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A burning city
Posted by the lazy knight
on
1:51 PM
A few days back, after her daily round of evening news, my mother entered my room and solemnly informed me that was rioting going on in Paris. You must be kidding, I shrugged her off. The last time Paris rioted was when Louis the XVI was the king and Marie Antoinette was wasting away the wealth of the kingdom while the ordinary people of the city starved to death.
But later that night, as the news channels showed images of vehicles set afire and stones being pelted on the heavily armed policemen, the seriousness of the violence and the undercurrents behind it registered a lot more strongly. For eleven consecutive days (and still counting) the most poor and impoverished suburbs of mainland Europe’s most grand city rose in a stunning and dangerous rebellion against a system which they felt had deprived them of development, employment and basic religious freedom. As the French PM and his Interior Minister indulged in a public spat on how to handle rioters, the outer limits of the city came to a kind of enforced standstill that Europe has rarely experienced since the end of the Second World war.
And yet, somewhere there was a reason to this madness. Poor and impoverished neighborhoods exist all over the world. Every glitzy urban city has its squalid ghettos; and yet hardly anywhere do the inhabitants take to the streets, burn cars and hurl Molotov cocktails at the besieged and outnumbered cops. But France is a peculiar case. In fact it is a paradox. Amongst all the European nations it has the largest Muslim population, primarily due to a liberal policy towards North African immigrants (Zinedine Zidane being the most famous of them). It is a nation being run by a secular left centered administration for almost two decades now and it hardly witnessed any incrimination of Muslim population post 9/11. Yet, it is those very immigrants and those very suburbs populated by them that have now risen in a revolt. And at the core of it lies an error of judgment whose consequences maybe still manifest themselves over and over again even after the violent suburbs have been calmed.
For years now France has defined secularism as non adherence to religion rather than adherence and acceptance of all religion. Hence the country has witnessed a drive for removal of all displays of religious identification from public life. Muslim girls were not allowed to wear scarves in schools while the Sikhs were to abstain from wearing turbans in public. For France, secularism while one hand meaning non-discrimination between religions has at the other hand also meant to attain a level homogeneity in the population. The administration, it seems believed, that in the longer run no religion would mean good religion and that communal frictions could be erased by taking away the distinctive characteristics of the communities and thus bringing them closer by bridging the walls created by visible religious practices.
But sadly for Jacques Chirac and France this approach has failed. Curbing religious practices and habits seldom leads to communal harmony. In fact it only fosters a sense of resentment (as the Sikh protests over the turban issues showed). A poor and helpless individual often drives solace from faith. When this individual turf of his is trod upon, the levels of bitterness against an unrewarding system rises. And a man who thinks he has no stake in the existing establishment will very readingly contribute to its destruction. The present riots are a result of unemployed energies and bitterness over perceived religious discrimination and suppression. And it prompts an even larger question in the global context - does secularism mean acceptance of all religions or abstainment from all religions? And can societies be integrated culturally while preserving their communal distinctions? It’s a question we in India have been answering for the last five decades. An increasingly multi religious and protective Europe could well take an Eastward glance for some of these answers.
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But later that night, as the news channels showed images of vehicles set afire and stones being pelted on the heavily armed policemen, the seriousness of the violence and the undercurrents behind it registered a lot more strongly. For eleven consecutive days (and still counting) the most poor and impoverished suburbs of mainland Europe’s most grand city rose in a stunning and dangerous rebellion against a system which they felt had deprived them of development, employment and basic religious freedom. As the French PM and his Interior Minister indulged in a public spat on how to handle rioters, the outer limits of the city came to a kind of enforced standstill that Europe has rarely experienced since the end of the Second World war.
And yet, somewhere there was a reason to this madness. Poor and impoverished neighborhoods exist all over the world. Every glitzy urban city has its squalid ghettos; and yet hardly anywhere do the inhabitants take to the streets, burn cars and hurl Molotov cocktails at the besieged and outnumbered cops. But France is a peculiar case. In fact it is a paradox. Amongst all the European nations it has the largest Muslim population, primarily due to a liberal policy towards North African immigrants (Zinedine Zidane being the most famous of them). It is a nation being run by a secular left centered administration for almost two decades now and it hardly witnessed any incrimination of Muslim population post 9/11. Yet, it is those very immigrants and those very suburbs populated by them that have now risen in a revolt. And at the core of it lies an error of judgment whose consequences maybe still manifest themselves over and over again even after the violent suburbs have been calmed.
For years now France has defined secularism as non adherence to religion rather than adherence and acceptance of all religion. Hence the country has witnessed a drive for removal of all displays of religious identification from public life. Muslim girls were not allowed to wear scarves in schools while the Sikhs were to abstain from wearing turbans in public. For France, secularism while one hand meaning non-discrimination between religions has at the other hand also meant to attain a level homogeneity in the population. The administration, it seems believed, that in the longer run no religion would mean good religion and that communal frictions could be erased by taking away the distinctive characteristics of the communities and thus bringing them closer by bridging the walls created by visible religious practices.
But sadly for Jacques Chirac and France this approach has failed. Curbing religious practices and habits seldom leads to communal harmony. In fact it only fosters a sense of resentment (as the Sikh protests over the turban issues showed). A poor and helpless individual often drives solace from faith. When this individual turf of his is trod upon, the levels of bitterness against an unrewarding system rises. And a man who thinks he has no stake in the existing establishment will very readingly contribute to its destruction. The present riots are a result of unemployed energies and bitterness over perceived religious discrimination and suppression. And it prompts an even larger question in the global context - does secularism mean acceptance of all religions or abstainment from all religions? And can societies be integrated culturally while preserving their communal distinctions? It’s a question we in India have been answering for the last five decades. An increasingly multi religious and protective Europe could well take an Eastward glance for some of these answers.
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