Watching India from far as an unbranded coolie in this part of Mother Earth

Watching India from far

"Why don't you want to come to India. how can you not want to see India.. aren't you Indian"? the man asks and texts me after. 2am where he is in India as he is home for the wedding of a lover. He is tired and emotional  so I try to tell him.. look, I don't need to go to India, India comes to me. 

Modern  India with its sophisticated foreign policies has been embedded in Guyana long after the first indentured immigrants came. 

Modern India with Bollywood and other things pushing 'Indian clothes' and 'Indian culture' which means consumption of Indian goods and services , far away.. I don't need to apply for the visa to go.

And even if there were no prominent political visits after Indira Gandhi, India has contributed education, technical assistance, cultural connections, money and many other things to Guyana.

The man does not understand my not wanting to visit India.. His residence and income are in the Middle East, and his home heart is in India and modern travel keeps him connected. 

He explains that where he is going for the wedding is different from where he lives , different city. "Why don't you want to learn Hindi".. I am careful how I talk as he is an avid supporter of the current Indian political leadership.

I have learned that 'India' is vast and complex,  a place where contradictions exist close to each other.

Even as people who do not Indian birth certificates cuss me when I agree with the views of those who have Indian birth certificates and feel excluded from the 2024 dreams of the current Indian leadership

I also have not bothered with trying to locate myself in modern India as that would be as useless as trying to locate myself in the different Guyana's/Caribbean's which my birth certificate brands me.

 Unbranded Coolie 

And India came again last week, as the desire and yearning of many admirers of the Hindutva leanings of the current Indian political administration were satisfied and the Prime Minister of India visited Guyana.

And connections reinforced not so much because of the masala we would need for the increasing amounts of 7 curry in the nation, but well because India wants oil and at fixed price and so. 

But the PM was generous, branding the Guyanese President as Indian on behalf of the 1.4 billion Indians , many of whom are feeling excluded from the modern Indian state which wants Guyana's oil.

Many Hindu leaders and other Hindus in Guyana welcomed the Prime Minister in a way that I have not seen any other leader of any country welcomed. 

Hinduism in the very Christian post-colonial Caribbean has to be constantly validated as equal to Christianity.

And even as people might wear 'Indian' wear and eat 7 curry, there are many ways in which the anti-Hindu prejudice manifests in the anti-coolie racism , in the idea that coolies are not civilised enough and so on.

And what could be more anti-colonial that the 'formal' state event which had everybody eating 7 curry out of the leaf rather than with expensive cutlery and china? 

While I am cynical about who like 7-curry and who don't, I did feel lil water coming to my eye watching thewhite haired man from India knocking jal with the Ramyana gole, 

Same feeling come up like when the student from India asked to sit next to me in mandir to read from the Ramayana wanting to sing with us

Same feeling coming up listening to other goles from Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius and Fiji , people who we never met.

And there are other times of course having to explain to other Hindus from India because they had never hear our kind of singing back in India, or it is described as 'folk' (which mean that it not fancy like the other classical stuff and so..)

But this thing about the nation state, as the white powered social media algorithms  decided what images I should see, it seemed as though India was not to come for Guyana as a whole, but just for the descendants of the indentured labourers who left a different India a long time ago, branded coolies.  

And for those coolies who are Hindu.

And as Hindutva grows, 'Indian' and 'Hindu' are being forced as synonymous - lord help any 'Indian' who is not Hindu or any Hindu like me who is not 'Indian' and who don't think it is relevant in 2024 for India to be a 'Hindu state' even as one or two Hindu leaders done cuss me about my 'secularism' and so on.

So as I watched as the unbranded coolie, a deep sadness, that with all the talk of diversity, that Guyana's divisions were reinforced (not difference but division), but this is not about Guyana alone, but about the world.

Mother Earth

And so the mumblings about mother land and so come back - and thing about India as mother land versus Guyana as mother land and the idea of having two mother land and spiritual home land and all kind of  'land'

One thing that I learn from Hindu religion though, is that beyond 'motherland' is  Mother Earth as we imagine it to be, and I like to think is beyond boundaries, boundaries which my ancestors of all nonWhite ethnic origins could do nothing about and which continue to cause more death and destruction than any nurturing.

Because even if we watch India - and China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, USA and so from afar, the way our common Mother works, is that ripples are felt all over if not now, then later.

And I hope that instead of cheap oil, that we could give/sell India and the world healing and nurturing ways of relating to each other and to Mother Earth, regardless of where our ancestors came from