identity… something we all wrestle with to varying degrees, whether we know it or not.

something often made fun of, so I feel slightly guilty even addressing it, but something important anyway.

I’m splitting this post into multiple parts because it’s long, but I want to write about identity: my own struggles with identity as a person who grew up outside India; my wrestling with identity now as I deal with the moronic Department of Homeland Insecurity over immigration papers; the importance God places on his people knowing their identity as His people (some key examples being Jacob, aka Israel, he-who-wrestles-with-God, and Nehemiah’s wall-building community-identity-exercise); and my growing understanding of the identity God is shaping me with.

Looking back as far as I can remember, my life has had one overriding constant theme: living in the uneasy joining of powerful cultural rivers. In all periods of my life I have always been in the middle of various cultural mixings, and I have unconsciously been part of people on either side rethinking their major cultural assumptions.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence - in this rapidly shrinking world where cultural mixing is now the assumed constant of life, there are many people who have had similar experiences as cultural whitewater-rafters. Some would say identity-confusion is a reality to be embraced, and this is challenging to many people who have had the privilege (disadvantage?) of growing up in traditionally strong-identity communities, such as conservative Christians (orthodox Brahmins, Catholics, Unitarians, etc), or political/philosophical fundamentalists (right-wing/left-wing, Marxists, etc).

I view it differently - cultural mixing can indeed lead to overwhelming defensive reactions and debilitating identity-confusion, but if embraced and proactively entered into, cultural mixing is a God-given environment for realizing and developing an empowering identity-clarity.

I think this “knack” for “unwittingly” being in difficult cultural mixes, in and of itself, is a key part of my reckless identity - one I used to resent very much, but one I now see as something God is shaping me with.

Part 1: Communal and cultural identity

From my earliest memories, identity has been a key struggle for me. I was born in Kerala, a state in southern India, but shortly after I was born my parents moved to the north, where my sister was born in the state of Rajasthan. We kept moving, and by the time I was 8 we were living in Yemen, in the Middle East. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was already a mixed bag of identities.

India is a land of many cultures and languages, being “Indian” was an identity originally imposed on us as an administrative convenience for the British bureaucratic machine. Even today the government struggles with keeping the nation focused on its collective identity while being a collection of wildly disparate cultures. I present, as living proof, the Indian parliamentary system: you’d be hard-pressed to find such a multi-faceted collection of regional political parties in any other country.

[To those Indians who look derisively at American-born Indians and label them derogatorily as ABCDs, i.e. "American Born Confused Desis", I ask back: "and who are you?"]

My dad is from Tamil Nadu, literally meaning “Tamil nation”, where they speak Tamil. My mom is from Kerala, where they speak Malayalam. The two states adjoin one other (they are the two southern-most states in India), but there is such a stark geographical contrast between the two lands. This reflects in the cultural difference between the two as well.

So my first cultural identity crisis: Am I Tamilian, or am I Keralite? When we visited India on vacations we would spend time with each side of the family (and there was always a family feud going on, so sometimes we would spend more time with one versus the other), which meant speaking different languages each time. Aspects of Tamil family life (being a patriarchal society) are very different from Malayalee family life (being a very matriarchal society), so we were living in the mix between Tamil and Kerala cultures quite often when we went home on vacation.

Even at home, in Yemen, we had mixtures of Tamil and Keralite cultural influences. However, my mom is a Tamil-fanatic, a lover of Tamil poetry and Tamil literature, so we spoke Tamil at home, and gradually I think my identity became more Tamilian than Keralite, but I can still see many very-Keralite aspects of my personality. It’s almost genetic - to be born in Kerala means you will have *some* piece of the Kerala-magic in you forever.

My second identity crisis: my dad is Brahmin, my mom was not - she is from a lower caste in the Hindu caste system. The caste system in and of itself is a major identity issue for modern Indians, many of whom would simply prefer others didn’t point to it. To American readers, I’d say it’s like the race issue in America, except with about 15 more levels of nuance, so now you can appreciate the sensitivity with which caste needs to be treated.

So: was I Brahmin, or was I Nair? This was more easily resolved - the higher caste is the more preferred caste. My dad’s father was very insistent on the importance of me becoming a Brahmin, and sure enough, at the age of 13 I went through a formal Hindu ceremony to become Brahmin. However, this was still a dividing line between my dad’s family and my mom’s family, and we crossed over the border frequently on this issue depending on which side of the family we were spending time with. For example: at my dad’s family homes we followed strict Brahmin dietary laws and eating habits, while at my mom’s family homes we adapted to a more looser interpretation

But by that age another major issue crept in: at 13 I had spent almost half my life outside India. My family were “NRIs”, non-resident Indians. This was in the 1980s, when the “Gulf boom” was taking place - almost every family in Kerala had at least one family member living and working in the Middle East. The group of Indian expatriates quickly took on an identity of their own, NRIs, with their own quirky habits and confusions, showing up in India on vacation for a month or two every year.

One aspect of the NRI culture is the forming of a cultural and familial gap between NRIs and the vibrant family structure back home. Life happens in parallel, and the NRI only gets to touch base with the rest of the family once a year, usually only over a few days. And this was no different with us. Major events brought painful reminders of the growing gulf between us and our extended family back in India: my mom’s brother’s death, my parents’ siblings’ weddings (on either side), several major festivals and family occassions missed. We were just not a part of the family fabric, and the identity confusion deepened.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, another identity confusion was boiling: I was a Indian Hindu growing up in an Arab Muslim country, surrounded by Arab Muslim children. Many of you know how brutal and vital the school years can be for the formation of a person’s identity - let me tell you, identity issues were rampant during my school years. To my Arab friends I was a pagan idol-worshiping heathen, destined for hell, unclean, parasitical, and mercenary. After all, didn’t my dad come to be subservient to the will of his superior Arab bosses? Didn’t we compromise our religious principles in order to earn money? That was the view my Arab friends had anyway. Many of them actually believed Indians like me were polluting influences of evil - the Koran has the same Old Testament stories about cleansing the land of idols and idol-worshipers, stories about the wrath of God being on those who did not obey his command to purge the land of sinful people who worshiped stones, and many of our neighbors and friends were very religious people. Our presence in their midst was a confusing issue for their own identity.

To many Americans, especially conservative-Christian types, who read that last part and shake their heads at the ignorant intolerance of Islam, I’d draw the parallel as follows: imagine a gay couple with young kids showing up in a small town in the rural mid-west US, a predominantly conservative Christian town.

[To be continued...]