The other day, I received a call from a distressed friend in Sharjah. He told me he was scared to go home to India because, for the first time, he felt unwelcome. “I am a Muslim after all,” he said. That hit me hard; it was the first time that a friend had reminded me of his faith in an unpleasant context. But this is not just about one expatriate Indian.
Each time we visit home, my children are asked how they feel about being there. The question comes in many forms, from as many corners – friends, acquaintances, even strangers. The questions sometimes have serious undertones. I realised this a few years ago, when a family member expressed disappointment at the children’s lack of excitement over their visit. She took their reaction as an indicator of our failure to instil in them a sense of attachment to their roots. Such sentiment is typical in a society steeped in traditionalism. This is not a grave matter, I explained, as the children had been out of their home country from a very young age. Like many expatriate children, they consider the UAE their home. It’s the place they know and love more than any other.
But something about their attitude worried me. During a recent trip to India, I felt a sense of fear in them. Unlike before, they preferred to stay within the confines of home and hesitated to go anywhere unescorted. They told me that they were scared of being attacked. “I don’t know who my enemy is here,” my daughter told me, adding that she had been keeping a close watch on developments in India.
In today’s digital world, knowledge rules all. And it seems that not a day passes without a media report about rape, murder or kidnapping in India.
India is changing – but sometimes not for the better. Over the past month alone, a man was killed for allegedly eating beef, a boy was killed for trading in cows, a man was killed for having the temerity to go to a temple and a Dalit (low-caste) family was stripped naked by policemen.
Freedom of expression has seldom been under so much threat. Writers are killed for expressing their opinions and those who are outraged about these attacks have their motives questioned. In March, a bomb attack on the office of a Tamil television channel took the growing intolerance in society to new heights. When the channel showed trailers of a programme it intended to telecast on the relevance of the thali or mangalsutra – a neck ornament worn by Hindu women as a symbol of marriage and a living husband – in contemporary India, it received threatening calls. Callers turned abusive when women answered the phone. The channel decided to call off the show, which was to be a debate about whether battered or abandoned wives still needed to wear a thali.
Art and sport are not being spared. Last month, a Mumbai concert by Ghulam Ali, a Pakistani singer who enjoys huge popularity in India, had to be cancelled after Shiv Sena, the Hindu right-wing party affiliated with the BJP, threatened to disrupt the performance. Meanwhile, the International Cricket Council withdrew Pakistani umpire Aleem Dar from further matches in the India versus South Africa series after activists stormed the Board of Control for Cricket in India headquarters and threatened to prevent the umpire from officiating in the fifth ODI.
“Although this intolerance seems to be directed largely at a section of the society as well as Pakistan, there is no method in the madness,” my daughter argued. My boy had a similar view and expressed wonder at the rape of two girls, aged two and five, in Delhi last month.
India has a millennia-old culture of tolerance and acceptance of a diverse, multilayered ethos. Is that at stake?
Fortunately not, as was clear in the Bihar election this month in which the BJP conceded defeat. Even if it was a state election, the result encapsulated the verdict of the nation. Playing the religion or caste card isn’t enough for any party to win any more. More than ever, it requires appealing to the middle-of-the-roaders, who want economic growth, jobs and security, not communal disharmony.
Prime minister Narendra Modi has often attempted to inspire a patriotic fervour among Indian expatriates, urging them to return home and contribute to the nation building. That itself is not a bad proposition, although there is one problem: for today’s generation, patriotism is often more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. It’s loyalty to a country’s ideals – those for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion. It is this loyalty that allows a country teeming with different races and ethnicities, religions and customs, to come together as one. That’s the kind of patriotism that India’s leadership must inspire in the youth. An inability to do so would only alienate them – just like my children – whose contributions could be crucial to fulfil the dream that Mr Modi has for India.
smukherjee@thenational.ae
