Togetherness

Community. A word that can mean many things. For some people it’s a funny TV show and nothing more. For other people, it’s a brotherhood of people from the same roots, the same background. There are all types of communities, small or big.

For an Indian person living in the west, community is a term close to their hearts. Many Indians moved to the UK in the Cold War Era, as the government encouraged it. Not just Indians, but also people from other countries all over the world. And the economy flourished from the new workforce, diverse yet together.

If we look at it today, there are many Indians scattered all over the UK, Ireland, America, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, to mention a few. Wembley and Southall are known for their Indian communities, and Southall even has an Indian radio channel where desi music is played. Wembley has many Indian stores, restaurants that serve more than the typical chicken tikka masala and paneer, and Indians living in large numbers. The teens are the second or third generation to be born in the UK, but this doesn’t keep them from keeping connected to their roots. They might not be able to read and write in Hindi or their mother tongue but they sure can speak it. Indian wedding venues, Indian food and cooking, the Indian love for cricket – all of it is preserved in the area. This can be observed in Birmingham, too, and you won’t just see Indian culture, you will see the different cultures within the Indian culture, from the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra.

Now if you put the people from different states together in India, you might not see the unity. But when you put them together in a place far away from their motherland, you will definitely see something. They have togetherness and a sense of closeness to each other. They come together to celebrate many important festivals, both regional and national. You might see them dancing the garba during Navaratri and lighting lamps during Diwali, but here’s what most people miss.

You won’t see the moments of support, when the community is all helping out that one person, or that one family, who really needs it. Maybe they lost their job, maybe someone is sick, maybe someone died. And yes, we can all be there for each other even if we’re from different communities, but it’s easier to open up to a person about your problems if you’ve shared them over life.

I’m not going to go into how Indian Americans or Indian Canadians or Indian Germans have faced discrimination and racism, because in today’s world, I can assure you, we all have faced racism. What we do about it, is more important. Racism occurs when you group people together because of their skin colour, discrimination occurs when you group people together because of their country, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, etc. Indians have faced things both ways. People look at us, they think we’re “stealing their jobs”. Oh, good to know this phrase isn’t reserved for Mexicans in America, huh? Even worse, people look at us and say “Paki” or “terrorist”. Why, because we have the same skin colour as the founding members of the Al-Qaeda and ISIS? How, may I ask, is that our fault?

Calling anyone Paki is wrong, but only if the person took a moment to read up on the tensions between the two countries in mention here, would they understand just how wrong and offensive that is. Saying that somebody is stealing your jobs sounds like a schoolhouse insult. Whoever is more qualified for a job, gets that job. It doesn’t have anything to do with race. I mean, Indians, we’re a smart lot, but then so are the Chinese. Oh wait, these people have slurs for them, too.

This is just one of the many reasons the minority communities have become so prevalent in the lives of these minorities. They turn to their communities to be in a safe space where they don’t have to worry about being judged for anything other than their words and actions. They turn to their communities to be understood when they don’t find that in the outside world, and that’s okay.

The general population is the one that actually made these communities strong. Most people never made an effort to understand an immigrant or their background. Said immigrant was always willing to accept the new culture of his new country, but he never found the respect he was looking for. A person doesn’t need to let go of their old culture to accept a new one into their lives.

What I’m trying to say here is, “outsiders” is the wrong term to use for anyone. Just because someone is different in any way doesn’t mean that they don’t belong. Just because you don’t understand a person doesn’t mean you can’t learn more about them. Any immigrant or foreigner shows openness to learn about their new land, so why is it hard for the local to show some interest in showing support and acceptance?

This causes divide, and communities get perceived in a negative way. “They don’t want to talk to us, they just stay within their circles.” Once people get burned, they are very wary, and we have to try and understand that. Be more accepting of people around you. Communities aren’t exclusive, and even though a non-Indian may not know what it is like to be an Indian, they can be an ally of the Indian community, in the same way that non-black people are allies of the Black Lives Matter movement and straight people are allies of the LGBTQIA+ movement.

While most communities are open and welcoming, their images are tarnished by extremist groups. We all have seen the video of a group of teens in America being taught to kill other people. These are not communities; these are violent groups that have nothing to do with the word.

This is not a callout to people of a specific race or country. This is a callout for each and every one of us. Being a POC does not give anyone a free pass of hatred or racism to a POC of a different race. I call for love, mutual respect and a community of people, irrespective of their race, irrespective of their gender, irrespective of their sexual orientation, irrespective of their country of origin. Let us form our international community, based on the principles of equality and openness, an eagerness for learning more about and respecting each other’s backgrounds, where we all share our experiences and learn from them. Let us not let anything limit us from our shared goals of equal opportunities for all.

This is my attempt to explain the word ‘community’ with an Indian lens, in today’s context. “I am not black, but I will stand with you.”