'Hindu, Hindu, Hindu', one of my class fellows was yelling at the top of her voice and I was cringing for my friend who was being screamed at in this manner. It meant that she was a caste-ist, she had a 'baghal mein churi and moon mein raam raam', in short, she was a liar, a kafir and it was better to be called for a duel than to be called a Hindu. And this was only primary school.
Fast forward almost a decade and a half: We were invited by some of my husband's Indian colleagues to a dinner at their place after returning from Pakistan after getting married. I was getting ready and was terribly anxious. The slur that was associated with being called a 'Hindu' still ringing in my ears. And this is someone who has lived in the West, by that time, for almost 4 years but though I had come across many Muslim and Christian Indians, I had never come across a Hindu Indian. My husband was a student of South Asian studies and had very good knowledge of Hinduism and even I knew much about Hinduism but surely there was another, less loaded term to call Hindus. I was so afraid that by calling them Hindus I would be offending them. Atlast I could not contain it any longer and blurted to my husband if it was alright during the course of our conversation if I referred to them as Hindus? At first he didn't quite understand what the problem was and shrugged. I could see I was getting nowhere so I gave him the whole context. As expected he was shocked by the prejudice I had been exposed to but assured me that it was perfectly alright, though the friends we were meeting would have other historical and epistemological issues with being called Hindus, the word itself was perfectly innocent and would not offend them! Phew!
So here is what happened: when I got an opportunity to visit India, all of these memories and impressions accompanied me. In my subsequent blogs in this series, I will be talking about these.
Fast forward almost a decade and a half: We were invited by some of my husband's Indian colleagues to a dinner at their place after returning from Pakistan after getting married. I was getting ready and was terribly anxious. The slur that was associated with being called a 'Hindu' still ringing in my ears. And this is someone who has lived in the West, by that time, for almost 4 years but though I had come across many Muslim and Christian Indians, I had never come across a Hindu Indian. My husband was a student of South Asian studies and had very good knowledge of Hinduism and even I knew much about Hinduism but surely there was another, less loaded term to call Hindus. I was so afraid that by calling them Hindus I would be offending them. Atlast I could not contain it any longer and blurted to my husband if it was alright during the course of our conversation if I referred to them as Hindus? At first he didn't quite understand what the problem was and shrugged. I could see I was getting nowhere so I gave him the whole context. As expected he was shocked by the prejudice I had been exposed to but assured me that it was perfectly alright, though the friends we were meeting would have other historical and epistemological issues with being called Hindus, the word itself was perfectly innocent and would not offend them! Phew!
So here is what happened: when I got an opportunity to visit India, all of these memories and impressions accompanied me. In my subsequent blogs in this series, I will be talking about these.
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