Scramble for Identity - Who am I ?

I spoke to my friend who has now migrated to Chennai for work. During the conversation he told me that it has just been a month and he was enquired about his ‘caste’ on two occasions. I told him that ‘two’ is quite a high number for a month. Then he told me, “It is not just in Chennai. You migrate to any place in our State; people aren’t shy in enquiring about your ‘caste’. It is the way it is”.

I had to admit what he said was true. Being a rationalist who denounces religion and caste, I have always found it uncomfortable when people ask me such questions. But it has to be acknowledged that different questions are raised depending on where you migrate. Your state is enquired when you leave your home ‘state’ and when you leave your country people are interested from which ‘country’ you come from.

The details which I filled for appearing for a government examination were rather amusing. Only during the process I realized that my ‘place’ of birth and my ‘native’ district were not the same, though I considered them to be one. When one keeps pondering over, the identities which are imposed on one – like nation, religion, race, caste and even sex are limitless. They also share a common trait that these identities are not the ones which one decides during his birth.

History might possibly have the answer for emergence of so many identities. Society adopts a structure according to man’s necessity and the foremost necessity when we lived as hunters and gatherers and later as settlers was ‘security’. Living as a group gave us better chances of survival and that may have given us the first identity ‘clan’, when humans or animals then were identified depending upon the group to which they belonged to.

When the concept of god began to take root people associated them with another identity ‘faith’. ‘Nation’ is a very modern concept where people belonging to diverse identities are imposed a common identification and are made to live with. But just as the first human identity ‘clan’ which was formed on the necessity of ‘security’, the identities which we ourselves chain to are fundamentally based on ‘economic security’.

A striking example in the Indian context would be ‘caste’. The actual reason caste has evolved and is still not dead even after all these years is because people saw it as a tool to protect their economic interests. Irrespective of gender, people were not allowed to marry outside their caste because they feared that the property which they own might go outside the family. Though one might give so many counter arguments, reason does not deny that the strong foundation of caste is ‘economic interest’.

The same could be said for other identities too. A person might be attached to his caste and religion and not much to his nationality. But when he migrates outside his nation, fearing threat he tries his level best to reside in an area where people belonging to the same nation reside. This indicates that though humans have evolved the basics remain the same.

Apart from all the identities mentioned above, every individual on earth craves to leave its mark on this planet. With species other than humans, each individual tries to produce as many offspring as possible, to sustain its ‘genetic material’ through its young ones. But humans crave for an identity apart from reproduction. It is a never ending search for setting a strong footprint on the sands of time.

Every person on earth wishes to create history. He wants himself to be identified with something which no other individual has ever done. A person who plays cricket might try to emulate Sachin but when given an opportunity he would definitely like to be remembered as himself rather than someone else’s copy. This is present in every phenomenon under the sky. Even if the son, is in the same field as his father he will not like to be overshadowed by his dad's achievements. This is an ever raging fight for a different kind of an ‘identity’, to create a new benchmark for ‘excellence’ in whatever field he is in.

It is one of man’s greatest ironies that the human who wishes to create a new ‘identity’ for himself is already chained by so many identities. But it is this struggle to be remembered as something new and to not die as a common man drives the human species forward in every aspect. It is this desire for excellence which brings about evolution, the fundamental asset for future existence.

There are men who might have renounced all the ‘imposed’ identities but one who doesn’t strive to create one does not exist. It is possibly the greatest force which drives human when one rises above the threshold of poverty and enters life.