Ubiquitous Reciprocal Affinity

Until a few years ago it had never occurred that there are other countries that struggle with racism. From news footage I of course knew of “ethnic cleansing” and from history I knew antisemitism and xenophobia as abstract concepts. but until a friend of mine lived for a year in a foreign country, and returned with stories of how the citizens thought about and treated people from the countries next-door (and who’s cultural differences I couldn’t name with a gun pointed to my head) I had never thought really hard about how and why racism exists as an Idea that can get lodged in the consciousness of a country.

In the run up to the “Commonwealth Games” scheduled for the second half of next month here in Delhi, there have been a number of editorials in the dailys on how playing host to a large multi-sport competition will make India look to the rest of the world: a lot of put your best face forward, and tackle corruption while the spotlight is on, sort of stuff. One magazine decided that it would handle things from a different angle. M, local competition to GQ-India and FHM, decided to present a series of essays and photos that discussed the zeitgeist of a striving for modernity yet exasperating republic.

Below the author tackles both his current predicament of feeling like a foreigner in what should be his homeland; but also touches on a not-so-uniquely-Indian problem of how to cobble together a national Identity.

Including the Excluded

By Pradip Phanjoubahm

Are you an Indian? Where was the last time I heard this thrown at me? Difficult to remember, for there have been too many occasions. Not too infrequently and painfully, this is also the experience of most others from the Northeast when they travel abroad, or to the so-called ‘mainland’ India. Mainland? Well, North—east India is almost an island, connected to the rest of the country by just a twenty—and-something kilometer ‘Siliguri Corridor’, or the ‘chicken’s neck’ as this narrow strip of land is more popularly known. Indeed, for most in the North—east, the existential question ‘Who am l?’ has to be renegotiated the day he or she crosses this corridor.

I am reminded of a classic story. Some years ago, one of our reporters was invited to Bangkok for a three—day workshop on climate reporting. He reached the hotel a day in advance, and with religious punctuality, arrived at the conference hall for the opening session, The meeting, however, did not begin for long after he completed the registration formalities. The organizers, it seemed, were waiting for another participant. When he inquired, one of them apologetic calmly told him that they were waiting for an Indian participant to reach the venue.

Ten minutes later, when the Indian man (or woman) still did not turn up, our reporter began to have a nagging suspicion that they could be waiting for somebody who may already be at the venue. He was not wrong. When he asked the organizers how many Indians were participating at the conference in the first place, it turned out there was only one. A look of surprise, a recheck of the attendance register and a hearty laugh later, the meet began. This happened in Bangkok, and therefore evoked nothing more than a hearty laugh. Had a similar thing happened in New Delhi, which is not an impossibility, the hurt and alienation caused would understandably have been much deeper.

The much talked about ghettoization of communities from the Northeast in New Delhi and other Indian metropolises is indeed not just a matter of the northeasterner preferring the security of a Northeast ghetto, but equally one of his or her being pushed into it. For many middle-class young men and women in Manipur, especially among the Hindu Meites who have grown up amidst a devout Vaishnav culture, the question ‘Who am I?’ normally begins troubling them at the college-going age - the time when their parents send them away in pursuit of higher studies to the better political and academic climes of other Indian states. Till then, most would have had no problem in believing themselves to be Indians, by definition as well as culture, without having ever felt the need to reflect on what it means to be an Indian.

They would hence cheer for the India an hockey and football teams without reservation. Cricket is a little alien, although its fan following is on the rise thanks to television and the game’s new packaging. They would celebrate Holi and Durga Puja and other Hindu festivals, and also know that they share these faiths with a lot of others in other parts of India, establishing, in this way, a sense of a loose national community. Unlike other ethnic groups in the region, a good majority of whom are Christians, their sense of a letdown when they discover there is more to the Indian identity then they believed, is peculiar. Needless to say, many end up embittered.

Just to give a sense of Manipur’s demographic profile, the Meiteis are one of three major ethnic groups of the state; They are predominantly Hindus, although seven percent of them are Muslims and an unspecified percentage follows the original pre-Hindu animistic faith of Sanamahi, now given new life by a strong revivalist movement in the 1960s and ’7os. (The percentage of Sanamahi followers will be known after the current Indian census exercise, which has allowed them to enter ‘Sanamahi’ as their religion, although today, it must be said, this faith has become somewhat an extension of Hinduism. The fact that Hinduism is not a structured religion has helped in this.) The other two major groups are the Nagas and Kukis, who are today almost a hundred percent Christian. (This followed the proselytizing path opened

115 years ago by the pioneering and revered American Baptist missionary William Pettigrew.) Their sense of aleinatiation to the idea of India is (or at least was) a substantially different equation. politic secular, is culturally still predominantly the land of the Hindus, or Hindustani. In modern times, Hindu nationalist political parties.,by trying to give this cultural identity a political use, have only accentuated this belief.

Not so much In Mipur, but a good majority of the Nagas in Nagaland, for instance, would even today say they are not Indians. But then there would have to be finer distinction made here. The ‘Indian’ that the Nagers in Nagaland say they are not Las an imagined ethnic category and not a citizenship status. So when a Nagger says he is not an Indian, more than citizenship, he means he is not a non-mongoloid, Dravldo—Aryan, generally dark-skinned plainsman, which he believes is the ethnic profile of an Indian. In Manipur, there is a separate category for the plainsman Indian - Mayan. A Meitei, Kuki or Naga from Manipur hence wll say he is not a Mayang (obviously), but wall have less trouble calling himself an Indian, for Indian here signifies citizenship. This is also true of th other Northeastern states. In Mizoram, the word for Mayang is Val, In Meghalaya it is Dkhar etc. So am I, a Meitei from the Indian state of Manipur, an Indian? On the face of it, yes. I am a citizen of the secular republic called India. I fulfill all the obligations of being an Indian citizen and, in turn, enjoy all the benefits (although with some hiccups such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA—1958) the Indian state guarantees its citizens. But the trouble is, being an Indian does not end here.

In fact, it only begins at this point. Quite to the contrary of what the republican Constitution of India says, ‘lndianmesn’ is often quite intuitively also projected as the state of belonging to a civilizational, historical and cultural stream. By this definition, to be Indian is a primordial state of being: Anybody can become an Indian citizen, but he cannot become an Indian, he has to be born as one. The case of the wide opposition some years ago amongst a good section of Indians to Sonia Gandhi emerging as a Prime Ministerial candidate is just one alibi. Quite ironically, even former Lok Sabha Speaker Puma Sangria, from Meghalaya, was one of the staunchest campaigners against this possibility, and he had even resigned from the Congress party on this count. This was, perhaps, a demonstration of the psychological phenomenon of self-hate that Frantz Fanon explained in Wretched of the Earth, in which the oppressed identifies his own degradation in others in a similar predicament, and despises that image.

This 5ooo-year-old historical mainstream of Indian culture is what the Northeast has never belonged to. The image oft Indian man projected both abroad as well as in the country has little of the northeast, which is why our reporter in Bangkok and other overseas travelers from the region are called upon to apologetically qualify their claims of being Indians every time they hold out their Indian passports. This may be just another unfortunate fact that the North-east man has to get used to and not be too sensitive about, but he cannot also prevent the hardening of the deep sense that he is a different Indian, The North—east has always belonged to historical stream that have flowed separately, and if there has been a forced confluence it is thanks to British colonialism. which yoked them together for its own ends. Under such circumstances, and especially when the boundary between ‘Indianness’ and ‘Hinduness’ is sought to be thinned down through political overtones such as ‘Hindutva’, the North-east finds itself recoiling.

This fact of the northeast being distant from the ‘mainstream’ is evident in the familiar appeal to it, to ’join the mainstream’. The question is, how about widening the Indian mainstream so that Northeasters do not have to leave their streams to join the ‘mainstream’? They can then remain in their old streams and still be part oft ‘mainstream’. To be a proud Indian, politically and culturally, then would only mean to be proud of what you actually are. And to this there would be no dispute, there would be no resistance, for then there would be nothing to resist. Nation building would then not involve either leaving any stream or joining another ‘mainstream’. In one stroke, the excluded would have automatically become included.

(The author is editor of Impala Free Press)

I had the best weekend in Delhi so far, even though it monosooned half of Saturday and I was half-sick on Sunday.
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So far this week we’ve I’ve had two nights (8:30 pm - 5:30am local) with my new team. The six guys all seem very intelligent and they look to have a very diverse ethnic backgrounds. All of them have come to delhi to get jobs that were not avaliable in their home regions. We asked a “favorite place question as an “icebreaker” and got a slew of “my hometown” answers — even from my colleague who was having an admittedly heavy bout of homesick.

They asked us what our degrees were in and were surprised to learn that neither of their trainers had a degree in business/finance - although they seemed to perk up when it was mentioned that their other trainer was in school for MBA (we didn’t mention that his first class wont be till he gets back in Sept). These guys had studied computer programing, and marketing at their various institutions, but in a down economy had thought that getting time in with a global-outsourcing firm would look good on their CV’s and give them a leg up on competition when internal management positions become available. It sounds a lot like how I started at the Job almost 7 years ago.

I’m more amazed at the similarities in the cultures than at the differences, and if it’s not to patronizing a thing to say — looking a out at Delhi (I know I’m in a suburb but out trip into the city Sunday revealed not so different a landscape from the one outside my balcony) I see the US 120 years ago, perhapse the mash of social classes, climbers, entreprenuers, migrants, visionaries, and those just struggling to get by, that existed in the New York City at the turn of the 19th century.

Another telling answer to our icebreaker questions was the what would you do if you won the lottery — although lotteries have been banned here recently for reasons having to do with fixing and corruption, they all knew what we meant. (I suspect though that in his description of American lottery, my colleague made us all seem like wastrel gambling addicts - but no matter.) 5 out of the six had in mind a sort of charitable foundation to assist all their countrymen & women that the upheavals of the last decades seem to have left behind.

I doubt than American group would answer so selflessly, either out of cynicsm at the effects of charity; or because of a lack of knowledge on the full extent of the domestic needs. Conversely I think it noble but perhapse futile to think that one lottery winning will have an impact on the fortunes of an entire country. (It’s hard enough to coordinate the schedules/motivations of my family so hundreds of millions seems impossible.) Maybe I’m wrong (and a part of me hopes I am) but “poor” is a relative state and there will always be some among us that are less advantaged, our efforts at charity do more to help the giver feel good than it does the situation of the recipient.

The other thing that makes this group of trainees amusing is the degree of camaraderie that they show toward each other. I learned that these guys have been mentoring with the firm’s new business teams for the last month while we were delayed in getting here (damned visa issue) and so they seem already pretty familiar with each other. The first night of training we accompanied them to the the small food stand/pavilion that had been set up in the vacant lot next to the office tower, they offered to buy us food - as if we were paying for our food ourselves anyway.

The degree of back slapping, hand holding, horsing around and general physical affection on display would be unthinkable in the American workplace, it made my colleague wonder about the idea of “sexual orientation” in Indian culture. From my limited knowledge there is no such thing as a homosexual-Hindi (although if there were they would no longer be considered criminal by national law). I explained that it was typical in most gender separated societies (as most of the non-G8 countries are) the assumption of marriage and child rearing are so strong that any activity short of being caught by the paparazzi in a man-on-man-on-man orgy wouldn’t lead to suspicion. Not that I’ll be picking up boys at a bar while I’m here — sorry Brett & Paul.

Again I think back to the mores of 19th century America, where the future president could share a bed/house with his law partner and nobody would assume that they were “life-partners”. The question remains as to how this may develop as the country grows more affluent. Will they loose this expression of friendship as trying to out-macho each other becomes a symptom of competetion, or will the strides toward gay-rights in the US and elsewhere allow them to leapfrog past that stage in their economic growth.

More later. Tomorrow afternoon we visit the India division of the corporation.

So I’m bringing the blog back on-line. I’m preparing for the trip of the decade. The number of people that expressed interest in my itinerary and accommodations has been very flattering so I figured I would bring the blog back on-line to keep all the people who care up to date, and as excited (vicariously) as possible.

More to come as the trip nears. The current departure is set for July 7th.

The title of the post says it as suscint as possible. But I can’t put a whole post of just that one sentance over and over again. Those of you who are single will likely be aware of the emotions - and those of you in relationships are likely recollecting the “bad old days” before happiness presented itself.

Right now I’m “between relationships” and by relationship I mean a period of monogomus dating. I did once reach a stage where I lived with a significant other, but that was long ago and illconsidered. Most of my “relationships” since then have lasted 18 to 24 months aproximately the gestational period of an Elephant calf. Metaphorically I guess that implies a lot of miscarriages (or just that the “where’s this going” question takes that much time to become big enough to force acknowledgement). The elephant in the room indeed.

When they end I usually take a period to mourn, usually llasting about a week for each month that the relationship lasted. By that token I was “over ” the last BF by the time my brother got married last year. Since then I’ve had a lot of first dates, a smatterin of seconds and a grAnd total of 4 third dates. So much for the sucess rate of Match dot Com.

Every time I get the “I’m really busy” brush off I wonder what it was that put them off. Was it my busy schedule? Was it my nerdiness? Was it the fact that I’m always running late? And easily distracted? I never get an answer like that - which would be easier to understand. Mostly it’s the cliché ” not you, it’s me”, or the even more generic “just not working”.

This gives me no direction for improvement. Which could at least a way to channel the anger at getting dumped. I could get to the gym more often, spend more time cleaning my apt ( which usually needs it, but I’m not usually motivated unless I have an impression to make) or even discontinuing the use of phrase X. (I’ve recently caught myself starting to say the useless tautology “It is what it is”, I thankfully stopped before I got through “Wha”.) I’m left strugging to come up with a blueprint for how to be a better boyfriend. So I’m looking for all the advice I can get.

All suggestions welcome. All criticisms are acceptable. Let the commenting begin!

Since the job 2 schedule has settled, my Sunday rituals have changed. In an earlier incarnation the political talkshows would fire me up better than coffee - curse like a sailor indeed, John. Before that it was puzzle time with Steph, Michelle and the dogs. Now I find that my Sundays consist of a Panera breakfast and “Speaking of Faith”. The train ride is a good way to start the day, and the topics being discussed on the radio take me back to some of my earliest Sunday memories.

The church I attended, and that my parents still attend, was, in the 70’s a very lively place with many social groups engaged in lively discussions after, around, and between church(s). This was I think largely the work of the pastor’s interests - he had left teaching and later returned to it. Knowing what I do now I would characterize the atmosphere as a response to, and an augmentation of Vatican II creative energies. Of course at my young age all I knew was “Church”.

I’ll give a lot of credit for my spiritual direction to Joe Everson who fostered that environment in the 80’s (and Katherine Finegan who carried into the youth ministries of the 90’s). I was in fact his first Baptism, and part of his last Confirmation class. But when he moved to CA and I was about 14, the spirit of the place changed.

Where Joe was a curious and intellectually rigorous person of religious temperament, he seemed not be as engaged in the emotional mystery of the Christian tradition. A “bridal” Lutheran he was not. (Leave it to a guy typing on a train to commingle those two labels.) His replacement was of contrasting ideas, more in tune with how peoples’ hearts connect with God; and, I suspect, that he was correspondingly much better at pastoral care.

The tenor of Sundays also changed, as one would assume with a new speaker at the pulpit. A community seems to choose the leadership style they most need. And where Joe was very interested in the history and textual analysis of the bible, Connie understood the good book through its great characters. The sermons implicitly asked the congregation to imagine themselves in the place of gospel situations; often extemporaneous, they expressed an assumption that each person could develop a personal relationship with god. Its description was vertical.

I am tempted to draw some parallel with the national rise of political evangelism but that puts to much of a negative taint to the direction of my childhood church. What I did see was a growth of the membership that drew on more un-churched demographics. Illustrative of the change was the use of the phrase “whose side we/you are on”.

Not that I believe there is such a thing as sides, but that’s a different post. An important coincidence with the change in tone was the tapering off of the adult education hours. As this was happening in the older populations of the church, I was beginning to ask the tough questions that all gay kids most struggle through.

I never discussed those questions with Connie, but I suspect that he would have likely told me to pray more often and more diligently. I hope that he would not have been disparaging that about my sexual quandary, but the emphasis would have been on trying to feel closer to God, and the implicit meaning was that my heart would choose the non-gay road. The experienced know that whenever there is a dispute between the heart and the mind the body decides, so really there was no contest - Exodus material I wasn’t (and am not).

The hot-rod-lovin’ pastor was incredibly inviting to neighborhood members, but the Sunday services moved away from the comfort of ritual and metaphor  and closer toward testimonials of parishioners and celebrations of how great it was that those assembled had found their way to God. Surprisingly we never hosted an AA group.  

As I’ve struggled to find a spiritual home in my post-coming-out life, I find comfort in literature of faith, both broad and rigorous. I recently exchanged a few notes with a sister who had some questions about where I was in my faith life. I told her I was heartened to learn that she was interested but also skeptical of her ability to listen to my answer. I recommended that she read some Spinoza which has recently influenced me, but also that she expand her search for meaning beyond her tradition and environment - not really happy with her choice of educational institutions. I look forward to talking more with her about this journey.

It continues as it will through, and amongst many different Ideas and it’s the movement that I find most to be the most comforting ritual. And thanks to the latest version of the Sunday morning, I now have a new path to explore.

Reinhold Niebuhr

The cable TV was awash in comercials for flowers, teddy-bears and pajama-grams this week in the build up to a fat ass fraud. Yes, I’m annoyed, I’ll get over it though - always have. Even on those February 14th’s that I’ve had a Valentine, the cultural expectations that come to bear are difficult to escape. And if there’s something that really annoys me, it’s cultural expectation.

Everybody is familiar with absurdity of “a special day for romance” so I’ll skip the if-it’s-expected-is-it-real straw man. I can’t pretend that I wouldn’t like somebody to have Dinner with this evening, but I keep wondering what things would be different if there were larger cultural acceptance of being single.

I suspect that there have been many an unhappy life created by the assumption, external or internalized, that being in a relationship is better than not - and there are the children that have been brought up by the people in those relationships.

There are of course cultural icons and archtypes that single people are assumed to emulate: John Wayne, comes to mind. And then

Special Olympics Polar Plunge

This week I got notice of my 2008 performance bonus and raise. It was disappointing to say the least. Not surprising, but disappointing none the less. A 1.08% raise and a “Bonus” about 36% of last year’s - Citibank, my job is not.

It’s not like I am struggling on my current salary, and with everything that’s happened with the economy I am happy to have a job. But with the pending “Stimulus Bill”, all the talk about people being “upside down” on their mortgages, and the supposed “foreclosure crisis”, I think that there is a demographic that seems to have been forgotten: student debtors. It seems that with the dramatic increases in cost of a College diploma, and the declining value of all but the highest graduate degrees, the sheepskin that once would have seemed a ticket to prosperity is more and more a type of indentured servitude. Is it time to rethink the position of the student loan on the good debit - bad debit spectrum. 

At least it is time to start looking at the trade offs more individually, and in personal contexts. For instance: how is it possible to take a job in the non-profit sector, or even in education when the service on your debit is approaching the recommended savings allotment? For myself I find that if it weren’t for my second job my social life would consist of treating myself to an Applebees dinner once a month. (I will admit that I did live outside my budget while dating Dale because I felt guilty if I ever let him pay for something. And while I loved the grand canyon trip I’m not sure we would have gone if price had been an object for him. I don’t recommend dating one of the Joneses.) 

The way I see things is that if we were really looking toward stimulating the economy that there should be some thought given to the debit that so many of my peer group have incurred in the pursuit of higher learning. Maybe it it is we who should be considered as deserving of a bail out. How many good ideas could the next generation think up if they had enough time to spend thinking them up. How many new and innovative products could be brought to market if the “we” of indentured servitude could spend our time living our lives and not making money for other people.

Perhaps I exaggerated a bit and maybe I should just sign up for some American Volunteer Service program. But I know that if I didn’t have my student loan payment in my bi-weekly budget I could get $2500 a month closer to my retirement goals — to my gorgous condo/work space on which to work on my media empire (chuckle). JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.

Today I’m heading over to my parents house for a birhday party for one of my aunts. She is the oldest of my mother’s siblings and has never been married; for these reasons I feel a certain affinity for her. And I doubt that we share much in common philosophically I have a lot of respect for the choices she’s made and the life she built.

This morning I have been wondering if my niece/s and nephews will think of me in the same way. I hope to be as big a part of their lives as this aunt ha been in mine. I likely won’t buy them trinkety figurines (Hummels for a 9 year old? What’s that about?) but I know the time I spend with them now will be a positive part of their growing up.

While writing out her card and wanting to express my appreciation for all she’s done, I went looking for a looking for a gender neutral term for aunt/uncle - she can’t really show what it means to be a unclen nor would she want to. I was not able to find one in english and the resources all seemed to point out that even foreign languages seem to lack this term. I am now looking for help to identify an appropriate word leaf suggestions in the comments.