Where are the Indians?

SOCIETY

I was recently told that if you run into an American these days, the standard greeting is likely to be “Hi! I am American but I don’t support George Bush.” (Yes, even now when the latter is all but gone from the White House.) The American engagement with politics and affairs of the world seems to be at an all-time high contrary to all our perceptions about the average Joe being interested only in happenings in his backyard and believing “Delhi” to be, in fact, the deli down the road.

Sitting in the cosy café down Delhi’s own “Fleet Street” just the other day, we all noted with amazement how friends and friends of friends returning from the US, people you’ve all your life believed to be firmly the Karol Bagh or Chembur type-on-the-make, interested only in Dior, D&G and iPhones, come back these days and invariably surprise you with their altered world view: “How is the politics?” they ask, having acquired foreign trappings.

India, of course, has always been one of the most politically-opinionated countries in the world. And you’ll only confirm this if you take any person off the road and put him in front of a TV camera. Switch off that TV camera and what do you find? The average Indian may call up his local FM radio jockey to express joy at the wonderful Olympic medals “we” have won, he may clap in the theatres at Akshay Kumar taking on the West in his son-of-the-soil act, but is he really engaged with India? And what is that idea of India he relates to?

If you go by the flags raised in the Valley this last week, the idea of India is merely that of an imperial power — certainly not of the Motherland worthy of the sentimental Vande Mataram. In fact, the Hurriyat’s oft-quoted words that they are “Kashmiris, not Indians” are now increasingly being aired.

A friend, for instance, a Kashmiri who used to stay in Delhi, is now based in Srinagar and who has been otherwise sending us regular details about her family is curiously mum on this issue even after repeated asking — not wanting to offend, I guess, those of us on the Other side. Those of us on this side, meanwhile, now seem more reconciled than ever to the idea of divorcing Kashmir from Jammu and the rest of India too.

But if there are no Indians in Kashmir, where are they in Manipur or “South India” or Bihar or even in Delhi? Manipuris have taken to the streets to angrily protest against a conspiracy — not against a single weightlifter, Monika Devi, but against all Manipuri sportspersons. Bihar (and UP and many others), of course, don’t subscribe to the law of the republic at all, while in Delhi, look closely, are there any Indians between the South Delhiites and the West Delhi types? You’ll agree that our Indian identity is hardly paramount.

It surfaces only when we travel or watch Karan Johar’s films or when we want to feel superior because of “our” Sunita Williams or our cricket team (playing against Australia and Pakistan though certainly not Sri Lanka). But even in cricket, there is now the Premier League and one’s identity as, say, a Rajasthan Royalist may subsume whatever remained of Mera Bharat Mahan sentiment.