Let my country awake

Growing up in a mining colony in the 1970s, your defining identity was that of an Indian. At home, we spoke different languages, worshipped different gods and celebrated different festivals, but outside, we were Indian. We spoke a mixture of English and Hindi, with assorted words from other languages thrown in. We landed up in each other’s houses without warning when we learnt their mothers were cooking something good. We exchanged thalis of sweets and savouries during our festivals. And we often ended up celebrating different festivals with our friends.

“Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai. Aapas mein hai bhai bhai”, was not just a slogan for us. We genuinely believed in it. From the folk dances that we took part in during various cultural programmes, to the sheer diversity of food each of our kitchens churned out, to the festivals that were celebrated in the community center. Everything was a living personification of “अनेकता में एकता/ Unity in Diversity”.

As we grew older and moved away from the Projects we had grown up in, we continued to see the country through our ‘Indian’ lenses. The food we ate, the movies we watched, even the people we dated (and later married); everything was Cosmopolitan, Secular, Indian. Our Indianness was our identity, and we continued to view current affairs through our secular lens.

Long after the Babri Masjid was brought down. Long after Godhra and its aftermath. Long after the Hindutva ideology established itself in the political landscape of the country. Long after all that, I continued believing that it was only a fringe element that supported the divisionary politics that were tearing apart the fabric of the country.

It was only since 2014, and, more specifically, after 2019 that I started questioning whether the secular nation I thought I had grown up in actually existed or if it was merely something I had imagined. Maybe my memories were playing tricks on me. Maybe India had never been the haven of co-existance that I imagined it to be.

On the eve of the Bhoomi Poojan of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, I finally articulated what I had been thinking for awhile- had the nation I loved ever existed, or had my image of a secular Indian just been a mirage? I posted on Facebook; a place I often avoid because I cannot predict the responses.

I expected negativity. But I was surprised. Friends heard what I was saying and wrote to tell me that they were happy I had articulated what they felt but feared to say. My friends too were mourning the secularism that they had grown up with and taken for granted, but which no longer existed. “Thank you for saying this”, they said. “If I said it, I would have been branded anti-national. I am glad you did.”

The friends who said that had all grown up in cosmopolitan colonies like the one I’d grown up in. Through their childhood and youth, they never felt they were any different. So close was their indentification with an Indian identity, some had even married non-Muslim men. Their closest friends were still Hindu, their families still went on holidays with Hindu families, and their children spent most of their waking hours with their Hindu friends. The rising fundamentalism hadn’t destroyed those friendships, but their friends had changed. They felt the alienation. They recognized that things were no longer as they had been, and they missed those days.

It was heartbreaking to hear the words they left unsaid. These are the people who have lost most with the rise of fundamentalism. They had identified themselves as secular Indians, but were left bereft when that categorization was done away with.

But even in their heartbreak, I saw a glimmer of hope. They too were mourning a secular India that had once existed, but which has now got eroded. That they felt the vacuum proved that the India I thought I grew up in had actually existed. The India I thought I knew was an Oasis, not a mirage.

What never existed cannot be summoned, but what has been lost can certainly be reclaimed.

“Into that heaven of freedom, let my country awake.”