Mapping Home

Nusrat F Jafri’s debut book of nonfiction, This Land We Call Home opens in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, in January 1920, where a middle-aged man named Hardayal Singh wakes early one morning disturbed by memories of a fire that had changed his life, not yet aware that the day ahead will contain a bigoted assault. Originally Bhantus, a nomadic Adivasi group that was criminalised in British-occupied India, Hardayal, his wife Kalyani and their daughters had become Methodists after a fire, which was deliberately set by upper caste people. The church brought them education and upward mobility. By the time Jafri, his great-granddaughter, was born in the 1980s, the family had seen remarkable changes—and so had India. This well-researched book—which mixes creative non-fiction, memoir and reportage—traces how socio-political currents inform life trajectories at any given time, all the effects of which are then carried down from generation to generation.

From a religious perspective, Jafri’s maternal family converted many times over within several decades. As Bhantus, they practiced a form of folk religion literally on the margins of Hinduism, and as a people were reviled by the Hindu caste system, which placed them beyond the pale. They become Methodists, and later Catholics. Jafri’s mother Meera converted by choice to Islam after meeting her father Abid, and became the more devout Shia Muslim of the two, imparting the customs to her children while her husband had a less traditional outlook. Jafri herself is a practicing Muslim who has married a Hindu.

By detailing these journeys, and juxtaposing them against the backdrop of the Independence movement, Partition, Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, the demolition of Babri Masjid and the present political landscape, the author paints a vivid picture of India’s own transformations. She does not pretend that India of the past was a perfectly syncretic place—only that the country’s turn toward hatred and intolerance palpably, and indeed statistically provably, sharpened in the last three decades or so. Even within her own lifetime, things felt different—about the 1980s, she writes: “For some time, we forgot we were a minority.”

“Maybe we are conditioned to expect conflict around our social differences but sometimes the world astounds us by highlighting how like each other we really are,” Jafri contemplates towards the end of the book, even as she tracks this collective decline. But she is never wistful, or rose-coloured in her view of any religion and its practices, bringing in tricky nuances at many points: from how Hardayal felt held back by other Dalit deacons in the church, to how Meera is still judged by her Christian origins, and how she herself is accused of performing Islamic rituals inadequately.

Through detailing ordinary unkindnesses and complications alongside major national events, while narrating cultural criss-crossings over several generations, This Land We Call Home convincingly but quietly brings home the point that multiculturality is imperilled in India, and backs this through both data and empirical evidence. There is a necessary incompleteness to the book, arising from the fact that the author, her family and her country are all mid-flux in a longer arc of citizenry in a nation that feels like a “stark contrast to the India that Hardayal and Prudence [Jafri’s grandmother] would have known”.

One of the book’s strengths is that it rarely overplays sentimentality when it comes to either the institution of family or of the nation. Its approach is subtle, but its effect is thought-provoking. There is also a curious—or perhaps just cautious—absence of overt anger in Jafri’s tone. There is always a measuredness in the narrative whether it comes to relaying stories of familial discord or national disharmony. This book is not a polemic, but says just enough so that we can infer the depth of what is actually being shared or suggested. There is much to rue, yet also much restraint.

bookcasteConversionsmodern IndiaThis Land We Call Home: The Story of a Family