Melancholic Migrants: Everlasting Grief
-
Nitin Sawhney’s parents describe their experience of migration as a struggle and a sacrifice. They state that ‘‘with God’s grace and his kindness we are okay now, and our children are okay as well’’. This illustrates that the sacrifices they made and the struggles they went through were a way of giving their children a better life. This song mainly describes the emotions of the children of immigrants, who feel disconnected in relation to their parents’ culture. Claiming ‘‘I can’t see you’’ is a way of emphasizing this disconnection. The song represents the melancholia felt by second generation immigrants. Not only do they feel disconnected in relation to their culture, but they also feel guilt due to the sacrifices made by their parents.
Mills states that happiness is a way of assessing civility. Thus, the colonized must be deemed as unhappy to justify colonization. In this context, a happier stage of existence comes through certain qualities or attributes, which colonized people do not have before being colonized (Ahmed, 125). In relation to this lack of happiness, we can analyze mourning and melancholia, which have similar roots but different results. According to Freud, mourning is a healthy process of grieving for a lost object, where the person eventually moves on (Ahmed, 138). Melancholia, on the other hand, is also a process of grieving. However, the person holds on that grief until it becomes unhealthy (Ahmed, 139). In the context of integration, to ‘‘let go’’ means to forget a part of your culture, your roots, and to forget colonial history which creates unhappiness (Ahmed, 158). In a way, integration and ‘‘letting go’’ means forgiving the colonizers. It also means becoming like a Westerner in order to be accepted. Similarly to James Baldwin’s claim in his letter to his nephew, we can say that one needs to be like the Whites to be accepted by them. However, Ahmed mentions shared grief among immigrants, who have a sense of community with other people who feel the same grief as they do (Ahmed, 141). Holding on to that grief results in a rejection from the Westerners. Diagnosing someone with melancholia is problematic as you are supposing that the object causing their grief is dead. However, the countries that people come from still exist, and their colonial histories affect the way they appear today.
Eswaran’s look on Jay’s opposition to his daughter’s relationship with a Black man illustrates how colonialism makes colonized people hate each other. In this context, Indians lived in Uganda, serving as middleman between the British and Ugandan. Although Indians are not white, they are still perceived as closer to white people than Black people are (Eswaran, 98). There was a large community of Indians living in Uganda, serving as a buffer between colonizers and Ugandans in commerce and administration. Eventually, they were kicked out, under Idi Amin, which was Jay’s case (Eswaran, 97). This led to anti-Black racism in Indian communities, through which they would cohere (Eswaran, 99). This form of complex grief, due to a colonial history, extends Ahmed’s concept of migrant melancholia. Not only does it create negative sentiments toward colonizers, but also toward other colonized people.