The profanity of sameness

Fortunately or unfortunately, this piece, like the headquarters of SAARC, will have to be located in Nepal. My case, quite frankly, is that if there is a larger identity I sense other than being Indian (I am, after all, also such difficult and politically incorrect things as Brahmin, Bihari, eastern, middle class and privileged), it is that I am Asian, not Southasian. And to me, the clues to why Southasia remains no more than an accident of geography – or worse, a figment of vested intellectual fantasy, the sad whore that feeds seminarist appetites on longtables – are nowhere more blatant than in the manner in which India and Nepal have come to abuse their sameness. I think it was Pablo Picasso who once stated what has since become a tried-and-true maxim: learn the rules first in order to be able to break them. Southasia, likewise, must begin with learning to recognise, and then grasping, the profundity of its differences.

Until then, it will only profane its sameness. Allow me a parentheses, too tempting and critical to bypass. Actually, for all the resonance it might have in relation to the rest of the world, the idea of Southasian sameness makes me laugh (and cry) in our collective context. Gujar, Gurung, Dalit, Pathan, Limbu, Yadav, Baloch, Naga, Shia, Sunni, Kashmiri, Madhesi, Meitei, Pahari, Brahmin, Bakerwal, Baangaal, Ghoti, Magar, Moplah, Tamil, Kannad, Tharu, Sinhala, Newar, Kumaoni, Kutchi, Sylheti, Sindhi, Bohra, Syrian, Suhrawardy, Chhetri, Ladakhi, Mizo, Upper Valley, Lower Valley, Badi Dhoti, Chhoti Dhoti, Hinayana, Mahayana, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isahi, apas mein ki khub ladai. Sameness? And yet, here we are, ineffably together despite ourselves, a preposterous, and fairly thriving, challenge to whatever laws there are that keep the cosmos going. End of parentheses. The beginning of yet more differences.