A few questions...

Where do you belong… I mean which state? What’s your caste? What religion do you belong to? These are the first questions that one is asked.

How does it matter where I belong? Is it really important to know which state I am from? How much does my religion play a role in my being a good or a bad person? Why does my caste matter so much? I have often seen my mother bobbing up and down whenever someone mentions that they are a Bhatnagar, she seems so happy just to meet them as if they belong to her family. I feel a pang of pain whenever she says that she won’t give her daughter to a Saxena family. Heaven forbid if I fall in love with a Muslim or a Scheduled Caste. She doesn’t look amused whenever my dad even jestingly says that he will marry me to a Scheduled caste as that would be a quite advantageous for my kids.

People say that India is the most discriminating society in this world. And I seem to agree. We may all rave about the tolerance levels of our country, about how secular we are, about how India is a country of unity in diversity, that how so many cultures are blended within that Indianness, that how we are one; the truth is that we may be one but that one betrays the many decimals that make that number, the cultures may have blended but there are people who seem to know just how to disintegrate that blend, there may be unity but sometimes the diversity defeats that unity, our secularism betrays signs of pseudo-secularism, and the tolerance levels are nothing to rave about. Gujarat witnesses small communal riots on a daily basis, which largely go unreported. Malegaon in Maharashtra is a communal tinderbox.

Why is it that today every Muslim is looked upon with a suspicious gaze? Why is it that many Christians do charity in the name of their religion? Why is it that Hindus are treated as second-rate citizens here? Why is it that vote-bank politics as well caste-based politics is still practiced in India? We get the leaders that we deserve and today our politics and politicians are playing politics of hatred, then we are to blame. We do vote on caste and religion lines.

Why? It is time, perhaps, that we ask ourselves these questions before it gets too late. Too late for us to be called a nation.