The difficulty of being [a resident] Indian

He said his generation was lucky. He claimed his was the era of Visvesvaraya and Nehru where character-building and nation-building went hand in hand. “For us, it was easy to dream, easy to build. Our society allowed for it. For you, it will not be easy to do, because as a nation loses its confidence, it becomes difficult to be. When being is difficult, doing is impossible. We were all Indians each in our own way. Like Hinduism, being Indian was like breathing. We exhale and inhale our Indianness in a ‘taken for granted’ way. Since we were free, we were free to be Indian in any way we wanted. For you, as India becomes a complex of inferiorities, being Indian will be difficult. We grow into our Indianness, but your generation will need handbooks and be reduced to policing,” he smiled sadly.

Think of it today: it’s difficult being Indian. Being resident in India isn’t enough. Being part of a locality is no longer adequate. Think of a Kashmiri or a Manipuri, even if he carries an ID card he’s not quite Indian. His identity is confused with identification. He feels he has to be certified as Indian to feel safe. Indianness now has to be certified. Unfortunately, it’s no longer a state of being. No one lets you be. Letting be seems to be “un-Indian”. Earlier, being Indian didn’t require a specified set of criteria. Now, it demands uniformity as part of unity. Earlier, one could be Sikh and Indian, or insist you were more Bengali than Indian. You could be the quarrelsome Indian, the hyphenated Indian, the argumentative Indian, but of late the only Indianness available to you is being the politically correct Indian. Indian is now a stencil you have to fit into to be declared Indian. Now, you must recite the national anthem or Vande Mataram to prove you are Indian. You can’t have multiple loyalties. It’s not correct to cheer for Pakistan and be Indian. But in an oddly hypocritical way, we want and expect Indians abroad to cheer for India even if they are British citizens.

This fact raises one of the greatest anomalies of being Indian. The NRI is seen as more Indian than resident Indians. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to create a resurgent India, he goes to Silicon Valley. The Indian abroad seems both civilisationally and modemistically more Indian. Today we have to be developed to be Indian, which is why Mr Modi thinks the best of Indian values lies with NRIs. Resident Indians aren’t truly Indian: they complain too much about the difficulty of being Indian, while the NRI is immaculately Indian as he proudly advertises his Indianness. Earlier, dissent was a part of being Indian. The eccentric, the marginal, the deviant, the dissenter, all by being different added to our sense of Indianness. Indianness was a whole.