Sarva Dharma Samabhava

Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre was a life altering book for me. It speaks about the partition of India and the ensuing Hindu-Muslim riots which left millions dead, homeless. I had a new found respect for the Muslims who stayed back in India braving the riots, risking their lives.

Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen was another book I really enjoyed. The basic premise of the first few essays is how the Indian, over the years, has been accomadating the people who visited India through the years be it Portugese, Persian, Chinese, etc and how this feeling is being tampered with by the VHP and Bajrang Dal like organisations who want to make India a Hindu state. He also talks about how the average Indian has always been argumentative which laid the foundation for the Indian democracy after independence.

These two books have made me very conscious of who I am as an Indian, about our diversity and our history. It has made me immensely proud of this country. I love the diversity and our(normally) peaceful nature.

The current book I am reading is called Communal Rage in Secular India by Rafiq Zakaria, (whose The Man who divided India -about Jinnah, I thoroughly enjoyed) is about the Godhra riots. I have just finished the first 2 chapters in which he details accounts of journalists and their witnesses during the riots. Its gut-wrenching to say the least. Some of the victims' accounts are horrifying and you can't help closing your eyes and saying a little prayer for them.

India is a largely peaceful nation, or so I would like to believe, considering the large amount of diversities that exist here. Sometimes, we fail to respect this. We have divided ourselves, according to caste, religion, region or any shitty reason we could give ourselves. Once these divisions are made we love to draw lines and act George-Bushesquely "you are with us or against us". Hindus hate Muslims, Muslims despise Hindus and there is always a rift between people on either side of the Vindhyas.

Another thing Indians seem to enjoy is typecasting people. Brahmins are elitists, Muslims are violent, Tamilians are tight-fisted, Delhites are show-offs, Bongs have egos. We like to castigate all the other communities except ours. We can't stand anyone else except ourselves and our types. A Hindu will think twice before befriending a Muslim but somehow when an Irfan Pathan takes a wicket the whole country celebrates, when Shahrukh Khan is in a movie people throng the theatres to watch him. Are these two guys beyond judgement and their religion? Why is that? Is it because they are famous? Does that change a person? Or is it just that he grows out of his stereotypes once he is famous?

What worries me the most is that we, the educated class, also have such notions. I think being unbiased in next to impossible, but I think it is possible to free of prejudice. Thanks to these few books I have gotten rid a lot of my demons and pre-concieved notions. I am not saying I'm totally unprejudiced, but I know I'm trying.