Home: An Emotion

Homes are not just defined on the coordinates of time and space rather it is an emotion. The grief of leaving our homes could make us sick (homesick). Then imagine the trauma of those refugees whose emotion of home is colonized by the bureaucrats and the systemic evils of the world. Houses could be built but homes are not the niche of an architect, they evolve; not just out of the blue but through sheer sacrifices, compromises, endurance, hope and pain. Homes are the concrete expressions of human abstraction. When people are made to be homeless it is not just rendering them space-less rather you take a toll on their humanness. Devoid of homes means devoid of emotions and bereft of emotions humans are just a mass of flesh. Theologians and faith leaders add impetus to this. Eulogizing the ordeals of exile through the intervention of a divine force makes suffering and endurance sacrilegious. Resilience turns to be an inert cognizance in this entire process.

What has gone wrong? Slavoj Zizek reckons; “What if the way we perceive a problem is already part of the problem?” Extrapolating this statement George Zachariah opines;

Our social location informs our knowledge and determines our responses. The knowledge that we construct informed by the dominant interests is nothing but an ideological apparatus to legitimize and perpetuate the prevailing order. The solutions that we develop to the contemporary problems are also coming from the same logic. That means, our solutions are incapable of addressing the root causes of the problem and bringing healing and restoration into our communities.   

Today I intend to contemplate on refugees. Here we need to take cognizance of the fact that a refugee and a migrant are not the same. Migration could be a matter of choice but refugee is exclusively a matter of force. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” 1951 Refugee convention is the key legal document ratified​ by 145 State parties. It defines the term ‘refugee’ and outlines the rights of the displaced, as well as the legal obligations of States to protect them. The core principle is non-refoulement, which asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. This is now considered a rule of customary international law.

It is quite disheartening that a nation like India which takes pride in its legacy of welcoming guests through one of its ancient maxims, athithi devo bhava (a guest is akin to God), has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention. After all this is only a soothing maxim because had we successfully translated this maxim into economic dividends, India should have been among the top 10 countries in the world for tourism. However, even today, we are ranked 40th globally by the Travel and Tourism index of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Amit Singh, a human rights researcher states;

India has not signed 1951 Refugee Convention (which is legally binding principals for refugee protection) and, there is no specific domestic legal framework to protect the rights of refugees and asylum seekers in India. This has led to legal insecurity of refugees’ status and difficulty to access in refugee rights. Due to the absence of specific laws related to refugees and asylum seekers; they are regulated under the Foreigners Act, 1946. However, problem with this act is, it does not take special situation of refugees and refugees’ rights and treats refugees and asylum seekers with tourist, illegal immigrants, economic immigrants alike. Indian legal framework has no uniform law to deal with its huge refugee population, it chooses to treat incoming refugees based on their national origin and political considerations, questioning the uniformity of rights and privileges granted to refugee communities as per the international human rights conventions and UN treaties. This results in unequal treatment towards refugee groups. This treatment is reflected in how refugees from China are well received compare to refugees from Myanmar in India.

What really disturbs me is that age is no longer an impediment for one to turn a refugee. Trump’s new ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy has pushed many kids to the abyss of despair and trauma. More than 700 families have been separated from their children at the US border. Concerning the mental status of the separated children, Elizabeth Frankel, Associate Director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights observes;

The trauma increases the longer the children are detained. It’s traumatizing to have no information about your parents and to be in this completely different environment it’s heartbreaking. We see kids who can’t sleep, can’t eat, that are regressing developmentally, that cry all the time. These children have already endured ‘layers of trauma.’ The journey is traumatic, they're separated from family members, they have post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, high levels of anxiety and trauma is what caused them to flee in the first place.

We the Church too cannot elope accountability as we claim to be the bride of Jesus, who was a refugee himself. We welcomed him by slamming doors on his face when he was in his mother’s womb by giving her no space to deliver her child. This young boy Jesus, who had to face shut doors even before his birth, grows up and says to the world that I am the door of the sheep. The statement “I am the door” itself is so beautiful. What could be more beautiful in this world than being doors to others? But the beauty of this saying intensifies when a person like Jesus, who has faced utter rejection in all walks of life says so.

Could the Church be doors to the refugees so as to maintain the credibility of the statement of Christ? I would solicit your attention to the Gubbio Project; wherein which an average of 225 homeless people seek safety and rest on the pews in the sanctuary of St. Boniface church in San Francisco every day. The Gubbio Project was co-founded in 2004 by community activists Shelly Roder and Father Louis Vitale as a non-denominational project of St. Boniface Neighbourhood Center located in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighbourhood in response to the increasing numbers of homeless men and women in need of refuge from the streets.

Lent could be a time to contemplate on the pathos of the refugees as well as reverberate the same through our praxis. Fred Rogers reckoned, “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.” Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.” I conclude with a video;

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul