Auslander

The foreigner – the videshi - the firangi – der Auslander – L’etranger – the very idea of one living among us yet who is not one of us seems to hold an eternal and universal fascination. And at its crux, the idea is quite inexplicable – and difficult to define with consistency and logic in our post-Westphalian world where being an outsider seemingly depends on which side of a line drawn on a map for bureaucratic convenience you find yourself.  And yet, that is not really the case – one may well ask the Transnistrians who live in yearning for the glories of the Soviet state whether they really feel a kinship with Mother Russia, lying a whole nation away? Do the Saxons in Romania feel any kinship at all with Germans? Is the Foreigner merely then the consummate manifestation of the Outsider? The one who doesn’t understand us? The one we feel is secretly judging us? The one we fear may harm us?  Flip the question around – what earthly reason could be there for the Gujarati to feel any kinship with the Oriya? And yet, the Gujarati would not call the Oriya a ‘foreigner’ even though he is still an outsider. The inescapable conclusion is that identity is a voluntary affiliation to an imagined community – and there are multiple levels of affiliation – but still, the idea that there exists a degree of affiliation beyond which the outsider is a foreigner seems endemic to the human condition – does it have to do with distance? Probably not – why would the Japanese across the straits be a ‘foreign devil’ to the Han Chinese living on the coast yet an Uyghur be acceptable as a countryman? Is it just political? Probably not again – despite nearly half a century of propaganda promoting unity and a Pan-South Slavic identity, the Serb and the Bosnian today do see each other as foreigners. The conclusion here then as well would have to be that foreign-ness is an exo-attribute – one that we bestow on the other, one which, like all other human attempts to stratify and simplify the world around them, is limited by the imperfections and limitations of the human mind.

So what happens when you look at the situation from the other side? What does the Foreigner think? Well, it probably has to be conceded that the Foreigner himself willingly concedes his foreign-ness and assumes the label almost reflexively – and the reflexivity has to be attributed to the fact that there is clearly a zone of affiliation beyond which he definitely feels foreign. In summary then, I think it’s safe to say that everyone in the world agrees that there are foreigners – we can’t tell you how we decide someone is a foreigner but we can tell you who is one and who isn’t

So why the long rumination on outsiders and insiders and foreigners and firangis? Well a funny thing happened to me recently – or almost recently. I went from being the ultimate insider, a member of the most majoritarian majority imaginable – a Hindi speaking Hindu from Uttar Pradesh – to being an out and out outsider – a member of the most minority community imaginable – a non-German speaking Indian in a small country in Central Europe. The currently unfashionable Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that our language determines our world view – is it also true then that how you view the world around you changes when you are a foreigner?

These reflections are my attempt to chronicle and record my journey as an Auslander, a stranger in a strange land. As an outsider, you are constantly reminded that you are an outsider – you can’t read the signs on the shops, when you get a letter from the local authorities you have to use the Google translate app and its camera function and hope that you get the broad gist of the latest diktat – but you are also in a privileged position to view the world around you objectively and without bias. And let’s admit it – the European continent is a vast unknown for us Indians. We have a cultural and linguistic connect with the United Kingdom and unfortunately that totally distorts the lens with which we view Europe. We lose sight of the fact that for centuries, the United Kingdom was but a minor distraction to the course of European history, we lose sight that the UK is but a tiny and for much of its existence, a largely inconsequential island floating off the coast of the Great European peninsula and we lose sight of the fact that the UK is a bit player in the great European saga which is essentially a story of the inter-play between the Germanic, Slavic and Mediterranean populations of the continent which shape this continent. Europe is a fascinating anthropological terrarium and it is my intention to learn as much as I can and observe as much as I can about this continent now that I live among the natives.

Lastly – why ibn-Fadlan? An indulgence to my self-grandeur I suppose – and also a tribute to one of the great travel writers of all time, though he is probably not as well known in India (and maybe even the wider world). One can – and should – read the details on Wikipedia but ibn-Fadlan was one of the first Arabs to visit and write about the Vikings – at a time when the Arab (well actually Abbasid) and Viking world were first coming into contact through the Volga trade route that ultimately led to the establishment of Russia. His account of a Norse burial is gripping – but more than the blood and gore, I have always imagined what ibn-Fadlan would have felt like when he watched the ceremony – the sense of bafflement, bewilderment, the revulsion and yet the inability to tear oneself away – no one can accuse the theologian of being an unbiased observer but I do feel his account had a fair sense of objectivity, which is always good in an outsider. And the fact that like ibn-Fadlan, I am an Asiatic catapulted into Europe – I think ibn-Fadlan al Hindi will do nicely.

Viel Spaß und bis nachste mal