Part I and Part II of the Identities series
It's hard to talk about Identity groups and not mention Ghettos. Although the origin of this term takes us back some 500 years, it's only the last century that the term has gained prominence when talking about social groups. In 1516, Jews in Venice were forced to stay in area called the 'Venetian Ghetto'. The same area, within which the Jews lived in, also contained iron foundries used for cooling slag. Slag in Venetian is "gheta". I read about Ghettos in history lessons about World War II for the first time. A majority group (Germans) rounded up a minority group (Jewish people) and forced them to live in a restricted neighborhood. This as we learnt in school was not the final destination. From here, they were sent to concentration camps.
The Ghettos of the Second World War were neighborhoods, districts even, where people of a community were segregated and forced to live. Seventy years later, the creation of modern day ghettos has not always been by force of law. Ghettos today are created primarily because of socio-economic reasons. You have black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods in America. You have Muslim neighborhood in India. While one Ghetto has been formed because of the color of your skin, another Ghetto has been created because of the God you chose to worship. But race and religion are not alone when it comes to Ghettos. You have Chinatowns, Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Caribbean and many other nationalities that formed their own neighborhoods across urban America.
I lived in London for over 4 years. If there is any city in the world that can boast of having a true multi-national population then it must be dear old London. You can't strictly call them Ghettos but they represent broad groups of nationalities, races and religions; living across London in bunches. Wembly has a high population of Gujratis. East Ham has a high population of Tamilians. Southall has a large population of Punjabis. Imagine my surprise when the train stops in Southall station and I am greeted with a signboard that says SOUTHALL in three different languages English, Hindi and Urdu. Most Australians, South Africans and Kiwis living in London would be residing in West or South London. Brick Lane is thickly populated by Bangladeshis. Euston is another place with a lot of Bangladeshis. I was told that a few decades earlier Brick Lane was dominated by Jewish people. Today a large number of them can be found in North London. Ilford has a high Punjabi and Pakistani crowd. Where do the actual British people live? Well, they live all over the place but there are areas in and around London which have your average British population like Romford for example. Most of my work colleagues however preferred the quite life on the countryside and commuted long distances to work. I wonder if the term white flight is applicable here. According to Wikipedia - White flight is a term for the demographic trend in which white people move away from suburbs or urban neighborhoods that are becoming racially desegregated to white suburbs.
So why does the average Bangladeshi arriving in London (or Bengali for that matter) prefer to stay near Brick Lane. You could say that safety and familiarity play a role here. You could say that things like access to local food, language, music and culture play an influential role here. You could say that being surrounded by people of your own community fosters a feeling of home away from home. Since none of these conditions actually are a consequence of socio-economic pressures, it hard to call them Ghettos. The closest I can call them is "Ghetto like".
I have never strictly seen a black neighborhood. I have seen black dominated areas in London without really seeing the problems faced in such neighborhoods. What I have seen is Muslim neighborhoods in India living in abject poverty, epitomized by their narrow lanes, illegally constructed houses sticking wall to wall, in which an overcrowded and often illiterate population attempts to survive and beat the odds of life on a daily basis. One such example of a ghetto is the Sabarmati River in Ahmadabad that divides the city into two distinct parts. The division is not just geographical. It also divides the increasingly affluent Hindus on the West and the economically marginalized Muslims on the East side. This is equally true of other neighborhoods across India that houses the Dalit populations or any other socio-economically backward group. A village in the backdrop of rural India still living with the burden of a caste driven society has a segregated population of 'untouchables' living in one portion of the village.
One of challenges that a society faces and in my opinion often fails in; is to integrate all sections of society as it moves forward. One of India's biggest problems is that sections of our societies are divided not just on a single identity but in multiples. A progress that fails to include everybody is not really a progress. It's a recipe for disaster. What will happen to a society in which one section moves forward at the cost of another? Why does social unrest surprise us anymore? Can a society afford to marginalize some of its constituents? Social, economic and political tensions are direct fallouts of Ghettoized societies.
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