In today’s turbulent atmosphere, I would like to recall how I was brought up, much like many others across Indian communities. My elders, born in the late 1920s, disdained and discarded caste distinctions and many old taboos, especially about food, because the conditions that led to those distinctions no longer applied as we branched off into non-traditional professions.
I was brought up first by my mother and then by my paternal aunt, both independent working women. My mother, a treasured child raised by progressive parents, was quietly subversive though she observed the Savitri Vrat and the Varalakshmi Puja with grace.
My father’s sister was a rebel, outside the pale of organised religion from an early age, having seen the cruelty of orthodoxy at close quarters. She eventually left the Communist Party of India too in protest after the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, though she abided by the better principles of the Left movement up until her dying day.
Besides holding responsible jobs, both women were curiously alike in key ways. I was taught the habit of prayer by my mother and did not hide it when I began to write on religion and culture, which inevitably led to scorn and suspicion from some quarters. But both my mother and my aunt viewed religion as a private matter. They made it clear that there was an inner world and an outer world, the latter mediated by strict codes of citizenly behaviour.
It was considered vulgar to speak loudly, and it was entirely forbidden to speak impatiently to servants, subordinates, strangers and elders. My grandparents were like that, too, scornful of caste and unhealthy superstition while respecting the right to belief across communities as long as it did not insult or oppress others in the name of ‘God’.
I think I was fortunate to be raised first by a liberal, modern Hindu and then by a liberal ‘Lefty’, both truly liberal in terms of civilly accepting the right to differ. The keyword in both cases was ‘civilly’.
Just so, I find that I now have friends who are deeply Hindu, nominally Hindu, of another persuasion, agnostic, atheist; Indian, from the Indic bandwidth or unfamiliar with matters Indian. But we meet in good fellowship and share opinions, books and films.
The vegetarians remain vegetarian, the ‘egg-only’ eat their omelettes, the meat-eaters set out kebabs and biryani, the teetotallers stick to rasam or nimbupani and the gin-drinkers argue amicably about artisanal brews.
They happen to be from wildly different backgrounds. Some say they’re keeping roza; others say the Navratras or Pitrupaksh are underway. None of them would gloat heartlessly on X if someone with differing views were killed for that. Their beliefs and lifestyles may be worlds apart, but what unites them is a common decency.
We also need to address ghastly situations like this, which continue to happen even now. Back in 2017, auto-driver Uday Chand of Bihar and his wife Lakshmi, drugged their teenage daughters Jyoti and Priti and threw them into a canal because they suspected them of having boyfriends.
The girls were rescued a day later, when passersby spotted them floating in the water. They were rushed to a local hospital, where Jyoti died.
According to news reports, the police said Priti was ‘initially evasive and furnished false names’. She also told police that they were orphans, used to begging near a local temple, and fell unconscious after eating food offered by a stranger. This aroused the police’s suspicions, since the girls did not look like beggars.
After the police counselled her, Priti told them what really happened. Isn’t it grotesquely moving that she tried to protect her parents?
The police charged the parents with murder and attempted murder, and launched a manhunt for the absconding couple. I don’t recall any follow-up news.
This sad story reminds me of how an elegant young woman once told me she despaired of ever finding a partner who was the perfect mix of a chivalrous knight who’d fight for her and a modern man who was self-controlled, polished and balanced.
“Looks like only Sri Ram will do,” I said spontaneously and knew at once that I should duck; that I would have grenades with ‘Sita’ on them lobbed at me. So, I read aloud 19th-century French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story The Model to my young friend, who was horrified and diverted. The Model is famous as a dark, cynical short story about Jean Sumner, a celebrated painter trapped in a miserable marriage to his former model, Josephine. Tiring of her manipulative nature, he tried to leave. After she jumped out of the window and broke her legs to force his commitment, he is shackled to her out of guilt and views his marriage as a curse. The woman is the villain here.
As we conversed, we began to wonder why men who behaved obnoxiously towards women were nevertheless awarded and celebrated, as actors Casey Affleck, Mel Gibson and Marlon Brando were, or as directors Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci were. My friend said it herself: “White men get Oscars though they abuse women, their pictures are splashed in Indian papers with adulatory articles. So, how come our Ram, who was nothing like them, is a bad guy? Does their art excuse them?”
No, it does not, and Ram remains the king of hearts. Uday Chand and Lakshmi were only slightly different from those foreign celebrities. It all comes back to civility, as moral decency towards our fellow beings, don’t you think?
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)