India Is Not Modi, We Once Said. I Wish I Still Believed It.
Every Indian Muslim knows about the pause: the moment when another Indian, usually a Hindu, hears your name, waits a few seconds, and then, with a furrowed brow or a step back, acts surprised and confused that you, too, are Indian. The implication is one of suspicion, as though we are Indians with an asterisk—or worse, as though we are not Indians at all.
I have encountered this reaction at literary parties in New Delhi, where guests greet each other with air kisses, as well as during my office hours in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when more than one Hindu American student has expressed surprise that I—a Pakistani, they incorrectly assumed—cared so much about India.
The experience is exhausting, but it is not new. My father went through it growing up in Tanzania, as did his father in India. and a to a joint session of Congress.
