My Premature Nationality Crisis

To make my first ever website article also my most polarizing one was not a hard decision for me. Ideally, what you want to do is start off with content that is easy to digest for everyone so that you don't scare potential readers away. At least, that's what I read on the internet. But then again, the only reason I'm starting this website is to put my thoughts and ideas out so that I may find like-minded people, and then give them the oppurtunity to do the same. I won't be able to do that if I'm actively censoring my words. So here goes.

The story has many parts, but I think two incidents are enough to give anyone the gist of it.

Incident one. I was doing an internship in Kolkata last year, and every morning on my commute to the workplace I would pass this saffron-clad man in his fifties heading in the opposite direction. He caught my attention because he used to greet everyone he saw with loud dramatic cries of 'Jai Shri Ram'. I had the fortune to be greeted thus on several occasions. I didn't mind it, but I didn't like it much either. Anyway, this one day late into the summer, I saw him standing across a small child who was waiting for his school bus alone, and he was coercing the child to return his salutation. The child appeared reluctant, and the man's mannerism was getting closer and closer to harrassment, until the child's father came and shooed him away. The boy was visibly distraught, and glad to see his father. I didn't run into the guy again, but if I had I was planning on greeting him with a 'Wa'alaikumu salam'. I don't suppose he would have liked that very much.

Incident two. This happened more recently. The film club at my college scheduled a screening of the documentary 'Ram Ke Naam'. Perhaps you can guess what happened next. If not, some students objected, and they threatened to bring goons from outside and wreak havoc if the screening took place. The threat was credible enough that our Director had to call off the event citing concerns to campus safety, marking the first time his hand was forced in such a manner. I have to admit, before this affair I used to think that the people at my college were above all this partisan bullshit, with us being an '...Institute of Science.. and Research'. Evidently, I was wrong.

Episodes that are motivated by the same root causes as the above-mentioned events are taking place all over India today. These just happen to be the ones that I had direct involvement with. I strongly believe that a lot of people reading this would have had similar experiences, experiences which made you wonder as to what the heck is happening here. I'm depending on that very belief in writing this article, hoping to reach out to those who can relate.

I'm a Muslim mostly due to my birth and my name, not so much because of my beliefs or my actions. And so what disturbs me about what is happening in India is not that there's persecution against my community, but that it exists against some community. In all fairness, I have never found a lot of reasons to be proud of India. But if there's one thing that I've always held close to my heart, it is that we were a country continuously striving to be inclusive of all its people, ever since our independence. That we do this despite all the religions and the castes and the cultures and the many other things that divide its citizens. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be true any longer. With that gone, the only true ideological connection that I've ever felt with my country is also gone. What is left in its wake is a citizen who's unsure whether to stay and fight, or to let go and leave.