Wednesday 12 January 2011

Like USA, India also is a land of immigrants!

Really, it is established after so many years that India too, like USA is a land of immigrants. My Keralite friend always told that they came from outside India but like you, I also did not believe him. But now we have Supreme Court judgment supporting his case. Quoting The Hindu of January 12, 2011, "If North America is predominantly made up of immigrants, India is largely a country of old immigrants, which explains its tremendous diversity. It follow that tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects are an absolute imperative if we wish to keep India united. If it was believed at one time that Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India, that view has since been considerably modified. Now the generally accepted belief is that the pre-Dravidian aborigines, that is the ancestors of the present tribals or Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes) were the original inhabitants. This is the thesis put forward in a judgment delivered on January 5, 2011 by a Supreme Court of India Bench comprising Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra."
So finally India is not any more the land of Aryans, Dravidians, Jats, Thakurs, Dalits, Punjabis, Marathis, Assamese, Malayalees, Bengalees, Kannadigas or even Tamils, as each of these communities like to believe. It follows therefore that we, part of a nine billion strong immigrant population live [though 'live' would be a gross understatement] in this country that was fondly named 'India' by some western rulers and governed by the the Constitution of India which is written by immigrants like us who again were inspired by another set of immigrants [in case you are wondering, Indian Constitution authors were heavily inspired by the Constitution of USA beside UK]!
How do you feel?! I know.. it feels like someone has pulled the nice carpet under your feet, no? Nothing, nothing is rightfully your ancestral property! We actually are enjoying the gracious hospitality of the people who we pushed to the fringe of this land! You must be feeling sorry for those of your friends who keep boasting of their heritage, their upper cast status. Really, there seems nothing original, nothing authentic about our sense of belonging. The very concept of India itself is imposed, created by the invaders; the heritage that we brag about is just an immigrant heritage, a lot like North American heritage, however unpalatable it is! And we have been fighting for these identifications, these narrow spheres of belongingness, for ages, which if we think carefully, are nothing but set of ideas, unquestioned, untested!
However there is one true sphere of belongingness that will always be there for each of us, whether immigrant, invader or aborigine and that is the sphere called humanity. And that is the only circle of identity that we truly can aspire to belong to for our entire life; that is the only sense of belongingness that is as real as our existence is and that is the only gift from nature that we can fall back when all ideologies fail; that is which can give the true meaning to each of our own individuality.
Rest are all false, unauthentic, prejudices!

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