One Man, Many
Identities
By Professor Nazeer
Ahmed
CA
The more I travel around the
world, the more I wonder if the so-called “Clash
of Civilizations” is a ruse floated to serve
a political agenda. The fatal flaw in Huntington’s
thesis of a clash of civilizations is its fixity.
It assumes that cultures and civilizations are
fixed to geographical boundaries. In a shrinking
world, as nations draw closer together, cultures
melt, group and individual identities form and
are molded by time and space. People chose different
identities at different times in response to historical
currents. Civilizations renew themselves from
within and are transformed.
Some identities are God given. Some are imposed.
Yet others are a result of conscious choice. The
divinely endowed identities are beautiful. They
bestow upon us character and personality. Those
made by man are transient. They shift with the
inexorable march of time. Some man-made identities
serve a social or political agenda. Once the agenda
is satisfied, they change. At other times they
are used as a safety net against a threat. Once
the threat passes, they are altered.
To fix a single identity to an individual is like
looking at the world with a monochromatic lens.
The world is illuminated by a spectrum of many
colors. Some wavelengths are invisible. To fix
a single color to the world is like looking through
a narrow slit. The majestic panorama on the horizon
is lost.
Here is a brief recollection of the many identities,
some imposed, some endowed by divine grace and
some a result of a conscious choice that I have
been associated with. I am certain each of our
readers has a similar story to tell.
It was the year 1977. A group of us, South Asians
and Egyptians, all residents of the United States
and Canada, had landed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
for hajj. Exiting the airport, we needed some
help with the luggage. A Pakistani-Canadian brother
from our group approached a porter.
“I do not handle the luggage of rafeeqs
from Bakistan” (there is no P in Arabic
and the Arabs pronounce a P as a B), shouted the
porter in Arabic. Looking at our faces, the man
thought we were all from Pakistan. When an Egyptian
member from our entourage explained that we were
from the US and Canada, the porter smiled and
was more than willing to oblige. Our identity
changed the moment our domicile changed. We were
instantaneously transformed from unacceptable
“Bakistanis” to acceptable Canadians
and Americans.
It was the year 2002. We were visiting the great
pyramids of Giza near Cairo. It was a hot, sultry
afternoon and I sought out the shade from the
great pyramid for a place to stand.
“Hey, Indian, do you want your picture?”
came the voice of a tall, bearded Egyptian wearing
a long, flowing jalaba and a Nubian turban. Here
was an identity stripped down to its essentials.
Never mind that I have carried a US passport for
decades and have spent over forty-five years in
America. On that hot, sultry afternoon by the
pyramids, my face became my passport and my color
my identity.
People who spring from the soil, like the fellahin
of Egypt and the kisans of South Asia, see the
world as it is, stripped of its embellishments.
For them there is no pretense of a civilizational
façade, no curtain of acquired accents
and mannerisms. It is like standing in front of
a mirror. If you want to find out how the world
sees you, present yourself to a kisan or a fellahin.
We took a boat ride down the river Nile and stopped
at small towns on the way. Egyptian children accosted
us at every stop. They had a simple, straightforward
way of identifying you. Every European was “English”.
Every East Asian was “Chinee”. Every
South Asian was “Indian”. Every black
face was “Sudanee”.
Not even the most sophisticated escapes the trappings
of outward appearances in affixing identities.
In 2003, I was invited to a discussion on Iraq
and Afghanistan by a joint conference sponsored
by a Washington, DC-based NGO and the German embassy.
In the evening the conference attendees were invited
to dinner with the ambassador. For the occasion
I wore a black sherwani and a green pointed sufi
cap which I had bought in Istanbul, Turkey. The
ambassador, noticing my obviously different attire,
approached and asked, “What part of Pakistan
are you from?” I have always wanted to visit
the shrines in Lahore and Multan and stand before
the tomb of Allama Iqbal but despite invitations
from so many friends and well-wishers, I have
not had the privilege to visit Pakistan. But there
I was in the eyes of the German ambassador, an
obvious Pakistani.
For a while I lived in Albuquerque, NM and made
many friends. One of them, an Iranian scholar,
enjoyed discussing Islamic history with me. “You
Sunnis”, he said to me one day metaphorically,
“live in a house without furniture. Shias,
on the other hand, live in the same house, but
our rooms have beautiful furniture”. He
was quite aware of my own views that I had no
use for Shia-Sunni differences or for that matter
any sectarian differences. Nonetheless, in his
eyes, my identity was that of a Sunni.
Language is another identity trap. I am sometimes
asked, “Do you speak Hindu?” Obviously,
many well meaning Americans do not know that Hindi
is a language and Hindu is the follower of a religious
tradition. When I tell them I speak Urdu, they
are baffled, as if somehow Urdu was somehow related
to Zulu.
Identities change, and change they do in galactic
strides to affect nations and civilizations. The
case of East Bengal illustrates this observation.
In the 1920s, after the collapse of the Khilafat
movement in British India, the people of East
Bengal (now Bangladesh) sought their identity
through the Krishak Praja Party. Religion was
less important at this stage in their historical
experience. The focus was liberation from the
zamindari system and escape from the clutches
of money lenders. Snubbed both by the Indian National
Congress and the Muslim League, the Krushak Praja
Party collapsed. From 1937 onwards there was a
gradual shift from economics-based identity to
a religion-based identity and the rise of the
Muslim League. After partition (1947) and the
emergence of Pakistan, this identity shifted to
one based on the Bengali language, and reached
its crescendo in the tragic events of 1971. It
has shifted back again to a religion-based identity
in recent years.
Identity is both a bane and boon. Sometimes, it
embellishes the individual and gives him protection
from the ravages of politics. At other times it
is used to divide people and cause mischief. For
many, national identity is a matter of choice
as amply demonstrated by the immigration of thousands
of Muslims to North America each year.
“Are you a Muslim?” asks the woman
at the dinner table at a business dinner. “I
am a Gujarati”, she continues, “and
I am so sorry about the anti-Muslim pogrom that
took place in my state”. I was attending
the dinner as the CEO of a company. My identity
as a Muslim was not a dinner table conversation.
But in the eyes of that lady that was what I was.
Over the years, I have had my share of identities,
some chosen and some thrust upon me. Here are
a few that I wish to share with our readers: “South
Asian”, “East Indian”, “Indian”,
“Bakistani” (both with a B and a P),
“South Indian”, “American”,
“American Indian”, “Indian American”,
“Muslim”, “American Muslim”,
“Indian Muslim”, “Sunni”,
“Hanafi”, “Sufi”, “Salafi”,
“Urdu-speaking Indian”, “Hindu-speaking
Indian”. These identities do not include
the ones associated with my diverse careers and
professions such as “scientist”, “historian”,
“writer”, “legislator”,
“executive”, ”author”,
“inventor”,
Who am I? I am certain each one asks this question
at some time or the other in one’s life.
On occasions, when I am up past midnight and have
the privilege of offering tahajjud prayers, I
raise my hands in supplication and I say, “My
Lord, I thank thee for creating me a human being,
bestowing upon me speech and intelligence, so
that I can for a moment or two witness the majesty
and beauty of your creation, serve thee and thank
thee”.
Huntington highlights in particular a forthcoming
clash between Islam and the West. Neither of these
great civilizations are monoliths. They are a
compendium of many cultures and many nationalities.
There is enormous diversity in each group and
they overlap each other at many levels so much
so that the similarities between them sometimes
overshadow the differences within each.
Looking at the Islamic universe one may legitimately
ask: Are the Turks the same as the Nigerians?
Are the Pakistanis the same as the Nubians? Or,
for that matter, the Indian Muslims the same as
the Chinese Muslims? Doesn’t a Lebanese
Muslim have more in common with a Lebanese Christian
than with a Muslim from the Fiji islands? Are
American Muslim women the same as Somali women?
In the western universe, are the Latins the same
as the English? Or for that matter the Guatemalans
the same as the Canadians? If you slice the pie
vertically across economic lines, the slum dwellers
of Buenos Aires have more in common with the slum
dwellers of Jakarta than with the rich citizens
of Beverly Hills. How can we attach civilizational
fixities to geographic boundaries?
The theory of a clash of civilizations does not
stand the test of observation. Identities are
not fixed. They change with time and space. The
theory is sure to wither away and die or stored
away in the museum of curious ideas.
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