Every Indian Muslim is aware of in regards to the pause: the second when one other Indian, normally a Hindu, hears your title, waits a couple of seconds, after which, with a furrowed forehead or a step again, acts stunned and confused that you just, too, are Indian. The implication is certainly one of suspicion, as if we’re Indians with an asterisk—or worse, as if we’re not Indians in any respect.
I’ve encountered this response at literary events in New Delhi, the place friends greet one another with air kisses, in addition to throughout my workplace hours in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when a couple of Hindu American pupil has expressed shock that I—a Pakistani, they incorrectly assumed—cared a lot about India.
The expertise is exhausting, however it’s not new. My father went via it rising up in Tanzania, as did his father in India. But right this moment, presumptions about Indian identification seem to have narrowed nonetheless additional, and the person accountable, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is receiving a red-carpet welcome in Washington, D.C., with a state dinner and a speech to a joint session of Congress.
India was as soon as extra accepting, extra tolerant. That’s what we Indian Muslims say, particularly when Hindus are round. What different selection do now we have?
And to some extent, it’s true. Ages in the past, in 2005, I labored on the marketing campaign to dam Modi from getting into the United States. What strikes me about that marketing campaign now could be, effectively, how simple it was.
A decade in the past, I might barely persuade a dozen members of the House of Representatives—Democrat or Republican—to signal a letter expressing concern for political prisoners in Bahrain. But, at the least in 2005, it wasn’t actually that tough to criticize Modi, as a result of India, State Department officers informed me, is just not Modi. It has by no means been Modi, and it will possibly by no means be Modi.
I liked that line. I used it on a regular basis. And I believed it. But right this moment, whether or not we prefer it or not, India is Modi, and the United States is partly responsible, as a result of Modi is aware of that no matter what he does, he’ll obtain a heat embrace right here.
Since Modi grew to become prime minister in 2014, Indian Muslims have been attacked—and in some instances killed—for doing the next: consuming beef, attending Hindu festivals, falling in love with a Hindu, posting on social media, promoting greens, “causing” COVID-19, not standing for the Indian nationwide anthem, praying inside a mosque, praying inside their properties, giving their little one a Muslim title, protesting, driving, and sporting what they need.
By 2050, India will have the world’s largest Muslim inhabitants, surpassing Indonesia, and but it’s a group in peril. Conditions in India have been in comparison with these in nations getting ready for genocide. Extremists have overtly known as for killing Muslims by the tens of millions, and political operatives boast on Twitter when Muslim properties are destroyed by authorities bulldozers. India additionally leads the world in web shutdowns, has cracked down on journalists at an alarming fee, and continues to grant impunity to those that assault Christians, Dalits, Adivasis, and different marginalized teams.
Earlier this month, in Modi’s dwelling state of Gujarat, a Dalit was reportedly attacked by upper-caste Hindus as a result of he wore fashionable garments and sun shades. Just a few days in the past, additionally in Gujarat, Muslims had been flogged in public for protesting the destruction of an Islamic shrine. In reality, as many as 90 p.c of hate crimes in India since 2009 occurred after Modi got here to energy. Despite all of this, or maybe due to it, Modi is now the world’s hottest chief, with an approval ranking of 76 p.c in India.
Modi is liked in America too. Soon after he grew to become prime minister, he spoke to a sold-out crowd of about 20,000 at Madison Square Garden. After securing his second time period, he spoke to 50,000 in Houston. By some estimates, he has acquired the biggest reception of any overseas chief within the United States besides the pope, and in line with a examine by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, practically 70 p.c of Hindu Americans—versus about 20 p.c of Indian Muslim Americans—help Modi.
Many of Modi’s supporters—like Trump supporters—are recognized to get rowdy, to place it mildly. Attendees at an India Independence Day Celebration in California final yr known as demonstrators who tried to convey consideration to non secular discrimination in India “stupid Muslims,” grabbing and breaking their indicators. In New Jersey that very same yr, Hindus drove a bulldozer—a logo of anti-Muslim hate in India—via the Indian-dominated metropolis of Edison with an image of Modi affixed to it.
These days, after I attend a social gathering and I see one other Indian American in attendance, I’ll typically stroll to the opposite facet of the room. Am I being extreme and unfair? Of course. But I’ve grown weary of feeling that I’d want to hide elements of myself with the intention to be favored and accepted by different Indians.
I used to be born in California to Gujarati immigrants from East Africa. In 2002, I traveled to Gujarat as a service-corps fellow with the American India Foundation to work with an NGO in Ahmedabad. It was the primary time anybody in my household had visited our ancestral homeland.
Twelve days after I arrived, a prepare carrying Hindu volunteers caught fireplace within the Gujarat metropolis of Godhra, leading to what the scholar Ashutosh Varshney calls the “first full-blooded pogrom in independent India.” More than 1,000 individuals had been killed, most of them Muslim.
I’ll always remember, a couple of days into the pogrom, seeing an aged Hindu girl, her again hunched, throwing a brick at a Muslim restaurant, being ever so cautious to not hurt the Hindu restaurant simply above it. When a gaggle of Hindu boys noticed her struggling, they ran to her assist, providing her water and biscuits in order that she might preserve her stamina and proceed destroying Muslim property.
That tenderness, that love, that compassion—I didn’t know how one can make sense of it, particularly when mixed with burning, looting, and killing.
Modi’s complicity within the violence is the simple a part of this story. What many Indian Muslims discuss, particularly when Hindus will not be round, is that this: Why did so few of our Hindu buddies, whom we as soon as liked, get up for us?
In the many years for the reason that pogrom, I can depend on one hand the variety of Hindu American buddies who’ve reached out to acknowledge what I went via in India. Many of my dad and mom’ Hindu buddies in Sacramento, California, the place they dwell, stopped speaking to them after I began criticizing Modi. I do know my dad and mom are happy with my work. I additionally know they miss their buddies.
As Modi visits America, I want I had been nonetheless a congressional staffer, if just for the prospect to temporary elected officers this week to remind them of how a lot energy they’ve over India.
From 2011 to 2015, I lived and reported from a Muslim ghetto in Ahmedabad for a guide I’m writing in regards to the 2002 pogrom and its aftermath. When I interviewed officers within the Gujarat authorities and in Modi’s inside circle, they might be so enamored of talking to an American that they might ignore my questions and never even trouble to ask my title. After assembly in individual, some would throw me out of their workplace as quickly as they discovered I used to be Muslim. But many extra would beg me to remain, insisting I inform them all the things I’ve ever heard about India in Washington.
That’s the curious factor about Modi: In India, he’s a strongman who brags about his chest dimension, however outdoors it, he’s so determined for adulation that there are memes of him awkwardly hugging world leaders. The United States has this benefit over India. It can get Modi to alter, even just a bit, and I worry that except one thing is completed, Modi’s mission to redefine India and its diaspora will grow to be irreversible.
Two years in the past, my spouse and I welcomed our first little one, a son we named Mirza. After Mirza and I eat Indian meals—particularly butter-coated parathas full of potatoes—he typically goes round and declares, “I am from India!”
It is a stupendous, cute factor. I hope Mirza continues to say that. But I fear that earlier than lengthy, he, too, shall be informed he isn’t Indian.