Ideas - What It Means To Belong In The World: Writer M.G. Vassanji

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

The celebrated writer M.G. Vassanji argues that there’s a more fundamental and even slipperier endeavour than establishing one’s identity, and that’s how — if ever — can we establish a sense of belonging? For many, he says, our true home is nowhere... exactly.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. How, if ever, can we establish a sense of belonging? That is a question that has long intrigued the writer M.G. Vasanji.

He argues a more fundamental and slippery endeavor than establishing one's identity is how, if ever, we can establish a sense of belonging. He writes, Home is never a single place entirely and unequivocally. It is contingent. For many, he says, the true home is nowhere exactly. This fits in particular for Vasanji, who calls himself perpetually homeless. He's of Indian heritage, but was born 74 years ago in Nairobi, Kenya, and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After winning a scholarship to MIT, he moved to the United States, where he became a nuclear physicist. He later immigrated to Canada for work, eventually giving up his science career for a successful literary one.

A prolific writer, he's won numerous prestigious awards, including two Gillers for his novels and a Governor General's Award in nonfiction. Today, M.G. Vasanji is in conversation with Ideas producer Mary Link. It was recorded on stage at the 2024 Afterwards Literary Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Please welcome Mary Link and M.G. Vasanji. Thank you. I've had the real pleasure in the past two months of trying to read as many books as I could by M.G.,

and I read ten, which is very impressive. But not really, because he has 17. So my type A is not quite fulfilled. But it was the most fabulous time to be reading these books and to be set in various places around the world, but in particular in East Africa. And to hear the stories of the Asian experience in East Africa and the history of East Africa and then India and then what it is to live like an immigrant coming to Toronto and then nostalgia, which is a sci-fi. It's all sorts of interesting things about what memory means.

And it just went on and on. It was just the most beautiful read in Karaku, his memoir of East Africa. So you have brought great, great insight and beauty and told stories that haven't been told. So I want to congratulate you and thank you very, very much. Thank you. Okay, so there's an elephant in the room, which will be that this will air probably in December or sometime. But four days ago, to the shock of many Americans, American Democrats, Trump soared back into power, very much on an authoritarian bent.

Modi, I saw, was enthusiastically tweeting. He came up with my tweet. My dear friend, my this friend, my exalted friend, welcome back. How are you processing it four days later? Well, we were not sure how to look at it. But what the Biden administration did, you know, is pumping more and more weapons as, you know, thousands were being killed. I mean, that is not a good record. But so, you know, you wish for change, but the only change we got was Trump. So we have to see what he does.

I mean, if he gives the green light to Israel to just finish off the Palestinians. It gives the green light to Israel to just finish off the Palestinians. It's been very anxious the last few months. So you don't watch the news or just get it in bits and pieces. I'm curious, you know, we know half of America is a wreck. Europe's scared because of what Putin could be up to. But your friends, and I don't know if you've talked to in East Africa, in Tanzania, your friends there, or in India, have you heard from them at all about their feelings,

or would they be more indifferent than us? They wouldn't be as terrified. The beauty for me, the joy of going back to East Africa, is that there, this part of the world doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. You go to a village, you might not, Canada, US might not exist. Maybe for the intellectuals,

but there's a very small few in number. So in East Africa, at least the one I know, and I've been there many times again, it doesn't matter. For in India, I'm not sure how they process it. There's a bit of nervousness about saying things because of the government in power when I was there. But, you know, in daily life, you don't really notice.

It just feels like this is India. Vasanji's latest book is non-fiction. It's called Nowhere Exactly on Identity and Belonging. And where does he belong? In East Africa, where both he and his parents were born and raised? Or India, where his grandparents were born, but a place he only first visited when he was in his 40s? Or Canada, where he and his wife moved to in 1978 and raised their family.

Or maybe he belongs nowhere exactly. So it's tough living in today's world, especially from someone from my background. I go to East Africa, I feel at home. And in fact, this was, again, my wife and I, we just felt we'd come back home. But I know that when the crunch comes, I would still be called non-indigenous. And in India, I would be called a Muslim. I don't know what I would be called in the US.

When I first met there in 1970, it was a wonderful place to be. I spent eight years there, and those were, I think, some of my best years. But now when I go there, I feel a bit nervous. Maybe I have changed. I have, and the country has changed. And here, I think this is the safest place that I can be. But you still feel, you know, it's not quite, it doesn't quite click.

And I don't quite click. So when I go to Dar es Salaam, I can speak to anybody the way I like. Here, even though I feel at home, people treat me like I was at home. I cannot, that little thing. What little thing can't you tell? Even to banter with someone or to complain

or, you know, in a friendly way. Like when I was at the hotel in Ras Nain, I was complaining to these waitresses. I said, why do you keep playing the same music day in, day out? And they would laugh and smile. But I think if I said it to them in a hotel, in a posh hotel, they would just, they'd say I think if I said it in a hotel, in a Porsche hotel,

they would just, who are you to say that? That's what I feel. Sometimes it's how you feel and not how it is. But it's that level of... Yeah, you wrote somewhere about you were in India. But there was this one story where you and your wife, I think, it was a train that was supposed to take you out at night and it didn't, and then this person, friend of a friend, came and took you

and they were so incredibly generous, and you talked about that kindness. It has happened to me. People have been very kind to me in India. I mean, kinder than anywhere else. It's just, you know, India is a very complex place. There is a murder and mayhem going on, butchery. And then at the same time the kindness, you know, they'll go out of their way. So this was another train I missed and I didn't know what to do. I called this friend

of mine. He lived near a real distance. It's like from downtown Toronto to Mississauga. In Toronto, nobody would come within a mile of you. But he said, wait, and he called his friend. And that friend of his who came and he took me to different guest houses in the vicinity and checked me in and, you know, everything. So, you know, it just works. Incredibly kind. I know what you wrote about that.

You said that, quote, it is one of those instances of extraordinary kindness that makes you bewail the formality we have assumed after moving to the West, where time has become so precious it has to be hoarded. Yeah. Yeah, see, when you're there, it's that kind of informality. You know, we lose. It's just the way of the world. How do you feel about the question, where are you from? Like if you're walking down the street and someone says...

See, I never got offended by saying, oh, I come from Don Mills. People got offended because they thought the question meant you belong elsewhere. But I'm happy to say I belong to many places. If they ask me, where do you come from? I say,

I live in Toronto, but I come from Dar es Salaam in Nairobi, where I was born. And my grandparents were born in Gujarat in India. And that community supposedly migrated from Afghanistan during the Mongol attacks. And so I have no problems with that. But some, of course, people are very sensitive or were. I don't know about now.

I find it silly. I ask it all the time, but then I feel like I can ask it because I look like I'm also not from here, because part of me is an immigrant story. So I really want to know about where they're from. But I think that if I was maybe white, white is a question I wouldn't ask because maybe they would feel offended. I don't know.

I also want to ask white people where they come from. You do? Yeah. I'm very curious about people and roots and migrations. I think if you're interested in history of people, it's nice to know. There's no harm or stigma coming from anywhere. You wrote that a more fundamental and slippery endeavor than establishing one's identity is how, if ever,

we can establish a sense of belonging. Why do you think the need to feel that we belong is so powerful, so important to the human psyche, the human soul? For me, belonging is important, and I think for many people it is, and for many, supposedly, they would say it doesn't matter. I belong here, I live here, and that's fine. But for me, belonging is fundamental. I cannot erase my memories.

If I say I just belong here and that's it, it's as if my whole experience of my life no longer matters, but it does. And I think if you look at literature, a lot of writers start from where they came from. You know, a lot of the first novels, collections of stories are about where they were from. So it's not gone away. You know, where you are born is the soil, you know, is the ground, is the songs, the language, the echoes, you know, the smells. And if you can let go of all of that, that's fine. But some of us can't, you know.

And I feel, I don't know, when I go back to Dar es Salaam, which I went in September, of course the downtown where I grew up, or, yeah, where I grew up and used to roam around and you know, sort of you would go to our prayer house every day and back

and forth and back, go to school. It all looks very dilapidated, you know, like in ruins. So this place, for me, it's still the home where I grew up. And when people tell me in Toronto, oh, but it's no longer the same and it looks like this and like that, I say, I would tell them, I've told them a couple of times, have you looked at yourself in the mirror? Are you the same? Or, you know, when you go to see your mother,

when you go to see your mother, do you complain that she's old and wrinkled and you complain about her knees and so on? You know, it's yours, you know. Okay, so you were born in Kenya, and when you were about five, you moved with your mother and siblings and were raised in Tanzania. And your family's origins, like a few generations back, were originally from India. But then in the 60s, when the East African countries

were becoming independent from colonial rule, there was a mass exodus of Asians from their homes. At the end of the 60s. End of the 60s. I think maybe 70, 71. Yeah, and in Uganda it was pretty horrific. Yeah, that was a kind of. But there were a lot of issues too.

In Zanzibar there was that revolution and where a lot of the Arabs were killed, but also some of the Indians. And what did that have, because you were living there at the time. Tanzania was better. Being a minority, of course, we were scared. But there was only one day of nervousness when the army, Tanzanian army, went on mutiny and everything was closed. There was some looting.

Everything was closed then. There was some looting. But then did you get a sense that, how did that affect your sense of belonging when people start to move? But you know, when you grow older, you realize that these things happen everywhere. So when we were there, we were so naive that we thought it was only happening to us.

Therefore, we should go back to the Queen. And they went to England, and there was a lot of racism there. People were beaten up. Of course. And can I say one thing? Does it interrupt for a sec? Because what I found really fascinating was that you wrote about when they were going to go back to England, that in the 60s in East Africa for the Asians there,

that by then my generation and in my community of people, our spiritual home, we naively thought was already England. Even growing up. That's amazing. It wasn't India. It wasn't from before. No, our generation.

Yeah, it was England. You know, to go to London was the kind of thing. But as we became teenagers, my generation, then the countries became independent. teenagers, my generation, then the countries became independent. Then, of course, the big issues, and you know, we're all, you know, sort of not stupid. The big issues were

South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia, you know. So we were all drawn into that African movement, support for support for Southern Africa. And Tanzania was almost at the border, right? Mozambique was just across the river.

And a lot of the freedom-fighting armies, not a lot, but Mozambique, South Africa at least, were trained in. There are training camps in Tanzania. So we were very much part of the African political, you know, freedom struggle when we left. So when I went to Boston or Cambridge, it was with that awareness that I am from Tanzania. So when Indians, when we met Indians on the streets of Cambridge

and they would say, are you from India? I said, no, I'm from Tanzania. It was only when we came to Toronto that, you know, somehow we learned about the other Indians and got to know them better and, you know, got to know who they were, where they came from, where in India they came from, or where in Trinidad or Guyana they came from. So we got some kind of bonding. Because here, it's, your Asian-ness became important because for Africans, their blackness became important. So if you didn't embrace South Asia, you were sort of nowhere. And at the end, after many, I guess, years,

you sort of came to accept both. Because ultimately, you think it's a very stupid thing to say to yourself, but it took me a long time to realize it doesn't matter. You cannot define yourself completely. Say, I'm African, I'm Asian, I'm Indian, and I'm a Canadian. I don't have to say this or that. But in the independence time in Africa,

just because of the rhetoric, and there are always politicians looking for some, like Trump, looking for victims. They would say, oh, go back to Bombay. You belong there. But nowadays, if you told the Tanzanian nation, go back to Bombay, as one of my friends said, you go back, your father will go to Bombay.

He said, you can say that now. But I wish we had had the courage to say it then. But we were nervous, I guess, partly because we were also guilty because of our loyalty to the queen, as they put it. And Indians preceded the white colonists to East Africa. They came as traders and everything before that. But you talk about when this exodus happened and some businesses were taken over

when there was nationalization and stuff from Asians. You have this line in one of your books as a reference to an Asian leaving his home of East Africa. And he says, Goodbye, Mother Africa. Your bastard son loved you. Yeah. There was some bitterness.

This guy was from Uganda. He finally found a job at the University of Iowa. But during his time in Iowa, his main focus was on supporting African authors. So he would invite African authors from Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, whatever. So that never left him, but he never went back. So that bond to your place of birth doesn't go away. I mean, he was a Ugandan Asian, but I don't know why he didn't go back. For me, you always go back.

I would just like to put my feet on the earth. But in East Africa, in one sense, there was a sort of a tension, wasn't there, between the Asian community and the African community? There was a racial tension because obviously in the British colony or territory the Asians were in the middle and they were the traders. It's like the Jews who went to

New York and so on. They were called the Jews of Africa. But they were not very rich. They were small traders. My mother had a small shop. So it was not a big difference, but at that time it looked big

because there were the whites on top. In Tanzania, it was not a big thing. After independence, almost things, because the whole culture was very inclusive. Well, that was Narari, wasn't it? Julius... Yeah. He made it very clear that it was citizenship that counted. Yes. And he was our hero, you know, I mean. Julius Nyerere was the first president of Tanzania.

While Idi Amin in Uganda ordered the expulsion of all South Asians after independence, Nyerere instead believed Tanzania should be a country for all, regardless of race or ethnic background. As for Kenya, the land of his birth, Basanchi says lately he feels more accepted there. You tell a really touching story. So you had been away for quite a few years. Oh, you've been away anyways.

And sometimes feeling, you know, that sense of divide as an Asian, as much as East Africa is your home, that you're cognizant that you haven't been there as many generations, you're not Indigenous to the land. But then you tell the story about returning to Kenya, where you were born, and you're speaking to a class, and it was a very touching moment because of the way the teacher introduced you to his class. Do you remember that? I think it was the same thing.

It was the publicist who emphasized that they were all black kids, young kids, nice little kids, and she said, don't think because he's brown he's different. He's a Kenyan like you and me. But this time when I went there 10 years later, this was a festival. I felt so comfortable. And I also felt that I meant something to them because I was telling a story of Kenya and Tanzania, and not afraid to identify myself

as also a Kenyan and Tanzanian. So I was a hero there. You know, so moving, and because it's important because when I'm in Toronto, however much at home I feel, all the streets, and you know, we sign petitions about our neighborhood and so on, mow the lawn and shovel snow very reluctantly.

But I've often felt, and I've often told my wife this, who cares? Sometimes you go to a bookstore, they don't know where to put your book. These young kids, Canadian kids, they have their own issues. I feel totally useless in a world that I think is on fire. And here I'm writing about a small community in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Who cares? But when I went there, I found that it actually made a difference.

And you felt, in some ways then, I mean, when he said, don't ignore his color, he's African, about you, did you feel a deeper belonging then because of that? Because there was that tension before that you were fully accepted as being African? But not in comparison terms. I just felt. In Tanzania, I didn't feel uncomfortable after my teenage years because we did national service in Tanzania I didn't feel uncomfortable after my teenage years because we did national service

in Tanzania and there Asian boys and girls basically lived with the African boys and girls from high school slept in the same tents and so on so there you got to know a greater sense of bonding and belonging

and I didn't feel that. But in Nairobi, I would have felt it. I think in Nairobi, 10, 15 years ago, I was told I was not indigenous. But, you know, these are political statements. Many tribes in Kenya trace their roots to North Africa and the Middle East. There's one particular time. Who the hell are you to tell me? I'm not indigenous.

Who is indigenous? But these were moving moments. I was really stunned when I went this time. Because even if you go for short periods, you meet certain people, you don't meet certain people and then you at another

time but last year I think one and a half years ago I got a

letter from the Tanzanian government Ministry of Education email in Swahili

I can speak fluently but you know that language is formal so with a little bit of help from Google Translate I can speak fluently, but, you know, that language is formal.

So with a little bit of help from Google Translate, you know, they were inviting me to a new prize that had instituted called the Nyerere Prize for Translation, no, for Swahili Literature. But now, this was when I was in Portugal, where I go to hide, to finish my books and write. So I told them, look, I'm honored, but I can't come. I'm stuck here. I'm finishing my work and so on. But they asked me again, please come.

And they were paying for everything. So I asked my wife. I asked my other people. They said, you have to go because this is duty. So I went. And again, it felt, it was such a moving, of course. And then I had to go up on stage and give a little spiel in Swahili, mixed with English.

And also I beat other six or seven writers, hand out prizes to these. And also, I'll be the other six or seven writers to hand out prizes to this. But it just felt hard to describe, you know. I mean, I don't know. This is how I felt. You're listening to Where Do We Belong? A conversation with the writer M.G. Vasanji on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on U.S. Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM,

in Australia on ABC Radio National, on World Radio Paris, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear ideas on the CBC News app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and, most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes, I just want to know more. I want to go

deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. Let's return to the writer and novelist M.G. Vasanji on stage at the 2024 Afterwards Literary Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was speaking with Ideas producer Mary Link. They turn to a poem Vasanji has quoted in two of his books. It's by C.P. Cavafy, a Greek poet born in Egypt in 1863. The poem was translated by Lawrence Durrell and appears in his celebrated novel, Justine.

It is about Cavafy's home city of Alexandria, but in essence, it's about going away. of Alexandria, but in essence, it's about going away. Here's Mary reading the poem, The City, to M.G. Fasanji and the audience. You'll tell yourself I'll be gone to some other land, some other sea, to a city lovelier, far than this. There's no land, my friend, no new sea, for the city will follow you in the same streets you wander endlessly. It spoke to me because this was just as I had come to Toronto

from the U.S. And there were lots of people from Dar es Salaam Asians who had come. And like immigrants in those days, nowadays I think they are more circumspect. I'm kind of Canadian. They basically stepped off the plane, you know.

The first city M.G. Visanji left behind was Nairobi, Kenya. In 1954, his young mother, Nuli Widot, moved her family south to the capital city of Dar es Salaam in neighboring Tanzania. Your mother, so your mother moved your siblings and you to Dar, as you call it, Dar es Salaam, when you were only five. It's just after your dad, your father passed away. And she was from Zanzibar originally, and she had family in Dar es Salaam, so she decided

to go there. And you dedicate your novel, The In-Between World of Vikram Lal, to him. And the dedication at the beginning of the book reads... I give it to my father. To your father. Yeah. And the dedication reads, For my father, always vivid, whose absence inspired, which is quite something to think of you writing this now of a person that you knew up to the age of five. He was always a presence in our house. In Indian households, even in East Africa, a

dead mother or father, the portrait is always in the living room, hung there, you know. The portrait is always in the living room, hung there, you know. So we always saw him, and my mother's portrait was next to his. And we had some small memories. I had some memories. I still have some memories. What memories? Memories of him at night coming at home and putting us all in a car.

In those days, we could afford a car and take us out for ice cream, you know, things like that. Two or three memories. And then, of course, my mother had memories because her best years were when he was alive. When she came to Dar es Salaam, you know, the car was gone, everything was gone. It was just making sure that we all went and finished school, which we did, you know. But I wonder, did the loss of your father affect your sense of belonging? I think, I personally think, if it was the loss of my father, it was a loss.

It was coming from Nairobi, in a town where all the Asians in the neighborhood, almost all of them were from Tanzania, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. So we came there. We were like exiles in a way. And they knew us. And we also thought of ourselves as from Nairobi. In Nairobi, you know, you went to school, you were a blazer. And you went to school in a bus, you know, and you wore your shoes at home, you know,

so you were kind of anglicized. In Dar es Salaam, you couldn't wear a blazer, it was bloody hot, you know. And you went to school on foot, you know, going through mud or puddles or lakes, you know. It was a tough life, but it also brought us very close together. Even now, I'm very close to my siblings.

We may not see each other in three, four months, but we're very close. But we always thought we were from there. Now, when I went to Boston, then the realization struck that I'm from Dar es Salaam. That's where I grew up.

My friends are there. My school is there. School was there. My Swahili is from there. It was in Kenya. The Swahili spoken was almost very different. Now, of course, it's still different. But at that time, most people would say it was non-existent.

It was so bad. They spoke their own languages in Kenya. So in Tanzania, I knew I was from Tanzania, and Kenya, of course, was... But then my mother had moved back to Nairobi. So it was basically a very migrant life. Perpetually homeless, as you say. Yeah, so whenever I went back from university, I would go to Nairobi. And then there was always India looming in the background.

His grandparents on both sides were from the coastal state of Gujarat and were part of a large Indian migration to East Africa beginning in the mid-1800s. The Indians were mainly small merchants, and they arrived there before the white Europeans. Vasanji's family belonged to the religious community of Koja Ismailis. Kojas were originally practicing Hindus in India, but adopted Islamic mystical practices and beliefs around the 15th century, after the arrival of a religious teacher from Persia. Vasanji describes it as a syncretic religion, containing both Islam and Hindu elements. This combination of religions in his upbringing makes Vasanji's sense of belonging even more blurry.

However, these days, there is pressure for Koja Ismailis to view themselves as purely Muslim. What I'm really fascinated by is your background in terms of your ancestors from Gujarat are Koja Ismailis. Can you explain what that is, what that means, your community? Well, the Koja Ismailis, this is of course now being... Twisted a little bit. Yeah, because of, you would say modern pressures or wherever you lay the blame if you want to blame.

You lay the blame if you want to blame. But these are people in Gujarat who are traditionally followers of Krishna and Vishnu. And then with the arrival of peers, you would call them missionaries or mystics. A few came from Persia and then, of course, they sort of settled there. So around them formed a community which sort of was a syncretistic community. Yeah, they were of two combinations. Combinations. Of course, now if you say that in the wrong place, you come back without your head. They were considered Muslims really in some ways, but they also had elements of Hinduism, as you say, so they were synchronistic. And tell me about Ginanz.

Ginanz are hymns sung by coaches, melees, and reference both Muslim and Hindu beliefs. Some were very philosophical, some were mystical, and some were just didactic, you know, come and join your hands and pray, the simplest thing that you taught the kids. But they were sung. Every day we heard them.

And then our school was a community school, so the religion teacher came and hammered the Ghanaians into our heads. So we know them by heart, some of them. I can wake up and somehow something comes into my head. And some are totally mystical. So you get a gist of the meaning, you know, the mystery. But when you went back to Gujarat not too long ago and one of your books you talk about,

they're reluctant to sing them anymore. So once I always traveled with some local companion and we went to this temple. It was at the temple of the Patels, a lot of whom are in the United States. And when we went there, we found that there was a book of Ghanans. It had the same format of printing as some of the ones we had in Dar es Salaam. So immediately, you know, at that moment, I get very shameless. I said, do you sing these things?

There's one priest going about, and he was nervous. You know, he said, yeah, we sing, but we have to be careful because of the new order. But what is the new order? The order is an attempt to purify the folkloric, we call them Hindus, who had these beliefs, yeah, that are not orthodox. And on the other side, among Muslims, even in my community,

there is an attempt to purify and turn people who are half Muslims into full Muslims. Right. So because your religion was a combination of two. It was a combination. And now politics is trying to push it just to be one, to be Islam. Yeah. See, in the Ghanas, one of the words most commonly used for the deity is Hari.

Hari, in fact, is the name of Krishna. is Hari. Hari, in fact, is the name of Krishna. But in one shrine that I went to, Hari was equated to Ali. Ali would be the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and Krishna, or Hari, is a main Hindu deity. So in that level, in the last, in the 19th century and before,

it didn't matter. You look at the guy from a small village, you think he cares where middle is, who Ali was or who. They're singing for whatever spiritual or material gains they get, and that's what it was. And so you hate when people ask you if you are a Muslim or Hindu. I don't like it.

The or really bothers you. It bothers me because once you use that word to identify yourself, then you're put in a box. You went to India for the first time in 1993. What was your impressions when you first went there to a place that I don't even think your father

had been? Had your father was going to go and get off a boat? The story my mother said was my father as a young man, in his early 20s or maybe 20s, 19, 20s, we just boarded a ship and went to Bombay. They wouldn't let him out because he didn't have the papers, so he came back.

True, it's a nice story about that pool. I went because I just, you know, I got fascinated with India because I knew about Africa from growing up, but because

of these Ginans, this folkloric, they haunted me, and I wanted to find out

where in the whole of Indian civilization do they belong, very naively. So I would,

you know, go to bookstores in Harvard Square and the MIT recoup and, you know, looking for, picking out books on Indian philosophy

and Indian religions and, you know, Indian mythology. Couldn't quite, didn't know how to put myself there. So that remained a problem. So one day I'll go.

Well, this guy from India, a professor from Gujarat, he was visiting and he came to see me and he said, I want to invite you to a conference in India. It was a Canadian Studies Conference in India. So I jumped at it, you know. And it was the most amazing experience, you know, just because India was there. It was in our language. It was in our food. Everything modified. It was in the Ghanas, in the stories, you know.

But it was still there. But when you go there, you find, I discovered that it is not there. It is here. It's not gone away. It went into your chest. Yeah, because you know, it it's something that had not gone away.

I was stunned, you know. I just couldn't. My first day, I heard a man swearing at another guy and I put that down. My first day in Delhi, you know, just taking a walk. And I think this guy on the street, really the most abusive language against someone.

And to my shock, I understood it. Because as boys, you use that language. So it was a very, I mean, it just shook me up because here I was, you know, sort of battling between Africa and Canada. Suddenly India comes in. But anyway, as I said, you just live with what you have. You can't define, put borders around what you are. You can't define, put borders around what you are. In terms of Gandhi, you say that you have,

your attraction to Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, has always remained personal. What do you mean by that? Well, he's called the father of the nation. If you see Bollywood movies in any court, I don't know if it's real or not, but in the Bollywood movies, above the judge is a picture of Gandhi.

And every town and city has Mahatma Gandhi road. They call it MG road. As a kind of person who brought freedom, at least with other people. But if you read his autobiography, he struggles with himself. And that is the Gandhi that attracted me. He struggles with himself. Anyone who's been brought up, I'm an agnostic now, I can tell you that, but who's brought up in a kind of spiritual, mystical kind of community,

the Catholics have it, right? The struggle with yourself is very much part of, you know, every... You're told many things when you're growing up. Don't do this, don't do that. This is sinful. And then when you are out in the world, you ask yourself, why not, you know? Why not? Let me try, and so on.

And you find your friends doing the same thing. So it's always been a struggle. And Gandhi's struggles, in fact, one of his struggles was, of course, with drinking wine and eating meat and very basic things, which for me drinking wine was one, you know? Letting go of my morning prayers was another, you know. How is Gandhi seen these days? I mean, he didn't want to have what happened with the separation.

Well, there are those who are complete followers. There are those who see him as an example. You can't do what he did, but he's a perfect example. And there are others who just say he was effeminate. He was just, they don't respect him. There are some on the right wing who do that. But he has a following. Yeah, he's an embarrassment for some,

for those who believe in a kind of virile India. And that's where the other person is going to talk to, because Gandhi was from Gujarat, where your ancestors are from. So is Modi, who is now the prime minister of India, a very right-wing Hindu nationalist. And what do you make of him? I think right now in the States there's this huge fear, of course, with Trump and authoritarianism, or maybe it's just a stage.

Do you think how Modi is transforming India is a stage? Will it come back? Because there's still 150 million Muslims who actually live in India. Is this a stage or is this kind of the future? Well, nobody knows how long this trend will last. But of course the changes have begun. You know, some of the streets have been renamed. Some cities have been renamed.

School curricula sort of are changed to sort of downplay the... I don't want to call it Muslim. First of all, they had nothing to do with my people. They were Turks, what we call from Turkmenistan or Afghanistan. Why do I have to be identified with them? This is one of the things that's bothered me, the Muslim rule. I didn't rule anyone, nor did my ancestors. But whatever they did, some of them were great things and some of course

were horrible things. But if you look at the history of Europe, there were horrible things going on there too. You know, William Henry VIII and so on. People used to be drawn and quartered and so on. So that was the time. But, so changes are taking place. If it goes on long enough, I mean, the changes might last. Which is like letting go of history. India has a wonderful history, but you don't let go of part of it which somehow you don't like personally. But India is a way of rebounding.

Like the last election, it was a big shock to the government. But I think we have to see. I tend to be on the side of optimism, that people will decide. But from my Indian friends, whom I meet once in a while they are very pessimistic i mean they see no hope but you know if it's your own you're more pessimistic i want to jump ahead now to the theory of everything because one of your novels is called everything there is and it's about a theoretical physicist, which is what you started off as.

That was your career before you became this amazing novelist. In terms of the theory of everything, how important is that answer to the theory of everything, do you think? There was a belief that if you understood the fundamental forces of nature, which basically are responsible for everything that's put together, then you can go on in principle to explain everything, how everything is put together. I think if I've not got it right in the words of Feynman,

it could be someone else. He said, nature in the form of mankind begins to understand itself. It's a kind of arrogant statement, but also, you know, when you're young, in your early 20s, it hits you, you know. And a lot of physicists, and then I checked when I was finishing the book, Stephen Hawking said a similar thing. You don't need God. Maybe there is a God, but since physics tries to explain everything, you don't need God. Maybe there is a God.

But since physics tries to explain everything, you don't need him. What will you do? And same with Weinberg. He was my model for the other guy in this book. There's really no necessity. One was a Christian, one was a Jew. There's no necessity for a God or for some. And Einstein also said the same thing.

Yeah, if you could explain how the universe started, you don't need God. You know, you don't need God, yeah. What do you think of that? Well, I also think you don't need God. I mean, you may find comfort in the concept. And you could also answer the scientists by saying, but what happened before then? Fine.

They would say, but if you think there is a God, put him there. I don't see his need. We'll just keep going. You say you're agnostic. That seems to be almost hedging. Yeah, it is hedging because you must remember where I came from. I think atheist is a kind of anti. Right.

I'm not anti-God. I just don't care. I don't think there is a deity who will come after me, you know, or put me in the fire, as my young used to believe, they put you in the fire. I just don't see the necessity, but some people find a comfort in the concept in that. And I think maybe they should not be discarded as a kind of, as a crutch, but you know, maybe some people need that spiritual crutch. There's this concept called broken symmetry,

and you write about this, and it's, Higgs talked about it, and it's the point of nature where nature or God or evolution, whatever people would believe but the symmetry where you have your right hand and your left hand and your right leg and your left leg and so the corresponding thing corresponds and the broken symmetry is you have your heart just on the left side why is that yeah but what's interesting is that you then turned it and looked at you say that race is a form of broken symmetry, which I thought was really poetic and beautiful. Explain that.

Oh, well, I think what I had in mind was since we all came from Africa, and that's the belief, right? I hope I'm not offended by that. If we all came from Africa and then this divergence took place, you know, some people have high cheekbones, some people are fair, some people are pink, some people are white, some people are brown, and some are black. That, to me, is a kind of broken symmetry, you know. But we all came...

From the same place. You quoted the ethics scholar Martha Nussbaum saying that, quote, To count people as moral equals is to treat nationally, ethnically, religion, class, race, and gender as morally irrelevant. But do you think humans are, for the most part, capable of doing that? They may not be, but I think if you ask yourself what is right, I think you would say it is right not to distinguish between who is like you and who is unlike you

when you're trying to save a person. You know, the question is if people are sort of drowning, would you sort of say, who is brown, who is white, you know? Or who speaks the same language as me. In real life, you may do that, but I think if you're not facing that choice immediately and you ask yourself, then you would say I shouldn't because one life is as valuable as another.

You're Indian, but you were born in East Africa, so you're very much part of that. You're part of a religion that has duality in terms of Islam and Hinduism. And then you go to the States, you're in Canada. So you're all these different worlds, and you say you're perpetually homeless in the sense of belonging. And you write that you have a deep envy for those people who casually display a fulsome sense of their identity and place in the world.

those people who casually display a fulsome sense of their identity and place in the world. But I wonder, and I say this also sort of personally because I'm Muslim, Christian background, I don't look Scottish at all, and I'm Arab, but I don't feel like I belong really anywhere. But as much as I used to grow up wishing to be Jewish or Catholic, because they all had that kind of real strong tribalism and community, isn't it a good thing not to belong in some ways? I think so, but, you know, sometimes not to belong anywhere is also often being in a state of despair, you know, that, you know, you don't, you cannot identify completely anywhere.

So once in a while I've, you know, when I watch Indians, some of them, it amazes me, you know, they live in a place where, they will will say Ram 2,000, 3,000 years ago was roaming. He was there with his brother Lakshman. True or not, but they believe the land itself is identified with the mythology. Every river, every lake, every mountain,

every tree almost has a mythological mystical significance and and sometimes I wished

I could be that but not always because you know it always comes with baggage you know there is always the other yes there is always the other

there is always the other and history is not uniform or continuous. And you may think you belong to the same, maybe there was a migrant in your ancestry who came from somewhere else and so on. So there's that. Do you think an immigrant can ever belong?

I mean, an immigrant first generation. I don't know, to be honest. I just came from New York and Americans, even those who have been there 10 years,

they have such a sense of complete identification. I don't know if it's real or false. They speak

the lingo, they get involved in the politics, they start despairing, what will happen to

us if Trump comes, when there are not even citizens yet, you know, which I don't think happens in Canada, you know, as much. This is my last thing. You quoted in one of your many, many books, you quoted this scene from a film, and it's, I think, a Bollywood film, and it's a tragic heroine in the film, and she's singing, the worldollywood film and it's a tragic heroine in the film and she's singing

the world belongs to one who's loved yeah and I thought maybe that's what belonging really is yeah but then if the one who loves he dies then you are lived with memories But it's a very famous... We're not going to have a Hollywood ending on belonging, are we? But are you still searching for belonging? It's too late for me now. I just am what I am, you know. I used to, but then I realized, you know, you have everything in you.

I don't want to be put in a box. That is my fundamental belief. Don't call me just this or just that. I'll call you wonderful and thank you very much. Thank you. You were listening to Where Do We Belong, a conversation with the writer M.G. Vasanji. He was talking on stage with Ideas producer Mary Link at the 2024 Afterwards Literary Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Special thanks to Stephanie Domette and Ryan Turner. Technical production, Danielle Duval and Jeff Doan. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayyad.