What is Indian?

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/dont-stereotype-indians-emotional-pm-tells-uk/44143-3.html?xml

PM Manmohan Singh is unable to sleep after witnessing the interviews of the families of those Indians under arrest either in Australia or the UK.

I have lost count of the names.  The media here consistently announces the arrests in numbers and the detainees as ‘suspects’.  I admit I am also confused on who’s who.  In the old days, crimes were solely attributed to individuals.  Today, thanks to misguided trysts with media (a la Tony Blair), we are more susceptible to generalize.

As human beings, we are very much about personalization.  As infants, it was ‘My mommy’ and ‘My Daddy’ and we quibbed with our own siblings.  As children in schools, it became ‘My best friend’ and ‘my group’.  As adults, it’s really much of the same.  It’s ‘us’ vs ‘them’.

Until the terror suspects were identified by origin/nationality as ‘Indian’, I didn’t pay much attention.  Initially, Indian and muslim and I thought — Mumbai — but then when I heard ‘Bangalore’, I thought whoooa!  This is ‘My Bangalore’ or ‘Namma Bengaloooru’.

So the story on CNN-IBN relates is that of two brothers, children to professors from a medical college.  These two kids both earned a degree in medicine from B R Ambedkar college and then set forth on their journey ‘abroad’.  What happened during the journey seems to be as much an enigma to us as it is to the family involved.  They were ‘briefed’ by their children periodically about ‘projects’ that were highly confidential.  Next we hear, one of the sons is in hospital suffering from over ‘90%’ burn wounds, after  having run his jeep (complete with petrol bombs and gas canisters) into an airport wall in Glasgow, UK.

It is no surprice that Bangalore is a regular exporter of it’s children.  While known mainly  for IT-related exports, this is perhaps the first time the city has come in the news for exporting terror suspects.  The fact that these children are also from the muslim faith only further simplifies the matter for those too afraid to think.

The UK government however isn’t seeing this as a simple matter.  They are pulling together the pieces quietly.  The same report on CNN-IBN also mentioned over 30 reports of racial violence that broke out in Glasgow.  Asians are being targetted.

When we first moved to the UK, we heard this sentiment to break up the ‘Asian’ tag into ‘Indian’, ‘Pakistani’, ‘Bangladeshi’ etc — because most people from one country were not comfortable being clubbed with those from their neighbours.  Now, when I read the report, I wondered how many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were being targetted due to the acts of these Indians.

It’s like going in circles, isn’t it?  PM Manmohan Singh is right in that Indians should not be stereotyped.  And yet, it doesn’t seem fair that we only attribute our positive qualities to being ‘Indian’. 

I feel terrible for the family.  They seemed like just any other set of parents in Bangalore who’s kids have gone abroad to ‘be successful’.  They clearly do not endorce the ‘terror attacks’.  They are in shock and unable to understand what led their son to do what he has done.  Was he under ‘drugs’ / has he been brainwashed?

Think about it.  If one of your own family members were caught in the red commiting a crime such as this, where do you start?

The Bangalore police, the report said, is also doing some ‘investigating’.  That made me smile.  They wanted to learn, the report said, if these brothers had a local network.  This is what I think our prime minister was refering to when he said he was losing sleep.  As India surges economically, we are also causing a shift of powers at large.  Our current prime minister might not be around to steer us but he is thinking about what this means.

Till late, all the terror suspects were mainly an export of our friendly neighbour, Pakistan.  Now, we need to contend with this as well.  These terror suspects are no longer nationals of any country.  They are forming a boundary-less nationality to whom the world is a playground.  Religion is not a clue either.  While the majority might be muslims today, the next generation will be religion-less as well.  What about family binds then?  Did the two sons think of their parents when they went down this path?  We don’t know.

What results is a very bleak reality of individuals who are without any traditional linkages.  For those of us cast aside by these individuals, we will need to reach out and talk to one another.  We can’t go on feeding our ‘us’ vs ‘them’ illusion amongst ourselves.  We will need to include and provide as many ties to bind us to ourselves so that we don’t lose any more of us to the bleak wilderness out there again.

It might just start with the individual in your company that you think is wierd.  Or the family down the street who really don’t know what to do with their own garbage.  We will need to re-engage in our communities but also re-engage with other communities as well.  We need to become more nosy about our children’s affairs and figure out what the ‘projects’ are really about.  We need to drone out the hype from people who are looking to gain ‘public’ favor and instead spend our time engaging one another.