Identity rooted in an idea

By Ajay Parasram

My family immigrated to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago when I was three years old. We lived in Ottawa, then Toronto, before finally settling in Halifax.

I always felt like a curious sort of Canadian because I fit poorly into minority groups and diasporas. I cannot yet explain the confusion of identity (not all of it bad) that I experienced as a child, so I will take a chronological approach instead.

Growing up in Halifax, I was the only non-white, vegetarian, Hindu student in my entire school and even when other South Asian children arrived, it was clear that I did not fit in with them. My ancestors left India 160 years ago to work as indentured labourers in the sugar plantations of Trinidad and Tobago and I was taught from a young age that my brothers and I were the fruition of their struggle for a better life.

Romantic as that sounds, I have always found myself torn between competing identities: Am I Canadian? I am a citizen. Am I Trinidadian? I was born there and still have my passport.

Am I Indian? According to my schoolmates in Nova Scotia, there was no such thing as an Indian — only white and black. The “Indian” children were certainly different from me. They spoke with accents, and their food and cultural practices were as alien to me as the concept of St. Patrick’s Day or an omelette.

Gandhi as a hero

My first exploration of politics, justice and theology was a project I called Bapuji, the Hindi word for "father." I was 12 years old and had recently watched Ben Kingsley play Mohandas Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi.

While I learned a lot, it was the presentation of the paper that helped to shape my experience as a "philosophical Hindu with strong Buddhist inclinations" in Canada.

We were tasked to "dress up" as the person we studied, and present our research papers to the class and the parents of all the children. Thrilled to play my hero, I arrived in my dhoti, a loincloth, walking stick in hand. I had even managed to find some circular glasses with the lenses popped out.

To my shock, my teacher and the other parents told me they had scarcely heard of Gandhi, and some asked whether Martin Luther King Jr. influenced him!

I was aghast.

In later years, I have found the identity that I sought as a child, but it is not rooted in geography. It is rooted in an idea that righteousness must always overcome wickedness. The Hinduism I know holds this core concept in high regard.

The personal aspect of Hinduism

The Mahatma provided the inspiration I needed to critically interrogate my own religion, something that I always feel the religiously inclined of any faith ought to do more often.

Gandhi saw no substantive differences between faiths, regularly identifying as a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist — it didn’t matter. Indeed, this is one of the most important aspects of Hinduism to me.

How does one begin to explain that there are simultaneously infinite gods, one god, and no god to people in a society taught that there is only one God, and that his son is his prophet? More importantly, how can you communicate that if there is one God or many are fundamentally and ethically insignificant without offending millions?

Indeed, this personal aspect of Hinduism is what has kept me from abandoning religion because I have learned from my parents and grandparents that no one can dictate rules to you; my Hinduism is an ethical philosophy.

Lessons from Hinduism

Though 160 years removed from the country, I was taught stories from India on my grandfather’s lap.

For example, there is the god Yama, who brought an end to a famine because he was struck by the humble charity of a family that fed him their only morsels of food as he was disguised as an old man. Charity is more than giving away your excess — it is parting with that which you need.

I was taught the core lessons of devotion from the Mahabharata, one of Hinduism's most important texts. A few grains of rice, given with purity of intent, outweighs the purest of gold and silver.

My explorations into the spirituality of India (academically and personally) have taught me that death itself is part of a soul’s experience. As the The Gita, a Hindu sacred text, states:

The soul can never be cut in pieces by any weapon, nor can it be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by wind. This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble and can be neither burned nor dried. It is everlasting, all pervading, unchangeable, immovable, and eternally the same. (Gita: 2.23)

Though the strict Hindu may interpret this literally, I prefer to think of The Gita’s "soul" as referring to right actions and motives. It embodies principles that are necessarily dynamic to remain relevant to society.

This is what prompted India to be a secular state and what compelled Gandhi to say he was all of Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and more.

No absolute truth

To be a Canadian Hindu to me means to take nothing as absolute truth. Dharma, the social good, is necessarily dynamic and adapts to suit every society. There can be no evangelizing in Hinduism, and those who do miss the point.

So I have learned much since my first study of Gandhi and India, and my experience in Canada has offered me many excellent opportunities that I might not have been afforded elsewhere.

For example, I met my incredible wife on one of my teenage travels attending a law conference. Who would have thought that a Trini/Canadian Hindu from Halifax could get married to a Canadian born Ismaili Muslim from Vancouver? I doubt such a thing would have been possible even 30 years ago in Canada.

But my experience as a Hindu Canadian can best be summarized as such: there is more to this world than Eurocentrism, and I aim to spend my life seeking it out.

Ajay Parasram, 24, is a Masters candidate at Carleton University's Department of Political Science in Ottawa. He studies Asian International Relations and is fascinated with multiculturalism.

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