Racial profiling cannot curb global terrorism: Wole Soyinka

NEW DELHI - First African Nobel laureate Akinwande Oluwole ‘Wole’ Soyinka feels that racial profiling is a “complete failure” when it comes to curbing global terrorism.

“The arrest of the Nigerian national from the flight to Detroit in December for alleged possession of explosives does not call for racial profiling of all terror suspects. The Nigerian national may have fallen into bad company. It should be inquired where he was indoctrinated. He may have been of a spiritual nature and was indoctrinated into the jihadist philosophy,” Soyinka told the media at the Jaipur Literature Festival Friday.

“It is unfair to discriminate against terror suspects on racial grounds. Several Nigerian nationals lost their lives in the London underground terror attacks and in strikes elsewhere across the globe,” said the 75-years-old Nigerian novelist, poet and playwright.

Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for Literature as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioned the drama of existence”.

Soyinka, who is also a political activist, spoke on a series of issues ranging from politics, ethnicity, literature to his childhood and journey as an author and activist.

Allowing the media a window into his views on ethnicity, Soyinka said, “There is too much of pejorative on the word tribe — Irish tribe, Scottish tribe — all over the globe, especially in those countries which had been colonised. These organic groups of people who are called tribes have been forced to abandon their cultural identity by colonialists.

“In West Africa, you have vertical groupings (collectives of highly independent people who are answerable to a single authority in the group) of people along the West African coast and cocktails of religious groupings of people who have their natural ethnic entities. In India, you have exactly the same situation — bred by the education system imposed in colonial nations,” he said.

Soyinka’s views on ethnicity stem from his “exiles abroad”.

“Circumstances forced me to go out of my country to look for new existence in England. I was forced into exiles. I called it a political sabbatical. One of the paradoxical things about exiles is that it breeds anger. You become angrier because people in other parts of the world don’t have two heads. They are logical, humane and creative. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to me on the turf that I call my own,” he said, referring to his own years away from home, which prompted him to “bond more strongly with his country’s tradition and politics”.

The writer traces his lineage to the illustrious Ransome-Kuti family, known for their contribution to Nigerian music and politics.

“The Nigerian Afro beat musician, late Fela Kuti (who was the theme of a Broadway musical) was my cousin,” Soyinka said with a laugh.

Talking about the current state of African literature, Soyinka said: “Literature in Nigeria is very political, a colonial legacy, which bred an overwhelming sense of responsibility to write politically. But the women novelists of Africa surpass men with their sensitive observations of human rights,” he said.

“I am glad that I came (to the literary festival) because the atmosphere here is different. There is creative chaos, which is very similar to my temperament,” he added.

According to Soyinka, India and Africa “share many threads”.

“Indians are characterised by their closeness to earth like the African people. Indian cuisine is similar to that of Africa. But modernisation has uprooted both people from the earth,” he said.