The American Dream and the Living Nightmare

According to the US State Department’s 2012 International Religious Freedom Report, “Christians were a leading target of societal discrimination, abuse, and violence in some parts of the world.” As an instrument of diplomacy, the State Department’s  choice of “some” over ‘many’ or ‘most’ is hardly surprising. And rightly so. Were it not for diplomacy, the world would be an even more violent demonic playground.

As such, from the downgraded semantics employed by professional diplomats and their staff, it is possible to gauge the real extent and intensity of persecution suffered by Christian minorities outside of Western democracies and some Latin American countries. The oppression of Christian minorities barely flits on the periphery of media interest.

Mainly, there is a general belief that all minority Christians are rice bowl converts — the residue of 19th century western colonialism. For the United States to use its power and influence for good on the behalf of an oppressed Christian minority at the risk of compromising its political agenda is not an option. Letting this minority survive as best as it can, is. Just as with the non-Christian Kurds in Iraq during the end days of Saddam Hussein. Thus, the thought that these residual remnants of colonialism are merely the consequence of an economic impulse flagellates western guilt for its redemption, with the hope that mercantile policies can be better pursued from this moral high ground.

Somewhere down the line, this argument has further suffered by being force-fed into the Iraqi and Syrian situations. After all, before the US went into Iraq, and the Arab Spring blossomed for the strategic benefit of militant Islamic fundamentalists, eventually leading to the Syrian civil war, Christians in Iraq and Syria were said to be happy with their lot. As happy as they could be by murky suffrance. Their survival depended on a policy reminiscent of a “don’t see don’t tell” approach: conversions to Christianity were illegal, and to the best of my knowledge, even a capital offence. At the same time, the Syrian Orthodox church colluded with the state to persecute Christian evangelists of other denominations. The US State Department, meanwhile, blithely pursued its diplomacy as the ranks of persecuting-country immigrants in the American Dream swelled, and in proportion to their prosperity, were able to dictate where and when — if at all — Christmas Trees would be lit.

The foreign policy of the United States also appears to have inspired its immigration policy of generously opening its doors to immigrants from countries where Christians undergo direct discrimination.  While these immigrants are enabled to hold stock options in the American Dream, their Christian fellow citizens in their homelands only hold shares in a Living Nightmare — of fear and insecurity during their lucky periods when their homes and churches aren’t torched. Such a policy can safely be criticized as being absurdly disproportionate.

The underlying positive discrimination in the United States’ immigration policy leaves Christian minorities to languish in their predicament, since there is not a single country that has passed positive discrimination laws for the protection and uplift of a depressed Christian minority. Their expatriate dual citizens in the United States, however, may prosper under these laws if they care to.

Except in some individual cases, the United States has no policy to accommodate Christian minority applicants to the United States as refugees from persecution. Yet, in furtherance of its policy during the Cold War, escapees from Communist countries received a treatment almost on par with that accorded to economic immigrants from countries where Christian minorities are actively persecuted.

It is regrettable that this policy shows no signs of being revised in order to redress the unfavorable situation of Christian minorities.

The implicit policy of ignoring the plight of Christian minorities and seeking to assuage western guilt for colonialism has reached an impasse. In any case, carrying this burden is an exercise in the absurd. United Fruit’s dubious approach to Latin America and Hearst’s ‘Hully Gee it’s War!’ notwithstanding, the US never was a colonial power, even though it received the ‘white man’s burden’ from Kipling. This policy begs to be revised — nay, excised. As Alexis de Tocqueville said in Democracy in America (1835), “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults … If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Recognizing the suffering of Christian minorities without taking active measures to redress it has been a mistake. It can be repaired by extending a policy of positive discrimination or most favored status to Christian immigrants from countries in which they are a minority.

The South Asian Equalizer

Samuel Colt, the founder of Colt’s Manufacturing Company, died in 1862. Eleven years after his death, the M1873 .45 single action Army SAA Mod P revolver ensured his posterity. It was known as the Peacemaker, and the Equalizer that won the West, even though history records an unequal contest. Had Samuel Colt been an Indian, he would have been called Samir Kalloo and his Equalizer a katori bowl of mouth-watering, belch-inducing lamb trotters, or payas as rightfully known.

Kala Hotel in Yakki Gate, run by the famous Kala Pehelwan following his retirement from kushti wrestling was known to Lahore’s select foodies.

Kala Hotel had a long, narrow dining hall of bare, smooth cement. There were tables for four at each side, covered with tacked down plastic. The walls had pictures of the Holy Ka’aba, a few saints’ shrines, and bulging-eyed, bare-chested and mustachioed wrestlers from Kala Pehelwan’s family holding decorated gurze maces . Some of the pictures were draped with tinsel garlands. Punjabi music played to the kahrewa beat of dholak, mirdhang and k’tara /iktara.

At the entrance to the dining hall, facing the street, were the huge deg pots and para’at trays of lamb payas, siri-payas or lamb’s head and trotters, liver and kidney, heart-liver-lungs and superb free range chicken chargha!

The meat was personally selected by the pehelwan every day, and the cooking was also supervised by him. It was said that all the cooks and waiters remained in a state of pre-prayer ritual wash known as vuzoo —ensured by the Pehelwan. When they smiled, you could see the stain of the walnut bark dandasa with which they had cleaned their teeth. Their clothes looked fresh, and they smelled of soap. Discreet incense sticks were lit in the corners. Underneath every table was an empty kerosene oil tin. Every table had a notice: PATRONS ARE REQUESTED TO THROW THEIR BONES IN THE TINS BELOW THE TABLE AND NOT ON THE FLOOR.

The discriminating clientele ranged from lawyers acocuntants and police officers to haard-core gangsters and day labourers of all castes and religions living in Lahore.

The classless impact of payas could be felt to the bone.

Yet, there was a wide gap between the street and the household. For cooking payas took at least twelve hours, if not more. In some homes they were cooked regularly, in others, a takeaway dish. There was a choice of being dependent or independent at the high price of twelve hours labour!

Then in 1964, Sheikh Abdul Razzak, of Sialkote’s, Majestic  company took pity on the households which neither had an army of servants nor a surplus of women. The Majestic pressure cooker, by uniting the street and the home with a single, classless dish, took democratization a step further. Households could buy raw payas in the morning and pressure cook them for lunch in as much time as it took to prepare a simple meat and veg curry. If they wanted the traditional taste of slow cooking, they could always buy payas.

Choice, after all, is a component of liberty.

The democratizing effect of payas can be traced to the end of the 18th century. During the beginning of the Mughal empire’s decline, Urdu flourished and the aristocracy, after a night of poetry and dance spectacles, enjoyed paya / nihari in the early hours of the morning and then slept off their hangovers! Payas, throwaway hoofs which the poor retrieved to nourish themselves had, by dint of talented hard work, become a gourmet delicacy that made it to the tables of the aristocracy. In their consumption, sensory pleasure superseded class.

In Lahore of the seventies karigars from Old Lahore moved to establishments in the suburbs, or opened their own, further narrowing the gap between social class and availability.

The final democratization came through press freedom.

Competing TV stations broadcast programs in which mediagenic chefs brought their skills into living rooms from which the kitchen was only short, dedicated step away. And there it rests, except that although the elephant has gone through the gate, its tail is stuck.

Like meteorology, democratization being an ongoing and imprecise process in the developing world, the taste of payas slow cooked by a karigar or a dedicated home-maker remains unmatched as an Equalizer. A lesson for politicians tripping over each other in dedicated power-grabs.