Happy Unpacking!

This holiday season, if we are lucky enough to retreat to spaces that we called home, where we reflect on the past year or two — what a blur! — where a new year’s resolution (singular, not plural) can be rounded into an idea — survival! — and in some cases, we gather around and carefully open seasonal gift wrapping, I encourage us to unpack something else, once again — discomfort. And this doesn’t have to manifest in the form of a verbal explosion, but more importantly, self reflection or safe dissection amongst trusted company.

At the top of COVID, when we probably didn’t expect to feel such displacement for so long, such sharing was rampant — let’s get it out of our systems now! In a conversation with a close friend, where we exchanged family histories, I spoke about my secular upbringing — A(n actively) Christian mother, a spiritually Hindu father, and being raised in a Sunni Ibadi Muslim country. I went on to note that I didn’t know what caste I was until my early 20s, until someone else told me upon hearing my name. The reason I shared this story with my friend was to highlight my non-caste-ist upbringing. My friend listened patiently, and then commented — Therein lies your privilege, Shruti. Your privilege was in NOT having to know. And these words shook me, and have stayed with me — He was absolutely right. Having spent a fair amount of time filming in various villages in India (while balancing that with name-dropping film trade announcements), I think I prided myself in my ‘goodness’, using my filmmaking lens to highlight such stories, in addition to the numerous marches, rants on social media, being in various groups and showing up. But the need is to constantly do the work, personally. More than claiming to be an activist, one has to actively work on being anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-casteist, anti-colorist… which as a South Asian, and more specifically (in my case) Indian, we are all the -ists. That is, as a society. The uproar in support of BLM, particularly amongst the media and film stars and cultural elite in India and the diaspora was loud, but when it came to the farmer’s protests, the continued prosecution of Dalits, the CAA-NRC protests, we heard a deafening silence. I don’t want my OCI card revoked became the resounding cry of many. I want to be able to visit my family home, my parents, and grandparents. What about these newly released videos of a “Dharam Sansad” held in Haridwar where political leaders called for a “cleansing” and ridding of Muslims, “like Myanmar”. What happened in Myanmar to the Rohingya is nothing short of a genocide. Should anyone who calls themself a Hindu stay quiet, whilst such venom is being pumped into the country’s veins? What happens to dharma and karma then? Writer (and friend) Aatish Taseer was made an example of when he wrote about the current government in all its uncomfortable truth in Time. International media and personalities ‘meddling’ with Indian affairs became cause for defensiveness. I mean, why should foreign outlets do investigative work into one of the largest protests in human history, or call for alarm when one of the largest populations of Muslims in the world is being persecuted, in a country that claims to be a secular, socialist, democratic republic? The largest “democracy” at that.

Arundhati Roy’s Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes On Democracy was a fair warning when it was published in 2009. In it, she dove right into the darkness, and most were too scared to let such devastating ideas of societal decay wash over them. A bitter pill for the morally ailing. Give yourself the gift of this book, and recognize how Roy used the F word early on as an alarm bell. But alas! The time is nigh and upon us.

This year, India — a country that loves a good ranking system, particularly when it comes to college admissions — continued to place as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, and just when one thought that it was only Muslims or Sikhs targeted, now unsurprisingly, the Christian contingent has realized that they too are targets. The last religious census by the government was conducted 20 years ago, in 2001, which claims that religion is a “wonderful kaleidoscope of the country’s rich social composition”. How we wish that was still true!

Tell Shruti to be quiet has become a repeat directive to my family and friends. Do I recognize that by even writing this that I could possibly cause harm to those I love the most? I do. But when I look at the unstoppable and remarkable fearlessness of Khabar Lahariya, a Dalit women’s newsroom headquartered in UP, whose work has been highlighted in the Oscar shortlisted film, Writing With Fire, I feel more urgency and hope than ever before. We are united by our dreams for democracy.

But democracy, as Roy posits in her own book, does it work? The United States, which prides itself on such an idea, is struggling. A predominantly two-sided political party system, similar to that in India, simply doesn’t work. In the meantime, Norway, which has numerous parties, and has been my base over the last few years, has a new ruling Labour leadership. Previously, Erna Solberg of the Conservative Party had been the Prime Minister for 8 years. I’ve been reminded on various occasions — Norway’s right is like Bernie Sanders’ left. I guess that’s what “conservatism” means for a socialist country. A country that can afford to be socialist. Of all the places to get stuck or live, Norway is not the worst. It ranks high on many lists, beyond pining for the Northern Lights. A focus on gender equality (although still painfully binary), to incentives around the environment (in spite of oil money and a fund that sponsors) a social security safety net, free education, and government-sponsored healthcare, Norway stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its Scandinavian neighbors. Yet many Norwegians are quick to comment on how Sweden’s open-door immigration policy has contributed to so many “problems”. Talking about race and racism often gets a brusque response: This is not America, Shruti. To provide a critique of a country that prides itself on so much, one recognizes that discomfort is not welcome here either. And neither in a country like Oman, where I grew up, that runs on a “benevolent dictatorship”.

And this is where America excels, and one can recognize that freedom of speech is ultimately one of the greatest measures of democracy. A country, while built on colonial bloodshed and ultimately immigration, one witnesses movements happen on a daily basis to fight for justice or simply better conditions. Abortion access is now the major weight in the balance. And as someone who has had an abortion (thank you, Planned Parenthood), who wants to have kids, I fully support the rights for anyone to make choices for their own bodies. How can one imagine victims of rape to bear the children of their rapist? That is, if they even survive such brutality.

Gape rape, these two syllables, make anyone shift and shake with rage. It is all too real in India where stories of such violence occur every day. On the topic, a relative of mine claimed that this was something that Muslim men were doing to Hindu women. What about Asifa? The Kathua case where an eight year-old Muslim shepherd girl was raped and murdered on the basis on her religion, a case where Asifa’s lawyer was harassed so extensively that she had to navigate so much more than simply seeking justice for a poor family and dead child. That’s an exception, said my relative. When does an exception become our reality, I asked? What would you say to me, Uncle, if I told you my own story? That I too suffered such aggression at the age of four by someone who worked in my grandparents’ house in South Delhi, a neighborhood filled with gardens, mishti doi, and comfort. The same property where my parents now live. This made my relative pause. The dis-comfort hit home, literally.

If we don’t take pause to not just reflect, but take a step deeper, and crack open our own wounds, or the crevices in the soil from where we build our homes or claim our citizenship, will anything ever change? What happens to those lyrics “joy to the world” and “peace on earth” if we don’t realize that our silence is complicity? Pretending that we are “safe” will be our biggest regret. If you are reading this, you most likely can afford technology, and you live in a place where the government doesn’t take away your Internet… at least not at this moment. So this holiday season, in our household, we will unpack our presents and make a resolution — Survival — and for others too.