Chance Remarks-->Identity Crisis-->Language of Freedom
It’s strange how much effect a chance remark, stated without intent to hurt or even provoke thought, could influence a person so much. It’ strange that one person, who’s a friend of a friend, could say that I share only links to Western articles and cause me to wonder if I have internalised racism.
Aye! It’s food for thought, isn’t it? Whether we, or whether some of us, like me, for example :-), are so consumed and influenced by the Western media and Western culture that we don’t think much of the culture that brought us up and fed us, the culture that gave us our roots?
Though the thought is not new! After all, the story of Indian Independence is replete with examples of our struggles against colonial propaganda that strove to paint the Indian culture as juvenile and rudimentary; along with counter-cultural movements that tried to strike out the superstitious, abusive and misogynist practices that India had come to embrace.
And you still see repercussions of that in today’s national (and regional) political stage where you have folks promoting one uniform “supposedly” Indian culture on the one hand, while on the other hand, you have a myriad of people who ostentatiously stand for “freedom”; although their track record says that most of them just stand for re-election and lining their pockets.
And not just India; the struggle and questions within my heart, reflected in the nation’s centre stage, are also seen in every place in the globe where folks are subject to different and, at times, conflicting ethnic and culture values; which these days is pretty much everywhere.
Sigh! I am rambling now. And casting a wide net for an answer that is within my heart...
...Which says that “English” to me is freedom.
It’s the freedom to indulge in thoughts that are not reflected in my own language even if they may have existed unexpressed in some folks’ heart. Like when I first read the Fried Green Tomatoes and found something that made more sense to me (though it was a long while before I admitted that to myself) than all the Bollywood movies out there or the “popular” versions of Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas.
It’s the freedom to go to places that do not speak my language or follow my culture and manage there adequately despite the foreignness of the new place. Like the time when my family moved to Dehradun and I found friends in Nancy Drew because I no longer had access to Malayalam books.
Most importantly, it’s the freedom to be me, and to connect with people like me, when my culture has long been silent about folks such as us. Like the time when I found AfterEllen and Autostraddle or Jezebel (although the introvert in me has not yet allowed me to do anything more than visit those places ;-)).
I’d feel stifled and claustrophobic if I were not to keep in touch with the Western media and Western world.
I don’t think opening yourself to different cultures, assimilating values that make sense to you even if they don’t originally hail from what you consider your own, is racist.
Neither do I think that accepting and recognising the values in other cultures that sings to you means that you are demeaning yourself and where you come from.
Why should it be an either/or rather than a both?
