Losing Hindustan

The majority of Meiteis, Manipur’s dominant tribe, adhere to Vaishnavism, of Lord Vishnu, symbolised by the U-shaped tilak on the forehead. Yet theirs is a syncretic Hinduism, which incorporates indigenous Sanamahi animism, including reverence for Pakhangba, a dragon god. Photo: Kirit Kiran

The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India
Manan Ahmed Asif
Harvard University Press: 2020
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The first time somebody called me a Hindustani was in 2004, in a small village in Pahang on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, not far from the tropical Malayan rainforest, not far from the warm waters of the South China Sea.

‘Asal dari mana?’, where are your origins, a middle-aged Malay man asked me. I was twenty-seven then and, having grown up in neighbouring Singapore, an equally race-conscious country, was well accustomed to such interrogations. They usually reflected earnest attempts to understand ancestry and culture, yet to be blemished by the snarky ‘Where are you from?’ of the nativist zeitgeist.

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