Why I Am A Hindu But Not
My parents are “Hindu” Sindhi. Being Sindhi is one of the reasons for being Hindu, but it is also one of the reasons for being Sufi Muslim and Sikh – all at the same time. I prefer to remain “hyphenated” about my own religious identity.
UTTARA SHAHANI
I read Aditi Bannerji’s excellent essay, The Hyphenated Hindus, with great interest. It prompted me to write about my own feelings of “Hinduness”. This is not a response to her essay – just some thoughts that her essay provoked. I am resistant to defining a religion. At least for myself, the word “Hindu” itself is problematic and I don’t think calling Hinduism “Sanatan Dharma” solves this problem. However, that is a subject for another debate. Here I concentrate on why I prefer to remain “hyphenated” about my own religious identity.
Despite being brought up by atheist parents and being surrounded by their deeply atheist friends, I have always prayed and always been attracted to, if not needed, religious ritual. My parents are “Hindu” Sindhi, my father having gone through the trauma of partition at a young age. Being Sindhi is one of the reasons for
being Hindu, but it is also one of the reasons for being Sufi Muslim and Sikh – all at the same time.
As a child I was intensely jealous of the neighbours who conducted big pujas on religious occasions, and the festivity that surrounded each one, while my parents did nothing. True, we celebrated Diwali, lit diyas, made rangoli, and left the door open for Lakshmi. Ganesh Chaturthi was celebrated at my much-loved Maharashtrian aunt’s house with all the right food including a twenty-six vegetable curry and modaks. But none of those occasions could actually be called religious in the orthodox sense.
Didn’t ammi pray? I would ask my father in desperation, about my paternal grandmother, whom I had never known – simply because in my experience at least all grandmothers prayed.
Ammi did pray, but her worship took place in a way that may be viewed with suspicion by a lot of today’s “Hindus”. Every morning after she had bathed, she would go to the prayer room and open the Granth Saheb at any page and recite to herself.
In the puja room there were many idols, both of Vaishnav and Shaiva lineage. There were also photographs. There was one of a man sitting on a durrie and smoking a hookah. My father says he thinks that they called him Saijin and that “he was of a Hindu-Sufi order, if there could be anything of that sort”.
Satyanarayan pujas were held regularly. Arti of the Granth-sahib was also done after which karah-prasad and choorie were distributed to people, as in a langar, from the courtyard. In addition to all this, there was the Brahmo influence through Sadhu Vaswani. Every morning when she woke my father up, ammi sang a song which was a folk-dhun in Raga Todi which is said to originate in Turkey and is a favourite of the sufis.
When ammi had to leave Sindh for Bombay, she made friends with the woman who cleaned the local dargah at Worli Sea Face and generally looked after it. The woman from the dargah came regularly to visit her and there were long conversations between them, seated on the threshold of the house. Ammi thought it was natural to send a chaddar for the pir. She was very worried about her children, so she would seek the blessings of the woman from the dargah (as the representative of the pir).
In short, ammi was someone who, like many other Sindhis, got her spiritual sustenance from more than one religious tradition. Yet, she and her family, and countless others, had to leave their homeland, because you were either Hindu or you were Muslim, but you couldn’t be both or none at all.
