[Reader-list] Shahidul Alam detained by Indian Border Security Force

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Rahul,

I have always felt quite at home in the world, regardless of whether  
I was on the terrace of my Old Rajendra Nagar house in New Delhi,  
which once housed refugees from West Pakistan before it housed my  
migrant parents and me (where I live), or I was on hilltop in  
Damascus, or in a ruined factory in Warsaw, or on the border between  
East and West Jerusalem. I do not sense a feeling of being 'not at  
home' when I am not in my own country, and there are many places in  
my own country, where I do not feel quite as home as I would have  
liked to, for instance in the wide, paranoiac, expansive and empty  
boulevards of Lutyens Delhi. In Delhi, take me to Akbar Road, and I  
will feel a foreigner (even a bit of an illegal migrant), leave me in  
Karol Bagh, Chitli Qabar, Mehrauli, Khan Market or Jungpura, and I  
will do just fine. Home, after all, is where the heart is. And my  
heart is not in the Lutyens Bungalow Zone of New Delhi.

So I don't quite understand the analogy of locked homes and fenced  
countries. After all, we lock our homes, primarily against the  
possible attacks of our own fellow citizens. So, since we lock our  
homes against our own fellow citizens, logically, then, following  
your line of thinking, should we not turn the whole country into one  
vast prison, where everyone watches out for the danger that is  
everybody else.We don't even have to look as far as the next  
Bangladeshi.

Or, as my friends and I had reason to say in another context, 'Is the  
outer wall of the detention centre, the inner wall of the city?"

regards,

Shuddha


On 19-Jun-09, at 9:39 PM, Rahul Asthana wrote:

>
> Dear Anupam,
> Your question is a straw man.I am not drawing any analogy between  
> nation and home.My question to Shuddha is based upon his statement  
> about artificial borders etc.
>
> Thanks
> Rahul
>

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net