An atheist born in a Hindu family, I often dream about reincarnation. No, I don’t want a do-over. In times like these, I want Martin Luther...
An atheist born in a Hindu family, I often dream about reincarnation. No, I don’t want a do-over. In times like these, I want Martin Luther King, Jr to come back and talk to me about racial justice.
I have occasionally seen references to him in essays about Donald Trump being The First White President or Kanye West befriending Trump. However, like most Hindus ignoring caste injustice for generations, I quickly compartmentalised racism as if it did not affect me.
That changed last week when videos documenting racism emerged from Minneapolis and New York. As I was finishing up Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me, it made me wonder: is that Martin Luther King, Jr talking to me?
He would find a lot to admonish me about. Hailing from a Brahmin family in small-town India, I grew up amid casual casteism. My grandfather was the first general physician in town and the first two rooms of our home were his clinic. Coming back from school, I would walk through his clinic, full of patients from all strata of society. And yet, he wanted to know the last names of the kids I was hanging out with at school. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t hanging out with...
