Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

by Pavan K. Varma

  The problem, of course, is that however strong the desire to be subsumed in the dominant culture, some aspects of identity cannot be erased. If you are coloured, you cannot be white; if your mother tongue is not English, you will speak the Queen’s language in an accented fashion, or lapse into your own in ‘embarrassing’ ways; if your religion is different, certain symbols of its practice will surface; if your name is Indian, it will sound different and attempts to give it an Anglo-Saxon abbreviation will not always work. Ravi Mirchandani, the UK editor of my previous book, Being Indian, had come to the UK when very young; he had gone to school here, and was pale to look at because his mother was English. For all practical purposes he was, and wanted to be, part of the white mainstream. But his name was a dead giveaway. For some reason, not clear even to himself, he did not want to be called Paul, his pet name; but Mirchandani was more than an unpronounceable mouthful for his English friends, and marked him forever as different.

  Being different is not being separate. A polity genuinely aspiring towards a multicultural society should strive to give these differences space, but tolerance cannot obliterate the fact of difference. The insistence of the Sikhs on wearing their turbans, which has religious sanction for them, is a case in point. In the UK they successfully fought for their right to do so, and the law was amended in 1976 allowing them to wear their turbans in lieu of crash helmets. In Canada, the struggle was more protracted. Unlike other police forces in the country, the elite Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was adamant in not allowing its Sikh recruits their headgear. When the RCMP finally relented, a group of Canadians protested the decision vociferously, and took the matter right up to the Supreme Court, which fortunately dismissed the case. In France, however, the turban is still proscribed in schools. The French political tradition comes close to believing that minorities do not exist. All citizens must accept the French nation, and embrace that supreme nation state’s definition of French culture. The absence of flexibility in such a paradigm makes little emotional appeal to the ethnic minorities, the migrants of former colonies, whose numbers in France, as in the UK, are substantial—as high as six per cent of the population.

  Against the many things that underline what is common to all of humanity, there are as many which reveal divergences. People coming from different cultural backgrounds can be different in a bewildering variety of ways, and sometimes this can border on the comical. The writer Upamanyu Chatterjee told me of an Indian woman bureaucrat who was keeping the Karva Chauth fast during an official visit to Paris. The fast requires the devout Hindu wife to fast through the day and eat and drink nothing till she has sighted the moon in the evening. In the cloud-laden sky of Paris it was not easy to do so. Very thirsty and hungry after a day of work, she set off in desperation for the roof of her hotel where, she reasoned, the moon would be more accessible. Unfortunately, this part of the hotel was not open to guests, and in opening the door at the rooftop, she set off an alarm. The French police were there in a jiffy. Much confusion and consternation followed, since the lady’s French was poor. But even had her French been excellent, the estimable members of the gendarmerie would have still found it hard to believe that all she wanted to do was to frame the moon in a sieve before breaking a fast she had kept for the longevity of a husband who was several thousand miles away in Delhi, where the moon would have risen several hours earlier! They promptly arrested her and were wondering which psychologist to consult when someone from the Indian embassy with a better grasp of French and diplomacy managed to bail her out.

  The interesting thing is that there was much in common between the distressed lady and her French interlocutors. All of them were educated; she knew something about France, and they about India; everyone on that hotel roof had CNN and McDonald’s and so much else of a global vocabulary in common. Yet rituals of this nature can be very difficult to understand for an outsider. Certain patterns of behaviour are rooted in a unique cultural milieu and will make little sense to someone not born into that milieu. Mike Bryan, the Penguin CEO in India, once told me that although he had tried to adapt to Indian ways and habits in the few months that he had been in Delhi, he was still taken by surprise when his Indian friends put their other palm over clasped hands in a handshake, as if to add greater warmth to the greeting. In South Asia it is perfectly normal for two male friends to embrace when they meet, and the physical reticence of the formal handshake that is very British is largely alien to Indians, even to those with half a lifetime of western education behind them. Sonal Mansingh, the celebrated classical dancer, argues that cultures are intuitive and their reference points for those born to them can be understood on a pan-national scale. ‘If I stand in the tribhanga posture, anybody in any village in India will know that I am portraying Krishna,’ she once commented. ‘But to anyone not from this soil everything has to be explained to the nth degree.’ Symbols, meanings, gestures, expressions, behavioural patterns, values—these constitute a common code of comprehension which is learnt almost by osmosis. It can never become fully transparent to those not born naturally to a culture, often even when they have spent a great many years studying it. The sense of otherness can be reduced, but not entirely eliminated. Some element of curiosity or bewilderment or surprise will perpetually shadow an outsider, and he or she will never be capable of the same degree of spontaneity and effortlessness which comes so naturally to those who belong. In the world of cultures not everything is porous, and not everything can be synthesized.

  Even today in the UK, the attitudinal differences born of divergent cultural perspectives and beliefs can cause bewilderment and friction. In June 2007, a British employment tribunal awarded £4000 to Bushra Noah, a Muslim teenage hairdresser from Acton in West London, as compensation for ‘injury to feelings’ after she was refused a job for wearing her headscarf. There was behind this seemingly minor incident the classic opaqueness of cultures. Sarah Desrosiers, who owned the Wedge Salon at King’s Cross in Central London, could not for the life of her understand how a person who insisted on wearing a headscarf could be in the hairdressing trade. ‘I never in a million years dreamt that somebody would be completely against the display of hair and be in this industry,’ she is reported to have exclaimed. For Bushra, on the other hand, there was no contradiction at all. The headscarf was her personal badge of identity; it had a symbolism and a meaning that she was not willing to discard. She did not see why this should mean that she could not style her clients’ hair in the ‘funky and urban’ image desired by her employer.

  In the summer of the same year, Sarika Singh, a fourteen-year-old Sikh girl in Wales, took the Aberdare Girls’ School to court for not allowing her to wear a kara, the steel bangle that is an essential marker of identity for every practising Sikh. The school bans its students from wearing any jewellery other than wrist-watches or plain ear studs. Sarika, who began to wear the kara after a visit to India in 2005, saw her expulsion as an assault on her faith. ‘I never thought I would be forced by a school to choose between my religion and my education,’ she protested. Her petition was backed by 150 gurdwaras and 250 Sikh organizations, as also the UK human rights group Liberty.

  It is a tribute to British policies that such cases of discrimination have a hearing and often receive support beyond partisan lines. Yet, for every such battle won or waged, there are perhaps a thousand instances of discrimination and racism that go unreported or uncontested. In the early years, as we have discussed, the expression of racism was stark. Talat Ahmed remembers how her father and uncle would talk about incidents where they were abused as ‘Paki bastards’. Ravi Mirchandani can never forget that one of his English schoolmates would refuse to hold his hand on the playing field. Usha Kiran, an Indian teacher in the government school at Southall, told me that until as late as the 1970s the white lady who headed the school did not encourage Asian parents to come inside the school premises; parents were expected to leave their children at the school gate. Old timers in Southall recall that there was a time w
hen white shopkeepers would not allow Asians to touch the fruit and vegetables. Even when laws to ensure racial equality had been put in place, the means to subvert them were manifold. For instance, when Usha Kiran posted her first application for a teaching job, the school authorities said they had not received it. She learnt that this was not an uncommon response if the receiving clerk was white.

  There is no doubt that such incidents have become less frequent and less blatant, partly because of the conscious government policy to promote multiculturalism, but also because of the financial muscle and confidence acquired by the minorities. Today, far from being unwelcome in shops, Asian customers are valued. They can touch whatever is on display, check and choose what they wish to buy, and all shopkeepers, whatever the colour of their skin, have no option but to be polite. And of course, it is dangerous to form facile stereotypes. The truth often comes in shades of grey. When Usha Kiran applied the next time for a teaching job, she did so in person, obtained a receipt, and got an interview call. At the interview she found that an Indian lady—someone she knew—was sitting in as the representative of the Equal Opportunity Commission. She got the job. Later, the white head of her school was most supportive, and gave her an independent class to teach much sooner than she expected. There was a time, Usha says, when she could not even think of going to work in a salwar-kameez or sari. Today, no one notices such things.

  And yet, it is important to remember that the tendency among people to bring to your attention, in a derogatory way, the fact of your difference is not always something that the law can correct. And the manner in which it is done cannot always be quantified—though, however tangential or subtle or indirect or insidious the form of its expression, the person at the receiving end is never in doubt. Kunal Basu, the Indian author of the The Miniaturist and The Opium Clerk, and his wife Susmita joined us for dinner one evening in London. Jay Panda, the young member of Parliament from Orissa was there too. Both Jay and Kunal were educated in the USA. Jay had lived there for seven years. Kunal had stayed on for twenty. Both of them felt that it was far easier for an Asian to merge into the multi-ethnic landscape of America. New York and Los Angeles, Jay said, were actually non-white-majority cities. But the ethos in these coastal cities was different to what prevailed in the conservative hinterland, where non-white outsiders were often looked upon with suspicion and curiosity and sometimes with hostility. Kunal, who now teaches corporate governance at Templeton College in Oxford, said he was far more conscious of his status as the ‘other’ in England than in the USA. His Asianness was often used as a badge in his department because he was the only coloured person on the faculty. The cover of any brochure brought out by the faculty would carry his picture, invariably there to stress the college’s commitment to a multicultural Britain. But behind that projection was often another reality of deep-seated prejudices and notions of racial exclusiveness. In one meeting of college dons, the chairperson said: ‘We must do what we say. After all, we are white people.’ Kunal said that he had protested, but the convictions that could lead to such a remark were not really shaken.

  Jaishree Misra, who works in the British film classification office, and is a well-known writer in English, mentioned to me that there are some ways in which a person can use your difference to make you feel inferior which, even if the intent is not always malicious, can be offensive. For instance, one of her white colleagues in the office always lapsed into a vaguely comical Indian-English accent when talking to her, despite having worked with Jaishree for some years. Did she do it because she thought she would be more comprehensible? Was it an unconscious reflex, stemming from years of having to interact with people who were not born to English? Was it resentment at the success of an outsider claiming to be an equal with those born English? It could be any of these, but Jaishree confessed that it offended her.

  Some forms of behaviour infringe no law; they range from condescension and ridicule to smugness and callous humour, all of which are difficult to define precisely or to anticipate. One incident that illustrates this involved Jaishree again. On a crisp and sunny September morning my wife and I accompanied her and her husband Ashutosh on the Duck tour of London. The tour involves a ride through the city on an amphibian bus which after showing passengers the usual tourist spots makes a dramatic splash into the Thames for a short ride down the river. The tour guide, a lady who announced her name as Tracy, appeared to be in her forties and spoke with a very cockney accent quite incomprehensible to my native ears. She was average looking, somewhat large on the hips, and had her hair tied up untidily in a bun. Her commentary was full of jokes, tired and not exceptionally bright, only provoking the occasional titter in some of the passengers. (A young Indian couple, however, laughed the loudest, as though trying to prove that they were not outsiders to the very English context of her humour.) The bus driver was a young man, shy and of a slight build, dressed very ordinarily and with a beard. He could have been Sri Lankan or Indian or from Bangladesh or Pakistan. The woman took great pleasure in making him part of her jolly—at least to herself—routine. She would sing a song, and then thrust the mike in front of his face for the chorus line or the punchword. Or she would suddenly turn to him and ask him a question, and as he fumbled for a response or looked embarrassed she would laugh and expect the passengers to do the same. I don’t think she was trying to be deliberately racist, but obviously she did not give much value to the dark man’s discomfiture, which she was certain—this much was clear to us—he would not make evident. At the end of the tour, she walked down the aisle, asking passengers which country they were from. To me she said: ‘Are you from Sri Lanka?’ I said I was from India, to which she burst into the song ‘Chal chal meri hathi’, the words almost unrecognizable in her cockney accent.

  People react differently to the possibility of being marked out as different. Amit Choudhuri, the hugely talented writer in English, once told me that he left Oxford, where he lived and taught, for home in Kolkata the year his daughter was born. He wanted her to grow up among her own, he said, where she would belong, and where the pigment of her skin would not set her apart from the numerical mainstream. But most people stay on in the adopted country, and for them the issue of preserving the culture that has shaped them remains a principal preoccupation, even when they don’t acknowledge the struggle that this entails. Strange compromises emerge in the process, as for instance in the way arranged marriages are still negotiated by the Indian community. The Arya Samaj Mandir in London runs a marriage bureau where on paying £30 any member can benefit from the matrimonial service run by the temple. Basic particulars about the girl or the boy—family, caste, education, occupation and height—are circulated. The first contact is made by the parents, usually over the phone. If they connect and approve of each other, the boy will call the girl. If things look compatible thus far, the boy will ask to meet the girl. The two will then meet, with the full knowledge of both sets of parents. Such meetings could take place over many weeks. At this point the parents would expect to have a decision. If it’s yes, the girl’s parents will call on the boy’s, carrying fruit and mithai and some jewellery as a token of the engagement that will follow. It is an amazingly choreographed act, creating the space for traditional structures to operate in a dramatically different milieu. Even second-or third-generation British Indian children, who have internalized the western freedoms in such matters, agree to these rituals, and marry into Indian families, often into the same caste.

  Another interesting example of this curious hybridity is the Glassy Junction bar at Southall. A notice outside the premises proudly announces: ‘First Pub to Accept Ruppees [sic] as Currency’. Inside, the familiar features of a British pub are there, but Punjabiized beyond recognition. Pictures of rural Punjab showing green fields and bullock carts and tractors mix with photographs of bhangra Indi-pop icons and film stars. A lifesize portrait of Maharaja Duleep Singh takes up a wall. The names of prominent towns in Punjab—Patiala, Ludhiana, Bhatinda—define seating
areas. Rustic lads holding cues in their hands crowd around snooker tables. Indi-pop singers scream out of television screens. The snacks are tandoori chicken legs and sheekh kebabs. The bar counter has acquired an Indian idiom, with shiny glass and brass replacing the traditional English wood. The beer is English, but several of the whiskies are Indian brands, such as Kuch Nahin and Chak de Phatte. There are no women, but ‘exotic dances’, a poster tells us, can be seen on Thursdays at 8 p.m. and on Sundays at 7 p.m. Prem, my brother-in-law, whose Punjabi is up to par, asks what is meant by ‘exotic dances’. The waiter grins. ‘Why don’t you come and see for yourself?’ he parries. Prem comes to the point: ‘Are they nanga dances?’ The waiter’s grin is wider. He nods.

  Sandeep, my nephew who was born in London, told me that several establishments in the city have been set up by Indians exclusively for themselves. There are ‘members only’ private clubs like Panthers in Alperton and Ghunghat in Sudbury. A new nightclub—Masti—has recently opened in Wembley. Bang opposite Glassy Junction is Southall’s biggest gurdwara, the Guru Sri Singh Sabha. I could see devotees eating langar in cavernous halls, and women and children with their heads covered and bent in prayer. I wonder if some of the men go straight to the gurdwara after watching the ‘exotic dances’ in Glassy Junction.