In(ter)dependence Day

Found on Pinterest, tokkoro.com

This 'independence' day has been unlike any other. Perhaps some new ways of what an independence day of a nation could mean percolated through the complexity and density and shone through. At least for me. Who or what is the nation then is a question. 

My father was a military man, died a Major while in the Grenadiers. I had been about 4 and half years then. I'd been holding this narrative for a while now that his absence and my missing of this belonging to my father was something that Life and Universe chose for me to learn something about myself. Today I realised that actually he is not absent. He and his energy are very much present in me; in those parts of me that I had been rejecting all along as invalid. I held some ideals of the world, that of being military-less and of not being constricted by bigotted lines of nations. Isolated in themselves, without being in touch with reality would make these ideals into fantasies. And that is what they have been. What would bring them more into the light would be to hold them as living dreams while being in touch with reality. A living dream is an alive question that one holds within and lives it (the question). 

The reality is that there are numerous soldiers giving their life for love of this land no matter what ideas and opinions I may have about how love should be shown. My father had also been one such (though he lost his life in an accident, just a clarification). His way of loving and serving this land was to protect it, and his idea of this land was the nation and republic state as far as his public identity and official activity was concerned. 

A book on Dakshinamurthy Iyer

He married into a family for whom the nation was its civilisation. My mother's side of the family had all been part of the freedom struggle and believed in the 'Sanatana Dharma that is the true eternal religion of this land'. They believed this land to be the punya bhumi and this each of them carried within themselves. My great grandfather, better known as Annaji, had pictures of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi right along with many foreigners (whom I cant identify) and other people (whom I can now identify as Babasaheb Amte, Sri Guruji, Baburao Moke, Eknath Ranade and many others). This was the grandfather, Dakshinamurthy Iyer, into whose ear a 5-year old me let out a blaring horn through an old agarbatthi carton (those circular cartons that are used to store agarbatthis), and deafened that ear almost literally. He was the one who gave me my love for English by insisting that I write to him in English on the post card every week, and introducing me to English works, newspapers and journals. Now when I think of it, it seems like others looked at him like he was Don Quixote much of the time when his 90+ year old self engaged with the 5-yr old child and gave her all kinds of things that she can understand nothing about, to read. And yet, these are all the people whose idea of the nation was a civilisational one that they had been fighting for.  This is what I took on. Including the grief of the Partition that they all underwent and never recovered from. They retired from an active public life of serving this land and chose to serve in retreat mode (For example, another great grandfather of mine, Sitaraman Iyer, was a ghanapati and took part in all the veda parayanam that he could). He was the one who gave me his well-thumbed and loved copy of Sundara Kandam. 

Today I am looking at it as a giving up on what one loved, in grief and despair.  I understand it and believe that this land still is recovering from the Partition and still needs to own up to this grief. This is one of the fundamental encountering and reckoning that we have not done collectively. Only this collective grieving can bring about collective healing. I dont know though how we are to do that. It is because we have not grieved truly and enough that there is such turbulence in the country. 

One way for me to start doing it is to look at reality and accept all of it first as it just is. It is only then can I even recognise that there are these two ends of me that are both holding me: 

Had-Anhad, Film by Shabnam Virmani

There is on the one side, ideas of Dharma and spirituality and Vedanta that talk of humanity and a universal consciousness, a holding of all. This has always been there within me; this is also the part of me that has until now talked of Ahimsa, as a greater love. It is this side which loves revolutionary art, music and culture like that of Kabir which dissolves borders and carries us into the no man's land between boundaries of India and Pakistan. 

There is now on the other side, the idea of a nation state that has the military and the sheer reality of the circumstances that we have created for ourselves. We have hostile neighbours and have had genocides, and it is the military might that is holding some of this at bay. Even if I dont understand the nuances of all of that, I recognise and feel the passion and love that one can hold for this land which will draw a boundary to protect it. I felt it this morning in my first Silambam class as I took a stance and gazed straight ahead. A dream-like opponent stood in front of me; I dont know who or what it was. My father stood in me.  This is the same threatening stance that I took a couple of days back in an encounter, completely unplanned and spontaneous. I had never taken such a stance before.  That moment came flooding in too. And I realised that the opponent is not the enemy.  Ahimsa is also about boundaries - as much as I dont invade the other, I also dont allow invasion. It works both ways. Compassion, as anything else true to its name, begins at home. There are no enemies, only opponents. 

Are these two ends holding me, or am I at the centre holding them both together and balancing this tension? Or attempting to. When I am holding this tension within and looking at it, my idea of the whole changes. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And independence is about freedom. A freedom that cannot be an outcome shining at the end of the tunnel; tomorrow never comes! A freedom that is the journey and the path today. What I do today, this moment about my freedom is all that matters. That is what I will be doing tomorrow. The practice of yoga is happening now. It is absolutely the same for the nation. 

Who or what is the nation then is a question. Is it the land, the rivers, the forests and its geography? Is it all the historical twists and turns and wars that we have gone through and their numerous narratives? is it the nation and republic state with all its citizens and the Indian diaspora? Is it the Vedas, the Gita, and the Bible, and the Quran and Guru Granth Sahib and other scriptures and texts that we all love to quote out of context and for convenience? Is it all the media controversies and the struggles and movements of people on the ground? Is it our ideas of dharma, ahimsa, spirituality...? Is it our leader(s) in different walks of life, politics, media and all the different woods? Where is the nation located? 

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My reflections through this day were also watered by the following that happened today: 

1) A reflective post by a dear friend on Instagram about today & nationalism - She is a farmer, a mother, the bread-winner of the family, and truly of the earth in a way that I can only aspire for. 

2) The Centrefield Podcast on India - The Way Ahead - For me, a precise and beautiful conversation on the ideas and principles of dialogue that India holds, between Abhishek Thakore and Raghu Ananthanarayanan

3) A beautiful dialogue among friends at Purnam Cafe, holding quite a diversity of ideas and perspectives with much maitri and karuna - on the Uttarapara speech by Sri Aurobindo