Aug 24, 2024 09:10 PM IST
At a point when bricks are being concretised on the communal walls the world over, one might turn to everyday humans, like mothers, to loosen the strings around the human condition
At the Paris Olympics, Pakistani athlete Arshad Nadeem clinched the country’s first individual gold medal, which was also its first track-and-field medal. India’s Neeraj Chopra secured a splendid silver in the same game of javelin throw.
Things were fragile for a few hours after the game. Some elements on this side of the border posed questions about India losing to Pakistan, and a Hindu losing to a Muslim. There was gloating along these lines by some across the border. The fact that the match happened only a week ahead of the Independence Days of the two countries (August 14 and 15) perhaps served to whip up such sentiments.
But, soon enough, emerged two silver linings — the mothers of the athletes, Razia Parveen and Saroj Devi — who undid the spurious animosities in simple sentences. Reporters interviewed the two women about their sons’ successes after the game and asked the obvious question: How do you feel about who your son competed against?
Both women had the same answer about their son’s competitor: “He is like my son, I wish him well”. Through their responses, the women showed an alpha community charged with hyper-nationalism the origins of the word “community” — which is to have something in common. They also underlined the meaning of sportspersonship, which is reflected in the benignant camaraderie displayed by the two athletes on the podium finish.
These events point to a larger political proscenium, which has its roots in the fight for freedom from a common imperial oppressor and the subsequent mapping of frail boundaries that cannot fully contain overlapping tendencies. They prod us to question how borders are imagined and how cultures cross over.
The similarity we see in a person from another community or religion, practising life differently, is a frustrating view. The others look like us, use the same spices in food but cook them differently; they procure the same fabric but wear their clothes differently; adhere to the same values but implement them differently; and think the same thoughts but speak differently.
Communities, and, by extension, nations, are imagined on foundations of standardised antiquity. A unified past that ties everything together. Any departure from this process of standardisation leads to the othering of a person. Empathy is a virtue we extend to commonness.
A case in point is the character of Subodh Malgaonkar (played by Ashutosh Rana), the Right-wing leader in Mahesh Bhatt’s phenomenal film, Zakhm (1998), who stresses on abiding by the rituals of a community, even if the deceased wanted the last rites done differently. He says: “Our lives are not entirely ours… We also have to live according to what people expect of us.”
In his seminal work — Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983) — Irish political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson outlines the thoughts that gave rise to the concept of nationalism. He points out how modern notions of nationalism emerged when religious philosophies declined. In the New World, pamphlets and manifestoes replaced religious scriptures, but they rendered a similar effect, which was to limit the individual from crossing over, giving rise to confusion in exercises of belonging and identity.
Of course, Anderson’s is a much more complicated thought than what can be summarised in a short essay. But he opens a window to the modern reader to allow the differences in, only to find similarities. Motherhood is a good place to begin this imagination.
An important location where this imagination is realised is the arts, especially cinema. Even in popular Bollywood films like Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara (2004), there have been attempts to resolve territorial disputes through love, landscapes, and values, as is the case in Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi (2018). While the former is an extensive, albeit exaggerated, take on “love triumphs all”, the latter is centred on the fatigue of nationalism itself. In Zakhm, motherhood is visualised as a state that transgresses religious identities to arrive at concepts of love and care.
At a point when bricks are being concretised on the communal walls the world over, one might turn to everyday humans like mothers to loosen the strings around the human condition. One might take a leaf out of Parveen’s and Devi’s books and maybe even crack a wall.
The views expressed are personal
