Plight of Being Indian

Its not that i am North Indian; its because i am Indian

It’s commonly misunderstood that north Indians have to suffer in Mumbai or Chennai for their mannerism which sometimes is referred as cultural conflicts; this statement is as true as Indians are only greeted in Australia.

My journey commences from the crown of India, where one set of Indians (Natives of Kashmir) were dethroned by another set of Indians; fortunately or unfortunately I wasn’t among them although I witnessed that humiliation and love lost between two set of ideologies. Before readers will adjudge my religion, I assert that I am a Brahmin; just to make it clear that even Hindus are treated badly, so next time don’t credit any insult for being a minority or OBC; however I believe that the degree of insult and humiliation varies but still, I believe that one should not alibi his/her name by saying My Name is Khan!

I don’t think that every time I was at the receiving end but I can say that the racism and discrimination happened because neither do I belong to Sikh community nor did I have my roots in the Rajput clan. Although I thought that we all were humans, precisely Indians or derivatives of same religion but every time I was proved wrong. However, I can’t deny that I had Sikhs and Rajputs as my coterie.

From there I carried my journey for Punjab; during that, I found all the sign boards were in Gurmukhi script, completely a remote cousin of Devnagri. People were nice but the place had its own hidden protocols. The memories of Massacre that happened at Amritsar were still vivid and practically I could sense that since I was a Hindu, whatever happened can never be forgotten and hence someone has to pay the price; but with all due respect to all those who were sacrificed in the 1984’s Bloodshed; Sir, “I am a Hindu and I am not the one who did operation blue star”.

My next halt was at Delhi, an all together different experience. Although I don’t think it had any religious issues, however it had something else; Regional issues. If one has to survive then he has to adopt a typical Delhi attitude, sometimes referred as the North Indian Attitude and learn their slangs, irrespective of his will. It’s almost the same as inheriting a new set of mannerisms, following a new schedule and the most important; one has to read between the lines; sometimes small discussion can end up as a Homicide felony.

Later I went to UP, someone stared at me as if I was from Pakistan and then somebody spat near my foot. I looked at him and he was the Auto driver. Unfortunately, I indulged in some discussion which later turned into an undesired debate, my dialect was different and they decided that I was mudblood. Being fluent in Hindi is not sufficient to please the UP locals, so it all ended up in me saying sorry since my foot was at the wrong place and it interrupted the trajectory of the SPIT.

Then I entered Maharashtra, precisely Mumbai. It was not that rosy, I had to learn the mannerisms of local trains, but thanks to Delhi I was already well versed in learning new mannerisms and honestly being a Mumbaikar was far easier than being a Delhi wala. Later I attempted learning Marathi which was easier than learning Gurmikhi.

It’s always better to respect the locals and the local language, especially when you are a part of the migrated clan, which I learnt from my prior experiences of UP. Regarding the biasing part, I think the level of humiliation faced by native Kashmiris will always be much more mammoth than what the rest of the India can evince.

I don’t have any interest in writing about Chennai and Bangalore episodes because if N Indian has to suffer in northern India then what else he can expect from the rest of India. Whatever I went through had nothing to do me being a north Indian, the same could have happened had I belonged to southern, eastern or western India; it has to happen because our nationality is Indian.

P.S: Here the objective was to publicly scrutinise the issue of racial discrimination that happens across country.