At the outset, I must confess that I have not read Jhumpa Lahiri’s 1999 best seller, “Interpreter of Maladies”. Nonetheless, I have an interpretation for western civilization’s post-9/11 maladies that might not be palatable to its civil libertarians. Following the 7/7 and 7/21 suicide bomber attacks in London, it has become apparent that western civilization is being threatened in a way that demands any proposed remedies to be equally extreme. In the war on terrorism, Europe is fast approaching a point—which we have probably already breached in America—where freedom can no longer be considered a right but a privilege for its troublesome few. In this regard, any political solution would necessarily have to increase its focus on the wayward children of first generation immigrants in western societies.
In support of my desperate remedies reasoning, I recall a Bollywood movie from my days as a youth in India. In the movie an Indian soldier of a minority faith is faced with a classical dilemma when he needs to choose between the apparently conflicting demands of his religion and the pressing needs of his country? I remember billboards around Bombay asking ordinary citizens to vote on the matter prior to the movie’s release. Not surprisingly, the movie producers claimed that over 75% of the citizens chose country over religion! This Bollywood movie exemplifies the predicament faced by some first generation immigrants in western societies today. Given its poor record of assimilating its immigrant population, Western Europe shouldn’t be shocked to find out that a few of its first generation immigrants probably put the demands of their faith before the interests of their adopted country, which could be at cross-purposes at times.
Based on the initial reports from the 7/7 investigations, it seems that Britain’s first generation immigrant parents did not have a clue as to the terrorist proclivities of their progeny. Well, then it is about time Britain tested its “meet the parents” hypothesis. Some British children, of first generation immigrant parents, might not give a hoot about the country adopted by their mothers and fathers. However, if these misguided souls are religious fanatics, they surely must care a lot about the welfare of their diligent parents. After all, their parents did leave their native land to ensure that these ingrates lived a better life in Britain. Thus, my tough love proposal calls on Britain to pass a law that would seek the deportation of first generation parents of these suicide bombers back to their native countries.
The assumption here—while these suicide bombers might place their religion above the adopted country of their parents, they surely cannot love their religion more than their own parents—is a culturally accepted one. It’s high time that these misguided youth were made to realize that their foolish actions will force their parents to "inherit" punitive consequences. No longer will the planned murders of innocent patrons of mass transit systems go unpunished. Henceforth, these selfish and cowardly acts will additionally penalize the parents of these second generation suicide bombers. This will become a case of the sins of the children being visited upon their parents, which amounts to a rather harsh judgment in some cultures. I don’t write this lightly—my wife and I are both first-generation immigrant citizens of the United States, and we constantly pray that we have brought up our children to lead responsible, law-abiding lives in the country that we love and have adopted as our home. I hope that the deportation law that I have proposed will go a long way in stopping the madness—of this random killing of innocents by ungrateful children, who just happen to be citizens of civilized western societies only due to the accident of their birth!
