This is an archive article published on December 18, 2018

Opinion Borders and lies

With the death of seven-year-old Jakelin Caal, the Trump presidency is on a moral precipice.

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December 18, 2018 01:20 AM IST First published on: Dec 18, 2018 at 01:20 AM IST

The Congress is not exceptional in promoting political dynasties: In fact, no major political party in India can claim immunity to the pull of political dynasties.

Seven-year-old Jakelin Caal tried to get to the US in the hope that she could earn enough someday to send money to her mother in Guatemala. Deforestation in her native district to make way for palm-oil plantations had made the subsistence agriculture her family relied on unsustainable. Jakelin, who was detained by US border agents earlier this month, died in their custody. So far, the Donald Trump administration has relied on technicalities to parry blame and criticism for the death, stating that officials had no way of knowing of the child’s condition.

There are, among human beings, stupendous fictions that help order society; words that represent ideas and associations that define who we are. But while there are the notions of justice, equality, fraternity and freedom, there also exist borders and lately, infiltrators, illegal immigrants and other terms too vile to print. Often, the lies of a divisive political rhetoric and the insular passions of exclusive nationalism blind us to the people who suffer and die under its veil. In September 2015, the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s corpse, washed up on a beach in Turkey, shocked the world enough to inject a semblance of moral decency into the discourse on refugees from West Asia to Europe. The US now faces a similar moment.

The “caravan”, a procession of thousands of migrants from Latin American countries to the US border, was an act of assertion from people whose economic destiny was not of their making. It seemingly failed to have any effect on a US government and president that has sought to paint the poor seeking a better life as criminals and separated children from their parents and kept them in detention camps. If there is any chance of a redemptive tale emerging from Jakelin’s death, it is that enough people are moved to insist that between the fictional lines on a map, and a neighbour seeking succour, the latter is at least considered humanely.