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Showing posts with label Nazrani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazrani. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

new Pope and thoughts of my Nazrani heritage

New Pope in the offing for the Catholics. Again, the Nazranis are forgotten. No candidate from the Syro-Malabar Church. It is fascinating to see the invisibility of these people. In spite of the fact their faith is over 2000 years old. In spite of all the earnest traditions and strict followings of the Church doctrines, more than any other Catholic group in the world. Why, the priest and nuns in my community back home wield more power -- for good or bad -- than any monarch, over their flock. All that exaltation of virginity in our women, demands of covering our heads (in shame for being born as women?) in Church, of compulsory removals of our slippers in the not very clean Church floors, of strict fastings and confessions, public humiliations and ostracizations of sinners, and manic Charismatic retreats,, making girls wear plain sarees, to college -- none of that helped, sadly.

I had written previously, that my ancestors' belief that we were high caste Brahmins converted into Christianity by St Thomas the Apostle, was erroneous. I based it solely on hearsay , and on Nehru's statement that there were no Brahmins in Kerala in 52 A.D. Now, I had thought Nehru's ulterior motive may have been a unified India, without the North-South divide. But I had also read about the Apostles' first mission of getting the news of the Messiah to those places where there were Jews already. According to historians, Jews from Kerala sent gifts to King Solomon, who, we know, ruled before the times of Jesus. Musiris, the present day Kodungallur, was a famous port from ancient times.Combined with the fact that people from the Middle East were called Mappilas in Kerala, I deduced that my ancestors were Jews, not Hindu Brahmins. Of course they must have intermingled with the other local people too. As for Nehru's motive, now I think it may not have been that benevolent. It must have been an urge to perpetuate that British-influenced myth of the superiority of the North Indian "Aryan" race.

But now, after  DNA analysis for my ancestry,  I realize that there may have been something to my ancestor's belief about their Brahmin ancestry. I should not have dismissed it so callously as due to simple vanity. I learn that there was a strong  reformist movement in Kerala --by  Buddhists and Jains. One of the factors that the newer movements opposed was the Hindu caste system. So it stands to reason that there were Brahmins in Kerala then. There are other clues too in history -- one of which is the fact that Chanakya/Kautilya, the brainy Minister of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya( Ashoka's predecessor), who ruled a large empire extending to parts of Central Asia, long before the times of Jesus, was a Brahmin  from Kollam, Kerala. It is all more complex than I thought, obviously. Thus, according to 23 and me, apparently my ancestors spread out from the Central Asian area towards eastern Europe, up to Finland. Then, surely, at some point,  some groups returned to India. Or, a group stayed put, while a part of that group migrated northward. And we are the descendants of that group, Brahmin or not, Jewish or not. More has to be known to find out exactly how and when my ancestors got to be in Kerala, (Silk Route?)incorporating all the above details, and more, I am sure, about Jewish and Hindu history.

And according to the 23andme results, I have Hindu relatives, and I share my paternal ancestry with my husband, whose gene pool, I had thought,  was very different from mine, (even though he is a Nazrani from Kerala too, he belongs to the Latin Catholic community, and we Trichur Syrian Christians think of them as different. yep! that's how focused we are on "difference"!). And now I see that he has .2% native American ancestry, and a bit of Neanderthal too! How amazing can this get!!! We are all related really. :) Along with Hindu relatives, I seem to have connections with Indians from the North and South. and I share my paternal  haplogroup with Ukkrainian, Polish, and Finnish persons! The people of the world are not as different from each other as some would want to make it.

Anyway, we Nasranis were under the Eastern Orthodox Church for a while. Then with the advent of the Portuguese to Kerala in 1498 A.D. after many splinterings, one big chunk came under the largely  white Roman Catholic Church. Now, if we have any pride left, in our heritage, our story, or just plain pride like any of those practicing Princes of the Roman Church in the West , we would start our own Church, and select our own Pope, and canonize our own saints galore. just sayin'!


Friday, March 4, 2011

Diary of a bridger of gaps

2008-05-02T06:55:06.497+05:30





Most of us are born with an ability to be bridgers of gaps. For instance when I was a toddler, I had some tricks up my sleeve to make my arguing mom and dad smile at each other again, so I am told. And those smiles made them smile at me in turn which must have been the reason I did use those tricks. Call it self preservation , or preserving the harmony of my environment to my liking.

As I grew up, my studies lead me quite naturally to this theme over and over. I quite easily connected the African American Ralph Ellison and the Indian Salman Rushdie through their books. At the end of my researches, I declared that Midnight’s Children grew up to be Invisible Men – and women.

Next, I had the chance to delve into feminist criticism and theories of narrative techniques while applying it to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. There was a gap I was eager to bridge – the gap between the aesthetics and politics of feminism. And I did it, by adapting the theory of deconstruction to my advantage. Twisting and changing and transforming it to an extent that Derrida would squirm in his grave.

Then came the real identity crisis, as I came to live in the United States of America. All on a sudden, I was a nobody, who belonged nowhere. After a couple of courses in globalization, I found my new job in bridging. The bridging of the Hindu, the Muslim, the Parsi, the Nazrani, – into one group of Vedic people. I utilized many ideas here for my own end in the belief that end justifies the means. For instance, I took into consideration the common elements between Hinduism and Zoarashtrianism. The way the Vedic "deva" became the Zoarashtrian demon and the asura became their god. Compare Maha Asura and Ahura Mazda. And soon that lead me to a bridging of the gap between the Aryans and the Semitics.

The bridges are growing now – between the Mediterranean people and ancient Indians, between the Chinese and Indians, Africans and Indians, and Central Asians and Indians and so on.Meanwhile I did undergo a genetic test to satisfy my curiosity as to my corporeal identity. After all, we Nazranis do believe that we are descendants of Brahmins converted into Christianity by St. Thomas in 52 A.D. A beautiful myth as has been proved by many. I found that we are descendants of Jews who had settled in Kerala long before Brahmins. About the genetic test, nothing much to say except that I wasted some money in order to let someone inform me quite officially that I belong to the human race!

This need to bridge the gaps between people is of course for my own selfish reasons, as I said before. Self preservation, and a longing to preserve the harmony of my environment for myself and for future generations. So there would be no more Darfurs or Somalias or Iraqs and Kashmirs. And boys and girls will not be send away to fight windmills and allowed to die needlessly. And real bridgers of gaps like Sergio Vieira de Mello will not be sacrificed at the altar of greed and indifference.

update on the DNA test -- I got it done again recently and found that my maternal ancestor roamed around the plains of Central Asia around 60,000 years ago, and my paternal one in that area and Eastern Europe around 12,000 years ago. pretty amazing India, don't you think?


another update: the presence of Brahmins in Kerala  when St Thomas came cannot be easily dismissed as I did till now. It is possible, I realize now.