Barry Speak

South Asians of the world unite!

Venkat Bharathan

We once belonged to a land of plenty. Kings had us in kingdoms. Yet we could travel across the country, enjoy music, food, listen to gurus, worship, pray and trade with each other. In the first century AD, Saint Thomas formed Syrian christianity in South India...

Shankaracharaya started a spiritual revival of practicing Hinduism. Some time after, Buddhism and Jainism came to the fore. Subsequently the Moghuls brought in Islam. Akbar also showed us that all religions and faiths could co exist. The Europeans came by sea and fought among themselves. Modern christianity also spread its wings across the land.

The British finally prevailed. Bharat became a British geo-political dominion. Our leaders started the freedom struggle with strong patriotic secular values. The common thread of humanism, dignity, self respect, tradition,culture and patriotism became a durable twine, binding the people of the land.

When the British upped and left, they gave the Hindustani and Pakistani, a divided gift of freedom that haunts the sub continent since 1947. Bangaldesh too came into being.

The Yellow man has become our neighbour. He forces his friendship, makes us accept gifts, sells us a few good things along with cheap goods. In many inscrutable ways he plays mind games with our emotions. He seems taller than what he is.

We, South Asians are driven by an illogical visceral animosity that conveys “I’d rather do nothing with you or for you. I am a South Asian in a mind warp with myself, the Hindustani, Pakistani, Bangladeshi.” When things come to a pass we take to arms. We bleed each other in many ways. Never mind that we are yet to fulfill the basic human needs of the many poor in any of our countries. Never mind that we have set up SAARC that seems to progress backwards as it swims against the tide of our traumatic misunderstandings, the eddies of our egos, the currents of our false pretences, pasteurised by intractable positions and attitudes of arrogance. We appear strange to each other, distanced from our haloed past. Our mental and physical poverty is an inexplicable, unacceptable shame as we are still a sub continent of plenty that can care for all its people whose wants are so little with hearts that are so big.

We need to re-discover the common threads of our heritage. The empathy of ethnicism, food, culture, music, art and craft genetically spawned over 5000 years of togetherness can never be erased from our subconscious. We secretly enjoy things smuggled across our borders!

To our leaders - Trust in our common sense that keeps us going despite your disasters in determining what should have been done to take South Asia forward. Do not frighten us with what we would do to each other. We are more frightened as it is, of our way of life that makes most of us want to run away to other lands. We would rather be slaves there, than subjects here. We have just been freed from the white man. Let us not get shackled by the yellow man who shakes our hands and goes for our jugular!

We understand all of this. Let us think of solutions to solve our basic needs of sustenance and development. Together, let us reach out with respect and mutual tolerance to remove radicalism, in the spirit of the South Asian who knows that Hinduism is a way of life, Islam a faith, Christianity a comfort and Buddhism a blessing.
Let us teach ourselves to be good South Asians. We have much to gain and more to lose.
 

The author is the former Vice Chief of the Naval Staff.