New York, Uganda, India
Those who think that humanity is one, and that people should not be barred from public office for their race or religion, may be expected to celebrate on the night (eastern US time) of Tuesday November 4 if current polls (although they seem to be tightening) are proved correct, and Zohran Mamdani indeed wins New York City’s mayoral race.
If that happens, the people of New York will tell the world (among other things) that despite September 11, 2001, they refuse to hold a religion or religious community responsible for the horrific destruction that was caused that day in their city. It will reveal that New York’s popular mind is able to separate haters and destroyers from people of goodwill.
After the wickedness of 9/11, the global tirade against Islam and the world’s Muslims was fierce, relentless, and powered by big money. A Mamdani win on Nov. 4 will remove a crippling weight from the shoulders of young and old Muslims across the world. They will feel that belonging to their families or their faith is not the liability they were told it was. Told that for a quarter century.
Must every Buddhist anywhere in the world pay for Pol Pot’s crimes in Cambodia in the 1970s? Should all Germans, and other Europeans culturally connected to Germany, pay today for Nazi crimes against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s? Is every contemporary African somehow linked to the Rwandan genocide of 1994? Are all Jews anywhere in the world accountable for this year’s deaths of children in Gaza caused by starvation or bombs that can be connected to Israel?
IRRATIONAL SPELL
“Of course not” would be the universal answer. Yet a broad hostile brush has tarred humanity’s Muslims ever since 9/11. A Mamdani win on November 4 will suggest that this irrational spell has been broken.
Given Mamdani’s unmistakable and repeated declarations of support for elementary Palestinian rights, many will also see a victory by him as a significant milestone in the journey of US foreign policy. It will indicate that the American public no longer endorses unqualified backing for Israel – that the people of America would like Israel too, like other countries, to abide by international and humanitarian laws.
Isn’t it interesting that one mayoral election in one country has pulled out basic questions of this kind for the whole world to look at? This is a tribute to New York City but also the result of national and global trends converging the way they have done. A result of, among other things, the people of the world getting to know one another.
Years ago I briefly met Zohran Mamdani’s scholarly father Dr. Mahmood Mamdani when the latter was in New Delhi during one stage of his international career. Before becoming a distinguished professor in New York, Dr. Mamdani had been raised in that large but distinctive circle that moved in the 19th and 20th centuries from India to Africa. Some of these Indian Africans, or African Indians, later migrated to the US, the UK, or Canada, but quite a few, including Dr. Mamdani, have retained their links with both Africa and India.
STAYING PUT
Dr. Mamdani married the brilliant film-maker Mira Nair, a Hindu Punjabi, whose Mississippi Masala became quite famous in the early 1990s. Zohran is their son. I respect the parents for the live connections they keep with eastern Africa, especially Uganda, where Dr. Mamdani was actively associated with its reputed Makerere University, and with India, despite their full lives in the US.
Now their son Zohran hopes not only to become the mayor of New York but also to help make the life of New Yorkers “affordable”! Who wouldn’t want to wish him well?
The Mamdani story, if we think of Zohran and also his parents, is part of humanity’s incredible story of involvement and movement. Or of their opposites. One moment you are deeply engaged with people in one part of the world. Ditto the next moment, but somewhere else, perhaps thousands of miles away.
While there are others who make a decisive difference by staying put in their home! By refusing to leave Gaza, for example.
*
A few of India’s brave dissenters, unhappy with the ideological takeover in India of schools, colleges, and universities, and unhappy also with the pressure that has forced much of India’s media to sing the required tune, were recently in the US to interact with those they could, including Americans of Indian origin.
Comments made by a couple of them in reviewing their American visit were of interest to me. According to these two, the multiracial and multicultural audiences that heard them in the US were (a) far less polarized than they had expected, and (b) warmer, more cordial, and more enthusiastic than comparable audiences in India.
Given the conversation one often hears in the U.S. of polarization and a lack of hope, I found this assessment interesting. Does it suggest that the Indian scene is even more disappointing than the American? Or is it that Americans troubled by the state of democracy in the US are more dispirited than they should be? That Americans troubled by attacks on democracy in their country should retain their confidence in American institutions and the American spirit, and should, in addition, remain alive to tougher situations elsewhere?
PROVOCATIVE THINKER
I have a piece of good news to share with anyone interested in understanding contemporary India. One of its most articulate (and most courageous) intellectuals is the historian and novelist Dilip Simeon. Dilip was born in 1950 to Lt Col Eric Simeon and Goa’s Georgina Pinto-Lobo, who after her marriage was known as Jean Simeon.
After a short turbulent spell as a young Maoist in the late 1960s, Dilip taught history at Delhi University’s Ramjas College, became, among other things, a labor historian, and wrote novels including Revolution Highway, which was published in 2010 by Penguin India.
Amidst everything else that he has done, Dilip has written regular blogs or articles on historical, political, and philosophical subjects. Almost always, these have been thoughtful or provocative pieces. The good news is that a large number of these sensitive articles, published over a fifty-three-year period from 1971 till 2024, are now accessible for free, in this book!
I will leave it to readers to pick and choose from the arresting collection, but I take the liberty to quote below from what he wrote in 2015 or 2016 about his late father, Lt Col Eric Simeon, which in tone and subject is different from most of Dilip’s articles:
“I rarely place personal themes on this blog, but the exception has been a few posts memorialising my dear parents. This is not only for my own feelings, but also for all the many hundreds of people who knew them -- fellow officers, students, parents of students, and friends.
“My father had two whole careers -- as an Army officer in the Corps of Signals, and as principal of four schools -- The Sainik School in Kunjpura (Karnal, Haryana), La Martiniere School for Boys (Calcutta), The Doon School, Dehra Dun (where he was the first Indian Headmaster), and Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay.
(To head, one after the other, four highly regarded schools is surely exceptional. The Sainik School --“School for Soldiers”-- in Haryana that Lt Col Simeon took care of was one of five opened in 1961 to start India’s significant Sainik School system, now boasting 33 such schools, designed to prepare young Indians to enter the country’s military academies. -- RG)
“Today is his eighth death anniversary. The pain has ebbed, and I no longer grudge him his well-deserved rest. Yet the memory of his last days in the Army hospital in Delhi is still stark, as are some of his last words. To remember him, I post the letter I sent out eight years ago to people who knew and loved him. With love to all, and with deepest remembrance to my father… DS
“Dear friends, May 15, 2008, will be my father, Lt Col E J Simeon's first death anniversary. As the date has approached, I have re-lived those last weeks of his long and eventful life, full of principled endeavour and high values, laughter and theatrics, combined with deep personal modesty.
“I remember the visits paid him in the Army's RR Hospital by scores of friends and students, and his being touched by this. I also remember his telling me, two days before he died, and as I held his hand, ‘I'm not afraid, I know exactly what's going on. Thank you, now go home and get some rest.’
“I must tell you that despite his broken heart after my beloved mother's death in December 2004, he was courageous and stoic in his last days, and taught me much about life. He remained a teacher till the end. I watched him take his last breath, at 12.30 pm, May 15, 2007.
“After my father passed away, I often wondered what it was that endeared him to his students, who gave him so much affection and respect. I'd like to sum it up in the simple reflection that he loved to tell stories to children, to make them smile and wonder at the immense richness of the world.
“There is much to say, but I can't put words to it. A strong sense of loss remains with me. Some of you will remember the atmosphere that prevailed at the Army Cremation Ground in Delhi Cantonment on May 16, 2007, when those who loved him, including senior officers who were once his students, saluted the humble Lt Colonel for the last time.
“When I was a child, he once took me to see the film Goodbye Mr. Chips, about a much-loved schoolmaster. The old man doffed his well-worn hat, and walked away.. what a sense of nostalgia. Goodbye, dearest father. Enjoy your well-deserved rest!
“I thank all of you for your love and support in what was the hardest task of my life, and ask you once more to remember him. I attach the poem I read out at his memorial on May 29 last year (sent to me by an old student) and photos of him taken in 2005.
“Please circulate this letter to the many whom I cannot reach. With love to all of you, Dilip.”
Farewell to Thee!
Farewell to Thee! But not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of Thee;
Within my heart they still shall dwell
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
Life seems more sweet that Thou didst live
And men more true that Thou wert one;
Nothing is lost that Thou didst give,
Nothing destroyed that Thou hast done.
Anne Bronte
