Even without immigrants, Europe is hardly just Christian and white as many would assume. There are many secret fault lines.
I have a few questions:
Why is Greece ‘European’ when Turkey is ‘Middle Eastern‘? Athens is South of Istanbul and only 5 degrees Longitude West of Istanbul. Often, you would be hard-pressed to tell a Greek apart from a Turk.
Why is Northern Cyprus Turkish and Southern Cyprus (Greek) European? Why is Malta European when it is just a couple of hundred kilometers from North Africa? Both Cyprus and Malta lie at 35 degrees Latitude… which is closer to the ‘Middle East’ than ‘Europe’. Why is Finland referred to as a Scandinavian country and not as an Eastern European country? It does not share the Germanic-origin languages as its Nordic neighbours. And a direct Helsinki-Delhi flight is just 6 hours when a Delhi-Munich flight is at least 8 hours.
Pride and prejudice
To attempt to uncover Europe’s secret fault lines, I must narrate a couple of anecdotes. This might have been the 2010 Commercial Vehicle show in Hannover, Germany. As a journalist covering the trade fair, I ran into a cross-section of Europeans – quite a few Spaniards. Got talking to one of them.
‘I find a lot of similarity between the self-expression and even physical features of North Indians and Spaniards’.
This was a boo-boo.
The guy I had been speaking to visibly squirmed. Pointing to his swarthy colleague, he said, ‘Is it? You must be talking about people from the South of Spain. They were ruled by the Arabs for 800 years. I am Iberian, from the North.’ Just to make sure, he made prolonged eye contact with his light eyes and ran his fingers through his light hair.
I don’t know if it was at the same event or another one in Belgium. It was an otherwise sober Dutch journalist. We had been served a particularly unpalatable lunch. Only a couple of people still seemed to enjoy it. My friend smiled. ‘Don’t worry, these Serbs have been used to eating anything that moves under their former communist regime.’
India may have its caste and communal divides. But Europe is hardly about geographical boundaries. The reality is invisible boundaries. Even without bringing immigrants into the picture, Europe’s secret fault lines, Christianity v/s Islam, capitalism v/s socialism, slavic v/s non-slavic, North v/s South and East v/s West… all lurk just beneath the surface.
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