Every country in the world seems to have citizens in the crosshairs of the Russian-Ukranian war gun. It was only when Russian troops were massing at the Ukranian borders that countries started publicising the number of their nationals in the war zone and families started urging their governments to help their loved ones return to safety.
Who would have guessed that nearly 20,000 Indians lived in Ukraine, most of them students in the medical and engineering universities there? Apparently, the course fees for a full-fledged medical degree, taught in English and with excellent facilities, costs less than one fourth of what it would at private colleges in India or in the more popular Western colleges.
Ukrainian universities, many East European professional colleges and Chinese universities are top of the academic list for students from the Indian sub-continent. In Ukraine, other big groups of international students are from North Africa, the Caucasus or Central Asia (Morocco, Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan), from Nigeria and Ghana and some from Israel, Jordan, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Iran.
The numbers may be smaller than some recent crises which saw a couple of million citizens trapped and rescued but this is the age of social media and we find ourselves breathlessly tracing on our smartphones, the plight of people struggling to escape the dangers of a war.
But the battle in Ukraine has provoked sharp criticism not just of the attack by Russia but also the “Us vs. Them” treatment of the victims. Politicians are expressing pity for the ‘blonde and blue-eyed’ refugees escaping Ukraine, others are surprised that a European country is engulfed in war which they usually watch unfolding in ‘third-world, developing countries’ – with mention being made here of Iraq and Syria. Even among those escaping, there have been complaints of people of colour and of Africans being given least priority and aggressively stopped from crossing into safe neighbouring countries to reach home.
Have we really learnt nothing from two years of the terror of the pandemic? The milk of human kindness that overflowed when we saw humanity struggling for a lungful of oxygen and the philosophising we spouted at the needless loss of life to the virus, has all dried up. We are once again back to fragmenting ourselves by colour, by how we pray and even where we live. Toxic social media posts are tearing into these children who found themselves suddenly in the middle of a blitz of bullets, questioning why they chose to study in Ukraine instead of in India, whether they could have made it work in India if they had worked hard and got the requisite scores there.
Really? Where is our compassion and sense of empathy? As an expatriate of four decades, I have seen instances of people who get stranded by the high tide of misfortune for years – often, they are helped by the joint efforts of good Samaritans and governments. We rely on such safety nets to help each other.
If we don’t help today, the chances of such support reaching us in our own time of need grows dim.
Donate the cost of a few meals to soup kitchen NGOs in the borders, send a cheque to the Red Cross, do anything to be counted as willing to lend a hand!
Reaching out to people in need is not just the duty of governments but every individual.
We may be far from the conflict area but every kind thought and gesture counts.
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