Who is an Indian?

Partha Sengupta has sent the following two pieces.
Makes you thing where have all the Indian gone?
Surely not to America.
They were called Red-Indians.

Please don't let it happen!

AN AMERICAN VISITED INDIA AND WENT BACK TO AMERICA
WHERE HE MET HIS INDIAN FRIEND WHO ASKED HIM
HOW DID YOUU FIND MY COUNTRY?
THE AMERICAN SAID IT IS A GREAT COUNTRY WITH SOLID ANCIENT HISTORY
AND IMMENSELY RICH WITH NATURAL RESOURCES.
THE INDIAN FRIEND THEN ASKED ….
AND HOW DID U FIND INDIANS …….??
INDIANS??
WHO INDIANS??
I DIDNT FIND OR MEET A SINGLE INDIAN
THERE IN INDIA…….
WHAT NONSENSE??
WHO ELSE CAN YOU MEET IN INDIA THEN……??
THE AMERICAN SAID ……..
IN KASHMIR I MET A KASHMIRI–
IN PUNJAB A PANJABI—–
IN BIHAR,MAHARASTRA, BENGAL, TAMILNADU
I MET A BIHARI, MARATHI, BENGALI, TAMILIAN………
THEN I MET
A HINDU,
A MUSLIM,
A CHRISTIAN,
A JAIN,
A BUDDHIST
A SIKH
A YADAV
A KURMI
A BRAHMIN
A JAT
A MEENA
A DALIT
AN OBC
A KAYASTHA
A RAJPUT
AND MANY MANY MANY MORE
BUT NOT A SINGLE INDIAN DID I MEET

…………………………………………………………..

THINK HOW SERIOUS THIS JOKE IS……………..
THE DAY WOULD NOT BE FAR OFF WHEN INDEED WE WOULD
BECOME A COLLECTION OF NATION STATES AS SOME
REGIONAL ANTI-NATIONALS WANT ...
FIGHT BACK -
ALWAYS SAY WE ARE INDIANS……..

DON'T LET THE POLITICIANS DIVIDE US.

.............................................

THE INDIAN DILEMMA-
WHO IS INDIAN , WHAT IS HIS LINGUA FRANCA

A nation can be one only when each and every one of its citizen can sing, cry and express himself in one common language.

At some point of time in each one’s life the questions of one’s roots and ethnicity are bound to come up. Books abound on the subject of ROOTS. In my case doubts came up when my rich Sindhi grandfather died in New Delhi.

As the eldest grandson, I anticipated I would to be heir to some legacy through his will. I got nothing. Where, I questioned, was the feeling of the ‘united, joint family’ that kept the Indians tied to each other with invisible, yet strong bonds? It was disappointing to say the least. This is modernity for you, I was told.

My grandfather was originally, a trader of carpets from Sind.
He left Karachi by sea in the early 1900s and travelled to Colombo.
There he sold carpets and wares to passengers aboard cruise liners plying between Europe, the East and Australia. He was tall, handsome, fair complexioned and sported a chiselled Grecian nose. I presume this can be attributed to Alexander the Great’s foray into Sind when the Greek army freely copulated with the local Sindhi women. As a Sindhi, he was a charming salesperson. His business abroad thrived. Every time he went back to Karachi to his diminutive spouse, he gave her the gift of another child in her womb. His thirst for adventure kept him going and by the 1930’s he had decided to come to New Delhi and open an English book and printing shop. The new business did well in the Kashmiri Gate area of Old Delhi. When the British built Cannaught Place, he wisely shifted his business and residence to Lutyen’s New Delhi.

Bhawnani’s bookshop became a landmark stop for the rich, the learned and other high and mighty; including Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The ‘Discovery of India’ by Nehru was distributed by this shop in New Delhi and I, myself treasure an autographed copy.

I was born in a small room just above that famous book shop on the same day, that Shakespeare made famous in ‘Julius Caesar’; Caesar is told by his aide to ‘beware the ides of March’. The year was 1939. Europe was rumbling. Delhi was the rip roaring and lively Capital of British India. People in Delhi and my maternal relations in far away Karachi were all a part of one British India. Our family and that of Iftkar Ahmed (Ifty) were all ‘Hindustani’; citizens of ‘Hindustan’. Even our English speaking friends referred to us as ‘the Langotiya Yars’ (Bosom friends).At that time, Muslims and Hindus lived harmoniously.

Suddenly as a tryst with destiny on 15th August 1947, the day of the partition, there came a wave of change and violent turmoil followed. Friends became enemies. Suddenly Iftkar became a Pakistani and his family was forced to migrate. He was no longer an Indian (it was years later, in Trincomalee, I happened to meet Ifty who had in the meantime joined the Pakistan Navy). Muslim bodies mutilated during riots became a common sight in India and Hindu bodies by the thousands could be found in Pakistan.A million souls lost their bodies.

Sind, West Punjab and East Bengal became a part of Pakistan, and Sindhis, Punjabis and Bengalis were seen pouring in , into India. The migrant', lands and homes in both countries were taken over by the Controller of Evacuee Property. A bosom friend of my father, Dr Quereshi of New Delhi came to seek refuge in our house with his entire family, fleeing to save their lives.

As a child, I saw our home accommodate my maternal grandparents and fifteen other relatives from Karachi. They were jobless and homeless and in some cases, even penniless. They were called ‘refugees’ in India. They pined for their homes; now lost in Pakistan and struggled to survive as immigrants. With this background, the question of roots and ethnicity has always dogged me; an Indian. Lack of cohesion of any one language, religion and strict caste barriers has rankled me, as they do many Indians.

I married a Brahmin girl from Mangalore, after some opposition from her parents, it was a Kshatriya Sindhi wanting to marry a Higher Caste; only to realise with the passage of time that our children would be neither Sindhis nor Mangaloreans, nor true Brahmins.

When I applied for admission to school for my sons in Maharashtra, I was asked where I was domiciled and what was I? I replied, I was an Indian. I was told that, that was not enough; one had to be domiciled in a state. Being just an ‘Indian’ is not an adequate, tangible identity.

There are Indians who are Singaporeans, Malaysians, Hong Kongers, Fijians and Americans. Indians have done well worldwide. In U. K, seven among the richest hundred, are Indians. Indians have been Cabinet Ministers in Fiji, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Singapore and have played key roles in many other countries. Indians, ethnic and non-ethnic, are also found in the Americas. Abroad, they seem to do exceedingly well and are dubbed non-resident Indians-NRI's, and are afforded special privileges in India.

No wonder, foreigners often, and Indians more often, are stumped when asked the question ,Who is an Indian? ?

Can one truly categorise an Indian? Jawaharlal Nehru remarked, “I belong to everywhere and am at home nowhere." This comment lays bare the fact that there is some doubt in the minds of many about who really is an Indian. One is a Punjabi, a Sindhi, a Goan, a Tamilian, a Maharashtrian, a Bengali and so forth. Traits, dress, food, language and even often times, religion can be identified, but not an Indian per se. One has empathy for one's ethnic lineage, yet when one asks who then is Indian --the question stumps.

India from River Indus, paradoxically now in Pakistan? It merely means anyone living in or originating from India; there is no serious cohesion about it. One can go further and say Aryans, proto Aryans and Dravidians who descended into the subcontinent, are Indians. Yet each came to formulate a certain language; finally giving today's India a list of ten principal languages and many of their dialects. There is no common language that bonds and melts us together. The Chinese have spoken dialects but all can read one language. Therein lies an advantage with them.

Those Indians who had cohabited with the Britishers and their offspring, came to be called Anglo Indians. Salman Rushdie has written about them and their travails in ‘Midnight’s Children.' Today many of these, have migrated to Australia and Canada and those that remain struggle to be Indian. They have an Anglo Indian representative in Parliament, and the Westerners now call them Eurasian; to give them an identity. English is and was, their Lingua Franca.

There once was a ‘Hindustan’ where lived the Hindustanis, but with the partition of India and Pakistan it had become difficult to define the Indian, for he no longer called himself Hindustani. This is a problem for India and Indians. This cold, stark fact has to be faced.

Seeking deeper into this aspect of the country might actually get one closer to understanding, and thereby resolving the problems hindering progress in India; despite a recent survey that shows Indians as a group doing well in America, United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. Poverty, I believe deepens the difference amongst people and so poor Indians lean on local pride and shelve national pride.

Another approach is possibly to define Indians, genetically. Genes are the blue prints of life. They are carried on thread like bodies called chromosomes mainly in the nuclei of cells. An exercise proved that North Indians come closer to Caucasoid/ Mongoloid than those in the South do. Masatoshe Nei a Japanese geneticist settled in USA showed that caste had some connection with genes. Difference between castes and communities has genetic links in case of Indians. The aspect of religion is another paradigm approached separately, for Hinduism has been called a way of life.

If the premise that for various reasons in the last five decades of Independence there is a lack of cohesive Indianness about the people in India or its establishment, is accepted, then one can only, try to analyse why this happened?

In 1947 when India got its Independence luminaries like Nehru (Kashmiri), JRD Tata (Parsi), Lala Sri Ram (Uttari), HN Kunzru (Kashmiri), PC Mahalonobis (Bengali), Vikram Sarabhai (Gujarati), Homi Bhaba (Parsi), MC Chagla (Muslim), PN Haksar (UP Muslim), LK Jha (Bihari) helped to push the country forward by the tempered use of English as a medium. But soon English was suppressed and Hindi, spoken by only 40% of India, was thrust on the people. Hindi became Sanskritised and difficult for the majority. Many, especially in south India, resisted against such enforcement. The lack of one language in India became a serious debility.

Nothing touches the people, moves a race as intimately as their common language. A universal truth, this. Leaders have laboured to bring about a single language; great leaders being one, over this issue.

Suharto and before him Sukarno in Indonesia cajoled and shoved “Bhasa” down the people’s throats and adapted it to the English script. It took Indonesia 25 years to achieve success.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew chose Malay to cohese the people and let English loose in the business world. Now that Singapore is rich, Mandarin is being revived.

The French abide by one French language and took it into Switzerland and the Benelaux countries. All Seychellois speak Creole and so on.

Nations that stumble allow English to flourish.

Will India continue to stumble or will English rejuvenate true Indianness alongside Hindustani? Hindustani, is an amalgamation of common words from various parts of India and a classic example is our filmy Hindi. A new language appears to be emerging at least in the Northern parts of the country and the metropolitans ,better known as "Hinglish". Also, now our very own supposedly modern writers have started using this for fiction and TV.

It is food for thought, for English can be our forte; as it is proving to be in the field of software and cyber space. Once we are economically able, Hindi can be supported, not the other way around. As India globalises and liberalises to hook into the world with aspirations, our economic leaders can do this subtly. The modern tools of mass communications have come as blessings, only if we choose to employ them.