On Refusing To Be a Hindu Apologist in Hindustan

I am suffering from “double consciousness” these days – a trouble of always looking at myself through the eyes of a pseudo-secular society and measuring myself by the means of an activists’ led nation that looks back at me with contempt.

My life was marked by a strict dichotomy between the religious, spiritual, conventional and ritualistic vibe of my home that was full of pictures and statues of Hindu Gods and Goddesses and would be reverberating with the chants of sacred hymns and Sanskrit Mantras from my parents every morning, and the, irreligious, secular, activist and non-conformist vibe at my work place which had people of different faiths, orientations and dispositions, sometimes aware of, at other times not even aware of but never mindful of such individual differences, working and enjoying together in harmony and tranquillity.

When I went to work, the markers of my Hindu background were stripped away and I faced no favouritism or prejudice from my peers and colleagues.

I faced or feared no social consequences of my being a Hindu and for me assimilation in the work-milieu was solely driven by my interpersonal and professional skills. I observed that there were many other Hindus besides Muslims, Sikhs, Jains and Christians amongst the co-workers and we looked forward to sharing of sweets and food often because there would always be some religious festival coming up one after the other. I looked forward to “sevaiyaan” and “kadaah-parshad” coming from homes of Muslim and Sikh colleagues as they in turn waited for “Modak” and “Charan-amrit” from my home.

Until the aftermath of the incidents of 06 December 1992 and 12 March 1993, I never had to be watchful of my being a Hindu in my social circle at work or amongst friends. Something changed and I found it difficult to openly talk about my religion due to a perceived risk of alienating my Muslim colleagues and friends. I was scared that they would perceive me differently if they would know my belief in my shrines and my sense of loss at the hands of foreign invaders many centuries ago. As a result, I was left to deal with an ethnic and religious difference which always existed but never mattered before, and had suddenly surfaced as important without a reliable social support system. Suddenly, micro-aggressions in individual spaces became more difficult to ignore. Slick comments from some of my Hindu friends, who would abuse and accuse Hinduism, more than the non-Hindus, were far more confusing and harder to get over.

In the wake of such developments, I no longer thought about Hinduism as an irrelevant concept that I never paid attention to because of the pluralistic workplace and diversity amongst friends I had made. Over the years, my relationship with my Hindu friends deteriorated because they made flippant racial comments and insisted that my new interest in Hinduism was offensive. When some suggested a “protest” in support of secularism but used it as a smoke screen behind which to propagate their pseudo-secular, pseudo-liberal and pseudo-intellectual credentials, I was forced to acknowledge the ways in which my identity is diametrically at odds with such of my friends.

Later, when I confronted some of them, they could only argue without any convictions, information, awareness, understanding or wisdom. For me, their posing to be secular through taking up an anti-Hindu posture was an acknowledgment of the baggage that comes with their being a Hindu in a space populated by politically opportunistic anti-Hindu discourse which they are incapable of meeting through reasonable arguments. Because most Hindus are unable to defend against such malicious propagandists, they have meekly joined them. For them, my arguing with them became a sign that I was becoming one of “those Hindus” who “makes everything about Hinduism,” a transgression against their supposed religious neutrality of their majority society. This tension came to a head when my closest friends of years of mutual understanding started insisting that despite “Same Spirit towards all religions” as ethos of Hinduism, Hindus like them are seculars and Hindus like me are non-seculars; but such binary classifications do not apply to Muslims and Christians, whose basic ideology considers all other religions as inferior. In spite of my indoctrination into “equal reverence towards all religions” and my informed support to the doctrine, I am branded as a fundamentalist. In contrast, just to propagate their own pseudo-equanimity, my friends who were similarly indoctrinated, are willingly stooping as low as to vilify Hinduism and eulogise the religions of the invaders of Hindustan. This has pushed me to my breaking point because my friends’ pseudo-liberalism is no longer masked or diminishable.

No matter how I speak or what congregations I attend, I will never be safe from the assumptions my peers will make about me, my environs, or my affiliates. After all my meticulous efforts to avoid anything that would code my being a Hindu as “non-liberal” or “non-secular,” I seem to have committed the biggest sin of all: distinguishing myself through my beliefs and my arguments. Even well-intentioned insistence of a lot of my friends that they “don’t see any -ism” in me is slightly infuriating because “if you don’t see my being a Hindu then you don’t see me.”

Throughout the last 25 years, many of my choices were rooted in my desire to maintain my dual identities. I stifled righteous rage inside me and ignored threats to my self-worth in order to remain assimilated into my educated secular peer group, but I could not erase my Hindu-ness and I cannot swallow bile in order to please my friends.

Speaking up for Hindus means “outing” myself as “non-secular” and living in the truth of being a Hindu from Hindustan, the only homeland for Hindus, riddled with poverty and subservience, but also community and love. By now I have internalized this message and I am happy to be “just a Hindu.”

Things have changed. The markers of Muslim faith are specially being flaunted in public in the form of Burqa, Hizab, Niqab, skull-cap, short pyjama, beards, and so on, have increased visibility in classrooms, markets, streets and office campuses. There is a clear aggregation amongst Muslims and their separation from the rest of the people leading to favouritism and tolerance within the groups but discrimination and prejudice across the groups. Higher population growth amongst Muslims and clustering of Muslims in ghettos identified as “mini-Pakistans” within each city are a new undeniable reality of Hindustan.

While things have changed, I finally have given to myself the freedom to deal with them with the entirety of my person, without having to hide the particular stresses of being a Hindu in the Hindu land.

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