Margin is not
the fragile side of the society but it is where the fragility of any society
manifests itself. [1]
- Vitor
Westhelle.
The migrant
laborers are on their way back home on their feet! Tens of thousands of people,
including women and children, are trudging down hundreds of kilometers to reach
their small hometowns and villages. Joblessness, food shortage, fear, and
anxiety induced by the locked-down made the people take up this uncanny
challenge! Rajkumar[2]
one of the daily wagers in Delhi has set out for his home with just a thousand
rupees in hand, whose hometown is Chhapra in Bihar,1050km away. He has a
toddler in his arms while his wife walks beside him! He is hoping to hitch a
ride or several to reach home! The authority and the majority overlooked these
people. Indeed, the disenfranchised ones are always on the vulnerable side of
the orders and borders. These migrant laborers have to encounter many orders
and borders in their journey in a realistic sense. They are genuinely at the
Eschata / ends/margins!
Lent has a
recurring theme of Eschata, the ends! The biblical traditions of the Sabbath,
Jubilee, and lent are potent examples of revisiting the margins and resisting
the forces of death, and exclusions. The Deuteronomist( Deut 24:
10-22)tradition in the Hebrew Bible reminds of the memory of the Exodus event.
The slave memories connected to the Exodus event put demands on the people of
God, not to practice slavery because once they were slaves! Here the Exodus
event comes as a “dangerous memory”[3]
that challenges the people to keep always room for the alien, orphan, and widow
in their community. This memory re-shapes not only their community life but
also their economic/political practices at the micro-level.
In a country where
crony capitalism exercises hegemony, the poor are invisible, and their cry
becomes unheard and overlooked. This opacity or blindness of the regime is
brutal. There is a story about the current "economy of life" in India! A beggar was receiving alms at a roadside, holding a Pan. Suddenly few
military officers came over there in a military vehicle. Holding the gun at
him, one of the military officers asked brusquely: "Have you linked your
begging-pan with Aadhar Card?" He said NO! He was immediately taken to the
detention camp! Whenever the quality of life is taken over by political
correctness, it can be named fascism.
However, people
inhabiting quotidian eschata are on their long journey home. I think a simple gaze at them, disentangled from our
presuppositions and preoccupied opacity would be radically revelatory and transformative.
But sadly we often miss these significant epiphanies! Hans von Balthasar is obviously
intuitive when he writes, “we often resist the sheer unfolding of the truth.”[4]
[1] Vitor Westhelle, Eschatology and Space
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
[2] The
Times of India, March 27, 2020.
[3] Johannes
Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society : Toward a Practical
Fundamental Theology (New York : Seabury Press, 1980), 109.
[4] Rephrased from memory! Refer Hans Urs von Balthasar,
The Way of the Cross.
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