The Pakistanis Are Coming!

'Get out, the Pakistanis are coming!’ 

A fine headline to be greeted with this morning, on October 2, the day of Gandhi Jayanti. Made me check my calendar to confirm it wasn’t 30th January. 

To all those bandying their jingoism the past few days, jung mubarak, you’re welcome to your war. How comforting it must be to thump your chests as you listen to Ornob and approve ‘surgical strikes’. Us folks who live on the border - 553 Kms of Ferozepur, Fazilka, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Pathankot - teetering forever on Radcliffe’s line, are fleeing; leaving behind, yet again, our homes, our land, our crops, our selves.

But, I digress. Happee budday, Bapu! (that’s how we say it in Punjab). If you don’t feel like partying with the chest thumpers, join us as we hastily evacuate and scramble away from the border, sweat lining our sweaters in the autumnal chill, a thousand questions on our minds. Who will harvest the rice? Feed the buffalos? Where will we find shelter? How far before we can rest? Will Pakistan also do surgical strikes? Or will its tanks roll across the border like in ’71? Will we have a home to return to? We have no plan - we were ordered to ‘Evacuate at once!’ - but once we find shelter, in a gurdwaras perhaps, we can swap stories. 

You can tell us about the Purana Qila of Delhi, the same Old Fort where in 1947 you found Muslim refugees huddling from the tyranny of their Hindu brothers, much as the Pandavas had sought refuge from the Kauravas as the Mahabharata says. And I can tell you about fleeing from home astride my father’s shoulders, ducking into bushes as sirens sounded, crying when my embroidered jutti slipped off my foot and my father paused in flight as he searched for that one shoe even as the PAF fighter planes threatened to incinerate us any moment … 

When the war passed and we returned home to ‘normalcy’, we exchanged stories with friends and neighbors as we recalled our flights. We have so many stories, Bapu, the night will pass before you can blink an eye. For a people used to evacuating upon a crisp command, stories are all we can carry. And in an amnesiac nation (not a single memorial to Partition), stories are all we have.

A Letter to India

January 28, 2015

Sisters and brothers,

We live in an age of easy umbrage, when writers are particularly vulnerable to offended folks. So, as precaution, I decided to snitch from President Obama’s recent Delhi town hall, where he in turn snitched from Swami Vivekananda, and addressed all as ‘Sisters and brothers’ ( evoking Vivekananda’s address to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893). 

Obama was in Des for 2.5 days and for some moments of those in the warm embrace of PM Modi. When he recovered, two realizations struck him: 1) kuch kuch hota hai is one Bollywood song rich with meaning, 2) a planned visit with Michelle to Taj Mahal ain’t happenin’ on account of an oily dead sheikh. 

Indians with presence on social media - practically all one billion plus of us - expressed appreciation for the first, the effects of which were visible during the town hall, Señorita et al, and cheered lustily, and as Air Force One took off, began carping about the second. About the Prez’s double speak, about his lecturing to India about secularism and climate change considering he was headed to a medieval land where the raging hashtag would soon be Michelle_Obama_Not_Veiled.

No person would rue missing the Taj more than Obama - okay, Michelle, yes. A charming man with a twinkle in his eye, the world at his feet, his beloved by his side, has two choices: a stroll through the lush gardens of the world’s finest monument to love, or a condolence stopover in a desert in the company of overdressed men? The fact that Obama chose the latter doesn’t translate necessarily into marital discord (as some papers have hinted darkly) or hypocrisy or arrogance - it is, indeed, good ole realpolitik. 

It doesn’t mean that what Obama said in the town hall was sheer baloney. In the town hall Obama was himself: a charming professor who connects with his audience and speaks his mind. In Riyadh he will be the US Prez who has protocol to maintain. (You seriously think he didn’t notice Michelle change out of that floral dress into stern black pants as she transitioned from Delhi to Riyadh?) Or catch the Twitter din proclaiming imminent apocalypse because, la haul vila kuwat, a woman was out and about without a swathed head? 

I am reminded of an anecdote that P Chidambaram narrated. A foreign journalist was in India after a visit to China and he mentioned how he was left speechless in Beijing (presumably at the breathtaking pace of progress). Congrats, the minister said, in India you have found your voice! In the town hall, Obama spoke in his voice - India does that to people. 

And why are we drawing any comparisons with Saudi Arabia at all? Do we tell our children, ja beta, Saudi mien ja kar apna naam roshan kar? Instead, come admission time, don’t we share the name of the Ivy League - or minor league - US university that our child got into, followed by mile-long exclamation marks, because, Señorita, bade bade deshon mein … you know what I mean?

Aim for the highest standards, India. The world belongs to the nerds - hallelujah to all those engineering colleges, eh?!, and future success will be determined by harnessing the potential of one billion. Oil will run its course, as will medieval oligarchies that closet one half of their population. Education, skill-creation, freedom, opportunity, these will see us through. In the words of Vivekananda himself, “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”

As they did that morning in Delhi, they travelled from a September day in Chicago, from the year 1893, to a room full of Vivekananda’s country- men, women, and children, on the lips of a man who reveres Martin Luther King who, in turn, was inspired by Mahatama Gandhi. 

Thoughts live; they travel far. Think high, India. 

Onwards,

Manreet

Gandhi, Patel & Nehru: The Triumvirate that Made India

On the happy occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, let's remember the team of men who made India. The triumvirate of MK Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru was the architect of independent India. At a time when the right wing in India wants to appropriate Patel - the Iron Man as a symbol of their vision of a 'strong' India, when Nehru's legacy is in tatters because of ossified dynastic politics, and Gandhi remains relevant largely because of his mug on INR notes, it'd be good to remember that as a people we are capable of rewriting our own future, provided we work together as a team, despite our differences. 

While Nehru was popular with the masses and could engage with the world polity, Patel had the craft and cunning to meld the princely states into a newly partitioned India. In Patel's words to Nehru: "We have both been lifelong comrades in a common cause. The paramount interest of our country and our mutual love and regard, transcending such differences of outlook and temperament as existed, have held us together."

Pay heed, for beyond NaMo and RaGa, lies India.