The other day I was watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech of the Democratic party nomination and John McCain’s announcement of Sarah Palen as his running mate.
It was so great to watch the audience chanting “America, America” all the way, as if it truly still meant something.
And especially during Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, sitting here in India, I couldn’t help wondering, what if…
- My name was still Christina Daniels.
- I was born to a father who was an American Christian missionary – for the sake of convenience, let’s call him Joe Daniels.
- He met my mother Lakshmi Ramachandran (a liberal freethinking Indian) at JNU.
- I was born with glorious blonde hair, brilliant blue eyes and a peach complexion – like my father.
- I was raised in America, Japan and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (by my grandmother).
- During this time and for the rest of her life, my mother continued to live in Japan with her second husband, who was Japanese.
- My father returned to the USA.
- I learnt to speak Hindi as spoken in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands… And was also a practicing Hindu (This one is just for convenience in my later argument. Technically speaking, India is a secular country).
- My father of course remained an evangelizing American Christian missionary.
- I was later educated at St Stephens in Delhi, and I passed out of the university with flying colours.
- I then chose to enter politics.
With a complete absence of political lineage, would I be able to rise from the ranks of the Congress to be accepted as the party’s choice for Prime Minister over the wife/daughter of an extremely successful ex Prime Minister?
Then, if I were to run for an election campaign opposite Mr LK Advani, would the BJP and upper middle class/middle class India ever accept me (Christina Daniels of the blonde hair, blue eyes and evangelizing Christian missionary father, multiple parents and identities) as being truly Indian?
Would Mr LK Advani ever issue a public advertisement congratulating me on a historic moment in my nation’s history once I was announced as the Congress’ choice for Prime Minister? Or would the BJP be allowed to proceed unchecked as they launched a loud aggressive denigrating objection to my Indianess at every point of their election campaign?
Would it matter that I saw myself as being irrevocably Indian?
Well, you don’t have to answer those questions… I’m not sure if I’m ready to hear the answers 
But, just think about it…
2 Comments
September 1, 2008 at 7:21 am
September 1, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Interesting thoughts. It set my mind racing…:-)