Derek O'Brien has written a brilliant article about what it is like to be a minority in India. He comes straight to the point, and admittedly this is the first time I have heard someone saying it is for the country to integrate the minority, but it is also for the minority to integrate into the country, or words to that effect. He talk sof his childhood in Kolkata, when his parents encouraged all their kids to speak Bengali (not their mothertongue), celebrate Diwali and Id (at least from the sweets and visiting friend pov!) etc. And how, at the time of Partition, part of the extended family was in Pakistan.
He went back to meet them a few years back. And that is when the grittiness of the comparison come through and you feel proud of being an Indian. Parts of his extended family converted to Islam because it is simply too difficult to be a minority in Pakistan.
I am not a religious bigot, and not thumping my chest about how good India is (or worse, how bad Pakistan is). But my heart stopped for a minute, my eyes misted and I wondered about the heterogenous miracle that our country is.
Read http://quizderek.blogspot.ch/2012/08/the-obriens-of-india-and-pakistan_13.html
And separately, another article appeared in 'The Dawn' in Karachi: a fictionalised account of the plight of a Hindu girl in Pakistan (discriminated against twice over: first a Hindu, then a girl) and the horror of her forcible conversion and marriage. It is fiction, but it seems pretty close to the truth, if you read the internet about Rinkle Kumari and similar cases. It touched me.
He went back to meet them a few years back. And that is when the grittiness of the comparison come through and you feel proud of being an Indian. Parts of his extended family converted to Islam because it is simply too difficult to be a minority in Pakistan.
I am not a religious bigot, and not thumping my chest about how good India is (or worse, how bad Pakistan is). But my heart stopped for a minute, my eyes misted and I wondered about the heterogenous miracle that our country is.
Read http://quizderek.blogspot.ch/2012/08/the-obriens-of-india-and-pakistan_13.html
And separately, another article appeared in 'The Dawn' in Karachi: a fictionalised account of the plight of a Hindu girl in Pakistan (discriminated against twice over: first a Hindu, then a girl) and the horror of her forcible conversion and marriage. It is fiction, but it seems pretty close to the truth, if you read the internet about Rinkle Kumari and similar cases. It touched me.
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