Need
for an Identity
As the world
moves
into the golden age
of what we call the global village,
and national boundaries
slowly disappear
to merge into a new order
of a single government,
a world democracy,
isn’t it anachronistic,
this assertion of my identity?
A Kashmiri Pandit now in exile
but labelled a migrant
for having been uprooted,
why do I stake my claim
as an internally displaced
or a refugee
in my own country?
Why seek a minority status
as a minority Hindu
in a Muslim majority state
of a Hindu majority India?
A jigsaw puzzle, I agree,
the legacy of a race memory,
a generational déjà vu
of persecution and violation,
an ongoing trauma of six centuries,
a sacred injunction
of exodus -stricken ancestors
for redemption,
for salvation.
Yes I will need my identity
so long as these walls
between caste and community,
between faiths and religions,
between races and nations,
are not pulled down completely,
and a true world order
defined in all sincerity.
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