Of Beer, Muslimness, and Dialogue

I miss New York – that’s obvious – but one thing I miss above all else is the constant dialogue with interesting and knowledgeable people. I still reminisce about that first evening at 1020 (or was it 1080?) – the predominantly-undergrad bar on Amsterdam that my batch-mates and I used to frequent until we discovered the seedier (and thus more fascinating) Lion’s Head across the street. I remember sitting in one of those grungy booths at 1020, still on that high of having made it to Columbia and New York, and utterly confused by that week’s Theory and Methods course readings. I think we were reading Gadamer that week. Or was it Heidegger? Regardless, we sat at 1020 with our Brooklyn Lagers and Stella Artois and discussed theory. I still remember Ms. A (the only PhD candidate in the group) explaining a particularly difficult aspect of the theory through beer-related analogies.

I think the hardest part of moving back to Vancouver has been losing that intellectual part of my social life. Don’t get me wrong, my friends here are smart people – but we’re not in school together, and our relationships aren’t based on that commonality. When we go out we talk about everything under the sun, but that mental stimulation is just not the same. That being said, I’ve started to discover some fascinating minds, and am excited to tap into them over the coming months.

Dinner this evening was an interesting affair. There were five of us and somehow we got onto the topic of Indian politics. I can’t remember how exactly the conversation shifted into that realm; I think it had something to do with Minister Kenney’s recent remarks on the burqa, as well as my own tendency to veer towards issues of Indian politics. At one point, communal violence (particularly Gujarat 2002) came up – and one of my dinner companions (a South Indian born in Africa) started making fun of the riots and its outcomes. His manner of dealing with the issue evoked in me a reaction that I had not expected. I’m usually an unflinchably calm person, but the emotions that came out at that point were almost visceral in nature. I was, to be quite honest, taken aback by how much I was affected by the dialogue occurring around me. Seeing that I was obviously perturbed by the situation unfolding around me, the wonderful Ms. M stepped in and forced the conversation away from its ridiculous path. She made it clear that we were teetering on the edge of that spiral into discordance and asked those around the table to take into account that there was a Gujarati Muslim (me) – one who had studied the conflict so intently and intensely that she had once broken down in the library at Columbia because of her inability to deal with the literature any longer – present.

By this point, I had become so shaken-up by the conversation (and again, I must stress that this isn’t a usual occurrence!) that I started shovelling onions in my mouth (from my Greek salad – I had initially left them uneaten because of my dislike of raw onions) to keep me from bursting out in anger and frustration. Two of the people at the table hadn’t even heard of the Gujarat riots (facepalm) and asked me to explain them. Now, generally and having written at least 100 pages worth of papers on the topic during grad school, I would’ve been able to do so. I finished eating the onions, and began to explain the issues at hand – all the while staring at my plate, refusing to look up. For some reason, the words didn’t – no, couldn’t – emerge from my mouth. I was incoherent, couldn’t string sentences together, and had no idea where to start. About a minute into it, I gave up, gave Ms. M a pleading look that begged her to take over, and picked at the crumbs left on my plate. What she said, I don’t remember.

Having now studied Gujarat 2002 and Hindu nationalism in general for at least 5 years, my reaction to today’s conversation took me by surprise. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few hours but am still confused as to why my reaction was what it was. The only credible and possible answer that I can come up with involves two things: my deep knowledge of the issue (and thus of the complexities and problems inherent in it) and, perhaps more importantly, the effect of my summer 2010 India trip.

Growing up in Canada, I had never been made aware of my Muslimness. My name isn’t a common Muslim name; and so, apart from those who knew others with my name and knew their religion, I was never identified as a Muslim. Oftentimes, people weren’t sure of my religion. Most of the time, it was ethnicity that mattered more. But when I went to India, I was immediately identified as ‘Muslim.’ Maybe it’s the way I look. Maybe it was the clothes I wore, the Urduized language I spoke (although, I must say that I probably still know Hindi better than Urdu because of my Sanskrit training). My name, though, definitely indicated my Muslimness in India, and everyone I met picked up on it immediately. Having never dealt with ‘being Muslim’ – even in a post-9/11 age – I was definitely put on the defensive, dealt with a lot of criticism for veering off the Sirat al-Mustaqeem at one point (still haven’t read the Qur’an in full), and felt as if I was expected to behave in a certain way and conform to certain principles of Muslimness.
What’s weird though is that, while the Muslim identity was foisted onto me, I never – at least I don’t think I did – appropriated it for myself. Of course I used it to my advantage when I was in Muslim-majority areas, or when I needed to ingratiate myself with the guy looking after my shoes at Nizamuddin, but that was about it. I hated being identified as Muslim – because it had never mattered to me, and it was not a fundamental part of my identity. But when I returned to New York, and started reading all of this riot nonsense, it affected me much more than it had in the past. I’m not sure whether my heightened awareness of ‘my Muslimness’ had anything to do with it, or whether it was my constantly-fluctuating emotions (long story – we won’t even go there), or even whether it was just a result of my being more aware of the horrors of religious riots. Regardless, I sat in the library and cried, ended-up writing about the late 19th and early 20th centuries for my M.A thesis, and decided that I would not go into academia.

So where does that leave us now? I have no idea. I love studying Indian politics. I have so many fabulous memories and experiences that I will always cherish (yes, I’m a nerd). But, I don’t know if I can do this for much longer. That’s definitely one of the most important reasons for my attempt to veer into the legal/business/trade world. While the latter may pose many moral and ethical questions, at least I won’t be dealing with memories of trauma and fear, and with my new-found inability to deal with issues of hatred.