Yeh Still Mera India
What a mob forcefully imposing the chants of "Jai Shri Ram" and saying "Go to Pakistan!" can't take away.
Crowd gathered at Delhi's Red Fort, Aug. 16, 1947. Photo Credit: Homai Vyarawalla Archive/Alkazi Collection of Photography
This was going to be a different column. I was not going to write about the week we saw the last embers of India’s secularism die out. One, because it’s something others who are wiser than me have said more eloquently. But mostly, because I really like my new job and don’t want to risk the wrath of an online mob. I’m not being paranoid. In case you’ve missed how new India works these days, yes, that’s often a consequence one has to think of when writing something on religion.
Anyway. This column became what you’re reading right now, on a Sunday morning. I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a video. (Trigger warning, and also a caveat, that this video was posted a month ago.) A man, wearing a white skullcap and a beard, is pulled into a car by a man. Who loudly says, “Bol Jai Shri Ram!” The identifiably Muslim man gives a scared smile and repeats the chant. Then, the man in the car says “Bol bhagwaan Ram ki jai!” With the smile intact on his face, but now discernible fear in his eyes, the Muslim man repeats the chant. The man in the car, obviously gloating, gives him a whack, abuses him and threatens him. This undated video, is sadly, not an isolated incident.
On 8 August 2020, it was reported that a 52-year-old Muslim autorickshaw driver was allegedly assaulted in Sikar in Rajasthan after he refused to shout “Jai Shri Ram.” Just Google the words “Jai Shri Ram Muslim” and you’ll see many such incidents taking place over the years — in Maharashtra, in Jharkhand, in Gurgaon, and in Delhi.
I admittedly am not someone is an expert on religious studies, but I am pretty sure that no religion in the world – including Hinduism – preaches bullying. No religion in the world, at its heart, believes in undermining the existence of those different from us – that being religious is now considered equivalent to hating others is our failure, and our fundamentalism.
When a mob forces someone to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” it’s not their religion they are establishing dominance with. It’s their idea of India, it’s their faulty notions of what a nation should be like. The phrase “idea of India” has cropped up many times this week, often as a subject of obituaries. But the idea of India hasn’t died. A secular idea of India – the one enshrined in our Constitution – has just been replaced with a more powerful, potent, an exclusive idea of India. One where believing in a different God, is proof of irreconcilable differences. Differences, that can only be salvaged, if you chant a slogan and display your servility. Coexistence, replaced by obedience.
It’s here that I paused writing my article, hit “Select All” and hovered over the “Delete” button. I have been online enough to know that writing this – even this, which for so many would be a sensible thing – would invite rage and backlash. I know that the most common response to this article, should I ever choose to not hit “Delete,” would be an admonishment to “Go to Pakistan!”
So, let me anticipate this response, and address this unsolicited invitation to take myself to Pakistan. My response is this— “I would like to visit and see where my ancestors are born, so if you can arrange a visa to Pakistan, please let me know. As for moving there, you are no one to decide who this country belongs to.”
Like almost half the population in Delhi, I come from a post-Partition family. My maternal grandmother has family roots in Pakistan; like it’s true for many families in the city. A visit to Pakistan is on my bucket-list if only so I could take my mother to the place where she came from – it’s not a threat to my Indianness.
“Go to Pakistan” is not so much an insult to my patriotism; it’s a reflection of your fragile belief in India. My love for this deeply frustrating country is not founded on borders. It encompasses the complex history that makes this mix of languages and religions, somehow, bafflingly, one country.
And it’s this stupid love that I have held on to this week. Because here’s the thing.
Even if I may not chant “Jai Shri Ram,” even if after this week I’ve increasingly felt myself to be in a minority (“No one cares what we think” is what a friend messaged me,) even after the 100th message of “Go to Pakistan,” — this country still fiercely remains mine. It’s why, I still hold onto a silly hope that India will succeed in being a successful, and secular country.
It’s why, after a lot of thinking, I didn’t finally hit “Delete.”
Before we go to our usual Links of the Week programming, here are some things which brought me joy, made me laugh and just marvel at the experience of being human this week. Thinking of calling these Your Dose of Joy, but it feels a little cheesy. Anyhow.
1. Mughal-e-Azam, aka the Greatest Film Ever Made, turned sixty this week. If you still haven’t seen the film, you can watch it here for free on YouTube. The original black-and-white version is available on Mubi India.
2. This orchestra flash-mob singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy brought some bystanders in Italy to tears – and will have the same effect on anyone watching.
3. I’d like to age as gracefully as Waheeda Rehman, and be as excellent a storyteller as she is. This interview made my day, and week.
4. “Three Identical Strangers” is a documentary on Netflix that will make you think long and hard about nature vs nurture. We’re still having debates in our family. Not exactly joyous, but quite thought-provoking.
LINKS OF THE WEEK:
We all know the stereotypes of Parsis – loud, cantankerous, enterprising, and great food. But Shaun Walker for the Guardian does a deep dive into the history, and the chasms within, of this community. How can a community survive if it excommunicates its women for marrying outside their community?
“My grandfather stuck to his Zoroastrian faith doggedly, whatever obstacles life tossed into his path, but my mother was ejected from the Parsi fold, officially at least, when she married out. She came to London when she was 17, to go to university and then train as an English teacher. She slipped away from a planned marriage to a good Parsi boy, and later married my dad, another teacher from Southampton. Her parents, unlike many other relatives, quickly came to accept the marriage, but the strict community rules meant she was no longer a Parsi. Partly, she accepted this, and partly, she just ignored it. “No religious bigot was going to define who I was,” she told me, and she continued to feel deeply attached to the cultural aspects of being Parsi.”
Parenting is an unforgiving struggle even in normal times, but like Vanessa Wong writes in Buzzfeed, it’s a terrible deal right now.
“It’s always illuminating to hear the things my kid says, but his expressions have been especially telling since the pandemic. “First, wash hands.” “Where is your mask?!” “Hey! Why are you coughing?” The faint sound of a siren in a cartoon led him to ask, “Does someone have coronavirus?” When, one day at the playground, a boy picked up his soccer ball, he panicked; when the boy coughed, my son cried, “No! No!” as he buried his mouth into his elbow — the defensive gesture we had taught him when COVID-19 first arrived in New York last winter. His words opened a window into his young and achingly vulnerable mind.”
Indian journalism is in crisis — for those who have lost their jobs, and for those who still continue to work through long hours, pay cuts, horrific stories and more as Kavitha Iyer writes in this essential piece for Newslaundry. If you know a journalist, check up on how they’re doing, give them a (virtual) hug, and just share a (virtual) drink with them.
“I’m no newbie to drawing lines between the personal and professional, and I thought I had perfected a system of attempting to connect people in need who we meet as journalists to the correct resources. Without wading into their lives ourselves, remaining a tiny bit aloof while being approachable and attentive, we can report somewhat objectively. But this has been onerous in recent months. Aid-givers including specialist doctors, senior citizens, good samaritans, professionals with compromised immunity or pre-existent morbidities are under lockdown. Especially in April and May, willing and able social workers found it difficult to get transportation and permissions to reach those who needed them.”
This David Foster Wallance 2005 commencement speech was an important reminder to be conscious of default-settings of life.
“Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.”
That’s it from me this week! I hope you’re doing well — as well as one can considering the state of the world — and hope that you’ve found something, or someone, which allows you to retain your capacity to be amazed, and fascinated with the world.
As always, I’d be happy to hear from you — and will promptly write back.
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