Being Indian: outside the box

We visited Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad, during our visit to India in December '06-January '07.

As we walked around, I could feel the poignancy and profound presence of history. We were walking the very dusty paths that Indian freedom fighters had walked on. Just 6 years old in Canada, it was very powerful to see these thoughts expressed so clearly by Gandhiji. ( the suffix 'ji' is attached to the name to denote respect.)

The children and I spent close to three hours at Sabarmati. The peace of those special surroundings, the cool shade of the sprawling trees, and the dry, dry dust of those paths reminded us that we belonged here too, as much as we did in Markham.

Growing up in India, the persona of Mahatma Gandhi was indelibly printed on my mind. I had read about, seen and heard stories about the times that today live on only in history books. My mother remembers the brilliantly lit Mumbai on India's 1st ever Independence Day, August 15th, 1947; the shock she had felt when she first saw the map of a partioned sub-continent. She talks of the deep grief she had felt as a 7 year old, on Gandhiji's assassination in 1948: she had slid under her father's bed and had refused to come out the whole day.

Yet, they were just stories. Sabarmati was different. To me and perhaps for my children too, it was a pilgrimage. The Pretoria train incident had led to this, the lathi charge in South Africa had led to this, the pain of the starving indigo farmers of Champaran had led to this: this small piece of land around which bustled the busy metropolis of Ahmedabad on this day, and it took me a step closer to my own identity of a free Indian in a not-quite-free world.

I realised, as a hyphenated Canadian, deeply, now more than ever before, how important is it to retain ones own identity: personal, cultural, national, in the face of the demands of a majority culture. All messages come to us when we are ready to receive them.

My Indian-ness came to me far away from home, wherever it was: Mumbai or Markham, did not matter that day. In Sabarmati, I found another little part of myself that I had not even missed until that moment.