Neighbourhoodism, as the term suggests, is investing one’s well-being, loyalty, and love in a neighbourhood. In turn, the neighbourhood’s well-being becomes all-important to the person irrespective of whether she resides there or not. While ‘Saare jahan se achha’ may resonate for many people, chest-expansive NRIs included, as a descriptor for India, for me, it’s the 5-6 km radius of geography rippling across my old neighbourhood in Mayur Vihar 1. I will give my life to defend it. Well, not my life, but the next best thing – my vote – to defend it.
There is no reason why patriotism, or matritiosm, should be nailed to a nation-state alone. Frankly, loving a whole country is an act of imagination, a leap of collective faith where you imagine this great commonality between you sitting in Goregaon with someone sitting in Gurgaon. I’m okay with that – whatever floats your boat. But I find it easier, more ‘natural’ if you will, to love, be attached and loyal to a place that I actually engage with much more regularly. WYSIWYL: What You See Is What You Love.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m fond of going to Khan Market, and Lodhi Road, even certain parts of Mumbai when the circumstances are right. But it would be the same way one is fond of visiting places like Berlin or Siem Reap, lovely to have around so as to visit. But, without getting all xenophobic about it, they ain’t my ‘hood.
IPL has given a taste of what I’m trying to say here. Of course people shout their heads off shouting ‘INDIA! INDIA-A-A!’ But IPL has concentrated some of that love to one’s city or state, which is a start. But cities are really a conglomeration of neighbourhoods, the latter having their own character, flaws, foibles, and attractions. Just because there’s no neighbourhood anthem or flag hardly means one must be prioritised over the other. (Actually, a neighbourhood anthem and flag isn’t a bad idea.) Like nationalism, neighbourhoodism could, in theory, be put to the Tebbit test – that controversial idea coined by British Conservative Party member Norman Tebbit who, in a 1990 interview, said: ‘A large proportion of Britain’s Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It’s an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?’ Neighbourhoodism sidesteps this silly, constrictive ‘Are you with India or with England/Australia?’ test for NRIs. A neighbourhood (inshallah) doesn’t have to play against the city or country it resides in. (Unless, of course, the former decides to barricade itself against perceived injustice by the latter.)
And like multiple citizenship – where a person is recognised as a citizen in more than one country – one can, indeed, be a multiple neighbourhoodist. I certainly am, my other neighbourhood of love and loyalty being the 5-6 km radius rippling across my home near Khudiram Metro Station in the Garia area in Kolkata. This bears little resemblance to the city that lays itself outside like cobbled-together rubble beyond my Lakshmanrekha.
Which is why I take a missing manhole, an unlit street, music blasting from loudspeakers at night far more seriously than state of the economy, India-US relations, who becomes Delhi CM today. For me, the local councillor, even MLA, is far more important than the CM, never mind the ‘abstraction’ of a PM. Everything outside my two neighbourhoods is foreign affairs.
