Freedom Land

What the situation is, 65 years after independence.

·         20 crore Indians live without adequate food

·         Eight thousand die every day of starvation

·         2 crore children don’t go to school

·         20 crore Indians are illiterate

·         43% children suffer from malnutrition

·         66 crore Indians don’t have access to hygienic sanitation

·         India ranks 66th (Pakistan is 61) on the international hunger index

·         India ranks 132nd among 142 countries in terms of developmental index

These are numbers from a bunch of information links doing the rounds online. While they may not be exactly accurate, (at least, I am not sure whether they are) they are pretty close to the real situation overall. Not much cause to celebrate, if you ask me. Add to that India’s “record” showing at the London Olympics 2012, with 6 whole medals, not one of them gold, and I really don’t think there’s much to CELEBRATE right now.

And then there’s the madness going on all over the country with thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people FROM the seven north eastern states fleeing their places of residence all over India because they no longer feel safe in those places. And why did I just put the FROM in all caps?? Because many of them have been living in those places of education, work, residence, for years, decades even. Yet, one whiff of trouble in some far corner of the country, and they are being attacked, harassed, and driven out to go BACK to this place they are supposed to belong to. Rumours are flying, threats being issued and realized, attacks made, and a large segment of Indians are feeling  threatened within the sovereign territory of India. And news channels and papers are playing up the immigrant situation and the harassment of immigrants. (are these people immigrants in their own country? By what definition? What law?)

It began as a riot/ethnic clashes in certain areas of Assam primarily between illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and the resident farmers. The trouble was over rights to the land, and the attempt to prevent sneak-over-the-border-in-the-night people from encroaching on it. As is the nature of such conflicts, things got bigger and more complicated as it was allowed to go on for longer (although local Muslims are still pretty happy there, and safe), and since the news channels didn’t bother to even try to put anything other than a religious/communal colouring on it, this territorial, anti illegal alien clash began to be seen as another of the Hindu-Muslim riots that we are getting more and more used to. That’s new, although riots in themselves are not. What is really new this time, the year of the 65th anniversary of our becoming a nation, is the backlash against people seen to be from the “north east” in far flung parts of the country -- parts that have nothing to do with Assam, and face no added pressure from the refugee movement generated by the clashes.

From flash riots in Mumbai, to threats and rumours in Pune, Bangalore, and more, the overall perceived threat level has risen sharply, especially in places with a considerable presence of students and workers from the north eastern states. People are leaving in droves, with something like 9700 tickets to Guwahati booked in a single day from a single station, and four extra trains having to be made available to accommodate the huge waves of people leaving from Bangalore on a that ONE day. So, what’s really going on here? Does a bunch of mixed ethnic, mixed community hooligans (the bunch arrested in Bangalore for rumour mongering etc include Hindus and Christians) really care so much about the trouble in Assam? Are they so emotionally invested in, and swayed by, the people rendered homeless in Assam that they have to avenge them by harassing, assaulting, and killing people from Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, and West Bengal?

What it is, is a bunch of people making a noise, lashing out, creating trouble, for reasons and motives of their own. From chauvinistic political parties looking to strengthen their communal vote bases, to ruffians looking for any excuse to indulge in a little vandalism, reasons and motives are many and varied. What concerns me however, really worries me, is how easy it seems to have become to drive a large number of people out of your city, area, state on the pretext that they don’t belong. I am concerned because, this has a lot to do with people like me. As I blogged in January 2010 in SporadicDiaspora (premonition? Foreshadowing?), I belong to the increasingly larger segment of the population who are not really FROM anywhere. Of course, this is a concept most Indians don’t seem to get. So, for me there was never a question of going BACK to some safe place where I belong.

As populations grow and resources become strained, such things are only going to get more common. The refrains of “go back to where you belong” will continue to get louder as the years roll by, as they have in the last few decades, posing a massive problem for me and my ilk. I don’t BELONG. Having lived in some six different states till date, I have no domicile, no hometown. As for Bengal, I have no roots there, I don’t have a mental emotional connection there, and I don’t belong there. Yet, I have recently acquired a flat in Kolkata, a sort of roof over the head arrangement, even though it is no secret how much I have come to dislike the place over the last few years. A childhood friend, someone I have known for the last 36 years, and who is in kind of the same predicament, was fantasizing last week about selling up Kolkata flats when we are older, and moving back to Dehradun, where we were born, to live out our retirements.

While that sounds unbelievably lovely, and nostalgia inducing, I realize it is never gonna happen. As I was explaining to my chuddy buddy, no matter how much we feel like we are not  REALLY Bengali, no matter how much more comfortable we are outside Bengal as opposed to in Kolkata, no matter how much Doon, or Pune, feels like home, like where the soul belongs, for the “other” we will always remain outsiders. People will always ask “are you a local?” and mean “are you Garhwali/Maharashtrian?” they will always ask “where are you “originally” from?”, leaving you speechless, and when push comes to shove, they will – nicely or not so nicely – ask you to leave. It happened and continues to happen in many states, and is only getting worse. The Bengalis I know who chose to remain in Dehradun after their retirement are already facing problems, and they belong to my parents’ generation. How much worse are things going to get by the time we are ready to retire? In Maharashtra too, the erstwhile muted murmurs of the “Maharashtra for Marathi manoos” political language have been getting louder over the last decade. As the focus shifts from Biharis to the North Easterners, I can only wonder how long before it shifts again…to the Bengali.

And if it does, as it eventually will, where do I go? So, I have that little roof over the head insurance in the land that I feel no belonging in, in case I have to leave all the lands I feel connected to, in case it becomes impossible for me, or my child, to live threat free, safe lives in all the places I would rather live in. what makes me really sad, angry, disillusioned, disgusted, and depressed is to see this drama unfold each morning on the news, where on the 65th anniversary of the formation of a nation people of the nation are not free to live in their choice of location in it. To see that in this free land, this secular democracy, a segment of its own citizens is being called “immigrant”, to see that they are being driven to drop educations, livelihoods, settled lives to go BACK to a state where they supposedly BELONG, makes me fear for my future and that of my child outside the mythical land of my belonging.

Durga Puja tales

The Bengali, worldwide, begins going totally nuts around three and a half months before Durga Puja. Held sometime in September/October of every year (the date varies due to the fact that it is based on the lunar calendar), Durga Puja is not just the biggest festival of Bengal, and not just a Hindu festival. It is a cultural festival, a reaffirmation of one’s Bengali roots, history, and heritage, everywhere on the planet outside of Bengal. Within Bengal, it is one of those rare festivals that are completely enjoyed by all communities, and whose religious significance is the least important thing about it.

The countdown begins, as I said, some three months before the event, with all the satellite channels beginning to air pointed adverts, and promos of Pujo related competitions and such. Text messages start arriving from friends and relatives telling me how many days remain, and chat contacts begin to ask if I will be in Kolkata for the event. When I give an emphatic NO in response, they, especially the ones FROM Kolkata, are flabbergasted, amazed, and confused. “But why!” they ask, after all you are a bengali, so why wouldn’t you wish to enjoy the biggest festival of the Bengali year?

Well, first of all, I am not MISSING anything. Because no matter where they are on the planet, Bengalis always have their Durga Puja. From the full 6 day extravaganza in Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, et al, to the weekends only but massive affairs in the US, there is no WAY a Bengali is not going to celebrate this single largest event of his/her cultural year. And, secondly, I MUCH prefer the probasi…or outside-of-Bengal version of the festivities. Of course even saying this is enough to cause most of my Kolkata Bengali contacts to freak out completely. From being anti Bengali to being mentally unstable, all kinds of theories will be brought in to explain this complete impossibility.  And such is the knee-jerk nature of the response these people have to such a sacrilegious statement that even trying to explain is often futile. To the slightly more rational, my reasons sometimes make sense.

First of all, I am not from Kolkata. And never have been. For most Bengalis and non-Bengalis living in Kolkata, Puja is the time to catch up and hang out with friends and relatives. Like many people go home for Diwali, or Ganpati, Kolkattans flock back to the city, from wherever they may have gone to study or work, for the Puja week. As a result, long lost friends reunite, people you haven’t seen for years are suddenly in town and ready to spend hours in adda at college square, and cousins are vying for the honour of hanging out with you. However, this is true ONLY IF YOU ARE FROM KOLKATA, HAVE GROWN UP THERE, AND HAVE A CONSIDERABLE GROUP THERE! For me, all it means is having to leave home, and be in an unfamiliar city which doesn’t feel like home, and to compete for the attention of the few friends and cousins I have in the city with all their friends! It's meaningless! Why would I want to take them away from their groups, or be the unwanted tagalong with a bunch of people i don't know very well, or at all ?

Secondly, I really don’t enjoy what Puja seems to stand for in Kolkata. All it seems to entail is getting dressed up to the nine pins, stepping out into the impossibly hot and sultry weather, fighting wave after wave of teeming humanity, and walking for miles and miles to get to serpentine queues which can stretch for more than 2 kilometers, for the privilege of standing and sweltering, getting my butt pinched and being felt up, and crawling along foot by foot for hours to get into ONE pandal. Multiply this exercise by about 4 or 5 per evening, and you have basically managed to get a very clear picture of my idea of hell.

Our PROBASI pujas are a lot more user friendly. Having seen the annual event in at least 10 Indian cities, I can see the clear differences. We live far from our roots, in places where if not all the time, at least part of the time we feel like outsiders. So, the festive week is out time to celebrate our cultural and genetic heritage. It is a burst of reveling in our Bengaliness. It is a weeklong fest of Bengali food, music, dance, drama, film, and more. A normal probasi puja day for me goes something like this. We wake, bathe, get dressed up, and head for the pandal. Once congregated, it is one long session of adda, frequently punctuated by such bong yummies as chicken rolls and cutlets, and mishti, until it is time for the BHOG.

The bhog is lunch, and is a massive endeavour, feeding thousands of people in huge batches. Everyone who comes to the pandal gets fed, regardless of language, religion, social or economic standing etc, and they all eat together. The seating, service, and tableware are all the same. The serving is done by volunteers, from among us. That stuck up kid that you dislike so much suddenly seems to forget his/her uppishness, and thinks nothing of carrying heavy buckets of hot khichdi and sabzi to serve to all those rows of hungry people waiting for the Prasad.  The only things I can think of where the atmosphere is similar is the Langars of the Gurudwaras. The same communal atmosphere permeates, with very la di da, perfectly made up women thinking nothing of sitting down on the dusty concrete verandah in her muli thousand saree to chop tonnes of vegetables, and normally particular youngsters never wearing anything but the best western clothes begin running around serving hot food with not a care about the spillage and splotches on their expensive ethnic festive wear!

The massive undertaking of lunch being over, the older crowd heads home, while the younger crowd settles down for some more “hangin out”. One does head home around 5 ish, for a change of outfit, before getting back to the pandal around 8. From then on, it’s a fest of culture, with locally produced and imported (from Kolkata usually) shows of Bengali music, dance, dance drama, theatre and so on. After these, late at night, is movie time. Some of my best puja memories involve multiple and disastrous accidents with ancient projectors and trashy commercial bangla films, where half the time you hear nothing, half the time you have no picture, and most of the time its all out of sync anyway. But who cares! That’s part of the fun! And while I have sat through utter trash like “Beder Meye Josna” on these occasions, I have also seen some masterpieces of older Bengali cinema that I would otherwise have missed.

And, unlike in Kolkata, this is all a family event! In Kolkata, all the puja seeing, travel, pandal hopping, seems to be done by the younger crowd only. Even the middle aged don't seem to step out much, forget the senior citizens. And even if they do, it is almost never as families. The kids take off on their own, and the parents do their thing separately. With us, we go as a family. Maybe the older generation leaves sooner to go home, or sits in one central location while the younger bunch does a few surrounding pandals, but overall, its a FAMILY thing. The day only ends at something like 5 am, when we finally stagger home, to catch a few hours of sleep before a repeat performance begins the next morning, usually at a different pandal! After all cool stuff is happening at all of them! Sure we don’t spend lakhs on décor and lighting, but we have a LOT of fun. That’s Durga puja for me, not to mention being around MY friends, hanging out with MY crowd. Now what on earth would I want to give all that up for? So thanks a lot but no thanks is how I feel about KOLAKATAR pujo. Probasi pujo does just fine for me.

Sporadic Diaspora

I am an Indian writer in English. Yes, that’s a new official category in the world of words. It also gives you an edge if you wish to be published. An added advantage is to be a person of Indian origin living in the Diaspora. However, that’s a category I don’t officially fit into, because I am an Indian living in India. A lot of noise has been made in recent times, especially in literary circles about the experience of the Diaspora, and how the displacement, the clash of cultures seems to produce great depth in art. The person of Indian origin in the US, the UK, and around the world is living the Diaspora, creating and destroying ‘imaginary homelands’ and, occasionally, making art.

But are displacements, and culture clashes, only a result of movements over such large distances? What about people like me? The way I see it, I am a third generation nomad; more than 60 years into my own family’s Diaspora; and there are hundreds of thousands like me in India, and millions around the world. The only difference between them and me, is that a large part of our displacement, at least during my own lifetime, has been voluntary, while most internally displaced people have been “forced” to leave their ‘homes’, usually by civil war.

One of the persistent problems I keep having when I meet people, online as well as offline, is questions like ‘where are you from originally’. In the Indian context at least, most people are almost single mindedly obsessed with roots and origins. And even if issues like caste, surname, and language can be avoided or explained away (for more on this check out Chat Masala 2009 ), hometown, “native”, or ‘bari’ is an obsession. No matter how much you try to explain that you have lived in too many cities to call any one of them ‘home”, it does not compute. You still have pressure to tell people what your gaon is. The concept, of course, is that everyone – but everyone – has a nice little ‘native village’ complete with grandparents, ponds, cows and acres of land.

It is practically impossible for these people to grasp the fact that I don’t have a Native. The only semblance of an ancestral home, native, bhite, bari, had to be abandoned during the madness that was the partition. My barely-forty grandfather and his much younger wife landed up in a small mufassil town in West Bengal with three kids, and barely the clothes they stood in. The story was more or less the same for my other grandparents as well. Thirty something years, and at least six cities later, both passed away, one in Kolkata, one in Tripura.

My parents, having grown up in half a dozen cities, married, and moved to another dozen or so cities in their turn. Bhai and I lived, and loved every minute of, a completely nomadic life. Bengalis though we are we’ve never lived, or been educated in, Bengal and we don’t have a family home there either. In his late middle age, dad did acquire a flat in kolkata, but it’s a kind of way station. Locked up most of the time, it is used as holiday accommodation for my still-firmly-bitten-by-wanderlust parents. Dad has changed four cities in the last two and a half years, if that’s any indication of how mobile they still are.

Having grown up in so many cities, I really don’t feel like I have a hometown, and I definitely don’t feel that I am “from” Bengal. I am proud of my Bengali heritage, sure, but I am much more than that. I have absorbed so many things from practically every corner of the country, growing up as I did, that “who are you” – for me – has become a very large question, demanding much more than the pigeonholing definitions we are accustomed to think in.

Another side effect of having moved so much, and never having lived in “our state”, is that although I speak fluent and idiomatic Bangla, my knowledge of contemporary Bengali popular culture is sporadic at best. After all, all the music, films, books, that I have been exposed to, were things my parents owned. Cool and hip as they are, they are still the previous generation, and themselves removed from the source to boot. Obviously they have gaps too, which have been passed on to me, and become intensified in the transfer, as newer things have been produced in Bengal.

So, essentially, I am twice removed, at least, from my roots. Like all the second or third generation displaced, all I know about the place my family is from, is as a result of stories I have heard first hand from my grandparents, or one step removed, from my parents. That’s textbook ‘imaginary homelands’, because their memories and renditions are also coloured by the passage of time and a sense of loss. This puts me firmly in the Diaspora in certain essential ways. In others though, I am not so displaced after all. Like all results of internal displacements, voluntary or forced, I am surrounded by the familiar. The larger similarities that exist in most Indian states and their cultures camouflage the many differences to a large extent. This also prevents one from feeling as lost, alienated, and confused as first generation immigrants to any land feel, mitigating the sense of loss and the hurt of leaving everything behind to a large extent.

Still, there are growing similarities, and the differences are waning around the world. Racism, for example, which is a fact of life for most immigrants is supposed to be absent in internal displacement scenarios. But is it? Resentment for the ‘other’ who has come in to snatch my jobs, my opportunities, and to claim a share of my resources is ever present, and only natural. You can see it in the still-existing bangal ghoti rift, more than 60 years after partition; it is evident in how the ‘locals’ and the ‘refugees’ still look at each other with suspicion, and talk about each other with derision not just here but all over the world.
With ‘dhartiputra’ movements gathering strength in more and more Indian states, there is an ever strengthening muted murmur of ‘go home go home’ that seems to be ringing in my ears these days. This causes a not inconsiderable problem for the likes of me. What is home? Where is this ‘native place’ that I am supposed to belong to? Where am I supposed to go to when I am kicked out of the places I live in for being something called a Bengali?