Blowing in the wind

Do you, dear Reader, think it is a reasonable question? Do you think it is a relevant question? Do you think it is a rational question? Do you think I have the right to answer all these questions? Or, do you simply not care, willy-nilly?

Whether you like it or not; whether you think I am competent or not; whether you think I am crazy or not; and whether it is a reasonable question or not, I think—actually, I believe—that every AngloIndian worth his/her salt should ponder deeply about these things. This concerns you—as an individual, as a member of a still-surviving minority community, as a citizen of this great nation of ours—India, that is Bharat.

Let me make it clear: the AngloIndian, resident in India, is a citizen of this great, global, melting-pot of a country that welcomes everyone who is willing to wholeheartedly accept it’s diversity. The Indian citizen is a complete whole; he/she is not fragmented, disjointed, hyphenated by caste, creed, colour, or compulsion (political, religious, or otherwise). So, why should the AngloIndian be? The others who have flown, to all parts of the world, may still call themselves “Anglo-Indians”, because they still do not “belong”, they still have no “identity”, as we have (enshrined in our Constitution). This one clause separates us from the rest; we may be numbered—just 296 souls, and counting—as the Government still wants us to believe. We may be outnumbered, but we are forever in the Statutes. Who else but an AngloIndian can claim such an honour and privilege?

Did you notice the difference, dear Readers.

The AngloIndian is, by right, a citizen of India; he/ she is no longer hyphenated. Nothing else matters. We have a heritage and a history that go back to the beginning of time, because, I again believe, India was ever the cradle of civilisation.

Am I trying to forge a new chapter in Indian history? Of course, I am. I am not forging history, or trying to fake anything, though the word is subject to interpretation. What I am doing, and that too, at a very late stage, is trying to recover my lost heritage. After all, it has been said that India is the land of our mothers. So why can I not claim, belatedly, what was hers, and therefore mine too? Are there any takers for this line of thought? Think, think deeply about these things.

Only a few days back I saw the notification regarding the next “World Anglo-Indian Reunion”. Last time India, next time Australia. Celebrate Anglo-Indian-ness. Eat, drink and be merry, our would-be motto. How shallow those oft-repeated clichés sound today—“You can take an Anglo-Indian out of India, but you can never take the Indian out of an Anglo-Indian.” May God have mercy on us all.

I mentioned “296 souls” before. It may be possible to write “The History” of these individuals, but even that seems impossible. So any “History” trying to encapsulate a people (big or small) is bound to fail. To entitle the book: “The History of …” is faulty, to say the least, for the definite article “The” declares, implicitly and explicitly, that it is the be-all and end-all of the subject under discussion, period. Don’t you think the title of such an ambitious book could well be “The Vanity of Human Wishes”?

Until next time, dears.