Finding My Indianness

“Unity in diversity”. This tagline has been associated with India for as long as I can remember. I was told from childhood that India is a land of rich culture, of varied peoples with unique ideals separate from, and superior to, the rest of the world, living in perfect harmony. I was taught from an early age to think of myself as an Indian- a person who belonged to the list of unnumbered such souls that filled the land from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, Nagaland to Gujarat. I was an Indian, and I should be proud of it. It felt like I was part of a delicious avial, if you will.

            Then I grew up, and went through hours of History, Geography and such wondrous other subjects in school, and realized that India wasn’t, as I was lead to believe, a unified and  internalized concept for longer than perhaps the last 60-70 years ( at least, to its own residents). I learnt of our freedom struggle, how it united the various peoples across the vast subcontinent regardless of age, gender, religion, station and cast. I learnt of the age of kings before, of the Mughals and the Mauryas, the Rajputs and Cheras and the numerous other dynasties that came before and established their strongholds across the country. I came to know about the coming of the Muslim invaders from the Northeast and the arrival of Islam, and the bringing of Christianity through the Southern coast and its influence on the natives. The birth of Mahavira and Sidhartha Gautama and the impact of their ideals and spread of their respective followers were taught to me, and so were the legends of Rama and Krishna and the tales of the great epics. And in all this confusing melee, I realized that there never was a clearly defined nation called India. If there was one, it was just a notion of the people belonging to a few communities alone, and perhaps for the invading armies and other external entities. India was unified whole in the eyes of the Others that kept on coming to her for whatever reasons throughout the centuries; the trading Others, the travelling Others, the plundering Others and finally, the ruling Others. Only after throwing the yoke of British imperialism, that ‘evil Western’ foe of ours that shaped the whole of India’s character since,  was this modern entity of a united India taken shape as it stands today. It is clear that India, Bharath or Hindustan was more a product of exclusion because of its geographical isolation and historical seclusion rather than any other unifying force from within like most, if not all, nation-states in the world. The people between the Himalayas and the southern ocean were Indian, a single entity, no matter what differences the people living therein had. This did nothing to buoy my spirits in finding my Indianness. So apparently, I was Indian because I wasn’t Persian, Chinese, or Russian? That simply would not do.

             Then I turned my attention to finding what made this nation made up of 29 states and 7 union territories ‘India’. What was it that made me an Indian, aside from the fact that I happened to be born here? What it meant to belong to the Indian community, and the celebrated ‘Indian Culture’ that was being paraded around by certain individuals and socio-political agencies, and to find out who didn’t belong to it became my mission. Was it my birth within the political boundaries that made me an Indian?  Or  was it the fact that I belonged to Hinduism (the way of life of the people of Sindhu) or Sanatana Dharma, the prominent and original religion (for lack of better word) of the inhabitants of the Indo-Gangetic plains that defined my Indianness? However, going in that vein would mean that all those people from the other religious denominations here would be excluded as un-Indian, which I knew to be simply stupid. Therefore, I discarded that approach. Then I thought that may be my dark skin, dark hair and dark eyes were a sign of my innate Inidanness, because that was what I saw as a common feature among the people I knew. But that meant the fair-skinned, or rather “wheat-complexioned” northerners and the mongoloid descendants of the Northeast were not Indian on my scale. Absurd, I know. So I threw that measure out the window. I knew language could never be a measure of Indianness, because India had 22 scheduled languages (to my knowledge) and innumerable dialects. I mean, my mother tongue was Malayalam, and I could not have a real conversation with someone just 150km to my east, unless I tried Hindi or English. So unless Hindi, the “Northern” language, or English, the language of the “Foreigners”, were taken as a common denominator, I was screwed out of my Indianness. That was a no-go. Unsurprisingly, I was very disheartened at this point, because I was running out of criteria to justify my Indianness. What was that elusive thing that made me undoubtedly Indian? What was that unifying factor that made not just me and a few other handful, but the whole 1.2 Billion people who called this land their home, unquestionably Indian? I didn’t know. I was baffled. I mean, when somebody said ‘American’, the images that came to my mind were fat white people in tight t-shirts or scantily–clad girls doing the duckface, or beer-chugging frats yelling racist slurs. Or the cast of FRIENDS. When thinking of the British, the image of the Queen, Harry Potter and red buses crowded my mind, peopled by pale people who spoke posh English. China meant exotic colours, an inscrutable script and sweet, short people with fierce pride in their culture. Japan was a technological haven filled with smart, albeit sex-obsessed, people of mongoloid features. Africa meant dark shapes and a rich variety of cultures. But whenever I thought of India, there never was the same image that came to mind. Most times, it was the sights and sounds of Kerala, my first love. There were also the wheat-fields of the North, the distant, almost alien Himalayas, the graceful shapes of Bharathanatyam dancers as well as Katrina Kaif doing the lavani. My mother in the temple with the jasmine in her hair was India for me, my friend Annu in her Punjabi salwar too, as much as the Juma Masjid in Delhi meant India to me. Krishna and Radha were as much Indian to me as two of my guy friends having a tender moment were. All of these often conflicting images were what made my vision of India. Different colours and different shades, each different from the other, yet one seeping into the other seamlessly.

            Nevertheless, lately, I have seen a drastic change in the perception of what an Indian is. There seems to be no more space for pluralism. An Indian ‘has’ to be a certain way, or so some people would have you believe. Especially during this election season, I came across many people, including quite a few of my friends and relatives, who were all for “restoring India” and “protecting the Indian culture from alien forces of contemptible intentions”, though no one seemed particularly bothered to define what they meant by this ominous pronouncement. What I gleaned from all the zealous talk was that they intended to ward off  evil Western influences like capitalism, Christianity, Islam, homosexuality, brand culture, Pop music etc and preserve the original Indian culture or something of the sort. It didn’t take me long to find the folly of these ideas. What these persons were propagating was a sectarian, restrictive version of cultural identity that wasn’t Indian at all. In the guise of Hindu principles, apparently because India was after all a Hindu nation after the partition, the ideas being paraded around were extremely narrow, outdated concepts, in the similar vein the Westboro Baptist Church used the Christian faith to spread deluded judgments. True, the Hindu culture was indeed the more ancient of the many cultures that flourished in the subcontinent, but the fact was, it too was an ever-evolving entity, never a constant, stagnant notion like it was being labeled. The culture of India as it stands today was undeniably the product of the many internal and external forces that acted upon the people and their lives over the past few thousand years. The coming of Islam, the varying Sultanates in Delhi, the arrival of Vasco da Gama and the other Western traders and rulers, the spread of Christianity through Missionaries in most of India and the first wave of Christianity in Kerala, the numerous invasions by Eastern and Northwestern tribesmen, the unique geographical and cultural canvas of each part of India; all these ingredients added to the melting pot that was (and is) India to form this most multicultural of societies in the world.

            Indian Culture, as I see it, is an ever-changing, constantly mutating concept grounded in the ancient Vedic traditions, which simply cannot be defined by any of the conventional parameters. Why so? Because there is no such thing as a unified “Indian Culture” that defines a representative “Indianness” for its multicultural people. It is a set of unique micro-cultures spread across its vast landscape, different from each other in distinct and original ways, yet having certain shared threads here and there that give it a semblance of unity. Because of its unique position; sheltered on the North by the greatest mountains in the world (almost like The Wall in Westeros) and the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean on the East, West and South respectively, India has had a rather secluded existence. Sure, many other cultures have come and gone, but none have managed to truly eradicate the native traditions of the landmass, and have instead ingratiated themselves to the original vibrant symphony, shows the fact that the variety and multiplicity of cultures in India is its greatest asset as a society. It is rich, varied and unique in ways no other culture in the world is, and it is all thanks to the ability of the prevalent customs, traditions and cultures to readily appropriate and adapt foreign elements into it and thus replenish and refurbish its existence. A devout Malayali Syrian-Christian is as much an Indian as an atheist Bengali who nevertheless celebrates the Durga-Puja for its cultural value.

            As we all know, regional differences and conflicts are immediate to us than any other potential threat, unless it’s a Cricket match. We are all either Tamilians, or Christians, or Dalits inside, but the ‘Indian’ within us all awakes when the threat is external. It is the elusive Other that unites us, that grants us our Indianness. Our religious and cultural canvas is much to varied to be titled as ‘Indian’ at one go among ourselves. Our culture, in truth, is a smorgasbord of micro-cultures haring tenuous tendrils as binds, each similar and dissimilar to the one next to it in unique and unpredictable ways. The white Chatta-Mundu clad nasrani women of Kerala are as Indian as the devout, effervescent Konkani Christians of Goa.  

            So why this clamour to ‘preserve’ a non-existent thing? Is it a fear of change? Is it plain selfishness , an unwillingness to realize the fact that one’s ideas and beliefs have become outdated and archaic? I don’t know.

            What India is, is a multi-cultural potpourri surviving, indeed thriving, because (and not in spite) of its pluralities. It is because of the array of influences, adaptations and assimilation throughout the ages that India is the most heterogeneous culture in the world. It is when homogeneity is forced upon its people; whether linguistic, cultural, religious or racial, that there is discord and disharmony. Negation of its multiplicities is refuting its rich history and identity. Being Indian is all about being many things at once and be fine with it. It is being a Hindu teenager who thinks in English, but speaks Malayalam, wearing a ‘Lamb of God’ T-shirt, while enjoying a meal of spicy Chinese noodles with a Muslim or Christian classmate, clad in a traditional churidar and believes that evolution is a myth. That, is what being Indian is all about. It means being many things yet transcending them. That is my Indianness.