Since this morning, I have felt uncomfortable after seeing
so many people wishing each other Happy Thanksgiving. I had to keep my self-righteous
self at a check and not judge anyone and be angry. Thanksgiving, a holiday that
has efficiently erased the historic reality of genocide with a much benign
story of families coming together and eating a fat bird. So many (including me
when I first moved to this continent and bought into the dream of assimilation
and integration) “celebrates” this holiday probably not know what they are
actually celebrating. And then being angry now when I have a better
understanding of the holiday and judging others will be appropriation I feel as
it was not my people who were killed on this day and days and years and
centuries to follow. But as an ally and as a person coming from a land which
was colonized, vandalized, and impoverished by the same colonial rule, I can
only say to some extent i know how much it hurts.
But then i started thinking about my own festivals. Growing up
in Bengal, we had a saying, we have 13 festivals in 12 months, and that is
true. And the most important festival of all, the festival of the Goddess
Durga, Durgotsov, has been closest to my heart. Like so many Bengalis, my
family and i celebrated this by worshiping the clay idol of a ten handed
goddess killing a demon, Mahishasura. As a matter of fact she is my “personal
god” (having 33 million gods in the Hindu pantheon, a lot of us get to “shop”
our personal gods based on our convenience and character). But today when my
race sensitization is sharp, I do not see the beautiful smiling face of the
goddess killing a demon, the philosophical narrative saying she represents the
good winning over evil fades. The only thing that stands out is a fair skinned
person killing a dark skinned man and when it is done, she gives a smile and proclaims
divinity. Where does this lead me to? I had no conflict with my religion and my
sexuality, but today I have a severe conflict between my faith and my queer
politics. Once I had this one realization, stories after stories from the
mythology and scriptures came back to me stating the same story. A fair skinned
“god” punishing an immoral dark skinned “demon”. Take the example of Ravana,
the bad guy of the epic Ramayana in its most popular North Indian narrative. He
was fighting to get his own land from which he and his people were displaced by
the Devas or the fair skinned Aryans and at the end he had to die as a demon
although the author of the epic described him as a just king and ruler, but he
had to die. I wonder would he die if he was a fair skinned person. When I first
had this disturbing question, my brain tricked me by giving me two very popular
examples, where two dark skinned characters are given very important divine
role in the religion. Krishna (the name literally means the dark one) and Kali
(once again meaning the dark one, till date dark skinned girls are taunted and
humiliated by calling them Kali). I will start with Krishna, as he is the more
popular and “less violent” one. He participated in a battle where two Aryan
clans collided and at the battle field he gave his speech which eventually
became the most important Hindu text in modern times, The Bhagwat Gita. But if one
follows his life, from childhood to death, it is full of deceit, privilege, and
coming up with unfair war tactics (he could have been employed by the US army
as the chief advisor for doing all wrong things and coming up with a
justification). And after all these he got divinity. Same with Kali, a naked
woman at times wearing a skirt made of
human hands and a garland made of the heads of the demon she decapitated, with
her long dark hair untied and screaming and shouting and terrorizing demons. A gruesome
depiction with a wonderful and profound philosophical explanation. She is the
mother who kills, and invokes the idea that death is essential for birth to
happen. But for both Krishna and Kali I wonder why did these two people get
divinity? Is it because they both went against their own people (darker people)
and helped the ruling Aryans to gain the supremacy? Was it because they
maintained the status quo? Before I lose my mind completely and fear losing my
faith and live next several weeks and months in dissonance, i want to share one
last story. The story of Manasha (the goddess of snakes), a woman born from
Shiva (an appropriated deity from the pre-Hindu era that Hindus just claimed
and added later in time) and a tribal woman from the planes of Bengal. She fought
with the Gods, to get her right as a legitimate child of Shiva and hence
claiming divinity. Shiva’s main fair-skinned wife Parvati (another name of
Durga) was extremely unhappy with Manasha and her claim and did everything with
other gods to resist her divinity. At the end Shiva agreed to give Manasha what
she wanted, but only in parts. She was granted divinity, but she will only be
worshipped after the worship of Shiva has been done, so she did not gain the
Sovereign status of divinity that she claimed for the land she belonged to.
So when i feel conflicted on my role and on my stand with my
faith, i turn my attention to my own skin colour, dark, too dark for so many (including
me). But how did that happen? Considering I am a Brahmin? The highest Aryan
Hindu cast? The Sanskrit for cast is Varna which literally means skin colour,
and the cast system always tried to maintain the purity of the skin colours. The
Brahmins only were allowed to marry another Brahmin else they were outcast. But
then with time we mixed, mixed with people of the land that i call home now. i do
not know if my mix was a way to maintain the status quo, or a brutal rape on
one of my ancestors. i just know in this one body and mind i am fragmented,
with my privilege as a Hindu, Brahmin male and brutalized and demonized with my
dark skin, broad nose and thick lips. And hence when i stand in front of an
image of Durga killing Mahishasura from now onwards, a part of me will be proclaiming
my divinity, ability to intellectualize, and the other part will cry in anger
and rage and in despair.
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