Be My Guest by Priya Basil

Author:Priya Basil [Basil, Priya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

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MY BELIEF IN THE NECESSITY of the EU led me to launch a campaign for the establishment of a European public holiday across Europe. I always imagine it as a British-style bank holiday Monday, which would open up space for a long weekend marked by street parties and cultural events all over the continent. The idea occurred to me in the aftermath of Brexit when I was considering what possibilities British citizens had to explore and develop their own relationship with the EU. They had little room, I realised, between an education defined by a very selective, distorted view of history and a public discourse characterised by constant EU-bashing. The causes of Brexit are complex and an extra holiday wouldn’t necessarily have altered the choice of those who voted out of dissatisfaction at worsening social and economic conditions. Nevertheless, the very existence of a European holiday would, I think, have marked the common consciousness in unexpected ways.

Holidays release us from the daily routine: they are an invitation to be and act different. Street parties have the power to seduce and connect; they bring out people who might not otherwise join in public occasions; they give us permission to come together in another spirit: to be wilder, freer. We need more means to counter the growing nationalist and illiberal tendencies in our societies. Why not use the power of celebration? Celebration as cultural and political intervention. Festivity as a form of dreaming, of discovery, of friendship. Festivity as an act of gratitude, of attention, of hospitality.

Nations fully utilise—if not always to noble ends—the power of holidays, a power to create and entrench narratives, to foster love and loyalty for the things the state holds dear. The potential of a transnational, secular holiday is tremendous and it shocks me that the EU has not tried it.

One of the articles I wrote to outline the idea was published online, along with a photo of me standing beside the EU flag. In the piece I describe my discomfiture at posing with this “symbol,” which, like most existing EU emblems, feels empty and remote. I go on to describe how a European holiday could be a much more powerful, personal symbol for citizens. Soon there were a host of comments in response, a number of them insistent that I was “gar keine Europäerin”—no European.

“Priya Basil is a British-Indian writer. India is not in the EU and GB won’t be either soon. So why is she going on about things that have nothing to do with her?”

There is another Germany.

“Best would be a shifting holiday that’s tied to the end of Ramadan.”

“Why?” someone else asked. And I too wondered what had prompted the suggestion. I scrolled through my article, rereading, failing to make any connection. All the while, the commentary went on.

“Because if things go on as they are, the majority of people living in the EU in future will anyhow be Muslim?!”

I moved my mouse up and down the screen, ran my eyes over my words—which were not quite my words, because they were translated.

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