No country, Yes Country

                                                                          No country, Yes Country

I set foot for the first time on the English soil when I went as a British Council scholar to the University of East Anglia. I was 33 at that time. I had left my husband and my eight year old daughter in Delhi. The stay there was for just two years. Though I did not set the Thames on fire, the English stay set my soul on fire.  I loved England, the English summer with its tropical sunshine interspersed with rains and temperatures plummeting down to just about 20 degrees Celsius, its theatres, its vast green meadows, its universities of great repute, its museums and art galleries, and above all the pristine English spoken by the university dons and academicians. I loved my anonymity and the freedom that goes with it. I enjoyed walking for hours inhaling the fresh air or returning to my digs late at night after watching a play or listening to a concert. All through my stay I kept mumbling to myself Wordsworth’s famous lines  Bliss (is) it in this dawn to be alive/ But to be young is very heaven!—

 My attraction for England was the same as Wordsworth’s attraction for France,  a country in

 romance, at the time of the French revolution. Like Wordsworth, I looked upon my English

 sojourn as a period of freedom and liberty. It provided a great stimulus to my intellectual and

 emotional life because I saw in the civilized world of England hope and joy to live life as a true

 human being. There were times I wished I made England my home. I was glad to lose my Indian

 identity and willing to search for a new life. The idea of being a world citizen was too novel and

 fascinating to resist. I felt a sense of being connected to the world and was  willing to abandon

 my identity, my country, my past life and give myself a new identity as a world citizen. The stiff

 upper lip of the British did not bother me because I gave them the same identity that I had given

  myself- the identity of a world Citizen. I could be in my saree that was for me the most

 comfortable wear though it was far different from the Western wear but I was never subjected

 to any jeering comment. I was accepted as I was and I there were no signs of  racial hostility

 against me for being what I was. I did not feel the need to change  because I felt impelled to

 accept that  I belonged to “no country” ,  replace it with “yes Country” and derive my identity

 from all the countries of the world. I enjoyed the company of fellow students from Europe,

 North and South America, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Japan and Phillipines and

 learnt about their culture and identity and could discern the identical human culture that

 bonded all of us.

 I returned home at the expiry of my student visa. I had my family waiting for me and I came 

home as a reluctant Indian. India was at that time on the throes of emergency and there was 

  anger, fear, frustration and a frenetic throw -back to cultural nationalism focussing on national

 identity shaped by cultural, religious and linguistic traditions as opposed to liberal nationalism

, “the non-xenophobic form of nationalism compatible with values of freedom, tolerance,

 equality, and individual rights.” It was difficult for me to adjust to the new found enthusiasm for

 all that was Indian and non-Western as I feared that cultural nationalism was likely to end up as

 cultural atavism with modern India  regressing and reverting to the ways of thinking and acting

 of a distant past. Fortunately this lasted  for a short period and India headed once again towards

 globalization and liberalization in the 1990s. I did not feel suffocated and looked forward to the

 time when India will be as progressive as the West.

That was forty years back.   I visited England ten years later and followed this with two more visits in the next five years. England had changed including its weather. There were a lot more Asians and Africans than they were in the 1970s. English language had changed and it was no longer the Queens English one listened to except on the BBC. My saree clad presence did not invite curiosity as England had got used to the presence of Indians and Bangladeshis. But I sensed a change in the English spirit. The friendly camaraderie was replaced by distinct hostility against the non-British race, especially from the South Asian continent. I felt ill at ease during these visits and longed to return home almost with a cry “Yes country” that I was coming back to.

These last few years – since the turn of the 21^st century, we have been witness to religious fundamentalism, racial fanaticism and pseudo patriotic jingoism. The chauvinistic cry “Yes, country’ is  the new form of extreme nationalism and it has become an accepted, honoured and venerated norm to parade one’s identity in terms of nation, religion and language. India is also currently moving towards this nationalistic ideal, to feel proud and superior as the root and source of all knowledge and wisdom. The concept of Sarva Dharma Sambhava,  that all Dharmas (truths) are equal to or harmonious with each other and all religions are the same, showing  different paths to God or the same spiritual goal -which in English translation can be succinctly phrased as Cultivating Humanity – is slowly getting eroded.  It certainly requires a great leap of courage, imagination and faith to leave one’s narrow identity and embrace the wider  global identity and say “No country” and “Yes Country”  just as we say “The king is dead, Long live the King”. To accept the geographical displacement and feel a sense of belonging to humanity calls for a new mindset. Kalyan Ray speaking about his new novel, No Country says: “Anyone who has done something like that – well, I would say we are all heroes, all part of this great story of diaspora.”

It is time we stand up and start a new chorus “No country, Yes Country” and embrace humanity transcending shadow lines of the mind that erect barriers between man and man, woman and woman. It is only by adopting a common human identity that we can restore peace and harmony to our contemporary world that prefers a clash of civilizations to a co-existence of civilizations. The sun shines on all of us irrespective of what colour, creed or race  we are born into. The Ganges rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and flows south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North India into Bangladesh, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. Does it discriminate people on the basis of religion or geographical boundary?  So does the Indus river. It  originates in the Tibetan Plateau in the vicinity of Lake Mansarovar,  runs a course through the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, towards Gilgit and Baltistan and then flows in a southerly direction along the entire length of Pakistan to merge into the Arabian Sea near the port city of Karachi in Sindh. It is the same all over the world. The rivers flow through distinct lands, inhabited by people belonging to divergent civilizations, cultures and religions. But the perennial flow of the rivers sees only the face of humanity as a single identity and sustains all of it with the essential source of life. If the sun and the stars and the moon, the sea and the rivers, land, air and sky are available for every human being, it behoves us to reflect on a single human identity that is embedded in the phrase: No country, Yes Country.  Can we make this leap with courage and conviction and embrace our one and only human identity? Can we have the courage and the passion to cultivate humanity? I pause for your reply.