Patriotism is giving way to faithriotism

The other day, my wife and I were in a beach shack on Uttorda beach in Goa, having lunch.  There was a couple seated at the next table, and the woman struck up a conversation with us by asking where we were from.

We said we were from Delhi, thinking that she may not have heard of Gurgaon, where we actually live.

In return, she said she and her husband were from Bengaluru.  Then she added “We’re Muslims”.

My wife and I found his unsolicited identification by religion both perplexing and disturbing.

We had not volunteered any information on our own faith – or lack of it, in that we are both atheists – nor had we asked after the other’s religious belief.

So why this unasked for, and defensive, assertion of one’s religion?

It was a minor incident by itself, but it summed up the deep divide between many, if not most, of those who belong to the majority community in India and those who belong to the minority communities, particularly the Muslim community.

And every day – with news of the mob lynching of another suspected cattle smuggler, or the weeding out of illegal Bangaldeshi immigrants on religious lines – this sharp divide which is tantamount to another Partition, is deepening.

When I was growing up in what was then Calcutta, India was a very different country.  It was a seamless society where differences of religion not only didn’t matter but in many cases were not even noticed.

I had a college friend whose last name was Hafizji.  It did not strike me till years later that his name indicated that he was a Muslim.

In those days we were all Indians, with no prefix or suffix.  Today, increasingly, we are seen, or see ourselves as Indian Hindus, Indian Muslims, Indian Christians, Indian Sikhs.  And, not so gradually, these distinctions will alter so that we become identified as Hindu Indians, Muslim Indians, Christian Indians, Sikh Indians.

Our religious identifies will take precedence over our national identity.  Patriotism, the identification of oneself with one’s country, will be replaced by faithriotism, the identification of one with one’s religious belief.

And Partition II will be complete.