The Right to be a Citizen

Citizenship is a funny thing. It is an artificially created membership in an artificially created community, and yet inflected with deep emotion. One’s passport is just a piece of paper, and yet it is a symbol of privileged membership in an imagined community – a symbol of belonging.

There are two aspects to citizenship that I want to discuss here, both in terms of the non-resident citizen. The first is legal and the second, emotional.

By legal, I am referring to the laws of the nation that control whether or not non-resident citizens can participate fully in their national life. The biggest issue at hand is the right to vote. Non-resident citizens retain the right to vote, but not the means. You cannot go to your nearest consulate and vote, India has no provisions for absentee ballots, and the reason offered, when shaved of doublespeak, is that it’s too much of a bother. Being resident outside India means that your name cannot be on the electoral roll, except through accident or oversight. If your name is not on the rolls, you don’t vote – even if you have a permanent address in India.

Why deny Indian citizens their right to vote? It can’t possibly be legal, and it’s not all that inconvenient. Other countries do it. When the US elections took place, my husband, who is a US citizen, was in India with me. He wrote to the county where he was registered, gave them his India address, and got an absentee ballot. How hard is that? We’re supposed to be a growing technological superpower. We supply some of the best tech brains to the rest of the world! This should be a simple thing.

Of course, our money is good enough for everyone. The Hindu writes that remittances by NRIs amount to almost $25 billion. That’s just remittances – I don’t know if it includes other investments. That doesn’t include the money brought in person, or sent through someone else. NRI investments in the country are encouraged. I’ve never heard a single person say it was too much bother to set up systems for NRIs to send their money home, or to invest it in the Indian economy.

The emotional issue is harder to resolve. Indians in India often talk about NRIs as though they were stupid, or second-class citizens, or both, and say things like “You don’t know anything. You don’t know what it’s like in India”, which is sort of a stupid thing to say if the person is a recent, adult NRI. Unless the NRI in question is famous, in which case they will be proudly claimed even if they are about as Indian as John Travolta, and their ancestors left India two hundred years ago.

NRIs – especially those of us who are recent migrants – are emotionally committed to India in a way that people who have not lived outside India will never understand. Ask your family NRI why they left. Your answers will vary – better life, better education, more opportunity, so they can help their families at home. Ask them if it was an easy decision. I’m pretty sure that they will say no. Ask them if their move entailed major sacrifices. Most likely, they will all say yes. Ask them if there is even one day when they do not think of home, if they ever have moments when homesickness hits them like a punch in the stomach, when the guilt of leaving home overwhelms them until they have to focus to breathe. They will all say yes.

Life is hard outside India. Very hard. We have to work very hard, because we have everything to lose. We remember home with a desperate fondness that is in no way reduced because we chose to leave. If anything, it is heightened by our knowledge that it was our choice – a guilt that increases everytime a parent is sick, a friend gets married, a cousin has a baby, and we can’t go home.

We live with our choices because we have to, because we made them, and because we built our lives around them. This doesn’t mean we don’t take joy in our lives. But it also doesn’t mean that we lose our legal statuses as Indians, that we cannot vote, that we can be told that we are no longer Indians and have no say in the family or nation because we left the country. It does not mean that we have lost the right to be Indian, because being Indian is not a matter of where you live or what color the piece of paper you hold is. It’s a matter of being Indian in your heart.

Of Love, Culture, and Equality

I’ve been following, with great interest, comments from India on the Delhi High Court’s decision on Section 377. As you may know, the Court decided to decriminalize homosexuality and dropped it from the list of things Section 377 could cover. Read the judgment here. I speak now as an Indian, as a person with the benefit of living in two nations, as a professional student of culture whose area of specialization is India, and as a very proud ally and friend.

There is a lot of comment, of course, from people stating that homosexuality is against “our culture”, that this is “perversion” from Western culture, etc, etc. As Barkha Dutt wrote in today’s Hindustan Times, religious leaders are, for once, completely united in their disapprobation of the High Court’s decision. They suggest, very strongly, that “our” very moral fiber is threatened by this threat to “our culture”.

There are a number of issues here that need to be interrogated. The first, and most important, is the issue of constitutionality. As Shohini Ghosh writes, the HC judgment was a milestone in upholding the constitutional rights of Indian citizens:

“Arguing that Section 377 is violative of Articles 21 (right to life and personal liberty), Article 14 (equality before law and equal protection from law) and Article 15 (prohibiting discrimination on several grounds including sex), the judgement holds that if there is one “constitutional tenet” that can be considered an “underlying theme” of the Indian Constitution, it is “inclusiveness”.”

The fact is that we, as Indian citizens, have these rights. They are our fundamental rights, constitutionally guaranteed. These are our freedoms. We cannot have them taken away. We are a free nation – which means more than sovereignty. It means that we, as citizens, are free. Two (or more) consenting adults must be free to do what they please in their bedroom. How can the law legislate how you have sex? As Vir Sanghvi eloquently says, the regulation of private lives and relationships is not the business of the law.

The second issue is that of religion, and the place of religion in a secular society. Those who wish to illegalize homosexuality and deny gay rights in the name of religion forget that religions do not – and should not – legislate in a secular society. Article 15 of the Indian Constitution states that “the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, or any of them.” Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the freedom to practice and profess religion as we desire.

This means that the State cannot prohibit people from practicing their religions as they see fit, or not practicing them at all, as the case may be. Religious institutions, by the same coin, have the freedom to denounce homosexuality within their religion, to those who practice it, and are free to refuse to marry gay people. The State, being a sovereign, secular entity, is not. Two consenting adults, under our Constitution, have the right to have sex as they please, and have the right to marriage under law. Those who choose not to follow religious edicts cannot be legislated by those edicts, or laws influenced by those edicts, in a secular nation. It is unconstitutional and illegal. Sanghvi puts it out there: “I have some sympathy for the religious leaders who oppose homosexuality (well, okay, not a lot of sympathy actually!) but their writ extends only to those of their followers who choose to listen to them. No pandit, no padre, and no maulvi has the right to tell me how to live my life if I don’t want him to.”

The third issue is that of “culture”. People who speak of “our culture” are presenting an argument that is simplistic and unthinking. As a nation of over a billion people, hundreds of languages and dialects, scores of religions and sects, diverse regions and affiliations, it is ridiculous to talk about “our culture”. Is a culture really created by virtue of somehow being restrained within artificially created national borders? (Set up by the British, I might add). Indian culture is not a monolithic, homogeneous phenomenon. It is vibrant, dynamic, and diverse, and for every group of people who relate to each other as part of the same group, there is a shared culture or subculture. I certainly don’t share the cultural element of bigotry with any bigot I know. I refuse to be part of their culture, and I will have a whole lot of intelligent Indians standing with me.

Even if we accept this senseless and decidedly unintellectual argument, that means that gay culture, not being part of “our culture”, is its own culture. And gay people are certainly in the minority in India, or we wouldn’t be having this debate. In that case, Article 29 of our Constitution (which all Indians do share in common) protects the interests of minorities, and states that “any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same”. Which brings us back to the constitutionality argument.

To the people who complain about this being something brought in from Western culture, I really don’t have anything to say beyond: pull your heads out of the sand – these issues are being debated in “Western” countries as well, with the same bellicose and jingoistic arguments.

The final issue I want to deal with has not been discussed very much in public comment, but goes right to the heart of the matter. So to speak. What is really at stake here? It is the right to love whom you please. If you put all our constitutional freedoms together, two consenting adults have the right, under law, to love each other as they please. However, time and time again this right is taken away from people in India. Inter-caste or inter-religious couples are killed, brutalized, ostracized, for the sin of daring to love each other. People from the same caste or class groups, who otherwise would have been perfectly acceptable spouses, are not allowed to marry each other if they commit the solecism of loving each other first. “Our culture”, which produces wildly unbelievable romantic movies as a matter of course, which prides itself on traditions of love between our epic heroes and heroines, has no room for love in reality. “Our culture” demands obedience from its children, and love, not being the result of “our culture’s” decisions, is above all disobedient, and thereby disrespectful. There is no love for love in this version of Indian culture, not even for straight couples.

Whatever your personal opinion, this is a matter of law. Whether you are gay, straight, or bisexual, transgendered, transsexual or queer, your rights are protected by the Indian Constitution. We must stand up together for those rights as a matter of principle, to recognize that those freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution were hard-won by our parents and our grandparents, through jail terms, through deprivation, at the point of a cannon, through death. We must stand up for those freedoms, even if we don’t, personally, agree with their consequences. Because they protect all of us. And if we cannot, then we must at least stand up for love.

Iowa City Weather

Things have been rather intense around IC lately. As you might know, the Iowa and Cedar rivers (and the Coralville reservoir) have been flooding. Cedar Rapids was especially hard hit, and the University campus here in Iowa City has been partially flooded.

Various newspapers and news sites have covered the details, so I won’t bother with that. It’s been a strange experience, though, living in Iowa.

Thunderstorms, for starters. And we’re not talking minor ones here – these are monster storms, with frighteningly, furiously fast, almost hurrincane-force winds and walls of lightening that, for a split second, can make it bright as day. Hail the size of golf balls. Now I’m from Delhi, and we’ve seen some big storms, but these scare me. Because they’re often accompanied by…

…Tornadoes. I didn’t realize, before I came to Iowa, that tornadoes were clouds. My first year here, my roommate called me to the window the show me the sky when there was a tornado in Cedar Rapids. And a mighty strange sky it was too – purple and green and not at all a normal color. My second year here (or was it the third?) a tornado actually touched down in downtown Iowa City, doing considerable damage to large parts of the East side. We lived in that general area, and I remember thinking that it was a hailstorm just like the ones we get in Delhi. Except for the tornado. It was at night, and we didn’t know that there was a tornado in town. We didn’t know what the sirens meant, and we didn’t have a radio or television on. We didn’t have power, so no internet. What we did have was sheer dumb luck. The tornado hit a block or so from where we lived, and I learnt about it only the next morning. I was, amd continue to be, rightfully terrified of tornadoes. They’re BIG, and scary, and loud, and powerful, and you can’t negotiate with them. So when you’re done with tornado and thunderstorm season, it’s time for…

…Snow. I never ever thought I could feel as cold as I have here in Iowa. Or that snow was as heavy as it is. I’m told that sometimes, in the winter, the wind blows down straight from the Arctic. And into my eyes and nose. I used to wear contact lenses, but gave it up because I swear, the damn things used to freeze in my eyes. So all the years I’ve been here, I’ve had to deal with this biting, cutting, cold, that rips the breath from my lungs and freezes the tears in my eyes. I’ve felt my feet freeze through two pairs of socks and fleece-lined boots. I’ve wept in misery as my frozen hands thawed out from an inadvertent freezing. Every winter I survive and, somehow, enjoy, is a triumph for this sub-tropical girl. This winter, though, was a  bit different. For starters, it dumped more snow on Iowa City than, apparently, it has in sixty years. Or so the locals tell me. I’m not a tall person – what’s knee-deep for many is nearly hip-deep for me. Imagine opening (or trying to open) your front door, and being stalled by a three-foot high drift that built up over the long, cold night. It’s not easy.

We shoveled. And shoveled. And shoveled. Until it seemed like that was all we did, all winter long. Arms aching, lungs full of sharp pain. And it was a six-month winter. The snow piled higher and higher, and between high snow and treacherous ice, walking was a hazardous activity. And all the while, winds blew with burning cold, tearing through any hope of ever being rid of the bitter Winter.

Until one day, the snow melted. The sun came out. It was still cold, cold, cold, but not cold enough to stop the snow from melting. It was nice, there, for a while. But all the melting snow meant more runoff, I think, and then, before we could have a proper spring, we slipped into summer and…

…Rain. Weeks of it. Filling the lakes and dams and rivers and streams, pouring off roofs and bringing the earthworms out to play. Have I mentioned how much I dislike earthworms? Mostly because I don’t want to step on them, and that’s really hard to avoid when they’re covering the ground.

Anyway, it’s been an experience living in Iowa, and it will be nice to take a break from this weather and return to Delhi, where I will have a whole new set of things to crib about. While we are not personally affected by the floods here in IC, many people we know are, and our university is. I did as much sandbagging as I could, and retreated home when I realized it might be hard to get back otherwise. I wandered down to the local grocery, not too far away, and took some pictures. Here they are. If you’re from IC, this is the Waterfront/Gilbert/Hwy 6 intersection, near Carousel and the Waterfront Hy-Vee.