Rajasthan, defend yourself

Trigger Warning Rape culture, slavery, sexual slavery, genocide, colonial trauma, war, death, mass violence

A city in the dusk light, showing many white buildings with many domes, interspersed with trees. Some of the buildings are lit up with golden lighting. In the middle left and in the central background, there are bodies of water. — **Screenshot** A city in Rajasthan called Udaipur, the “white city”.
Image description: A city in the dusk light, showing many white buildings with many domes, interspersed with trees. Some of the buildings are lit up with golden lighting. In the middle left and in the central background, there are bodies of water reflecting the dusk light. The far background, there are mountains behind the body of water.

I spoke to a young Rajasthani man yesterday. When I told him I was Gujarati (from the next state over) he told me that several people in his family spoke Gujarati because they’d had jobs in Gujarat.

“I grew up hearing family members speaking Gujarati but I was too lazy to practice it,” he said.

“Well, you have an advantage over me,” I told him. “I don’t have family members who speak any Rajasthani so I have no intimate knowledge of your language.”

He laughed. “The Rajasthani language doesn’t exist.”

“What?”

“Yeah, no one I know speaks Rajasthani.”

“But there are different types and dialects of Rajasthani, right, like Marwadi? No one speaks Marwadi anymore?”

He shook his head, still laughing. “No one of my generation speaks that. They all speak Hindi.”

I was stunned. “That’s so sad.”

He shrugged. “It’s ok.”

“Is it? I can’t believe that. Especially when modern Hindi is so awful. Traditional Hindi is a beautiful language but modern Hindi isn’t even a real language, it’s a mishmash of colonizer words interspersed with some Hindi and it was invented by Bollywood.”

He just looked at me with a blank face, not comprehending what I was telling him.

I was shaken by this conversation and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since.

Rajasthan is the land of the brave honorable Rajput warriors. They gave their lives to defend India from colonizers. Rajput women literally walked into flames rather than become sex slaves to colonizers.

This young man who laughingly told me Rajasthani doesn’t exist was telling me that Rajasthan’s present generation is so uncaring of their ancestors’ sacrifice that they’ve given up their own language without a whimper.

And the worst of it is that he didn’t even realize that this was what he was telling me.

He was from Udaipur.

Udaipur is a stunning city, so beautiful that it’s world famous as the “white city”.

**Screenshot** Udaipur.
Image description: A city during the day filled with bright white buildings. Some of the buildings have domes. In the background there are mountain plains. Above is a light blue sky.

Udaipur was founded by Maharana Udai in 1553 after the fall of Chittore, where thousands of Rajput warriors committed Jauhar to save the land from surrender to Akbar’s colonizing supremacist empire. Jauhar was a Rajasthani practice of ultimate resistance. When a fort was besieged and there was no hope for victory against the colonizers, the Rajput warriors would don saffron robes to show that they have no attachment to the material world. Dressed thus, they would ride out to either win or die in battle, knowing that they would die. The Rajput women, meanwhile, would build huge pyres within the fort and if they saw that their men were losing the battle, the women would enter the flames to destroy their bodies so that there was nothing left for the colonizers to rape, desecrate, or plunder. Thousands gave their lives this way. The colonizer Akbar put at least 30,000 surviving civilians to the sword and enslaved everyone else.

The trauma of Chittore’s fall was so deep, Maharana Udai didn’t want to return to that fort where so much pain and suffering of his people had been endured. He created a new fort called Udaipur and made it so beautiful it was a triumph of Hindu resistance against the colonizing Abrahamic supremacists.

This young man I was speaking to was from that Udaipur. Despite being from such a bastion of Hindu resistance, he was nonchalant about his generation not being able to speak their own language.

That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.

Because what does it mean? It means that 1. the education system in Rajasthan is so bad that Rajasthani children aren’t being taught their own language and 2. the modern culture in Rajasthan is so lacking in respect for their own ancestors that they won’t even continue their language.

The young man I spoke to yesterday had such a colonized mind that our conversation raced through my mind over and over again all day and all night and all morning and all afternoon until I started writing this. It hurt to know that this was going on in Rajasthan and I’m not even Rajasthani. I can’t even imagine what pain it causes his Rajasthani ancestors who gave their lives so that he could call himself a free Rajasthani Hindu, an Indigenous man of Bharat who is not a slave to colonizers.

Here’s the thing: I don’t believe him. I believe that what he told me is probably true of the big cities like Udaipur, where youth are seduced by western influences and empty promises of colonizers they watch on TV and online. They might think that their ancestors are boring with their stories of endless resistance. Marvel is much more exciting, after all, because it comes from the west and makes up stories of superheroes. It’s totally understandable to ignore actual historical heroes in favor of made up stories about made up heroes. In other words, the west and white people must seem more exciting than their own history and identity. I can see that scenario for sure because it’s internalized oppression, internalized inferiority complex, internalized Hinduphobia.

But I can’t believe this scenario of Rajasthan’s villages. 20 years ago, I visited Rajasthan. They were a proud people. The villagers’ pride in their ancestry was evident in their words and their honorable deeds. They knew their history. They knew their ancestors’ many sacrifices. There’s no way they didn’t teach Rajasthani pride to their children including their language. That is what I believe. I don’t know, however, if I’m right in my belief. It has been 20 years since I saw for myself what the state of Rajasthan was like. That’s one whole generation and as Professor Vamsee Juluri says: “Every civilization is just one generation away from extinction.”

Rajasthan, please defend yourself by teaching your children your language. If you lose your language then you lose your history, your culture, your ancestors, your values, your dharma. In other words, you lose everything and that pain is never-ending. Years from now, even if your descendants don’t remember your name they will still feel this pain of emptiness, of loss, of constantly seeking their identity and yet never knowing who they are. I guarantee it. There are descendants of other Indigenous peoples all over this planet who know exactly the kind of pain I’m talking about. I know because I talk to them every day. How can you allow this to happen to your youth when your land has produced so many heroes of Indigenous Hindu resistance to colonizer imperialism?

I believe your ancestors’ valor lives in you. I believe in Rajasthani resistance and I pray that your language lives on because you ensure it does by teaching your children. Whatever happens, may Shrinathji guide your path.