When I left India, Ireland welcomed me in. I won’t let bigotry destroy the country we love | Cauvery Madhavan

I grew up twice. The first time in India, where I was born, and the second time in Ireland. One nation birthed me, the other swaddled my very soul. I was 24 years old when I arrived in Ireland in 1986, one of a handful of “aliens” in Sligo town. The only Irish people I had known until then were nuns, formidable women all, who ran many convent schools in India. I obviously didn’t impress them as I was deemed unmarriageable because of my consistently untidy needlework – at the age of 10. But I held no grudges, leaving India a little over a decade later, fortified by a wonderful education. Ireland in the 1980s shocked me in more ways than one. Yes, the 40 shades of green, the 21 types of rain, the 32 words for field and the 100,000 welcomes – they were all quite real. But also palpable was a society still stifled by religious commandments. Married people had no right to divorce and there was limited access to contraception if you were unmarried. Abortion wasn’t just illegal, it was banned by the constitution. Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll was what we were expecting from the west, instead we found Ireland’s young women dancing in circles around their handbags: the local Sligo lads had mostly gone abroad for work. Through the economic recessions of the 1980s, we watched as businesses collapsed, shops were boarded up, families floundered and people, especially young men, fled in droves, emigrating to the far corners of the world in search of jobs and opportunity. But even in those terrible years, racism was the kind of thing that only “eejits” with no “cop-on” indulged in. (To lack cop-on, of course, is a mortal sin in Ireland, which has never suffered fools.) It was not surprising, considering how much prejudice Irish people had faced over centuries as economic migrants themselves. Of course, in Ireland – and it happens even now – there was a constant curiosity about us: where we came from and why we spoke English. There was no malice intended and we took no offence, for we had migrated from a country of prying people to a nation of nosy ones and, as a novelist, I make a living out of that very trait. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the social fabric of the two countries was also woven from very similar threads. India has its overt, blatantly cruel caste system, and Ireland its hidden, insidious class divides. Religion loomed large in both countries, dishing out succour with one hand and doling out despair with the other. I was already familiar with politically stoked Hindu-Muslim animosities, but Ireland wasn’t slow in schooling me about sectarian divisions. Divide and rule had been perfected in Ireland before being exported across the empire. We shared that too – a colonial backstory and, for a very long while, every possible inferiority complex that came with that trauma. So down the years, not only have I felt at home in Ireland, I am unashamedly evangelical about it. We worked twice as hard to be treated as equals, approaching Ireland with curiosity, enthusiasm, frequent frustration and always humour. And it worked because this is exactly the attitude Irish emigrants adopt when they leave home in search of opportunity. I understand the psyche of this wonderful country, and how historical scars have given us a unique perspective. It is not a myth that we hold people who suffer from war, hunger and injustice in other parts of the world in our hearts. And yes, I use the pronouns “we” and “us” with pride, for I’ve been an Irishwoman for over 30 years now. But the past couple of months have been unsettling. People of colour, and particularly those from the Indian community, have been subjected to random, physical assaults. One of the most shocking cases – and among the first to make headlines in India – was an attack on a man who had recently arrived in Dublin to start a tech job. Cruel videos were circulated online of the victim, bleeding, injured, stripped of his clothing, wandering around a Dublin suburb. It is not just in the capital either: in Waterford, a six-year-old girl was reported to have been beaten and told: “Go back to India.” Indian nurses are said to be thinking of leaving. The annual India Day celebration in Dublin last month was cancelled for safety reasons and the Indian embassy advised its citizens in Ireland to “avoid deserted areas”. Among many of us there is disbelief that you could be giving your best to the country only to get kicked in your teeth – literally. Our heightened anxiety is driven by a deep sense of being wronged. I’ve mentally prepared my pat replies if I were to be abused or accused of taking anything I’m not entitled to: my husband saves Irish lives! My daughters too! My son looks after your pets! I’ll make you the most hateful person in my next novel! But in my heart of hearts I know that I would be shocked into silence, for bravado is no match for the utter humiliation of racial abuse. So what has changed? How did this generous, giving country come to be labelled racist? And collectively, as Irish citizens, why are we tolerating such an own goal? Irish people know that our legal immigrants are a lifeline for our struggling health service and provide critical skills to IT, biomedical engineering and pharmaceuticals. Tax-paying, law-abiding, contributing to the GDP – these are people we need. Foreign students are cash cows for the universities. And when they aren’t studying, these same students help prop up a hospitality industry already on its knees. Have we simply ignored how much latent bigotry was building because we bought our own narrative – the friendly, compassionate island of saints and scholars – always occupying the moral high ground? Now suddenly we find ourselves dazzled by the headlights of harsh new realities: the xenophobes with their absolute mastery of scapegoating. The out-of-state bad actors and bot farms fanning hate on social media. Political parties not willing to man up. Underage perpetrators who cock a snook at justice. At times, I feel I’ve woken in the middle of a fine Irish wake, one that has gone on for two years now, grieving for an Ireland we think we have lost to the far right. Shocked mourners mill around offering sympathies, in agreement that the deceased was sound, one of the good ones. Everyone has brought food for thought, trays of platitude, sandwiches stuffed with good intentions, bottled up anger all served as familiar tunes of regret fill the air. Politicians press hands and leave. Books of condolence are signed and priests call for reflection. And that’s what I’ve done over recent weeks – reflect. Believe me, it is soul-destroying to be racially abused, so as a first-generation immigrant, an Irish woman of colour, I say stop with the handwringing. Extend those same hands instead in friendship – at a bus stop, on a train, at work. Try small talk with the person in a hospital, at the school gates. A smile in a supermarket queue is more reassuring than any grand political statement. We are good at talking about the weather. Do it, it breaks barriers. Commit to random acts of friendliness. Return to being neighbourly, be nosy even. The Ireland we knew hasn’t gone anywhere. Complacency caught us out, but we can each take our country back by just being what we know we can be: fierce sound people. Cauvery Madhavan is a novelist and journalist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.