Often there is an enigma that westerners associate with India. What pulls them to this mystic land? It is our diversity that amazes them; how a land of such diverse cultures, beliefs and practices has survived through the times and is now flourishing and prospering.
I have been lucky to be born in a country where there can be a mosque where a maulana sings praises of Allah in the same street that houses a temple singing praises of Lord Rama and where a Sikh procession could be taking place all at the same time. A lot of other Christians, Jains, Buddhists etc could be feeling inconvenienced because of this but they just join the ruckus because this is what India truly is. I am proud of being born in a country where I can witness such freedom of expression and religion. This is what others around the world find amazing and this is what we Indians sometimes don’t realize. We don’t realize that being an Indian means trying to look for the evading similarities in the evident differences.
To most today, India is just another word in their vocabulary. After all most ‘Indians’ are Marathis, Punjabis, Gujaratis, etc, etc. and their religious or regional identity is supreme as compared to the national identity.
I read an account of India by an American tourist on the internet the other day in which he narrated an incident when on returning to the United States was asked how his trip to India was. He replied saying, “It was good, except that I did not meet any Indian there.” To the perplexity of the questioner he answered that he met a Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali but nowhere did he meet an Indian. It left a deep impression on me.
Sadly but very correctly this is what our country has been reduced to. The ideals and sacrifices of Gandhiji, Bhagat Singh and hundreds others that yielded such uncompromising levels of national integration have now been reduced to shreds.
I am a guy who has seen almost the whole of the country. I have been brought up in Shillong which is the capital of Meghalaya in the North East.I have frequented the Northern plains and am now staying in Mumbai for the past three years.
I have experienced such vast differences in culture, lifestyles, language, food and also looks if you compare the people in the North east to the ones in mainland India. I have experienced vast differences but also seen a glimmer of hope through the never ending circus of being Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi; of also being an Indian before all that.
There are often events of such magnitude that force you to stop in your tracks; events that bind you to the country and make you think of it as a whole; they make you think about the India that is not just spoken of in newspaper headlines and International conventions. They make you think of the India that you experience around you every day.
One such event was surely the 26th November 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Until that day I was of the impression that only cricket and Bollywood had the ability to bind the country together. That belief of mine was shattered when I saw ten gunmen from Pakistan bind the country together for at least a week. The whole of our country was shocked, concerned, angry.
That was probably the day which made people across the country realize what the terrorists had come after. They had not come after a Marathi, a Gujarati or a Punjabi. They had come after the vibrant image of INDIA. They were out to tarnish India’s image and tarnish it they did. They wanted to send out an image of a weak India; not a weak state in India; but India as a whole.
The terrorists did not spare any Marathi, any Punjabi or Gujarati. It was enough for him that he was killing an Indian. He wanted to kill an Indian and that was the only qualification one needed to die.
That was the day that made me realise that I was an Indian before being anything else. I cried and felt livid looking at landmarks of a city burn that I had known for just a year. I saw the Mumbai Police, the army and the NSG from Haryana fight a common enemy. I saw a major from Bangalore die in Mumbai. I went out onto the streets with thousands of others to protest the attack and incapability of us; of India to deal with it. I felt a fire in my bosom that was fuelled by hatred towards a common enemy.
Yes, we did realise our Indianness, or rather we discovered what being an Indian felt like collectively. But, that sense of ‘Unity in Diversity’ in its true sense was something that sadly did not last for a long time.
The dirty politics of caste and religion came back to entangle us in its vast mesh. The mesh that had its thread firmly fastened around us for a long time but it seemed for some time we might be able to finally break free.
People who play games of regional and religious politics need to realize that we are all Indians first. And that will happen only when there is a realization amongst all of us that we are Indians first.
Ten men from Pakistan on 26/11/2008 with AK-47s made me realize what being an Indian was. We do not need another 26/11 to wake up to being an Indian. When are you realizing that you are an Indian?
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