Living with differences

Living with differences

Just received a call from a friend who went to Ajmer to pray at the dargah Shariff of Hazrat Khwajah Moinuddun Chishti. When she tried to check into a hotel, she was asked for her passport by the hotel staff who probably thought she was a foreigner. Ok I forgot to mention she is from Assam and has north eastern features and complexion. So the people at the hotel decided to make sure of her passport details never mind the fact she spoke fluent Hindi.

Then I go to read the posts at Itchingtowrite's blog and see this post on preconceptions and stereotyping of people from specific regions. Some of the statements of her ill-informed relative made me want to laugh. But then I stopped myself and thought ;"How many times have I not heard people in my circle say things about someone being a typical Bihari Thug?" Don't we imagine people in Bihar to be at the throat of anyone from another caste, or blinding scheduled castes or kidnapping every child on the road? And that every bihari male kneads tobacco in their palm and keeps it under their tongue?

While most of the English- medium educated city-bred youth may deny the existence of such prejudices in their interactions, they exist across the country at all levels. One doctor from AFMC told me that they referred to all tamilians as "illad" ( as tamilian boys use this word meaning "No Da"). People who speak telugu are called Gults and North Indians are called CHOMS-chapathi oriented men.I am sure there are many more.

The trouble is that inspite of all the opportunities and information available to us, we do not really make an effort to understand the sub cultures within the country. What we know is mostly from stereotypes shown in films which are mostly caricatures and do not represent the ordinary man from the region. Tamilians do not eat idly/sambar for lunch, punjabis do not go about their day dancing Bhangra and UPites and Biharis do not have a yellow sticker with the list of kidnappings and rape for the day.They all lead ordinary boring lives like us, have the same kind of problems , desires and disappointments - only they speak a different language and eat differnt type of food. Beyond that we are all the same.

How do you explain that to this Tam Brahm mother-in-law of an Assamese friend who will not eat food cooked by her daughter-in-law ( because she is a non vegetarian?). And her disappointment and rejection of her grand daughter who looks assamese and nothing tamilian? How is it ok for her to accept her son who eats non vegetarian and reject her daughter-in-law? And the poor girl is barred from her own kitchen while the mom-in-law comes to her "son's house".And what did she expect the grandchild to look like - in a mixed marriage like this?

The other day our French professor asked us to suggest a topic on Indian Culture to discuss with a French Visitor to our class . One of my classmates immediately said "Unity in diversity"! We have been so indoctarinated about these concepts and accepted these cliches that we don't even bother to question if these exist in reality. Ok, by unity if we mean that we are not killing each other every day because of these differences, yes it is there. Is that the best that we can hope to have?