Western societies cannot do without migrants: Amitav Ghosh

There is no better chronicler of our times than Amitav Ghosh. Throughout his long literary life, he has written about topics on the intersection of literature and language; climate change and the environment; human lives, travel and discoveries.

Ghosh’s latest book, Wild Fictions brings together his writings on all these topics in one title.

“From the significance of the commodification of the clove to the diversity of the mangrove forests in Bengal and the radical fluidity of multilingualism, Wild Fictions is a powerful refutation of imperial violence, a fascinating exploration of the fictions we weave to absorb history, and a reminder of the importance of sensitivity and empathy,” the description of the book reads.

The celebrated author, who was in Delhi to promote his book, spoke with Down To Earth. Execrpts.

Rajat Ghai (RG): You write in the introduction about Antonio Gramsci’s ‘a time of monsters’ and term the extreme weather events of today to be such monsters. What prompted you to think of this analogy?

Amitav Ghosh (AG): These are not just weather events. They are also political ones. When Gramsci talked about one order having died and another one waiting to be born and in between there being the time of monsters, he was talking about fascists, purely political creatures if you like.

But now, we also have these purely environmental monsters which are also purely political because climate change itself is intensely political. It arises out of national inequalities, extreme geopolitical hierarchies. So we can no longer say they are just environmental disasters. They are in some profound sense, political disasters.

RG: You also talk about how it is no longer possible to cling to the fiction of there being a strict division between the natural and the political. How do you see current climate politics and negotiations from the prism of your statement?

AG: I don’t know if that came as a surprise to anyone. It certainly did not come as a surprise to me. It was perfectly self-evident that they were going to fail.

Because as I said, what these negotiations are essentially centred on is preserving inequalities. The status quo powers want to preserve their great privileges in the world. Obviously, those who were underprivileged before, do not want that situation to continue.

I think that is the juncture or dead wall that is impossible to pass beyond. The affluent countries of the West repeatedly say there is no money for climate mitigation. They offered a very trivial sum for mitigation. At the same time, they are increasing their defence spending by leaps and bounds. It is actually unimaginable how they are able to do this. None of it makes any sense.

RG: Climate change and migration are two cognate aspects of the same thing, you write. Can you elaborate on this statement?

AG: There are people who talk about ‘climate migration’. I think this is a misnomer because the sorts of migrations we are seeing around the world today are a product of not just climate (although climate disasters have a lot to do with it) but there are many different aspects to these huge movements of people.

One of the things that accelerates these great movements of people is exactly communications technology or cellphone technology. These movements are completely enabled by cellphone technology. Every aspect of a migrant’s journey is enabled by the cellphone. They pay their dalals (brokers) through the cellphone. They find their routing through the cellphone. They keep in touch with each other through the cellphone. All the information gathering is done through the cellphone. So you create those patterns of intercontinental traffic which is directed towards goods so that you can have by-the-minute production processes. But at some point, these obviously leak over into the movements of people. And that is what we are seeing now.

RG: The European migrant crisis of 2015 was a result of the West’s own actions while revelling in the delirium of the unipolar moment (winning the Cold War), you write. In his 2019 book This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto, Suketu Mehta wrote that all immigration from the Global South to the North was a result of Western imperialism and colonialism. ‘We are here because you were there’, he wrote. Would you agree?

AG: Yes. That certainly has a lot to do with it, empirically speaking. The huge Indian diaspora in Britain, for example, was completely carried along by pre-existing networks because the British were here. They used to employ sailors known as lascars. These lascars created these intercontinental networks of movement. So all of that is absolutely connected to that. Hence, I think Suketu is absolutely right to make that argument.

I think the situation today, in some ways, is different in that the way migration and movement is happening now is also connected to structures of imagination and desire.

For example, one keeps reading about these Gujarati families who freeze to death on the US-Canada border, trying to get into the United States. These are not people who are poor. They come from relatively well-off families in Gujarat. What is it then that is taking them to the United States? It is a kind of fantasy of what they think of as a “good life” or a “better life”.

RG: You offer several brilliant insights on the migration of today; of similarities and differences between the migrants of today and the slaves and indentured labourers of yore. What future do you foresee for human movement?

AG: It is going to become a battlefield. It already has, for instance, in the US. Migrants are literally hunted down by vigilante groups and various kinds of law-enforcement agencies. It has become an incredibly bloody and violent process.

The same is true for Europe and the Mediterranean. Now we see that European coastguards are actually abandoning people so that they drown. This is completely against the Law of the Sea and international law. But that is what they are doing.

This has literally become a battleground. Is it going to stop people from trying? I don’t think so. If anything, attempts at migration are only going to increase. Again, as I say in Wild Fictions, European states have created such instability around the Mediterranean that these attempts are bound to increase. There were wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. What do you expect when you destroy a society?

Libya was actually a middle-income country. It had free education and was a welfare state. But since Muammar Gaddafi had an anti-Western stance, they had to destroy him. They did destroy him and it ‘broke the dam’.

I had interviewed several Bangladeshi and Indian migrants in Europe. Many came from Libya. None of them wanted to go to Europe. They were doing perfectly well in Libya. They were saving money and sending it back. Suddenly, there was no work. The whole institutional structure collapsed. Where else can they go?

RG: It is an illusion to imagine that the best way to preserve communities is by excluding other humans, you note. But why is this sentiment not appealing to the masses of the West or indeed, India too?

AG: Realistically speaking, it is not easy to assimilate a lot of people from somewhere else into your society. But it can be done perfectly well.

What is very striking to me is that if you go along the relatively more prosperous west coast of India, its entire working class is from eastern India — Jharkhand, Bengal, Odisha and so on.

In Goa, for instance, all the waiters and manual workers are from east and Northeast India. I would say they have been comparatively well assimilated into Goan life. This is also true for Kerala and Karnataka.

So this is happening. Also, these places cannot do without migrants. Now, in Goa, no native-born Goan will do certain kinds of manual work like those of waiters, gardeners and so on. 

This is equally true of Europe and America. In Europe, certain kinds of care-giving for elderly people is entirely done by migrants. In America, the entire agricultural system is kept afloat by migrants. The same is true of Bangladeshis and Indians in Italy.

This is thus a strange paradox. These societies have created a circumstance where they will not be able to function without migrants. At the same time, intense hatred is being generated towards migrants. It is an incredibly explosive and dangerous situation.

RG: This winter again saw the Indo-Gangetic Plain turn into one big gas chamber from Lahore in the west to Dhaka in the east. What, in your view, can be the solution as this is now a pan-South Asian issue?

AG: It has been a pan-South Asian issue for a long time. Above all of South Asia, there sits this enormous brown cloud mostly formed of anthropogenic aerosols. You cannot get away from it in any part of South Asia.

People think that going to Goa will get them away from the bad air. The air in Goa is better than that in Delhi. But it is not good either. In the long run, this brown cloud is going to interfere with the monsoons and create increasing levels of catastrophe.

What can be done about it? Obviously, the answer is to stop burning so many fossil fuels. Is that going to happen? I don’t see that happening. 

But in the case of Delhi and North India, there are a lot of policy measures that could make a difference. The stubble burning, for example, is entirely a policy impact. The agricultural cycle was changed so that farmers had to plant at a certain point. It is a completely policy created disaster. That being the case, it should be possible to reverse it.  Frankly, I don’t understand why it is not being done.

RG: The Great Nicobar Project will be an ecocide and a genocide of indigenous peoples, you write. Those are very strong words. Why do you think the project was conceived? What was the thinking that went into it?

AG: They are doing it because a lot of people will make a lot of money. That is one part. The other part is the kind of strategic consideration because they want a strategic base in the Andamans to project power in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.

So these two logics come together. One is money making and the other is projecting military power. That is where this project has gained its momentum.

But this project is a perfect example of ‘disaster capitalism’. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami displaced so many people and they are taking advantage of that displacement to create this project. 

RG: Mauritius, you write, is located in a notorious ‘cyclone alley’. Southern Africa (the Mascarene Islands, Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe) has been seeing one destructive cyclone after another from Idai to Freddy to Alvaro to Chido in Mayotte. Africa is the youngest continent demographically. How can it take on the challenge of climate change while also paying heed to the development indices of its people?

AG: The weird thing about climate change is that it is a global phenomenon that manifests locally. In dealing with climate change, you have to think locally. I do not know enough about the local situation everywhere in Africa to be able to pronounce on that.

I have been spending a fair bit of time these last couple of years in Kenya and Tanzania. I think they will find ways of dealing with it.

If you are in Kenya, you do not see the kinds of extreme poverty that you see in India. If you also take the outcomes of the Covid pandemic, Senegal had some of the best outcomes. Generally speaking, West Africa fared well.

Bill Gates and others said at the beginning of the pandemic that there would be a ‘Covid Apocalypse’ in Africa. Which did not turn out to be the case.  In fact, Africa had very different outcomes from the US and UK. The reason for that is there is more social trust in African societies. These are tribal and clan-based societies. There is a sense of collective purpose also. These are not individualistic societies. So, people rally together. I think in the long run, those are real sources of resilience.

RG: 2024 broke all climate records. Are we all living on a dying planet?

AG: The planet will be fine without us. It will carry on. It is humanity and the sorts of civilisations that are under threat. It is humanity that we have to worry about.