dress, or other external factors
• Difficulty taking a supervisor seriously or connecting with a teammate who does not fall into the same racial, cultural, or religious group

The site from where I plagiarized the above bullet points goes on to say that “People who express xenophobia typically believe that their culture or nation is superior, want to keep immigrants out of their community, and may even engage in actions that are detrimental to those who are perceived as outsiders.”

The site also suggests solutions. Go out and meet those people whom you are scared of. Broaden your experience with them. They are usually not as wicked as you have imagined. Confront your fears. Many of them may be imaginary. Also make a conscious effort to understand your xenophobic thoughts and feelings. Replace them with more realistic ones.

There are more solutions. But if your xenophobia is politically motivated, then none of the solutions work! 

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

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Coming up tomorrow [the penultimate post in this series]: Yesterdays