Each Indian Muslim is aware of in regards to the pause: the second when one other Indian, often a Hindu, hears your title, waits just a few seconds, after which, with a furrowed forehead or a step again, acts shocked and confused that you just, too, are Indian. The implication is one in every of suspicion, as if we’re Indians with an asterisk—or worse, as if we aren’t Indians in any respect.
I’ve encountered this response at literary events in New Delhi, the place company greet one another with air kisses, in addition to throughout my workplace hours in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when a couple of Hindu American pupil has expressed shock that I—a Pakistani, they incorrectly assumed—cared a lot about India.
The expertise is exhausting, however it’s not new. My father went by way of it rising up in Tanzania, as did his father in India. However in the present day, presumptions about Indian id seem to have narrowed nonetheless additional, and the person accountable, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is receiving a red-carpet welcome in Washington, D.C., with a state dinner and a speech to a joint session of Congress.
India was as soon as extra accepting, extra tolerant. That’s what we Indian Muslims say, particularly when Hindus are round. What different selection do now we have?
And to a point, it’s true. Ages in the past, in 2005, I labored on the marketing campaign to dam Modi from coming into the US. What strikes me about that marketing campaign now could be, nicely, how straightforward it was.
A decade in the past, I may barely persuade a dozen members of the Home of Representatives—Democrat or Republican—to signal a letter expressing concern for political prisoners in Bahrain. However, no less than in 2005, it wasn’t actually that tough to criticize Modi, as a result of India, State Division officers informed me, will not be Modi. It has by no means been Modi, and it could by no means be Modi.
I cherished that line. I used it on a regular basis. And I believed it. However in the present day, whether or not we prefer it or not, India is Modi, and the US is partly in charge, as a result of Modi is aware of that no matter what he does, he’ll obtain a heat embrace right here.
Since Modi grew to become prime minister in 2014, Indian Muslims have been attacked—and in some instances killed—for doing the next: consuming beef, attending Hindu festivals, falling in love with a Hindu, posting on social media, promoting greens, “inflicting” COVID-19, not standing for the Indian nationwide anthem, praying inside a mosque, praying inside their properties, giving their baby a Muslim title, protesting, driving, and sporting what they need.
By 2050, India will have the world’s largest Muslim inhabitants, surpassing Indonesia, and but it’s a neighborhood in peril. Situations in India have been in comparison with these in nations getting ready for genocide. Extremists have brazenly known as for killing Muslims by the hundreds of thousands, and political operatives boast on Twitter when Muslim properties are destroyed by authorities bulldozers. India additionally leads the world in web shutdowns, has cracked down on journalists at an alarming price, and continues to grant impunity to those that assault Christians, Dalits, Adivasis, and different marginalized teams.
Earlier this month, in Modi’s dwelling state of Gujarat, a Dalit was reportedly attacked by upper-caste Hindus as a result of he wore fashionable garments and sun shades. A couple of days in the past, additionally in Gujarat, Muslims have been flogged in public for protesting the destruction of an Islamic shrine. In reality, as many as 90 p.c of hate crimes in India since 2009 occurred after Modi got here to energy. Regardless of all of this, or maybe due to it, Modi is now the world’s hottest chief, with an approval score of 76 p.c in India.
Modi is cherished in America too. Quickly after he grew to become prime minister, he spoke to a sold-out crowd of about 20,000 at Madison Sq. Backyard. After securing his second time period, he spoke to 50,000 in Houston. By some estimates, he has acquired the biggest reception of any international chief in the US besides the pope, and in keeping with a research by the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace, almost 70 p.c of Hindu Individuals—versus about 20 p.c of Indian Muslim Individuals—help Modi.
Lots of Modi’s supporters—like Trump supporters—are identified to get rowdy, to place it mildly. Attendees at an India Independence Day Celebration in California final 12 months known as demonstrators who tried to convey consideration to spiritual discrimination in India “silly Muslims,” grabbing and breaking their indicators. In New Jersey that very same 12 months, Hindus drove a bulldozer—a logo of anti-Muslim hate in India—by way of the Indian-dominated metropolis of Edison with an image of Modi affixed to it.
Lately, once I attend a social gathering and I see one other Indian American in attendance, I’ll usually stroll to the opposite aspect of the room. Am I being extreme and unfair? After all. However I’ve grown weary of feeling that I would want to hide elements of myself as a way to be appreciated and accepted by different Indians.
I used to be born in California to Gujarati immigrants from East Africa. In 2002, I traveled to Gujarat as a service-corps fellow with the American India Basis to work with an NGO in Ahmedabad. It was the primary time anybody in my household had visited our ancestral homeland.
Twelve days after I arrived, a practice carrying Hindu volunteers caught hearth within the Gujarat metropolis of Godhra, leading to what the scholar Ashutosh Varshney calls the “first full-blooded pogrom in impartial India.” Greater than 1,000 folks have been killed, most of them Muslim.
I’ll always remember, just a few days into the pogrom, seeing an aged Hindu lady, her again hunched, throwing a brick at a Muslim restaurant, being ever so cautious to not hurt the Hindu restaurant simply above it. When a gaggle of Hindu boys noticed her struggling, they ran to her help, providing her water and biscuits in order that she may preserve her stamina and proceed destroying Muslim property.
That tenderness, that love, that compassion—I didn’t know easy methods to make sense of it, particularly when mixed with burning, looting, and killing.
Modi’s complicity within the violence is the straightforward a part of this story. What many Indian Muslims speak about, particularly when Hindus usually are not round, is that this: Why did so few of our Hindu buddies, whom we as soon as cherished, get up for us?
Within the a long time because the pogrom, I can rely on one hand the variety of Hindu American buddies who’ve reached out to acknowledge what I went by way of in India. Lots of my mother and father’ Hindu buddies in Sacramento, California, the place they dwell, stopped speaking to them after I began criticizing Modi. I do know my mother and father are happy with my work. I additionally know they miss their buddies.
As Modi visits America, I want I have been nonetheless a congressional staffer, if just for the prospect to temporary elected officers this week to remind them of how a lot energy they’ve over India.
From 2011 to 2015, I lived and reported from a Muslim ghetto in Ahmedabad for a e-book I’m writing in regards to the 2002 pogrom and its aftermath. Once I interviewed officers within the Gujarat authorities and in Modi’s inside circle, they’d be so enamored of chatting with an American that they’d ignore my questions and never even hassle to ask my title. After assembly in particular person, some would throw me out of their workplace as quickly as they discovered I used to be Muslim. However many extra would beg me to remain, insisting I inform them the whole lot I’ve ever heard about India in Washington.
That’s the curious factor about Modi: In India, he’s a strongman who brags about his chest measurement, however outdoors it, he’s so determined for adulation that there are memes of him awkwardly hugging world leaders. The US has this benefit over India. It will probably get Modi to vary, even just a bit, and I concern that until one thing is finished, Modi’s undertaking to redefine India and its diaspora will grow to be irreversible.
Two years in the past, my spouse and I welcomed our first baby, a son we named Mirza. After Mirza and I eat Indian meals—particularly butter-coated parathas full of potatoes—he usually goes round and declares, “I’m from India!”
It’s a stunning, lovable factor. I hope Mirza continues to say that. However I fear that earlier than lengthy, he, too, will likely be informed he isn’t Indian.
