Home is where the heart is, isnt it?
Shelina Janmohamed
London Mayor Sadiq Khan became the first western politician to cross the border between India and Pakistan. Jack Taylor / Getty Images At the beginning of 1966, the hit record Homeward Bound by global pop duo Simon and Garfunkel went into the top ten of the charts. Home where my thoughts escaping Home where my love lies waiting, they crooned. Fast forward more than half a century and you would have forgiven Mayor of London Sadiq Khan responding to a journalist with the same words.
Khan became the first western politician of his generation to cross the border between India and Pakistan. His parents, also of Indian origin, migrated to Pakistan during Partition. Khans response went viral. The reporter asked him: Does it feel like coming home? With the kind of speed that comes only when an emotion is buried deep in your bones, he responded Nah! Home is south London, mate. It was delivered, of course, in the broadest south London accent possible.
His comments resonated with many around the world, and a global conversation is happening right now about what we call home, who gets to call it home and how countries should deal with changing and diverse populations in trying to create a sense of belonging.
I personally relate hugely with Khan and his feeling of belonging to London. Home is, after all, where the heart is. And in so many ways Im the epitome of a Londoner. But many wouldnt see it that way. The rise in racial tensions around the world means that those who are different attract hatred.
This hatred is couched in the language of home, and who has a right to be here and, by extension, who apparently does not. It is a deeply political terminology, determining who gets to belong and who does not.
The implications of whose home it is are heated and often fatal. Just ask the Rohingya of Myanmar. They are the worlds most persecuted people according to the UN. The leaders of their home country claim they do not belong there and are turning a blind eye to their rape, murder and genocide.
The very concept of home as a social and emotional construct is limitless, with the ability to encompass many peoples, languages, cultures and religions. Yet the competition over who gets to decide if its home, and its definition, is always fierce. US white supremacists claim the land is theirs, happily forgetting those who inhabited it before them, those upon whose backs it was built, and those who continue to build it today.
Its no surprise to find countries suffer when trying to build inclusive respectful societies when their founding myths already make judgements about how a place came to be home, who populates it and how it is defined.
This isnt just about countries where people arrived, like the US or Australia, although try describing them in that way to the many people who had already called it home. A kind of revisionist history and shifting of goal posts to fit a narrow idea of home are also tools that are being used. A new narrative in India of Hindu nationalism is being cultivated in order to exclude Muslims. The story of Israel is also built on revisionist ideas which say it was a land without a people. (Tell that to Palestinians.)
Perhaps Khans most powerful contribution with his razor sharp answer is to challenge us to rethink how we define home. Who gets to belong to home and how we characterise those relationships need rethinking for a globalised world in which migration, culture, and interconnectedness shape more of our ideas and experiences than ever before.
Perhaps it is no surprise that with the fluidity we face today, people feel scared and insecure, turning to tribalistic ideas to draw up the bridges and assert superiority, claiming home for themselves and seeking to evict others.
Its not just wrong - its self-defeating. A place feels hollow and stagnant if it rejects its inhabitants. And its inhabitants feel empty and restless if there is no rootedness. It becomes toxic.
Human beings have a natural instinct for belonging. As Simon and Garfunkel express, home is where love lies waiting. Home has to pull us in, and if it does, like Khan, we share our love and belonging and fly its flag wherever we go.
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