Harish Alagappa

Category: Ideas of India

  • A Man Without A Country: Navigating Community and Belonging

    A Man Without A Country: Navigating Community and Belonging

    There’s a question that I dread being asked.

    It’s not “where are the bodies?”, I have my alibi locked and loaded for that one. No, it’s the much more innocuous, “where are you from?”

    If I’m talking to any one of the 6.5 billion people who don’t hail from the nation of my birth, I can usually get away with, “I’m from India”. The problem arises when the question is put to me by a compatriot or someone who knows India well.

    Where my grandma from?

    My father’s ancestors were Tamil-speakers, which is why I have a Tamil surname. But I am not a Tamilian.

    My caste is Brahmin, my sub-caste is Dravida Brahmin, and my sub-sub-caste is Pudur Dravida Brahmin, but I don’t identify with any of those communities, either in belief, spirit or action. For example, Dravida Brahmins are supposed to be strictly vegetarian and let’s just say that I’ve enjoyed a few medium-rare steaks in my time.

    Plus, the obvious caveat that the caste system is a grotesque stain on India’s history and society and one that needs to be eradicated as soon as possible.

    Where am I from?

    I was born in the city of Hyderabad when it was the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh, but, as of 2014, is now the capital of the state of Telangana. I’m neither Andhra nor Telangana.

    I grew up mostly in Bangalore, or Bengaluru as it’s now called. Its name was (barely) changed to cater to the sentiments of Kannada-speakers, seeing that Bangalore is the capital of the state of Karnataka.

    Changing place names to placate ethnolinguistic or religious pride is common in India, which is why Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Madras became Chennai, and Allahabad became Prayagraj.

    But, coming back to the point, I’m not a Kannada-speaker either and I can’t count myself as a Bangalorean (or Bengalurean?) seeing that I haven’t lived in that city since 2004 when I moved to the national capital territory of Delhi.

    I lived in Delhi and Noida (in the state of Uttar Pradesh) until around 2017. But it’s not where I’m from. To the people there, I was an outsider. A “Madrasi“, which is what people in North India call anyone who hails from the Southern half of the country, because as far as they are concerned all of South India is just one giant city whose name is no longer what it was.

    I then moved to Goa for a year, which is ironically where I felt the most at home. I since lived in Navi Mumbai, but definitely felt like an outsider there too.

    Now, I’m back in Hyderabad and it is like a foreign country or the past: they do things differently here.

    A man from nowhere and everywhere

    So, to conclude, I am a man with no city to call his own. And according to self-appointed standard-bearers of what constitutes “Indian-ness”, I might not even qualify for that moniker.

    I think the answer is that belonging is not a matter of geography anymore. Community is essential to all humans, but we are the first generation of people who have the freedom to choose what community we wish to belong to.

    Some people find this development strange and unnatural and have been fighting it all the way, which I think is one of the many reasons why neo-fascist and hyper-nationalist movements are gaining ground across the world.

    Nevertheless, I remain, as Kurt Vonnegut said in the title of his final work, A Man Without a Country.

  • また 愛に くる から ね

    また 愛に くる から ね

    A few personal updates.

    I suffered a pulmonary embolism; a bit of the blood clot in my leg travelled up my vein and lodged itself in my lungs.

    I was in the ICU for a few days and at one point, the doctor said I was a “50-50 case”. My folks had to fly back a month early from their first-ever trip to the UK in case the worst happened.

    I went through two rounds of intravenous clot-busters before they wheeled the defibrillator out of the ICU, which until then had loomed over me like the sword of Damocles.

    While I was playing chess with death, fate was busy making a statement against the religious polarization plaguing India. My life was saved by two doctors, one a Hindu and the other a Muslim, as well as nurses and other medical professionals of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. Fuck your hate, we are one people.

    The Bergman reference comes from one of my doctors. After I was moved out of the ICU, he told me the full extent of what I had just gone through. “You played chess with death and won”, he said. I was taken aback and asked him if he had seen The Seventh Seal. He had never heard of the film.

    My recovery is going to take at least three to six months. Of course, this is a wake-up call and I need to change my lifestyle completely.

    While I do that, I plan to slowly start getting back to work today. What a time to be a freelancer!

    Originally shared on LinkedIn