We are all Ukrainians now

In March 2010--it feels like eons ago--I wrote a commentary in what was once a lively local newspaper about Syeda Rizwana Hasan, who was visiting from Bangladesh.

During the few minutes I chatted with Hasan, I asked her not about the ship-breaking industry and its environmental impacts that she challenged in the courts, but about the father of that nation, Mujibur Rahman.

In 1971 Bangladesh came into existence, after having been East Pakistan since 1947 when the British Raj ended.  I told Hasan about the comic books I had read as a kid that told the story of Mujib—as he is popularly referred to—and his fight for Bangladesh’s freedom.

The 1971 war was my political coming of age, if I exclude my grandmothers recalling and retelling stories of me as a four-year old walking away from home to see MGR who was scheduled to address a rally in Sengottai; how an older boy saw me dazed and confused in an alley; how he brought me home in the light rain that had started falling; and how I had a raging fever the next couple of days that they referred to as "MGR fever."  I have no personal memories of that episode from 1968.  But, I remember well the 1971 war.

I could not understand how there could be war in which people were killed.  I was only seven years old and was anti-war.

As I started understanding the world through formal schooling and from whatever I read, I was struck by how much people were fanatical about their national identities.  For a while, I too suffered from an "India fever" that my Indian pride caused.  During those few years, I suppose it would not have taken me much to sign up for a war and go kill people with other identities.  Thankfully, the fever broke in my late teens.

I came to believe that it was a terrible idea to have created an artificial “India” and an artificial “Indian.” Until the British Raj, there was no single political unit that encompassed the geography that we refer to as India. Until the colonization by Europeans, the Subcontinent was like any other place on the planet, with kingdoms large and small. Kingdoms and cultures with long and rich histories.

All that history was rudely interrupted by colonization. Centuries of cultural identities were thrown out under a new term called “Indian” in a country called "India."

I am still shocked that it took graduate school for me to understand that even the name “Pakistan” was something that was cooked up to create an identity out of Punjab, Indus, Afghan, Sindh, Balochistan, and … yes, Kashmir. I was never taught in school, nor did I pick up from any of the readings, that "Pakistan" was a synthesized word!  

In this artificially created national identities of "India" and "Pakistan" Kashmir became a battleground to both identities.  If not for the creation of these identities that drive people to a mad passion, there wouldn't be a fixation that Kashmir. 

During my early teens, when there was unrest in Nagaland and Mizoram, I could not understand why so much money and manpower was being invested to forcibly assimilate people with immense differences. A cousin's husband served as an army physician in Mizoram.  I couldn't understand his "service" nor the military's presence there.

The political unit of India was where my discomfort was.  I had nothing in common with the people from, say, Nagaland or Kashmir.  I could not understand why such a political union was created. On the other hand, I was at ease in my Tamil identity.  Because, I was born into it, raised in a Tamil environment, read Tamil fiction, listened to Tamil politicians, ... even as I read English fiction, watched English movies, and loved Hindi film songs.

But, I also understood that being a Tamil was a mere accident of birth.  How could an accidental birth determine everything political?  Once, I remarked about the accidental birth making me a Tamil Brahmin; the remark did not go well at home.  When people are wrapped up with such accidental identities, well, of course people do not welcome such remarks either.

For a long time now, I have been suspicious about cries of nationalism.  I, therefore, have no patience for any state forcing people, especially in such a highly militarized manner, to be in a political unit.

The orange monster stirring up nationalism here in the US worried me a lot.  Not only because he stirred it up, but also because I believed that it would take a long time for the flag-waving nationalism to die down.   The backdrop of the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany always remind me that flag-waving mobs and armies don't work out well for humanity.  Yet, here we are in an unfortunate age of militant nationalism.

Mario Vargas Llosa said it eloquently four years ago:

I believe that the great danger in our age is nationalism, it’s no longer fascism, nor communism. These ideologies have become completely outdated. But in contrast, nationalism is a defect that is always there under the surface and above all, at moments of crisis, can be very easily exploited by demagogues and power-hungry leaders. Nationalism is the great tradition of humankind; unfortunately it’s always present in history. 

And so, I believe that it’s the great enemy of democracy. It’s the great enemy of freedom and a terrible source of racism. If one believes that being born into or forming part of a particular community is a privilege, then that is racism. I believe that one must fight nationalism energetically if one believes in democracy, in freedom, especially in this age of mixing and the building of great blocks.

I agree with Llosa (how could I ever disagree with him!): "I think I have achieved something that I aimed for at a young age, which was to be a citizen of the world. The truth is I feel at home in France, in England and in Spain."

Why don't people want to chase after the lofty ideal of being a citizen of the world?