Inderjeet Pabla

of whats been going on in the Indian tour of Australia might take some time, while this is definitely a good start.

The most unbiased view of the chaos that has transpired over last couple of months.

Growing up in a small village, I never realized as a kid how diverse we in India really are. My idea or the definition of diversity was limited to the video clips shown on Delhi Doordarshan, specially around the Independence/Republic Day celebrations, with tag lines like ‘Unity In Diversity’. I gladly accepted the fact (myth) that we are all united irrespective of being so diverse, especially when I saw the National Television vouching for the same.

Growing up as a kid is not easy. When you are young you make some perceptions and believes about various things around you. Some of them actually turn out to be as you had perceived them to be, while others do not fit the bill and you begin to question yourself and your believes: why is that boy with hair tied on his head and a turban on is yelled at as ‘oyae sardar 12 baj gayae’ or some other guy as ‘abae bihari idhar aa’ ?

As I moved around different states (3 precisely) for education purposes at various levels, I came across people from all spheres of life, from all parts of India, all haling from far flung areas, all speaking different languages, all having different customs and culture and yet all Indians. Every person has got some grudge or the other against people from different states within India - while locals in a South India town think that the students from North India are spoiling the culture by their way of living, people from East India are rarely considered Indians and are often mistaken for being Chinese or Nepalese by just about every one else.

While people in the far Northern state think themselves to be more a part of our Neighbor country , people in South India make their anger or frustration known to all others by not learning the National language at all and prefer to communicate with everyone in their local language, does not matter if you understand a word or not.

While every Punjabi is blamed for having earned India a bad name internationally by settling in every nook and corner of the world except off course the North Pole, Punjabis do not miss an opportunity to point their fingers at Gujaratis for their way of living.

While people from different states think it is worth the effort to demand a country of their own, others find it worthwhile to vandalize/torture whatever comes their way so that they do not have to give water to some other state.

Unity in diversity???

I would love to see some of that for sure.