On India and being Indian

Before coming to study in Canada I never thought of my identity in terms of being Indian. However the longer I stayed away from home the more “Indian” I became, I now long to wear salwaar kurtas, eat Chicken Tikka Masala, listen to Hindi music, watch cricket matches and the latest Bollywood film and travel to the distant corners of my country. I find it strange that that I had to leave my homeland to realize how much it meant to me?

In my four years at Mount Allison, I’ve been asked strange, hilarious and sometimes frustrating questions that made me want to scream. Like “How can you live close to the Taj Mahal, I thought it was in Trinidad?” and “Are there cars in India, I thought everyone was poor and rode around on elephants?” or “Did you have to study the Kamasutra in school?” I’ve been asked whether I had to run away from home to come to university to escape from an arranged marriage. Someone once asked me why I didn’t celebrate Lent and I replied because I was Hindu and then they asked me what that was. I tried to explain but I don’t think I did a very good job because I was so hurt and offended at the person in question not knowing what my religion was. I mean don’t you have to study about different religions in schools in Canada?

So I decided to write an article in the Argosy about what India means to me. The India of Himalayan snow peaks, tropical jungles, the backwaters of Kerala, the sandy deserts of Rajasthan, the scary badlands of Bihar, the beaches of Goa, the bustling cities of Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi. The India of seventeen official languages, (thirty-five languages that are spoken by about a million people each), 22,000 dialects and a billion and some people. How do you come to terms with a country whose population is 40 % illiterate yet has trained millions of scientists, doctors and engineers? Ancient Hindu tradition, myth and scripture, the impact of Islam, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikhism Christianity and two centuries of British colonial rule has all played a role in shaping the country.

India is unpredictable, diverse, secular, corrupt, vibrant, frustrating, colorful, frightening, chaotic, dirty and exciting and every other possible adjective that you can imagine. As Arundhati Roy the famous novelist puts it, "as Indian citizens we subsist on a regular diet of caste massacres and nuclear tests, mosque breakings and fashion shows, church burnings and expanding cell phone networks, bonded labor and the digital revolution, female infanticide and a booming stock market, husbands who burn their wives for dowry and our delectable pile of Miss Worlds and Miss Universes"!

How do you come to terms with a country where millions are mired in poverty but that also has an urban middle class that’s growing by leaps and bounds and becoming more obsessed with consumption by the minute? Personal consumption in India now accounts for 67 % of the Gross Domestic Product second only to the United States of America! Every time I go back home a new mall has sprung up, or new offices, bridges and highways. A famous Indian once put it eloquently, "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." Those words, which Indians of a certain generation know by heart, were spoken by the country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, just after midnight on the 15^th of August 1947, when independent India was born. What Nehru was referring to of course, was the birth of India as an independent state. I think what is happening today is a definite change and like all changes some of it is for the better and some for the worse.

As Shashi Tharoor writes “ The idea of India is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may accommodate differences of caste, creed, color, culture, cuisine, costume and custom, and still be a nation so long as democracy insures that none of these differences are decisive in determining an Indian's opportunities.” India is the world’s largest democracy, however there are elements of democracy that have hurt, certainly in a country with rampant poverty, feudalism, illiteracy and a myriad of other problems. Democracy in India often means not the will of the majority but the will of minorities that are organized such as landowners, powerful castes, farmers, government unions and local thugs. Yet in May 2004 a Roman Catholic political leader (Sonia Gandhi) made way for a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) to be sworn in as Prime Minister by a Muslim (President Abdul Kalam) in a country that is 82 % Hindu.

As agriculture becomes more corporatized, the landscape of small, biologically diverse farms is slowly giving way to miles of monocultures of sunflowers, vegetables and shrimp for export. The Mc Donaldization of India has begun. Environmental destruction is taking place faster and over larger areas. The rapidly growing population (a billion and counting), along with a move toward urbanization and industrialization is placing significant pressure on infrastructure and natural resources. Deforestation, water pollution and land degradation continue to worsen while the rapid industrialization and urbanization in India's booming metropolises are straining the limits of municipal services and causing serious air pollution and water shortage problems.

When I read about a village of Dalits (“untouchables”) being burnt or a bride being tortured over dowry in India I feel sadness and frustration, yet on reading about the burgeoning software industry or the incredible diversity of heritage and culture I feel pride and happiness. That is what India does to me it can me feel morose one minute and overjoyed the next.

People always ask me why I want to go back to India and live there. It is difficult for many Indians to understand why if I had the means to leave, I would want to return. I get asked questions like “What is this International Relations, why not study something useful like Medicine or Engineering”? Or “Don’t you want to live in “Amreeka” or “Kaneda” you will have a better life? I hear Non Resident Indians or some of the privileged that live in India (but at every possible opportunity denigrate it) remark about how filthy India is, or about how women have no rights or about corrupt politicians. These very people will keep their homes spic and span, yet throw their garbage on the road in front of their homes, they will not allow their daughters to pick out their own husbands or work or marry someone from a so called “lower” caste, will demand dowries for their sons and they will pay bribes left, right and centre if caught in a difficult situation. Talk about hypocrisy! The way I see it is if there is a problem with something at least try and fix it instead of letting the situation worsen. Words are hollow if they aren’t followed up with some sort of action.

I want to go back to India because I can’t even begin to imagine living somewhere else. Firstly India is where my family and friends are and secondly I think that the country needs people who want to work to make a difference. There is a buzz in the air at home these days, a sense of optimism. But I think that in all this talk of 8% GDP growth and a nuclear deal with the US and George W Bush, many people are conveniently forgetting about the impoverished masses that don’t have a voice, the young girls who are forced to get married, the millions who don’t have access to easy credit, the children who have no schools to go to, the slum dwellers in the cities that watch their homes demolished to make way for a “better” India. I want to return to India because it is my home and if I can work to make it a better place for all its citizens and not just a privileged few then it is definitely worth a try.