Made In India

What does it mean to be an Indian? People seem to make their own definitions. At times it's beyond my level of understanding though. At some point in our lives, the way we perceive things such as patriotism, religion & God has a profound influence on our personality. These words divide human beings into collective groups of people. The whole purpose of religion and spirituality seems to be defeated.

You might be wondering what exactly it is I’m trying to get at. I started thinking about this when I was watching the news the other day. Sonia Gandhi was being described as a foreigner (as usual) in a particular interview. The fact that she's been in India for most of her adult life is of no consequence. The fact that both of her children have been raised as Indians means absolutely nothing. People are blinded by the fact that she wasn't born in India and can't seem to see beyond that.

I don’t think that just because someone may not have been born in India particularly disqualifies them from being Indian. Mother Teresa may have been born elsewhere but she’s one person who there is not much dispute over. We’re more than proud to declare her as one of our own. We still puff up with pride when names such as Lakshmi Mittal, Kalpana Chawla or Bobby Jindal are brought up in conversation. They're 'Indian' and look where they've reached. But people of Indian origin, even those who have been born and 'brought up' in the US, will always be considered as immigrants by the Americans. Does that mean we follow a similar policy when it comes to foreign people living in our lands?

I have a grandmother who was born in Germany. She spent the first 10 years of her life there before she had to be smuggled out of the country by boat in an attempt to escape the clutches of Nazi Germany. She met my grandfather in England and has been in India since 1949. India provided her a sense of stability and calm which she had never experienced before. She’s been here for well over 3/4th of her life; India is her ‘home’. If you ask me, she’s as Indian as any other person here. But some people think otherwise. They still consider her an outsider. That’s when it just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Agreed, my grandmother’s never tried running for public office but I really don’t get why people get so excitable about Sonia Gandhi’s Italian roots. They almost start hyper-ventilating at the thought.

What is supposed to set us from other animals and why we claim to be 'intelligent' beings is the fact that our brains are capable of something simple called 'logic'. It seems to be an increasingly rare commodity these days.