I’m on a weekend trip to India - one of the great perks of living in the Gulf, where we NRIs, unlike our counterparts scattered in many other countries, are Near, Regular and Involved! Routine trips back home help keep our fingers on the pulse and give us lots of insights to consider how desi life stacks up with living abroad. On a superficial, creature comfort level, India is not a place for NRIs spoilt by international housing and civic standards - but India has other ways of tugging at our heart strings. On this trip for some reason, a song from an old Raj Kapoor movie is recurring in my mind. It’s the title song from the movie “Chhaliya” where the hero explains that his name is Chhaliya, and he greets everyone irrespective of their religion. It is sung by Mukesh, written by Qamar Jalalabadi with music composed by Kalyanji Anandji.
Chhaliya mera naam, Chhaliya mera naam
Hindu Muslim Sikh Isaai sab ko mera salaam
A news report says one in two Mumbaikars lives in a slum - that’s not my idea of city life and I have no plans of becoming a Mumbaikar. But I know many who will consider no other place their home and I can understand why. It’s one good and one bad way in which Indians are different - even the rich ones don’t mind living in squalor-as long as they can live well. If that were not true, probably all of Bollywood would emigrate to Hollywood - if they could find work. Money in India is the best air purifier -it eliminates all kinds of smells.
Mumbai for me is not Aamchi Mumbai - it’s India, regardless of what Shri Bal Thackeray might say. Home not only for you and me, but also for interesting folks like William Dalrymple, Scottish author of two books on Delhi, White Mughals, and The City of Djinns. His latest book Nine Lives, is a distillation of25 years of traveling and observing India, having already sold 35,000 copies in India alone. I understand why someone like Dalrymple can call India his own and say, “Oddly, I felt at home from the beginning. I loved the history, food, people, the climate.” It’s inspiring to see such writers mining ideas for great books from our country, makes you want a slice of the action!
I can also understand why Ved Mehta, 75 year old blind author of the 12-book series Continents of Exile, including Daddyji and Mamaji says, “When my daughter was born, I prayed she wouldn’t do two things - one become a writer and two, discover India. All the awful things that ever happened to me happened in India. Nonetheless she is now writing a book on coming of age in India.” Mehta worked 33 years as a journalist at The New Yorker, andstudied at Stanford, Oxford and Harvard, he is now working on a new novel Widow’s Son.
Nearly thirty million Diaspora Indians must have India on their minds regularly for one reason or another. I am certainly one of them. Some of us have family back home, property that needs looking after, college education for kids and so on and a yearning to return home to friends and relatives. Many may think differently, but for most Indians living abroad, India is not just an idea. It is a deep longing that doesn’t go away, a physical reality that draws us like a powerful magnet. If you think about it, it is sentiment more than anything else that pulls, which is generally not a reliable ingredient for quality decision making. Going back nonetheless is probably one of the dominant thoughts in many NRI minds - the idea of returning to India is a tantalizing, ever present possibility. It’s like a balm especially at times when we feel cut off or overwhelmed by the uncertainty of expatriate life. The feeling is not always realistic perhaps, come what may we tell ourselves, somehow we will manage if we go back.
So if we are confident of a reasonable income and roti, kapada, makaan is not an issue, what stops us from heading back? Some will brush aside the notion, but it’s probably fear and or uncertainty of one kind or the other. We have got used to living in orderly societies around the world and India’s chaos, corruption and catastrophes can be unnerving. Satellite news channels 24x7 bring news of violence and human suffering in a society that constantly beckons us. And return many of us will, especially from the Gulf, even though our children may not go back with us. We have been globe-trotting and criss-crossing the world in search of opportunities for centuries. Indians are permanent residents in all but three countries of the world. India’s Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has registered the presence of NRIs in 180 out of 183 countries in the world. It is only in North Korea, Pakistan and Bhutan that not a single NRI is to be found.
As the lyrics of Chhaliya resonate in my mind I am aware, as I walk Mumbai’s streets of trauma and pain, that Raj Kapoor’s salaam had little impact on his militantly-religious, movie loving audience. I am aware that this is the land of Bapu’s birth and the ideals he was murdered for have not taken root. Instead, ideologies violently opposed to his dream of Ram Rajya for India have steadily consolidated power, waiting in the wings for more chances to unleash their deadly, divisive dogmas.
Hindu Muslim Sikh Isaai – do Indian hearts yearn for a breakthrough in the country’s communal conundrum? Dominique Moisi, visiting Professor of Government at Harvard points out that only if countries confront the dark shadows of their history can they move ahead. Nobel prize winning American author William Faulkner noted there is the past that, “isn’t dead and buried. In fact it is not even past.” The Ayodhya issue, inevitably resurfacing after 17 years, is a grim confirmation of that insight.
Indians seem unable to break free from the anguish of their past and remain shackled to their conflict-ridden fixations. Professor Moisi cites the situation in the Balkans, but he may as well be talking about India when he says if the past is not dealt with, it remains like a secret wound that can be reopened at any moment. Ayodhya was not about defending anybody’s religion, it was just a tool for amoral politicians who care nothing for Hindu or Muslim beliefs. It is high time Indians realized how easily religion is used to manipulate them. If India can dump what I call “Religionism” in exchange for genuine faith in the Creator, there is hope for a brand new society. Our choice is between a social order that is peaceful, open, confident, self reliant, tolerant, giving, and future oriented or one that is violent, wretched, servile, fatalistic, feudal, intolerant, cruel and medieval.
In 430 BC, shortly after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in the ‘Age of Pericles’, the statesman, orator and army general delivered an oration to the ancient Athenians, “Our system of government does not copy the institutions of its neighbors. It is more the case of our being a model to others, than of our imitating anyone.” In Gandhiji’s day India held the high moral ground. Justice Lieberhans long overdue report might still do some good if the recommendation for a new law to mete out “exemplary punishment” to those who misuse religion for political gain is implemented. If the proposed ‘Communal Violence Bill’ is effective every community and place of pilgrimage and prayer in India can truly be havens of peace and harmony.