India and Shah Rukh Khan: Open Letter or Rabid Nationalism?

Last month I got into an argument with someone who posted an inflammatory email in the mail-group I am a member of. I had absolutely no intention of starting into that argument: all I did was to note how shocking the mail was. This upset some others who started abusing me and questioning whether I was an India and then asked that I be expelled from that group. Astonishing.

The original email someone had posted was the notorious "Open Letter" by Arindam Bandyopadhyay, which I suppose was doing rounds through many Indians' email boxes. I should have done some research on who Mr Bandyopadhyay is, before responding, but I focused on the logic of his argument.

Basically, his claim is that the majority opinion must become the only opinion. He asked Indian Muslims to prove their devotion to India and implicitly assumed the preliminary sympathies of all Muslims lie primarily with Pakistan. Some of my points are listed below.

How can one assume that Indians, Hindus even are a monolithic culture? With 3.3 million gods and goddesses, there is ample choice and the clan-based system for marriages practiced by the Rajputs and Jats to this day gives the lie to this assumption. When even all Hindus in the same caste cannot easily agree to something despite speaking the same languages and observing essentially the same festivals, it is monumentally hard to forge a monolithic culture in India. It has not happened in thousands of years despite scores of invasions and settlements, it sure won't happen now.

I mean, heck, can you even get Shiv Sena and their goons to not be out of line and stop claiming that Mumbai is only for the Maharashtrians? I'd like to see Mr. Bandyopadhyay try. Let him go to Bandra.

India as a country it is now existed only very briefly in history, if at all. People forget the Maratha Empire and the Jat Empire. They forget how the Jats stuffed Taj Mahal with hay. They forget how the Marathas were brutal in their conquest of other parts of India and demanded a lot of tribute. After the disintegration of the Maratha Empire, the Holkers and Scindias could not agree on anything. And before that the Rajputs of Rajputana were almost constantly at war with each other. Just like any other country of this size.

He assumes that all the dalits will march under the aegis of upper-caste, upper-class, well educated Hindus. Centuries of malnutrition, lack of education, short life expectancy and lack of basic health care has created a big mass of Indians who live at the fringe of modern India. More and more farmers committing suicide because they cannot stand to live the life. Little has changed for them. These people first want grain and water, then basic hygiene and sanitation -- they do not want to annihilate Pakistan. Not far away from where I grew up, Phoolan Devi shot 12 Thakurs with the same bullet, taking revenge for the abuse she had suffered.

Besides, why are we Indians so obsessed with Pakistan? Pakistan has been a failed country and many intellectual Pakistanis openly accept that the problem with Pakistan is that it was conceived as a "not India" and therefore cannot exist independent of that founding principle. That is a severe limitation for any country. Having said that, by comparing their country to Pakistan, the Indians are doing themselves a disservice and indeed hampering their growth and development.

Culturally, the influence of the Farsi language and Persian culture cannot be wiped clean. A quick study of Farsi reveals that many words used by Hindi speakers (including saugandh [oath], kuchek [some]) came from Farsi. In fact, in rural Uttar Pradesh, people order two cups of tea thus: do tho chai. That is very simply intelligible to a Farsi speaker. Even the word for "I" -- main in Hindi comes from the Farsi man. Right wingers need to get over it, and they will once they realize how deep the roots are.

There has been terrorism committed by Muslims in India, no doubt about that, but how about the massacres in Gujarat that Mr. Modi presided over? Let me share this with you:

I remember being 9 years old when my family and the neighboring families harbored the innocent Sikhs whose life was suddenly put under grave danger on October 31, 1984. Marauding hordes of criminal elements were robbing and killing Sikhs who had nothing to do with Khalistan and asking if there were any Sanps (snakes) in the area, meaning Sikhs. That has never been addressed satisfactorily. So what makes think that all Sikhs or Punjabis even are cool with the assumption of a harmonious, monolithic body? I saw the father of one of my friends burned alive with kerosene and then stabbed to death, all in front of his family. His fault? Being a Sikh. Think about that for a minute. Wasn't this terrorism? Committed by the majority Hindus?

As Santayana said, Those who cannot learn from history are doomed (or compelled) to repeat it. So the right wingers will keep true to form.