Dear Editor,
On first reading of VS Naipaul’s novels on India, it’s easy to develop a grim view of an underdeveloped, perpetually festering country, doomed to remain so by its staggering degree of poverty and a worn zeitgeist that relied on the vestiges of a mythic past. Oh, how the times have changed!
PM Shri Narendra Modi’s visit to our small nation was an impressive and successful binding and bonding that we have historically craved since our ancestors first left India almost two centuries ago. Indentureship, distance and time had left our particular diaspora no choice but to carve out a place in the West, trafficked from one end of an empire to serve another. India was their homeland, the source of beliefs, culture, religions, languages and all that comprised ‘home’.
It cannot be that they left joyfully, as they watched the land of their birth disappear from sight. A new identity awaited them, one that was hard-forged on the anvil of the back-breaking work they came to endure. Generations held onto the concept of a distant homeland, one which was the source of the peculiar habits and ways they tenaciously preserved. We were a displaced people, who endured, grew and thrived.
That umbilicus, a source of pride accompanied by a metaphysical yearning for its loss; often manifested itself in our adherence to things ‘Indian’; as they somewhat represented the cultural context of our ancestors. We understood that they were ‘from’ India, and we were ‘of’ India. A distinction which became more pronounced in successive generations. So much so that when we left these shores in a second diaspora wave, in the western lands we went to, we often found ourselves wanting, by the diaspora who had more recently come directly from India. That disconnect rankled, because were we not also ‘Indian’ even though through the long years of separation our culture had evolved differently?
Some, like Naipaul, would return and reflect disdainfully about our ancestors’ motherland, deriding the impoverished and their low-brow existence.
Now, whether we agree with the politics or not, PM Shri Narendra Modi has remade this area of darkness into one of the most important nations of the world. A beacon for education, technology and healthcare; burgeoning industries with businesses that can swallow up the most refined and bespoke companies the West has to offer; for instance, the producer of the flagship vehicle that ferries the royalty of their once-colonial overlords. An irony that never fails to make me smile. This brilliant nation under Modi has been polished, poised to be the largest democratic counterpoint to dictators and autocrats.
Unafraid, today’s India is the reflection that we know we see in ourselves, a civilization that emerged millennia ago, eventually shattering the vestiges of colonization, daring the world to tell it what it must do and be. Much of that chutzpah is found in the personality of PM Modi, whose shrewd guidance has brought India to where it is today.
Watching him eat food from the traditional ‘purine’ leaf; listening to him praise Guyana, as mawkish as it seems, it felt somewhat akin to having your most beloved parent express pride in what you have become. An acknowledgement that we, lost children of a diaspora that has subconsciously yearned to be recognized as equals; are eminently deserving of respect, admiration and partnership. We always were, but the scar of indentureship had branded us deeply, leaving a sensation that we were somehow ‘lesser’.
A part of me has always thought that, as disparaging as he was of his ancestral homeland, Naipaul churned with the misplaced grief of separation.
Guyana has much to benefit from the partnership with India; and it is clear that India believes that it will be beneficial for them as well.
Sincerely,
Scheherazade Ishoof Khan