Untrue to type

This week, The Economist ran a piece on the rising aggressiveness of majorities across South Asia who feel threatened by minorities. It reminded me, a casteless, irreligious, often politically incorrect, usually mild-mannered woman — a minority, in fewer words — of when I was first woken to the possibility of being a threat of any kind. This was a long time ago, just before the current government was voted to power.

I was doing that everyday thing (DeMon made it “every day”, but that’s another matter): standing in queue at an ATM. A young woman rushed ahead of four of us and barged into the ATM. The men sighed and gave way, but I uncharacteristically gave voice to our collective annoyance. She was late for a film, she begged. I told her too bad, she should have set out earlier. Then she snarled, “Who do you think you are? You JNU types think you rule the world or what! I am also educated! I can also speak English!”

She left me speechless, outraged and fascinated. Me, a “type”? And JNU? I had been to JNU a few times in my youth, and I only remember it for cramped, malodorous hostel rooms that seemed to be cramped and malodorous because of some misguided Marxian solidarity with the Great Unwashed. In college in Delhi, I took no part in student politics, joined no demonstrations, lit no candles, being really too busy in the glorious world of books, boys and booze.

At a liberal arts college in the US known for its women’s studies department, I received a finger-wagging lecture from a dazzling and clever Croatian lesbian on the moral imperative of political action. I timidly asked why one’s sexual preferences couldn’t remain a private affair, and was rebuked. But I didn’t learn. Years later, a glamorous Delhi left-liberal told me she was “so disappointed” that I didn’t identify with the political left.

What’s your type?

Unconverted, I determinedly chose aesthetics over politics, discussing with my husband the relative merits of Pattamal’s, Subbulakshmi’s and Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s “Yaaro ivar yaaro” (we voted Pattamal); playing the casting game with a man-friend (How come no good films were made from the Modesty Blaise books? But who would play her best, no, not Angelina Jolie.) The greatness and goodness of Mohammed Rafi. The superb George and the overread T S. Which version of sambar should rule the world. Should sambar rule the world? Beef or mutton? And so on. How effete.

I still thrill to these themes, given enough good whisky, but something has changed as the world roils. For one, I notice in myself a new self-indulgence — self-examination. Book-reading, handloom-wearing, beauty salon-disdaining, cigarette-smoking, English-speaking, left-leaning — we are “JNU types”. Our precious individualism is entirely, easily identifiable by tribal markers. If only as much as the “basket of deplorables”.

Those of this tribe who are privileged in other ways — by virtue of having one foot in “ways of life” not entirely westernised, or of simply possessing an extraordinary sensitivity — point out that majoritarian aggressiveness is easily understood as a reaction to the smug, oppressive elitism of a minuscule minority. My self-exam is ongoing; instructive and humbling. But also somehow self-affirming. It was a political act to fight for the right of the woman who worked in my house to an Aadhaar card (oh, the innocence) — “only for residents”, they said; “she is resident in my home, ergo she is a resident,” I said. It was political to discuss with my husband what surname to give our children. It is political to not colour my hair anything other than blue or purple. The personal was always political, I must finally accept. And accept, too, that I must sometimes say so aloud. 

I still don’t join the growing number of civil society protests, though now I would like to. I don’t visit temples to pray but I discern a tiny wistfulness about being excluded from those arcane practices. I don’t speak Hindi well but believe that my children will be richer for knowing more Indian languages. I am no longer outraged that my appearance and speech codes “JNU type”. What a “woke” time, as the Americans are saying. Which reminds me that, as much as real JNU types might sneer, I refuse to lose my affection for the American talent for saying it as it is (literally, phonetically), for simplifying the incredibly complex.

nayantara.patel@bsmail.in