Identity – Policy Wise

On 5th August, 2023, we organised our third community meet-up at Ritanya’s Library. The theme this time was ‘Identity and Freedom: Who defines it and what does it mean?’. The first speaker Annie Zaidi, author of the book “Break, Cement and Cactus: A Memoir of Belonging and Dislocation” joined us from London. She spoke about her book and how it feels to belong to a minority community. How her multiple identities shape her life and work. The next speaker, Kanmani Ray, is a transwoman and a lawyer who discussed her fears, vulnerabilities, and how she navigates her identities and how it impacts her freedom.

The more you write about Annie’s book, the less it is. It is one of the most profound books I have read in my lifetime. The book thread explores home and belonging from the perspectives of ancestry, language, multiple identities and migration. How your surroundings play a big role in how you feel. How your identity can make you feel scared and create belongingness depending on where and how you are located. It also makes you less free in a fairly independent country because you belong to a certain identity. As Annie has mentioned multiple times in her book, she became conscious about her dress, food habits and accent because she belongs to a minority community.

Annie spoke a lot about how being a woman is so difficult in South Asia in general and in India in particular. She mentioned the practice of female infanticide, feticide, malnutrition, skewed sex ratio, the idea of paraya dhan and that’s why parents/family members themselves don’t want to invest in girl child because they feel that investing in girl child is like giving water to neighbor’s garden.

Kanmani Ray spoke about how being a single transwoman in a batch of 400 law students at Delhi University was terrifying. She felt like there were so many knives pointed at her. She also shared her experiences of living in Delhi as a student and migrant. She also shared how it was difficult for her to be herself because of people’s attitudes and biases towards the transgender community. She faced harassment and discrimination from her classmates and teachers just because she looked or spoke in a certain way. However, she never lost hope and realised that the only way to survive was by being loud and visible in public spaces. She urged the participants to read A Revathi’s book, ‘Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story’ because it is one of the books that inspired her to be herself and understand the nuances of living as a transgender person.

While speaking about freedom, Annie mentioned that ‘freedom is something can’t be given, it is always taken’. This is true, you can’t ask someone to give you something so intrinsic, you have to fight for it. To be counted, to feel safe, to feel welcomed, to speak in a language that a significant number of people can understand are some of the factors that will make you feel at home and belong to a certain place. That is why the focus should be on the rights of the people of India. They deserve to exist and flourish. We deserve to exist and flourish. Rights discourse was the basis of India’s constitution and our fight against the British Raj. The time has come to emphasize rights discourse again.

In the end Annie mentioned that we need to have hope in ourselves and others and keep the fight going like these bright yellow flowers shining in my living room for the last ten days.

The discussion ended with other participants Chaitanya, Nupur, and Rajesh discussing their understanding of identity and freedom and how they are so closely intertwined.

Would you be interested in meet-ups like this? Then you are at the right place. Please check out Ritanya’s Library page and share it with your friends, acquaintances, colleagues and relatives. Please fill out the Google Form if you’re interested in attending the upcoming community meet-up.

Please write to us at policywiseindia@gmail.com if you want to collaborate with us or organize a community meet-up at your place.

Please click the link below to buy us a coffee if you like this idea and would like us to organize more meet-ups like this at your place.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Cement-Cactus-Belonging-Dislocation/dp/1108814638

“Jahan Koyi apna Dafn na hua ho woh jagah apni nhi hua karti” [A person does not belong to a place until someone beloved is buried there]
Gabriel Garcia Marquez- One Hundred Years of Solitude

Reading the book, “Bread, Butter, and Cement” by Annie Zaidi, felt like a trip down memory lane. It made me nostalgic. It made me think of my roots, my identity, and my belongingness. The book is beautifully written and expressed. It feels like a slow cold breeze passing below your feet while you read this book but also makes you worry about the things happening in our country as to how our heritage and culture are being devoid of diversity.

Like Zaidi, I always wanted to own a place that I can call mine. Do I belong to a place or Do I want a place of my own? The first one is of course where my dada, dadi, and my ma lived their whole life. That place belongs to you where your ancestors have lived. If you see this in a larger context, it’s so difficult to imagine the lives of the people who were uprooted from their homeland because of partition, communal strife, or poverty and have had to move to a different place. The second one is that place that I am going to build/buy that is my own.

The title of the book intrigued me because what story could link three unconnected words: bread, butter, and cactus. It comes from the author’s childhood when she was living in the J K Puram colony. It was a colony for workers of the cement factory of the same name. Her mother was working as a principal in the school run for kids living in the colony. They moved to this unknown place so that her mother could provide ‘bread’ to her children. The author also describes the circumstances and situation prevailing in that colony and how the author wanted to escape the everyday ‘sameness’ of the place. The only life around was some cactus. There was nothing nearby and it almost felt like she was living on some island.

The book is neatly divided into nine chapters with unique and thoughtful names. Every chapter name has some hidden meaning. This book stands out because as it flows, the author shares her personal story while reflecting and interlinking the country’s socio-political events. For instance, I absolutely loved the chapter named ‘Gur, Imarati and Goons’ telling the story of Azamgarh in particular and eastern UP in general. ‘Listening to mother’ and ‘Place like Home’ are the two other beautiful chapters giving a beautiful perspective on how language is so important to feel the sense of belongingness and how creating your own home or having a home makes a lot of difference in your life. One of the lines from this chapter is fascinating: ‘Home is where suffering is shared out, like a bread, and or a three-seat bench shared by four’. The chapter on language is thoughtful and full of insights. It shows how much language diversity we have in our country and despite that, there is an imposition of one language on everyone. Hindi itself has around 49 variants.

Just finding out that the author’s hometown was Azamgarh which is also my hometown created a strong urge for me to read this book. Being a woman who belongs to the same district and also migrated to a different place and trying to create my own identity made me relate to the author’s feelings in this book. Just like the author of this book, ‘belonging had always been a fraught question for me’ because I also never lived at one place for long. Especially after my marriage, I moved to South India totally devoid of North Indian roots, culture, food, and the people. I am not sure where I belong.

I remember my first UPSC interview when they asked me about my hometown and I was trying to defend the reputation of my district as it has been stereotyped and demonised as a place linked to terrorism. I can say that even I was suffering from that bias otherwise there would be no need to defend. The author is also anguished about why a place of poetry, textile, and imarati has been stereotyped just because a section of minorities live there. It is sad. Even I agree with the author that this stereotyping isolates the minority community and also prevents the Hindu majority from taking pride in their regional identity. A couplet comes to mind after reading this:

“Sabhi ka khoon hai shaamil yahaan ki mitti Mein,Kisi ke baap ka Hindustan thodi hai” [Everybody’s blood is mixed into the earth here, Hindustan does not belong to anybody’s father]
Rahat Indori

Throughout the book, Zaidi shows concerns towards the marginalisation of minority communities with a special focus on Muslim communities. Being a Muslim and a woman, she has had to face a lot of questions and rejection. The socio-political climate of the country made her conscious of her identity. She was worried about what people will think or how they will behave if she wore a hijab/burqa.

This is the sad reality of this country. The recent findings of a three-year study on discrimination in housing, most cosmopolitan cities and neighborhoods continue to keep Muslims and Dalit out of their homes. Stereotyping and discrimination against Muslims and Dalits are rampant in our country. One of my close Muslim friends (I don’t want to disclose his identity), who is a writer and public policy expert tells me, ” I no more think India is my country and I want to move out from here as soon as I can”. Hearing this, I thought; where we have reached and what we have become as a nation.

“The ache for home lives in all of us.The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned”
Maya Angelou

The theme of this book is about home, identity, belonging, and most importantly about mitti (soil) of one’s birthplace. How absolutely nothing can replace the feeling of your roots. How this mitti or zameen as we call it, has ‘dual connotations’ that mean land and also a certain psychological feeling. It made me feel proud to know that the author traces her roots to eastern Uttar Pradesh. Generally, people from Uttar Pradesh who have relocated would rather not reveal their identity out of fear of being stereotyped.

Note: I created a draft of this blog last month but could not publish it because almost everyone in my family was sick. Finally, when I started feeling a bit better and things got stable at home, I completed this blog today.

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Tag: Identity

Identity & Freedom: What, why and for whom?

Mitti di Khushboo..