Our Labour Market is being threatened with the fracas in the Gulf. It is a major concern.

The Modi Administration’s outreach to the Gulf since 2015 was radical and enthusiastic. The Gujarati Baniya ethic was at work, with a larger trader diaspora in the Gulf being the custodian of Mandirs in Masqat and Manama had a long durée footprint which matters. Many Banias hold Gulf passports.

We presume our neighbors to stop at Pakistan and China, yet we forget that Oman and the UAE are maritime neighbors. Oman and the UAE have large ethnic Baluchi populations and Urdu/Hindi is a commonly spoken tongue in the region along with Malayalam, where Kerala is across Duqm in Oman, across the Sea of Oman. Muslims from Hyderabad and Malabar has had a long association with the Gulf especially Jeddah and Aden, which was governed from the Bombay Presidency.

The Indian Muslim finds cultural comfort in the Gulf from the IT executive to the working-class barber from Lucknow to Malda. The familiarity with ease with Ramadan and the Jumma Prayers, with marginalization of the other over the past three decades, has led the Indian Muslim to find work in Dubai and Dhahran rather than Delhi, where there will be rental issues based on identity as i had observed with a senior colleague in 2016 who was a BITS alum. The lived experiences coagulating into a ‘Muslim Commons’ in the Gulf, where the best Biryani Chefs find work and the Muslim Entrepreneur finds dignity, as dignity is not a one-way street.

Resistance might be quiet, yet the Indian who can move his business to Dubai has been doing that even the most inclusive individual. The Gulf is the commons of the Indian Musalman from Malappuram to Moradabad. Contrary to the zoomed-out IR Scholar whose head is in the cloud, who dismisses remittances and diaspora embeddedness that feeds millions in the hinterland over three generations- the texture of relationship is in the everyday trust. The politics of the present are threatening trust. The Indian Muslim will mobilize its resistance in some manner whether it is lobbying local rulers in the Gulf or on Twitter flagging bigots who were fired.

We live in interconnected times, where the weakest signal can be amplified. States in the south, even Bihar, need the labor diaspora remittances. We need to recognize that Muslim neighbors in the form of the monarchies of the Gulf have been supportive friends but must not take for granted. The current dispensation in the attempt to be Vishwa Guru, forgets the adage of being able to afford one’s politics.

The optics can be managed as had been doused earlier with the Tejaswi Surya case earlier, but a politics which threatens India’s national interest needs to be reflected upon over the long term as we cannot chose our neighbors in our ‘Sikkas’, or the neighborhood street in the Gulf. We better remain friends who understand each other through our common culture, which happens to be Muslim.

“This was first published by the author on his website. It has been published here with the author’s choice and willingness”.

We are a country which is a major sending country in migration corridors, and billions are sent that support millions of families, my family is one over two generations. Bravado is a case of ‘zindagi jhandwa phir bhi ghamandwa’

A key feeling of being a migrant is a constant sense of loss of a home, a place, a belonging, and a liminal feeling all the time.

The in betweenness is a state too, the half images of home or homes fleet in front of one’s eyes.

The last time, i saw an Anubhav Sinha film in a theatre was in Burjuman in Dubai, which was the clutter breaking, Article 15 which shed light on the internal borders which are invisible yet real in the form of casteism. In Anek, the film maker is trying for making the other ‘othered’ geography the anthropological preserve of Sanjib Baruah among others, of the Northeast as the Northeast in the dominant mainstream imagination of the North Indian ‘Bhaiya’ gaze. I often watch Bollywood phillums in the diaspora as a Gulf Kid who watched Hindi movies as a form of belonging to the city of my birth, Bombay.

The frame of the movie is clear that the post-colonial Indian State is interested in keeping the NE as an object of control through the buffering violence which no one is really interested in bringing real peace rather than the performativity of the peace accord. The machinations of a brown proto imperial state are in full glory with police intelligence official Aman (cryptically called Peace) played by Ayushman is out to charm, bend, negotiate the ‘peace’ on behalf of the powers of the day. The fractional politics of Tiger Sanga, modelled on a Naga insurgent leader and Johnson, the emerging fraction is delicious as a game of chess soaked in blood. The cinematography with drone shots and eye level montages, makes for intimacy with the viewer.

The film uses the power of dialogue to the full extent with the dialogue credits going to Mr. Sinha. The movie places the NE on par with the K issue, as if in the hierarchy of armed conflicts, the NE is a simmering flame rather than a sharp BBQ fire, prone to an accident. The characters in the film are apt with the NE boxer character of Alindo, sharing screen space with bigger names with ease.

The movie is quietly subversive with pot shots on Article 370, surgical strikes, and the present regime, which in the given scheme of affairs is commendable. There are parallel tracks to the movie including the human cost of conflict and the larger macro contests which give the out main aspect of the film, as who are wars fought for in the name of peace, as wars are easier fought for control rather than lasting peace. The politics of the Northeast as a sporting gold incubator of the country, punching above its weight class to speak to the nation as an equal spoke to me.

The stereotypes sprinkled across the film including taking snipes at a Bihari police officer is apt as the gaze is turned on the hidden linguistic hierarchies within Hindi, Hindu and Hindustan. The momo and the chili chicken references are jarring at best, but it speaks to a north Indian audience. The film also quotes Gandhi from a revolutionary lens and is not meant for the Salman Bhai viewing crowd albeit Ayushman borrowing nasal mannerisms from the Bandra boy.

The film offers rich raw material on a potential full-length paper on pop geopolitics and other South Asian Studies Scholars.

#ChangethinkerMovieReview

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The COG is in us. It just requires a F5.

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