ঘরে বাইরে
मैं कौन हूँ?
मेरे लिए घर क्या है?मेरे लोग कहाँ हैंमैं अपने ही शहर में अजनबी क्यों हूँ
Sometimes when I enter my classroom I see my classmates talking in a language that I do not fully understand. However very often they look at me and say “dkhar” and go about their gossip, I do not know what they talk about, but I know it would have something to do with someone like me.
I must have been about 4 years old when I heard the word “dkhar” for the first time. Not knowing what it meant, I approached my father who had to explain the word and its implications to me. I still remember the grim look on his face due to which I too, turned solemn.
Looking back at my childhood living in Shillong, I too faced the same old package of racial discrimination that every non-tribal boy/girl of my age would have faced. The sad part is that I ended up believing that I was different from the others at a very young age. We would always be told to be weary of our surroundings in the late evenings. Tales of how young boys were beaten up because they were “outsiders” served as Gabbar Singh aajaega level scares to go to sleep at night. As I grew more mature and understood the dynamics of the tension between the communities, I tried my best to make friends with them, learnt their language, celebrated their festivals, enjoyed their cuisine with them but it was never enough. I, along with my family, faced racism at every step, even told to my face that “you might try to be like us, but you’ll never be one of us”.
We may belong to different cultures but friendship had nothing to do with that. Under the roof of friendship differences were discussed and understood, not quietly shut down or were they?
The Citizenship Amendment Bill agitation has brought out the worst form of communal tensions the region. Hostile protests have brought massive outbreaks of racially aimed violence. The fake status quo of acceptance of the non-tribals stands exposed. Locals have begun attacking random people and destroying their private property. Local leaders have taken the chance to ignite the fire by calling the population of an old refugee colony in the city “Bangladeshi”. The families in that colony were accommodated after the 1971 Bangladesh independence, and were officially granted citizenship by the Government of India, but are now being termed foreigners. The reality of the matter is that we are so acquainted to these targeted acts of high handedness, that statements like this are not offensive anymore. Somewhere deep inside, a constant nagging reminder keeps throbbing, that we will always be perceived to be the problem. There are many local friends who sympathize with us, but the masses would never be distracted by their thoughts. At the end, many are even forced to choose a side.
Are we that different after all? The traditional garments you wear in your sleeve, the turban with so much grace. Are we that different after all?
Going to the same school, eating the same food, watching movies together, laughing at the same jokes, are we that different after all?
At some point when a Dkhar from Shillong moves to start a life outside to the metropolitans, an overwhelming feeling of acceptance and comfort floods us. We are so conditioned to being looked upon with doubt and hate, that indifference to our presence too, feels like something strange. Living in the real India where development is visible, where national integration feels somewhat real.
It feels so surreal.
As people with a fair idea of insecurity with identity we would understand a threat to our individuality too. We do not avail of any law that protects our right to a job or seat in prestigious institutions in the country. We do not exclusively have a right to purchase land in our home state. Hell, we do not even get a minority status in a state where we face oppression so openly. Being privy to such privileges and still crying foul to a so-called threat to their identity which is protected by ironclad law, which is mostly unfair to a normal taxpaying citizen of the union of India in today’s context.
Do you see us out on the streets, burning up shops, pelting stones and attacking people?
Having being born in Shillong, you would expect people like us to have a sense of belongingness to the place. The repeated turn of events that happened when we lived there and that continue to happen today, make that sense of belongingness a far-off distant dream.
Ma, I don’t feel home at all anymore.
I’m not alone. There are many like me, who are unfortunate enough to go through this unheard-of identity crisis- unable to be accepted in their birthplace, and being too different from the people of the state that speaks their mother tongue, having lived outside that culture.
I’m a part of a community and still so far apart from the members of it.
I am as much an Indian citizen as anyone else in this country. But since the day I could perceive it I had been conditioned otherwise. This is my story. Forced to be an outsider in my own state. Forced to believe that I am a refugee in my own country.
I am a man wandering endlessly for an identity
Somewhere for a little acceptance
Somewhere for a home.
The land where I was born
No longer terms me its own.
I am a foreigner in my own land.
||Written by Siddharth Barua
Edited by Tina||
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