Pavan Varma | Muslim lives matter, too, in Paris as well as Delhi

With so much political drama happening within the country, we sometimes forget to keep our eye on what is happening outside. On June 27, 17-year-old French citizen Nahel Merzouk, of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot dead by a white French police officer in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, for driving without a licence and not stopping when asked to. He was an only child. The country was engulfed in riots immediately thereafter. Protesters torched some 5600 cars, looted stores, and attacked thousands of private and state properties. President Emmanuel Macron cancelled a long-awaited official trip to Germany. 

This was a racial riot.  In the 19th century, France colonised most of north and west Africa, including the Maghreb — Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. In fact, between France and England, 95 per cent of Africa was enslaved: 22 countries by England, and 20 by France.  Today, large numbers of the once ruled — whom France set out to ‘civilise’ by spreading the French language and Catholicism — are in France as legitimate citizens. Their number increased especially after 1976, when the French government allowed family members of the original immigrants to join them. Today they constitute almost five per cent of the French population. The bulk of them live in shabby high-rise suburban ghettos outside the bigger cities, called banlieues: 10 per cent in Paris, 26 per cent in Montpellier, 16 per cent in Toulouse, and 14 per cent in Lyon.

There are some success stories, and these can be seen in the French football team, which is more coloured than white. But the overwhelming majority constitutes a simmering underbelly of the poor and discriminated. A total of 15 per cent have no academic qualifications, and 25 per cent less than secondary education.  According to the French Institute of Public Research, 40 per cent feel they are discriminated against, and a much larger number have suffered — as a result of their colour or their Muslim religion — verbal or defamatory insults, racial profiling by the police, and unprovoked violence. Officially, the French claim to follow a policy of strict secularism called laicite, where the state and the church are completely separated. But official surveys show that Muslims have a 2.5 times less chance than Christians with similar credentials to get a job. 

Across Europe, colonising countries are facing a return of their former empires — which they looted and exploited — in a manner they did not expect or want. Initially, the gates for the former colonies were opened due to the demand of cheap labour. This demand still persists, because the new immigrants are prepared to do work which their hitherto white masters are not. The difference is that while economically poorer, they are now equal citizens. Muslims in Europe are an estimated 44 million, accounting for almost five per cent of the population of the European Union.  In some capitals — such as Brussels — this figure is almost as high as 25 per cent. The UK has been relatively more successful in dealing with its multi-ethnic population, through a conscious policy of multi-culturalism. The United States, too, has responded better to movements like Black Lives Matter, but glass ceilings still abound in both countries.

France has fared much worse. Its so-called policy of ‘colourblind universalism’ has enabled decades of systemic racism. The consequences are now in full display. It is a vicious circle. The more the intolerance, the greater the Islamic radicalism. And the more the Islamic radicalism, the greater the crackdown. This vicious cycle is worsened by economic hardship. Jobs are scarce, the economy is still recovering, from the Covid pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war has taken its toll on the global economy. Even prosperous countries are looking for solutions, but often face stiff opposition from their own people. Till only some months ago all of France was in turmoil to protest the pension reforms initiated by President Macron.

While Islamic violence cannot be condoned, the hypocrisy of the dominant white French is also condemnable. The wearing of turbans by Sikh children and headscarves by Muslim girls is banned in France because the state does not allow any symbol of religious affiliation. However, there is no ban on the wearing of the Christian cross. In October 2008, when PM Manmohan Singh was on an official visit to France, then French President Nicolas Sarkozy actually took up with him the “massacre of Christians in India”. Over 40 Indians of the Christian faith had been killed by suspected Hindu extremists who resorted to violence in the states of Odisha and Karnataka ostensibly to protest against perceived missionary activism in converting Hindus to Christianity. The reprehensible killings were condemned by every political party, and the Centre sent police reinforcements to quickly quell the violence.  But neither Sarkozy nor any other Western leader has ever expressed regret at the death of 600,000 Muslims due to the completely unjustified invasion by America of Iraq, or the destruction without any international sanctions of Libya, or the unmandated intervention in Afghanistan. 

Countries which once believed in uninhibited oppression and exploitation are being forced to learn, in their own self-interest, the importance of coexistence and tolerance. This applies to countries like France, but there is a lesson for us as well. The historical background in our case is different, but the imperatives are the same. If much smaller minorities can bring a country as powerful as France to a standstill, a country like India,where the Muslim minority is around 200 million, and even the Christians at two per cent of the population are greater in number than the combined population of Hungary and Greece, the consequences of communal strife can be catastrophic. This is especially so since the minorities are not geographically segregated but spread across the country and live cheek by jowl with the Hindu majority. That is why, in a letter to all chief ministers in 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru had made clear that coexistence is not an option but a compulsion for us. Coexistence, by definition, can only be based on inclusion, tolerance and respect, not exclusion, hate and discrimination. France is learning that, and so must we.