Tag Archives: Greece

De Ambulandum

01 Fri Apr 2016

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Salve, amici! Every visit to the doctor these days seems to come with an exhortation to walk more. In the midst of a global obesity epidemic, the virtues of simple, low-intensity workouts like walking have seen a remarkable comeback, especially for the older among us and those with joint trouble. Walking comes to us almost as naturally as breathing, so naturally, in fact, that we think of it only in its absence – illness – or as a quiet act of solitary rebellion against the mechanisation of society. Whether by sheer numbers or necessity, the present association of walking with health has become so strong that we forget what an important part such a simple activity held in our cultural and intellectual development.

flaneurBefore health concerns came to dominate our physical activity scenario in the post-fast food age, walking was seen as a joyous pastime that promised liberation from the humdrum. The mid- 19th century saw the birth of the flâneur in Paris, the urban stroller who explored boulevards and arcades, parks and cafés. Bourgeois intellectuals sauntered through the city, in imitation of the greats like Honoré de Balzac, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Charles Baudelaire, Franz Hessel, observing yet not participating in the ebb and flow of urban life. Walter Benjamin writes that it was fashionable to take turtles for walks in the 1840s; the chelonians would set the pace for the flâneurs.

The act of walking was at once of observing and being observed. It was an economic statement – that one could afford the idle luxury of a jaunt – as well as a cultural one, taking a bird’s eye view of city life, micro-history, and fashion; the city was a book to be read by walking. In the transience of walking was found a solitude of the crowded street, a detachment amidst the throngs, as Søren Kierkegaard sought in Copenhagen, and Immanuel Kant in Königsberg before him.

The urban walker, however, has been a bit of an endangered species in modern times. Whether due to the Stürm und Drang intellectuals, the Romantics, or some other intellectual movement, the spirit of the age as been to wander in the wilderness. Civilisation was to be found in pristine nature rather than the trinkets of man. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among the first who turned an intellectual gaze upon the humdrum activity of walking, according it the status of a conscious activity and ascribing significance to walking for its own sake. Until then, walking had certainly been held in high regard but rarely in isolation. Rousseau came at the beginning of an intellectually turbulent, uncertain time, and after him, the next century and a half turned his less-travelled path into a well-worn road – GWF Hegel, Edmund Husserl, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Frank O’Hara, and others added theories or anecdotes to the reflection upon walking.

Nature was the venue for these philosophes, away from the din and smog of the rapidly modernising cities of Europe and America. Clean air, unpredictable breaks in the horizon, solitude, and the slow rhythmic pace were thought to rejuvenate mind and soul as the increasing popularity of Alpine resorts declared. There is surely something to the persistent claim that the bodily rhythms of walking somehow correspond to mental processes; think, for example, of how Jews shukel while learning the Torah or during tefillah. Perambulatory mechanics serve a similar purpose, though on a significantly more expansive scale and in pursuit of secular perspicacity.

Walking was seen as a deeply meditative practice perhaps marginally inferior to reading; to walk was to wander in the mind as much as on land, as to read was to journey in the mind and on the page. For some, like Woolf, walking activated melancholy and gloom while others, like Thoreau, found their muse in their rhythmic steps. To walk was to unchain the mind from the strictures of convention to let it revel in the barely plausible. As the activity of philosophers and poets, walking was seen as an eminently intellectual pursuit rather than physical exercise. Walking was clearly associated with health as it is today, but it was more of a psychological, perhaps even spiritual, tonic rather than a physical one.

Before the philosophers came the pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, walking was the subject of poets, and pilgrimage was one of the fundamental forms walking could take. The view was neither physical exercise nor intellectual stimulation, but a quest for self-transformation as much of the literature of the era, from Geoffrey Chaucer to John Bunyan, from Dante Alighieri to Thomas Malory, and from Miguel de Cervantes to John Milton, reveals. Whether it is Virgil and Beatrice guiding Dante, Christian, or Persiles, the journey – walk – itself is central to the narrative and the protagonists are passively passing through.

The sanctity of a pilgrimage had diminished considerably by the 15th century as pilgrims had become notorious for their chicanery and hence objects of mockery and suspicion. This is at the root of the subtle ridicule  Chaucer, Cervantes and others expose their bawdy and playful protagonists to. However, in the early Middle Ages, pilgrimages were difficult and fraught with danger, truly an act of penance.

Yet it was only in the Greco-Roman world that walking was not just a show, an intellective lubricant, or exercise but a marker of civilisation and even divinity. Of course, walking was all those other things too but it was much more. In his Geographica, the Greek geographer narrates an anecdote about an early interaction between the Romans and the Vettonians, a local Iberian tribe. Upon seeing a couple of Roman generals out for a stroll between the tents, the Vettonians were puzzled and tried to lead them into comfortable seating quarters since they thought that one should remain seated if not engaged in some utilitarian task. This is amusing to Strabo because the “barbarians'” response betrays their lack of culture. So strong is this view that it lasted even until the Age of Empire when the imperial portrayal of Orientals as indolent implied their inferiority on the civilisational scale.

To Romans, walking was a profoundly social activity; to be seen strolling with someone marked him as a good friend. The assumption of a constant audience made even the smallest of acts markers of identity and character. Though Cicero accepts the contemplative aspects of walking in De Officiis, he makes it clear in his letters to Atticus (Epistulae ad Atticum) what the true importance of walking was – company and conversation as a symbol of friendship. In fact, it is rare to find flâneurs in Latin literature.

woman who walksHow one walks was also very important to Romans – one’s gait was a mirror to one’s mind and character. A remarkable sample of the value of one’s gait is seen in Book Six of Virgil’s Aeneid, when a young Aeneas asks his father about the character of several heroes as they walk through the city. Earlier in the Aeneid, when Aeneas and Achates have been shipwrecked and separated from their men, they chance upon a strange woman – the goddess Venus, incognito – who tells them the story of the land they have found and its queen. Virgil writes, “…et vera incessu patuit dea” (and the goddess was revealed by the way she walked). Iris is similarly revealed in Book Five of the Aeneid when she appears in disguise to urge the Trojan women to burn their ships.

The intense focus on gaits meant that considerable effort was spent in teaching the children of the elites how to walk properly. The delicious paradox is that the gait was considered a natural indicator of character and here were the elites, training to be natural! Men walked differently from women, slaves from free men. Within the polis,  elite Romans inevitably walked in groups; just two noblemen with their bodyguards was enough to comprise a small group, and the companion and the guards indicated wealth, status, and ties.

Unlike the Romantics, the Greco-Roman world was also quite hostile to walking in nature. A telling exchange can be found in Plato’s Phaedrus, when the eponymous protagonist tries to urge Socrates out of the city walls. The Greek philosopher replies, “You’ll have to forgive me, my friend. I’m an intellectual, you see, and country places with their trees tend to have nothing to teach me, whereas people in town do.” Of course, the Peripatetic philosophers are the more commonly known example of this attitude; Aristotle believed that to leave the polis would be the act of either a god, unmoved by wild nature, or a beast. Seneca, however, reveals an ambiguity in the Roman mind towards nature in his De Tranquillitate Animi: they are at once interested in it and yet have a negative opinion of it.

So next time you go for a walk, remember – you are not only going to get some exercise but also to contemplate, meditate, display yourself, and participate in an act of civilisation. Go ahead, reveal the divinity in you!

Until next time, stammi bene.

This article first appeared in the April 2016 print edition of Swarajya as part of the column, Sprezzatura.

Riflessioni: India’s Religious Other

01 Fri May 2015

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One often hears Indian traditionalists argue that not all religions are equal, that the Sanskrit dharma does not translate as the English religion. In essence, the Gandhian phrase, sarva dharma sama bhava, which is considered the root of Indian secularism (though it speaks more to pluralism, actually), does not apply to the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Why are the latter two of these three religions – Judaism presents a complication that will be discussed later – considered as “outsiders” to the subcontinent despite having existed in the subcontinent for over a thousand years? In India, what passes for debate and discussion on this issue in the public sphere has so far been high on politicisation and wanting in scholarship. In academia, however, ironically even the Western variety that many Indian traditionalists like to ignorantly scoff at, there have been some articulate expositions of why the Abrahamic religions are fundamentally different from and unequal to the faith systems of the cultural Indosphere and elsewhere. The argument runs that the differences between the two groups are not simply about what to call the sine qua non (G-d) or even if it is indeed sine quibus non (many gods) but involve a radical difference in views on the political order as well.

How Many Gods?

Theo Sundermeier, professor of theology at Heidelberg University, makes an insightful distinction between religions in his Was ist Religion? Religionswissenschaft im theologischen Kontext between primary and secondary religions. The former, Sundermeier explains, developed over hundreds if not thousands of years, usually within a single culture, society, and language with which the religion is inextricably intertwined. These would include the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian religions as easily as Hinduism. The latter category of religions are those that originate from an act of revelation or foundation and are monotheistic, universal, and of the Book. Secondary religions denounce primary religions as paganism, a collection of superstitions, and idolatry. The three Abrahamic faiths fit this description well.

This seemingly obvious categorisation holds an evolution of great import – from primary to secondary, religion changes from being a system that is irrevocably embedded in the institutional, linguistic, and cultural conditions of a society to become an autonomous system that can transcend political, ethnic, and other boundaries and transplant itself into any alien culture. As Jan Assmann, an Egyptologist at the University of Konstanz, describes in his Die Mosaische Unterscheidung: oder der Preis des Monotheismus, this change, which he calls the Mosaic distinction, is hardly about whether there is one god or there are many gods but about truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance. Monotheistic faiths rest firmly on the distinction between their true god and the falseness of other gods; their truth does not stand in a complementary relationship to other truths but relegates any such claims to the realm of falsehood. They are exclusive, antagonistic, and explicitly codified and clearly communicated. As Assmann explains, the truth to be proclaimed comes complete with an enemy to be fought – only they know of “heretics and pagans, false doctrine, sects, superstition, idolatry, magic, ignorance, unbelief, heresy, and whatever other terms have been coined to designate what they denounce, persecute and proscribe as manifestations of untruth.” Secondary religions do not evolve from primary religions – rather, the emergence of the former represents a revolution, a rupture with the past that uncompromisingly divides the world between “Jews and Gentiles, Christians and pagans, Christians and Jews, Muslims and infidels, true believers and heretics.”

Truth and Falsehood

Such orthodoxy was unknown to the followers of primary religions and they found secondary religions intolerant. Indeed, this is an age-old argument that has been most vividly captured perhaps by David Hume in The Natural History of Religions. What is the root of such unyielding intolerance, or to put it in more sympathetic terms, conviction in their version of the truth? Assmann argues that the Mosaic distinction created an entirely new category of truth – faith – and draws an interesting parallel with a scientific development that Werner Jäger, a 20th century classicist at Harvard University, described as the Parmenidian distinction in Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Parmenides was a Greek philosopher who lived in the 6th century BCE and articulated something that is so taken for granted today in science that it would be difficult to imagine a world without such an obvious principle: Being is, and Notbeing is not; that which is cannot not be, and that which is not cannot be. Thus, knowledge is based on the distinction between true and false cognition and the irreconcilability between the two. In a sense, we can speak of scientific knowledge as intolerant too, as Hume did of monotheism.

Before the Mosaic distinction, knowledge and faith were not separate concepts. Pagans knew their gods but did not believe in them for they were not objects of faith; like myths, they were unverifiable to science but not necessarily devoid of knowledge. Before the Mosaic distinction, there were four kinds of fundamental truth: experiential (water is wet), mathematical (two plus two is four), historical (the life of Mokshagundam Visveswaraya), and truths conducive to life (ethics). The Mosaic distinction cleaved faith from knowledge and installed the former as a fifth truth that claimed knowledge of the highest authority even if it could not be verified on scientific grounds. The psychological and social impact of this differentiation is most visible in how Greek or Hindu science never conflicted with its philosophy, myths, or religious practices – each operated in their own domain. In fact, there are several anecdotes of highly acclaimed Hindu scientists subscribing to superstitions – S Ramanujan’s belief in astrology and CV Raman’s concern about the ill-effects of a solar eclipse come most readily to mind. But the monotheistic preoccupation with untruth in conjunction with faith-as-truth caused much acrimony in Christendom and the dar al-Islam.

Alterity and Exclusion

Were the conflict between primary and secondary religion merely about how many gods there were, the world might have been spared much strife. Hans Zirker, emeritus professor of theology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, sees monotheism as also a statement against being influenced by strife between divine powers, being divided permanently between a dualism of Good and Evil, or being trapped in the incessant wars of self-affirmation of pluralist people. This is the political dimension of monotheism. Eric Santner, professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, suggests that the universalism of monotheism is imposed upon all, thereby forcing them to acquiesce to the Mosaic distinction or to be regarded as failures. In The Psychotheology of Everyday Life, an obvious play on the title of Sigmund Freud’s work on psychopathology, Santner makes a case for the stranger – pagan? – to be the Other not for his spatial exteriority but because of his internal alterity. Externalities could be tolerated or influenced but internal alterity was far more insidious as it challenged faith-as-truth.

What makes Judaism different from Christianity and Islam, Assmann argues, is that Jews posit this universalism to be implemented at a messianic end-time whereas Christianity and Islam see it as an event at the time of their foundation. Judaism is no less exclusive than its Abrahamic descendents but as a result of a future date of redemption, Jewish communities have excluded themselves from the social and cultural customs of local gentile populations. Self-isolation has no need to resort to violence or persecute those with differing beliefs; for the Jews, goyim were free to worship whomever they wished. As a result Jewish communities have existed in harmony amidst pagan societies or found themselves to be co-victims of their own monotheistic cousins, alongside pagans, in the lands which came to be dominated by secondary religion.

In contrast, Christianity and Islam excluded the pagan rather than themselves. The Great Commission of Christianity and the Islamic obligation of da’wah not only excludes the pagan but directly puts them on a path of conflict. This intolerance stems from the absolute certitude that faith brings to Christianity and Islam. As Assmann points out, it makes no sense to talk of tolerance in pagan systems because there is no notion of incompatibility: one can tolerate something that is incompatible and irresolvable with one’s own views but how does one tolerate something that is not so steadfastly oppositional?

Translatability

Among the practitioners of primary religions, there has always been a translatability of divinity – the cosmology of different communities was believed to be compatible with each other. In a practice that has been the norm since at least Sumerian times, pagan communities sealed contracts upon oaths to their gods – for example, if the Akkadians wanted to consecrate a treaty with the Egyptians, the former would swear by Utu and the latter by Ra, the solar deities of their respective civilisations. There was no question of the falsehood of the other’s cosmology. The worship of each others’ gods was not unknown either – the Egyptian goddess Isis had a popular cult in Rome and the Syrian Atargatis and Phrygian Cybele and followers all around the Mediterranean. Usually, these gods would travel to foreign lands with traders and with increasing commerce and familiarity, would be established in the local pantheon as well. In the Indian context, the spread of Vedic Hinduism in India occurred along similar lines. The philosophical precepts of the Vedic Hindus were laid over the beliefs of the local communities and their gods were integrated into the Vedic pantheon. Many temples in Indian and Sri Lankan villages are dedicated to gramadevate – village deities – the legends behind whom trace their lineage back to a Puranic deity.

This is not to say that there were no conflicts among pagans – there were, and quite a few, but to go to war over theological differences was incomprehensible to them. In fact, conquerors often stole the idols of the vanquished to re-consecrate the deities back home with the dignity due them. Hercules has thus been around the Mediterranean quite a few times in the wars of Phoenicia, Greece, Carthage, and Rome. Religion, however, functioned as a medium of communication rather than as a criterion to exclude and eliminate. Varro, the Roman scholar who lived at the end of the 2nd century BCE, did not understand the need to distinguish between Jupiter and Yahweh as “the names are of no importance so long as the same thing is intended.” The Mosaic distinction prevented this translatability for Allah could never be Zeus nor Jesus be Apollo. This is another political ramification of monotheism.

Dominus Unum

The Mosaic distinction, if understood correctly, is, thus, a new political order rather than a cosmological order. The importance of this can be seen in that the primus inter pares status of the Abrahamic god and the prohibition of graven images is cemented in the first two of the ten commandments in every version. According to Assmann, this implies that monotheism does not deny the existence of other gods but merely holds them to be false and their worship, therefore, is not meaningless but disloyalty. The former is a cognitive category, a matter of knowledge, while the latter is a political category. In essence, one could not serve two masters. Christians themselves felt the repercussions of this tenet during the Reformation in the Early Modern era when Catholics were viewed with suspicion by monarchs belonging to the breakaway sects.

Historically, monotheistic faiths made outlandish accusations against pagan religions to keep their base radicalised while turning one community against another. The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, for example, spoke of pagans sacrificing their children in sacrifices and secret ceremonies, living in communities defined by adultery, murder, theft, corruption, and all other manner of immoral behavior. Idols, the faithful are told, is the beginning of spiritual fornication and the corruption of life. Thus, idolatrous religions are depicted as completely lacking in ethical orientation. Though this critique might be dated to a specific period of monotheistic radicalisation during the third century, it nonetheless lays claim to proper worship and ethical conduct. This dispute is not merely about the number of gods one worships but about the negation of all gods but one. Strictly speaking, most polytheistic faiths do not claim there to be many gods but that a singular divine presence animates itself in many ways. In that sense, the unity of divinity is not a monotheistic invention. However, the monotheistic spiritual binary is incapable of allowing for a primary god and several subordinate gods – it must insist on the exclusion of all gods but theirs.

There was no such paranoia in the lands where primary religions flourished. Monarchs patronised all religions in their kingdom despite their personal beliefs. Admittedly, at times, some received greater favour than others but never was a faith and its adherents exiled or made into second class subjects. Such pluralism was evident even in recent times. In Nepal, during the monarchy, Hindu and Buddhist holy days were both observed despite the official status of the state as Hindu and an overwhelming portion of the population – about 85 per cent – being Hindu. The closeness between the Hindu and Buddhist communities has historically been so great that it is difficult to demarcate the two in terms of social customs even today. During the famous Bunga Dyah Jatra festival in Laliptur, for example, the Hindu kings of Nepal participated during the climactic Bhoto Jatra phase during which they had to climb up the ceremonial chariot and display a sacred vest to the crowds.

Disenchanting the World

Another reason monotheism stands as the Other is that unlike polytheistic faiths, it disenchants the world. Pagan myths usually involved humans cavorting with the gods, in war as well as in love. This entanglement gives structure to the cosmos, describing its oppositional and synergetic forces in a manner that can be easily grasped by all. Furthermore, the gods bring order to society: with each trade, settlement, and resource associated with a patron deity, a network of duties and obligations is created. Each cult, so to speak, must be balanced with others in the greater community. As Assmann argues, this can even be extended to human destiny in that the stories of the gods give meaning to human relations as well. “By telling stories about the gods, myths bring order to human life.” Polytheism is synonymous with cosmotheism, and the divine cannot be divorced from the world. It is this theology that monotheism attacks. The divine is liberated from its ties to the cosmos, society, and the people, and in its place is the relationship of the individual with a divinity that stands outside the world, time, and space. Monotheism changes not only the image of god but man’s image of himself as well; instead of being in a seamless and symbiotic relationship with nature, he now stands alone but above it, to rule over it freely and independently, subservient only to a true god. To secondary religions, divinity is transcendent whereas for primary religions, it is immanent. Through this distinction between transcendence and immanence, the mosaic distinction also achieves a distinction between man and the world.

Ethics, the Law, and Justice

The disruption from culture and history, the certitude of a new type of truth, the exclusive rejection of other gods, the falsehood and criminality of the Other, the demand of fealty, and the disenchantment of the world pave the way to one of monotheism’s most important claims – that it is the religion of justice. Again, this is a political rather than theological claim. The key point of this claim is that ethics gained entry into religion precisely through biblical monotheism since the gods of Babylon, Assyria, or Rome had nothing to do with ethics in this sense. For the first time in history, justice, law, and freedom are declared to be the central themes of religion and the sole prerogative of god. Though technically true, this is a misleading statement. The monotheistic point of view is that since god is the true authority, only he can be the final arbiter of justice; the temporal laws of man are inferior to the divine. The story of the exodus from Egypt ties in well with ideas of liberation of the Jewish people from slavery. Furthermore, their escape, divinely sanctioned, also took the power to sit in judgment over them away from the pharaoh and invested it in god. The Shemot, or the Book of Exodus, is thus more concerned with political theology than with idolatry (the story of the golden calf). Thus, in monotheism, the political role of justice was given to religion. The authority of the king was superseded by that of the high clergy, god’s representatives on earth, as papal power well into the Early Modern era demonstrated. This fusion of the political with the religious in secondary religions but not primary belief systems is exactly what makes secularism a requirement solely of the former in the modern era.

In pagan religions, justice was of this world for even the gods were of this world. A Roman or an Egyptian who had been wronged could appeal to the local magistrate for justice for its own sake without reference to the gods. Indeed, in Hinduism, dharma is not only properly a function of kaala, desha, and paristhiti but the chaturanga purusharthas mention it along with artha and kama as one of the three goals of mortal life. The ultimate goal, moksha, is beyond short-term earthly consideration. As Hindi novelist Gurudutt explains in धर्म तथा समाजवाद (dharma tatha samajwad) and धर्म संस्कृत और राज्य (dharma, sanskriti, aur rajya), the individual is free to interact with the divine in a manner of his choosing but wherever he must interact with another, their conduct must be guided by the precepts of dharma, artha, and kama. Ethics and the law were intrinsically this-worldy and had no business to be under divine purview. Thus, justice, or ethics at least, existed much before secondary religions came on the scene but were not truly a part of the religious system.

In a world enchanted, this caused no philosophical problems. The famous story of Indra, the king of the Hindu pantheon, being cursed by Gautama Maharishi for seducing his wife, Ahalya, illustrates how virtue reigns even above the gods in Hinduism. Monotheism did not usher law, justice, or ethics into the world; these had long been in existence. Yet monotheism first made justice a matter of direct interest to god; before then, the world had not known a law-giving god. Any claim that law, morality, and justice are terrestrial and not celestial goods still arouses feelings of deep unease in theological circles; even today, the Church defends the dogma of the inseparable unity of monotheism and justice.

*     *     *     *     *

Behind the Mosaic distinction between true and false in religion, there ultimately stands the distinction between god and the world. This worldview is not only fundamentally alien to Hindus but it is also antithetical and inimical to their way of thinking. The emphasis of secondary religions on universalism and all its attendant political baggage keeps them at an arm’s length from the pagan practices of the subcontinent. Were the rejection of Christianity and Islam by Indian traditionalists merely a matter of geography, it would be silly. Yet the grounds for suspicion and Otherness are twofold – a predatory proselytism of exclusive monotheisms and the entire cosmology of secondary religions. Neither of these traits have mellowed over the 1,000+ years secondary religions have been in India, and until they do, the two religions will remain outsiders to the Indosphere.

*I would like to express my gratitude to Rangesh Shridhar for reading through the first draft of this essay and countless hours of debate, discussion, and hair-pulling!

This post appeared on FirstPost on May 11, 2015.

Death in the Mediterranean

26 Sun Apr 2015

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The Mediterranean Sea is no stranger to maritime deaths, particularly of irregular migrants from North Africa and the Middle East who seek to enter the European Union for purposes of employment illegally. However, the number of casualties has spiked astronomically in the last four years as have the number of people trying to cross the sea. Interestingly, European newspapers have so far portrayed the stories of the tragedies at sea as the usual tale of irregular migrants seeking a better life in Europe. The overwhelming conformity to this terminology, especially in light of the events of the past four years, is suspect.

Migration to EuropeMigration to Europe from Africa across the Mare Nostrum is a complex story yet no different from many other similar situations such as across the Mexican border with the United States. In both cases, the prosperous states do not take into account the factors responsible for illegal immigration while formulating their immigration policies. Consequently, these policies are found to be ineffective to stem the human tide of the neighbouring poor. Historically, irregular migrants have tried to enter Europe through four points – the Spanish Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa, Malta and the Italian islands of Sicily and Lampedusa, and Greece and the Balkans.

Soon after World War II, Europe was desperately short of labour to rebuild a shattered continent. The Marshall Plan fuelled the economic miracles, usually known as the golden decade, in several countries and there was a free flow of labour from Africa and the Middle East into Europe. During this first wave of migration, the European destinations of choice had been France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. However, this situation began to change after the Energy Crisis of 1973 and European countries began to have increasingly strict restrictions on visa issuances. The 1985 Schengen Treaty, for example, made it difficult for workers from the eastern and southern Mediterranean rim countries to seek employment in its member states – France, Germany, and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). In response to the demand for low-skilled labour in southern Europe and the closed markets of the traditional destinations, Spain and Italy saw an increase in immigration until the early 1990s when they too introduced visa requirements for immigrants from the Maghreb.

Despite the tightening of visa controls, there has always been a demand for unskilled labour in the informal sector in Europe; this has kept the flow of migrants going. Contrary to the common perception of irregular migrants, most are fairly well-educated and from middle class families. However, their qualifications are often not recognised in Europe and migrants therefore fulfill the demand in domestic service, agriculture, fisheries, and janitorial work. This is an advantage for their employers, who find semi-skilled workers for lower salaries. Again, contrary to common perception, the majority of irregular migrants do not enter Europe via the Mediterranean. Many overstay their legal visas, others travel with false documentation, and some hide away in vehicles and containers.

The crises that erupted in the Middle East and North Africa around 2011 augmented the usual flow of people into Europe. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of people fleeing to Italy in 2009 was 9,573; this had rocketed to 61,000 by 2011. Similarly, Greece, which had seen about 10,000 people attempt to reach its shores in 2005 saw the number climb up to 60,000 in 2011. For whatever reason, Italy seems to be bearing the brunt of this immigration surge – in 2010, some 4,500 migrants left Libya for Italy but by 2014, that number had soared to 170,000. By contrast, the land route into Greece and the Balkans from Turkey saw about 51,000 people smuggle across in 2008, approximately the same number as in 2014. According to UNHCR estimates, some 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean into Europe last year and 3,419 died at sea. By March this year, some 36,000 are expected to have entered Europe and the casualties already number 1,750.

Many blame Europe for the deaths. One immediate reason is that the EU scaled down maritime patrol operations in the Mediterranean which saved thousands of lives. In response to the drowning of over 300 people off the coast of Lampedusa in October 2013, Rome had launched Operation Mare Nostrum, a series of extended patrols and devotion of military assets to rescue operations. Funded at slightly over $12 million per month, it is estimated to have saved some 150,000 people in its short duration of a year. In the midst of a financial crisis itself, Italy could not afford to fund the efforts alone and asked for support from its EU partners. Additionally, the EU’s Dublin Regulation puts the cost of processing of illegal migrants entirely upon the country of first arrival, making border states of the federation more vulnerable. However, the EU refused to support Rome by arguing that Mare Nostrum had made the central Mediterranean route safer and hence encouraged even greater migration. Instead, Operation Triton was was launched, a programme that receives barely a third of the funding of Mare Nostrum and patrols only close to European waters rather than the entire Mediterranean. This, however, has not dissuaded people from attempting to cross the Mediterranean and given that most of the shipwrecks occur near Libyan waters, only increased casualties. Another reason Europe is blamed for the exacerbated irregular migration crisis is that European capitals encouraged or conducted operations in North Africa and the Levant that toppled local governments and sent the region into paroxysms of violence that has caused the dislocation.

To be fair, there are reasons beyond Europe’s control for the tragedies. Human traffickers crowd boats beyond the safety limit and deploy unseaworthy vessels to ferry irregular migrants across the Mediterranean. If the boats capsize or are wrecked, under maritime law, it is the legal obligation of anyone who sees the castaways to rescue them. Thus, traffickers shirk their responsibilities for safe passage onto European navies. Furthermore, the sheer number of boats put to sea at a time means that Italian naval vessels operating in the region have received over a dozen distress calls at a time. Underfunded and undermanned as the patrol operations are, it is simply impossible to rescue everyone. While the entire focus and blame as been on Europe, it is also a fact that African governments and media have remained silent and indifferent to the regular tragedies in the Mediterranean except to blame their northern neighbours across the sea. Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte asked that Africa must also collectively pick up its share of the responsibility; “Last time I checked Libya was in Africa, not Europe,” he said.

If Europe is to blame, however, it is not for the quotidian failures of its naval officers but for its refusal to acknowledge the realities of the problem it faces. Like the proverbial ostrich that buries its head in the sand, European governments have not cared to distinguish between the the regular inflow of illegal labour across their southern sea and the significant increase of migration in the last four years. European media and government still refer to the rescued and the victims as migrants rather than refugees, as if the primary motive of the Syrians and Libyans flooding into Europe now is gainful employment and remittance back home rather than physical safety. Yet the word ‘refugee’ is rarely seen in the discussion of the deaths in the Mediterranean.

The probable reason for this is that there are legal implications in the choice between these two words. Rooted in the horrors of the Holocaust and the denial of immigration to ships carrying Jewish refugees, the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees and its 1967 Protocol governs how the dislocated may be treated. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also guarantees a right to seek asylum from political crimes. Activists have tried to expand this to include economic deprivation but that would be so broad as to render the convention meaningless. It has become a basic principle of international law that countries are obligated to take in refugees of political violence and conflict and the treaty prohibits refoulement – forcing a refugee to return to a country where his life is threatened. The onus of proof of persecution is upon the refugee and asylum may be denied under specific circumstances. However, it is difficult to argue that Syrians and Libyans in particular do not have legitimate grounds for asylum presently.

Attaining the ‘refugee’ tag hardly guarantees a life of comfort – usually, it is followed by life in massive government camps awaiting resettlement. Some refugees are indeed given the opportunity to stay and work in their host country but this is a minuscule number. For example, of the 2.5 million refugees of the Syrian civil war in 2013, the United States accepted 36 for resettlement. Nevertheless, even such a life of rations and make-shift homes is preferable to the hundreds of thousands fleeing the Levant and North Africa. Of course, many try to escape the camp and disappear into the country, finding employment and lodging below the state’s net. This leaves them vulnerable to exploitation but few of the dislocated have anything left to lose and the even the leaking boats on the Mediterranean offer more hope than life back at home.

European law does give special consideration to certain categories of refugees – minors, the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women, single parents accompanied by minors, and victims of torture and sexual violence. Beyond non-refoulement, these include the right to information in a language they understand, a renewable residence permit valid for at least three years, travel within and outside the country that granted refugee status, employment, education and vocational training, access to medical care, access to appropriate accommodation, and access to programmes facilitating integration into the host society. An irregular migrant, on the other hand, receives no such benefits; he may be deported and employment is forbidden.

It is ironic that the continent that led the charge on the Right to Protect (R2P) now even refuses to acknowledge refugees. The humanitarian rhetoric of R2P is reserved for justifying the bombardment of other states but does not seem to apply to one’s own immigration policies. One can take this blame game even further back in history to the era of imperialism and blame the white man’s rapacity in the colonies but that does hardly any good at present. The humanitarian crisis in genuine and Europe needs all the international support it can get to alleviate the depressing and gut-wrenching plight of the refugees from the conflict zones in the Levant and Africa.

It must also be recognised that Europe does have legitimate grievances about its inability to handle the entire influx of refugees from the Greater Middle East. One possible approach to the Mediterranean crisis is an international commitment to resettle the refugees. Preference might be given to stable neighbours first, the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development next, and finally the rest of the world. Those unwilling to take people may contribute by way of financial assistance. Even if some of the refugees are dispatched through this programme, it will reduce the burden on the camps in Turkey, Jordan, and elsewhere. It is unlikely that the conflict in Libya or Syria/Iraq will be resolved soon by diplomacy or by force and though efforts should be made towards that end, the future of the dislocated cannot be pinned on such hopes in the short term.

International affairs is filled with rhetoric about our mutual obligations to one another. One such duty might perhaps be not to let the refugee protection system collapse for those are the neediest among us. Let too many institutions and ideals wither away on economic and “practical” grounds and eventually there will be nothing left to preserve in an anomic world. The first step, however, is for Europe to accept that the thousands of people risking life to cross the Mediterranean Sea are refugees and not irregular migrants.

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on April 28, 2015.