It was in the year 2009 that I first travelled abroad. I was a fresher just out of college, my career had only just begun and here I was in Australia, a new country. Everyone told me to be prepared because I would, after all, be an outsider there. In fact, I was even sent to attend a session to prepare for my stint there, to help me assimilate in a new social paradigm. But do you know something? That feeling of being an outsider wasn’t something new to me. I had, after all, been an outsider all my life. And the irony is that I had been made to feel this within my own country.
I was born to a Bengali family hailing from Assam but spent my entire childhood in Meghalaya. Shillong was my home, is still my home in some ways if you ask me, but out there I was a Bengali and not a Khasi, an important distinction for some. Not belonging to one of the prominent tribes of Meghalaya made me an outsider. I grew up being made to feel that I was living on borrowed grace which, mind you, I wasn’t. My father was a State Government employee there and he was working for the people of the very state, some of who called us Dakhars meaning outsiders. At a very young age, I learnt that being an Indian wasn’t always enough. Sometimes, the state you belonged to could be a matter of life or death. Of course, not everyone believed in this chauvinistic regional bias but those who did made it pretty obvious.
A few years down the line, I move to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, to pursue my Engineering degree. Again, I found myself in a place where I automatically became the outsider. Somehow being an Indian just wasn’t enough. And here I was an Indian from the North East, a part which sadly the rest of the country doesn’t know much about, even today. It was almost like I was illegally living in a foreign land when the truth really was I had as much right to be there as anyone who had been born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh. Again, not everyone made me feel this way but those who did made sure the message was loud and clear.
But I still never stopped believing that I have every right to move around freely in my country. I certainly didn’t need any permission. The yardstick, in my view, was simple. Hence, as a law abiding citizen, why was I being made to feel like an outsider? Strangely, I have seen we are more accommodating of foreigners than of people from a different state of our country. Wonder why that is?
I live in Bangalore now. It is in my view one of the best places to live in India. I have been here for 9 years now and have made some wonderful friends, friends who are Kannadigas, though I hate distinguishing friends based on their state of origin. The people are helpful here and it is also a very cosmopolitan city, which is wonderful. I even consider myself as belonging from this beautiful city now but I am often stopped in my tracks by some fringe voices. That uncomfortable feeling of being called an outsider is hard to shake off. It’s certainly hard for someone who has not experienced it to identify with this feeling.
When I go to Guwahati which is in Assam, I’m again treated by some as an outsider because I’m not an Assamese. Do you see my conundrum? This happens even in the state I was born in. Like I said, I’m the perpetual outsider.
“If you’ve ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you. You can be happy or successful or whatever, but that thing still stays within you.” ― Tim Burton
The thing is as much as I would want to maybe move back to the North East for the benefit of those who insist that I’m an outsider where ever I go in India, I can’t. There is nothing in terms of employment opportunities in that part of the country. Nobody cares and hence people like me have to move out. And we do that thinking we are only going to another city in our own country, there should be nothing to worry about. But that’s not true, is it? Though the question really is, why should I even have to consider going back?
We, the perpetual outsiders in any part of India, learn to live with subtle inhibitions. We cannot comment on something trivial like the weather for we might be told to go back to our state. We are repeatedly told to learn the local language to assimilate and believe me we try. But for someone like me who is a handicap when it comes to picking up new languages, it’s tough. Now even then we try but if we pronounce something wrong, we are again pounced upon. I don’t even know Bengali well. In fact, I cannot even read Bengali. I’m not proud of it but that’s my shortcoming even with a language which is my mother tongue. But does that warrant ill-treatment? Of course, we also know that the vast majority of people are actually very accommodating. But our experience even with even a select few makes us wary. The unpleasantness lingers like a bitter aftertaste.
These past few weeks I wanted so much to talk supporting Karnataka on the Cauvery Issue. I live in the state, I have a home here, I work here and contribute to the economy here so I wanted to say out loudly that the Supreme Court needs to listen and understand our side of the story too. But a voice from deep down kept telling me to keep quiet.
I feel like a new daughter-in-law who needs to think a million times before commenting on any matter related to her new home. And it’s not a comforting feeling.
My daughter was born in Karnataka. My husband hails from Uttar Pradesh and as told above, I come from Assam. We call ourselves the true Indian family but sometimes I worry that my daughter’s identity will be questioned and that she’ll end up being a perpetual outsider too. I don’t want her to feel that in her own country. Maybe she won’t but I still worry.
Regional chauvinism is a fact in every part of India. From north to south, east to west, there is not one corner of this country which is immune to this. We all are or have been regional chauvinists at one point in time or the other. And that’s the reason the tribe of perpetual outsiders like me keep increasing.
But in spite of everything, I still want to believe we are one country. Now there are good and bad, both kinds of people in the world and the state or language has no bearing on that. For example, I might be a bad person but that has nothing to do with me being a Bengali or that I was born in Assam, it will simply be because I’m a bad person. Period.
Honestly, I wish we embraced each other with our uniqueness and our differences, every single day and not only during a cricket match. I wish unity in diversity is not a sentence that we only use to adorn our essays but one that we firmly believe in. After all, we are all Indians, aren’t we?
(Nabanita Dhar is a reader of The New Indian Express)