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In the weeks preceding August 15th, schoolchildren in India get an extra dose of the national anthem and other patriotic songs. Shreya was no exception and came home each day proudly repeating the words to “Jana gana mana” and “Sare jahan se achcha.” She concentrated on memorizing the words without pausing to think about their meaning.
It was not until she returned from the flag-hoisting ceremony on Independence Day that she asked “Which is my country?” It seemed like only yesterday (although it was three years ago) that she had learned to say “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,” and had earnestly repeated them in an effort to make me learn the words. I wonder if reiterating those words in California made her feel like she belonged in America and if singing these songs in Hyderabad makes her feel a kinship with Indians. The questions of country, identity, affiliation, and most importantly, belonging, get complicated when you change countries.
Perhaps the most celebrated author to write on this topic is V.S. Naipaul. This is what he wrote on a visit to India in an essay titled “In the Middle of a Journey.”
“An Indian, I have never before been in streets where everyone is Indian, where I blend unremarkably into the crowd. This has been curiously deflating, for all my life I have expected some recognition of my difference; and it is only in India that I have recognized how necessary this stimulus is to me, how conditioned I have been by the multiracial society of Trinidad and then by my life as an outsider in England. To be a member of a minority community has always seemed to me attractive. To be one of four hundred and thirty-nine million Indians is terrifying.”
In this short paragraph, Naipaul has touched upon several aspects of the immigrant experience. For an Indian living in the West, it is practically impossible to separate the overall experience from being perceived as different based on physical attributes. However, the acknowledgement of this phenomenon comes, ironically, not when we live in a multiracial society but when we are surrounded by multitudes like us. While I was surprised by Naipaul’s suggestion that belonging to a minority may be attractive, I was struck by the way he confidently referred to himself as an Indian, despite the fact that he was a descendant of people who migrated from India to Trinidad several generations ago.
For obvious reasons, my daughter Shreya, although an American citizen by birth, will always be viewed as an Indian. If we had remained in the United States, like the children of our Indian friends who go to language and religion classes, take lessons in Indian classical dance and music, and perform at cultural functions, Shreya would have done the same. I would have chauffeured her to these and other activities, considering the efforts worthwhile in order to imbibe her with a feeling of Indian-ness.
Now that she is in India, she no longer needs what I used to euphemistically call “India 101.” She is enrolled in the India immersion program by default. Here I do nothing to reinforce either her Indian or her American identities. In today’s world, where the global village seems to be converging in our own backyard, I have often pondered the factors that make a person align with a particular group. Is it the color of our passport, the shade of our skin, or the lilt of our accent that indicates affiliation to a country? Can’t we simply be global citizens? These are complex questions and they may not have a single answer, or even a correct one.
However, the fact is that most people I encountered upon my return to India were intensely curious about my reasons for returning.
One Saturday morning Shreya and I passed through the metal detectors, took off our shoes, and sat in the waiting area of the Police Commissioner’s office. We filled out the forms necessary to get her registered as a foreign national living in India. The bureaucrat who sat in the spacious but cluttered office was not the first one to bluntly ask the question, “Why did you come back to India?” Replying to this question in thirty seconds is not easy, no matter who is asking it. Friends, acquaintances, relatives, total strangers have asked me this question quite unselfconsciously. To them, it is as simple as asking someone “Where are you from?” (another commonly asked question and a topic for another day). Even if I do attempt to answer, most people do not have the patience to listen to the story behind my motivation for returning.
Along with a craze for all “foreign” things, a majority of Indians view the chance to live abroad as an opportunity not to be missed. On this background, they are genuinely nonplussed when they meet a person who chose to return to the population density, pollution, and other problems that are integral to living in India. So incredulous are my questioners that on occasion I have felt that my answer would have seemed more reasonable if I had said that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had deported me or that I was trying to escape from the clutches of the Internal Revenue Service!
Convincing the skeptics has been no easy task. The one person from whom I have learned to respond with the right degree of honesty and nonchalance has been Shreya herself. After being repeatedly bombarded with the question “Why are you living in India?” she came up with the perfect answer. In her typical direct way, she replied, “Because I can”.
