Book: Passport Photos

Author: Amitava Kumar
Publisher:



“Passport Photos” by Amitava Kumar

University of California Press-Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, England,

267 Pages, Non-fiction

Price at www.amazon.com US$14.36 (Paperback)

“A book is a kind of passport”----

Salman Rushdie

Every few years a man or woman comes along on the Pakistani scene who decides to clean up corruption and remove the evils in Pakistani society. These evils center around his or her predecessor. All of Pakistan views a devil incarnate in the form of a Bhutto, a Zia, a Benazir or a Nawaz. The true prophet cries that all ills of life in Pakistan stem from the policies and agendas of the previous government. Every time our so-called parliamentarian, “representative” “democracy” is rescinded for a clean-up, a death knell sounds over the future of the country. Enterprising people migrate and the hollow voice of reason drops a few decibels further. After stoning false gods, the new gods erect a fortress till the next prophet comes along.

The political problems of Pakistan or indeed of all South Asia are deeply social problems. They start from the values we learnt on our mothers’ knees to the face of the latest President of America. They are rooted in the ideology of the Muslim Mughals and the inferiority complexes of the colonial slaves. They center in the fear of the maulvi who does not want to debate or discuss and the compliance of women, who accept every violation of their person in the name of propriety. A century or two is nothing to the story of South Asia. For us the migrant workers of today, the end result of this strife is the pain of separation. We, dimly aware of the power of our own identity, leave all that is known, familiar and warm to eke out a living in another country, taking on a new face with an old name. One wakes up on a morning with a new face and a new set of clothes, but without blissful amnesia. The immigrant attempts rebirth by adopting a new culture. The immigrant scours newspapers and family phone calls, always dreaming of going home; but in the large majority of cases never does. It is the immigrant who has been shaping the destiny of nations. It is the immigrant who is persecuted and hounded by the Governments of rich countries afraid of change; afraid of actually standing by their ideals of liberty, justice and community. It is the immigrant who knows how to survive.

“Passport Photos’ by Chowk published writer Amitava Kumar is organized like a passport, and is an account of the South Asian identity: “Name”, “Place of Birth”, “Date of Birth”, “Profession”, “Nationality”, “Sex” and “Identifying Marks”. These are the headlines of the immigrant’s identity in a passport, but Amitava Kumar talks about the story that the passport barely hints at.

Few records of information in the information age speak about the live evergreen story of the immigrant, so Amitava’s book fills a gap that we don’t even know exists. He crosses decades, history, films, political figures, the last 52 years of the sub-continent and the US immigrant experience to speak of the evolving story under the headlines. The book has a multitude of genres, there is poetry, photographs, and opinion to weave the many aspects of what it means to be an immigrant. He discusses immigrant issues in USA such as the story of Workers Awaaz (a group who fight for better treatment of illegal/poor and abused immigrant workers) and crosses over to haunting poetry. Written with the colour of fiction but researched like a biography, Amitava takes you on a journey about the immigrant’s story—his own story and yours and mine and ours.

There are many stories and descriptions that pulled at my own experiences in a foreign land. Amitava’s book has the kind of authenticity that ideas must have to live, breathe and grow; these ideas should stay in the global village and force a questioning of its anti-immigrant norms, where the market is god until its demands threaten the powerful.

Amitava quotes his full poem, part printed on Chowk “India Day Parade on Madison Avenue” in the Conclusion (Pg229-233). I excerpt:

“I have lost India. You have lost Pakistan.

We are now Citizens of General Electric.

In this country, there are no new words for exile.

And if you have nothing to sell,

You have nothing to say

That this, or that, is indeed you”

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About Amitava Kumar

Amitava Kumar is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida, and has been a Fellow at Yale University. He is the editor of Class Issues: Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, and the Public Sphere (1997) and Poetics/Politics: Radical Aesthetics for the Classroom (1999). Kumar was the script-writer and narrator for the award-winning documentary film Pure Chutney (1998).