Author: Lizzy Dutton
This week, Occidental junior Lizzy Dutton contributes to the features section as a guest writer. Dutton is spending the semester in Jaipur, India with a Sustainable Development and Social Change program through SIT Study Abroad. A native of Austin, Texas, she is researching beekeeping as a form of economic empowerment for the tribes and castes of India’s rural state of Gujarat. After meeting with a displaced group of Pakistani refugees on Oct. 6, Dutton penned this resonant reflection on the experience.
What is like to be, in all senses of the word, “stuck”?
Last month, I had the opportunity to meet Hindu refugees from Pakistan living in Jodhpur, India, who are physically and psychologically stuck. They are outcasts on both sides of the border: Hindus in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, unwanted Pakistanis in India. They have left their homes in Pakistan to escape religious persecution, only to face rampant discrimination as second-rate citizens in India. Despite being college-educated in Pakistan, they work in India as migrants and day laborers.
All of the refugees dropped their day’s work to talk to the students in my study abroad program. After we asked them many questions, they asked us just two.
“Why are you here? What can you do for us?”
My companions and I promised to spread the refugees’ story, but for me, the “real answer” to their question is that I am not going to “do” anything. As I write this, I am on a bus driving away from their settlement. I am going to finish my program abroad and return to Occidental to study mathematics.
I can romanticize the idea of abandoning studying abroad, dropping out of school and dedicating my life to helping the marginalized groups I’ve met in India. Wouldn’t it be empowering? It would fulfill this burning desire I have to step outside of the “plan.” To deviate from what is expected of me. Just to follow my heart. But then I realize the danger of thinking it is my job to fix everyone else’s problems. Especially problems that I think I understand just because they evoke within me an emotional response. Empathy is not understanding.
What I can do is share their story.
Despite being incredibly ill the morning we met the refugees, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to talk to them. So I went. It was sweltering hot. They invited us into an open tent in the shade. We all sat on the ground, with us facing them. So far on this study abroad program, the locals we meet usually have an introduction or a speech prepared. These refugees did not. They had a humble air about them. They weren’t overly eager to tell us about all of their problems. They sat quietly and patiently listened to our questions.
The refugees suffer from the circumstances and consequences of the partition of India. A result of the Indian independence movement of 1947, the partition created two separate nations, demarcated on religious lines: Pakistan for Muslims and India for Hindus. Before the partition, both nations were one colony, British India, held under British rule.
The refugees explained that their grandparents had lived in Rajasthan, India, but farmed in areas of current Pakistan before the partition. When the partition occurred, Hindus were given a few weeks to relocate from their farms in Pakistan to India. Many people stayed, including the refugees’ families, because their livelihoods depended on the lands they owned in Pakistan. It made no sense for them to move to India permanently.
When the line was drawn between the two countries, like the flip of a coin, their parents and grandparents were no longer considered Indians but Pakistanis.
They had no idea what their decision to stay as Hindus in Pakistan would cost them and their descendants.
“Our biggest mistake was being born in Pakistan,” one refugee told us.
So the refugees have come by tourist visas to Jodhpur, India, which has become a transport camp for immigrants, to escape the religious persecution in their own country. Now, instead of religious discrimination, they bear ethnic discrimination.
Many of them have lived in Jodhpur for 10 years or more. Most have children who were born in Jodhpur. I asked if that meant that their children were citizens, in the same way that the United States grants citizenship to anyone born on its soil, but that is not the case. There is no way for either the refugees or their children to become citizens without going through India’s extensive and bewildering naturalization process.
In the best circumstances, it takes seven years to get citizenship. Often, however, as was the case with this particular group of immigrants, it can take much longer. The government requires paperwork that often goes “missing,” and the price of citizenship is expensive. Some said that they would have to save up for years before they could even begin to consider it. The cost can exceed 20,000 to 50,000 rupees ($400 to $1,000). Even when they have the money, sometimes their application gets “lost” in the labyrinths of India’s notorious bureaucracy.
At all stages of the process, refugees are at the mercy of the government. Sometimes they will try to go to the appropriate government building to inquire about the status of their application, but often no information is given. The refugees’ stories of “missing documents” and bribe payments are endless. While the Indian government allows them to settle in Jodhpur, recognizing their lives are in danger in Pakistan, they are not allowed to leave the city and risk getting arrested or deported if they do. The Indian government is happy to keep them there as laborers without recognizing them as refugees or citizens.
The refugees’ main issues have to do with lack of access to both healthcare and education for their children. Healthcare is essentially unavailable, as they can’t afford trips to the hospital and the camp lacks its own doctor. Access to water is also expensive. A single tank that lasts only three or four days costs 200 rupees ($4).
One man explained that many of the children, who were sitting in their fathers’ laps and playing games with us, did not attend school because it was too expensive. He also told us that the children didn’t attend school because they would need an education visa to be eligible to enroll, and an education visa was anything but attainable. Other men countered that there is, in fact, no such thing as an education visa.
This sparked the beginning of my confusion. I wondered whether the education visa existed, and marveled at how the answer was so contested and unavailable. I thought back to a friend who told me that before the financial crisis, he had thought that there were groups of responsible people who worked in well-lit rooms every day to make sure the nation’s economy ran smoothly. It was so easy for me to think that there must be a solution, some website that could explain this all to me. But there isn’t. Welcome to the life of a refugee trying to find their rights.
I was surprised to find out that the older refugees were educated and had received college degrees in Pakistan before moving to Jodhpur. When I found out that all of them work in neighboring farms, I ignorantly assumed that many of them had done the same in Pakistan. In fact, when they lived in Pakistan, they had much higher-paying jobs, but they can’t get the same jobs here in India because they lack citizenship. They are reduced to migrant or under-the-table work, where they are exploited and paid less than Indians with the same jobs. Most of them make just enough money to feed their families and cover basic needs. Their standard of living is much lower than it was
in Pakistan.
After learning all of this, we asked if they regretted leaving Pakistan or if they would go back. The answer was a unanimous no. They continually used the phrase “second-class citizen” to describe their status in Pakistan. For someone like me, this phrase has no personal meaning. I have never been treated as a second-class citizen.
We asked them for more details about what they meant by the term, but their answers were limited to the nodding of heads and reaffirmation that conditions were bad. One man eventually mentioned, as an example, that if he married a Muslim woman he might get shot. The telling statement hung in the air, and we refrained from trying to clarify further what “second-class citizen” meant. I can only speculate how terrible the religious persecution must have been in Pakistan that they would trade their economically comfortable lives for migrant work without regret, even if it meant their children would lack education and proper healthcare.
A few of the refugees brought us chai tea and snacks. For a moment it felt so ludicrous that such serious issues could be discussed over chai and biscuits. How could we munch away on our salty chips while jotting down notes about how these people are literally stuck?
I felt so selfish and still do. I am using their story to learn more about life and economic development in Southeast Asia, but I have nothing to offer in return. I have to remember that while these issues are new and frustrating to me, they are something that the refugees face every day. This is their life; this isn’t about me or the sadness I feel.
The refugees’ lack of identity is what made their story stand out more than others I have heard during my time in India. The refugees have no upward mobility. Without citizenship or the proper visas, they have no geographic mobility either. They have no political power to control their fate. This was the first time I really understood the importance and privilege of being able to vote, the privilege of being a citizen. The refugees are in the hands of a government they have no part in or ability to contribute to. What links them to India is their identity as Hindus. Although the majority of Indians share this identity with them, the refugees still face prejudice because they are Pakistani. They are questioned by the government. They are mistrusted by the Indians around them. Just 60 years ago, their families were considered “Indian.” Now they are in a state of refuge in the place that used to be home. The mind reels.
Even in all of the United States’ “corporatocracy,” I still have faith in my rights as a citizen and the power of a mass movement. No movement by the refugees could be cared about or considered in India.
When I told people I was going to India, I remember people telling me, “Wow, you are going to see a lot of poverty, you know.”
I come back to this statement a lot here, wondering exactly what it means. It seems to imply that poverty does not exist in the U.S., only in “Third World” countries. What exists here, in my opinion, is the “unavoidability” of poverty. In my life in the United States, I’ve never been forced to see things that could make me feel truly uncomfortable like abject poverty. Here, the poverty is enveloping.
But to be honest, I’ve rarely felt deeply and truly pained by something I have seen in India. Instead of looking at the “poverty” with a sheepish sidewards glance of pity, I put my Hindi into practice and joke around with the people I meet. I don’t “see a lot of poverty.” I do see a lot of people.
Something else I consider: why is it that so many of the interesting stories I’ve heard have been taught to me in a classroom? It doesn’t have to be that way. It is true that an academic setting facilitates a certain kind of dialogue, not to mention beneficial connections with people I might not otherwise meet. But seeing how open the refugees were to answer our questions, I was reminded of how many people are willing to open their hearts and tell their stories if I just ask. The Indian refugees reminded me, too, of how much I don’t know about immigration issues in my own country, especially those in Los Angeles. There are people who live in my neighborhood who could probably share similar stories, yet I have never met them. Now, I wonder how this could be possible.
Before we drove away from the refugees, the leader of the settlement came onto our bus and thanked us with a deep “Namaskar.” His smile stretched from ear to ear, and he continually bowed his head, telling us to spread their story to others and thanking us for visiting. I was being thanked for listening to a story. The least I could do is what he asked me to, and share their story with others.
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