Amu

Just came back from seeing the film Amu. It was beautiful and frightening and moving, and brought back some terrible memories of January 1993. After we witnessed that, I can’t say that my life itself is any different, but something in me changed. Growing up, no one ever told me I was different from them. And then one day, all of a sudden, a whole lot of us became the other. Not to everyone, but to a number significant enough that I became self-conscious about having my name shouted out in public, or telling people who my god was, or answering the ever present, “What caste are you” question. Now I’m trying to write about it, and I can’t bring myself to recreate a single scene.

Almost every country has its great national tragedy, one that will be taught to every school child for generations to come, so that no one forgets. In the United States, the Twin Towers will be enshrined as their great tragedy; slavery was their tragedy before that, but unfortunately, I’ll bet you anything that a crime against capitalism will trump any crime against humanity there. In Germany, the Holocaust has already happened, and will never be forgotten — their guilt will be eternal, and no other tragedy will ever replace it. India’s great tragedy, unfortunately, isn’t over. Our tragedy began in 1947, and still continues. Our great tragedy is religion.

The number of religious holocausts in our country can no longer be counted, because their barbarism is forgotten. In a way, I understand it; how can we live day-to-day with the memories of hundreds of thousands of raped and slaughtered women, men burned alive, children cut from their mother’s wombs? We cannot, because the weight of our collective guilt would bury us alive. What must the body count be given the number of local and national religious riots our country has had since 1947 — including Partition? And yet, in forgetting these violations against Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians we see how it makes every subsequent act of barbarism worse, as if we’re trying to make the one horrific memory that we might, might just remember for generations to come.

Religion frightens me and makes me want to have nothing to do with it. I don’t understand how people can turn into monsters and literally tear each other apart. We just keep making the same stupid mistakes.