[Reader-list] Price of documenting Individual identity in India-100 rupees

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Kshmendra,

Isn't it that we can correct someone when we know what correct is. The
problem is I don't either. But it is nice to ramble at a Sarai
anytime.

Thank you for bringing up more ideas to my basket of concepts around
the notion of -identity-. But before I write anything on your views on
identity, please allow me to ramble along with you. I would like to
tell you about a nightmare I had a few days back.

So in my dream gone sour, I am sitting on a chair and looking at a
book titled –Identity-. Suddenly the title appears to become fuzzy. I
don't know why but the more clearly I tried to look at more it became
fuzzy. I had imagined the idea of -identity- would become clearer if I
look at it with a lot of focus. But here it was just not the case.
There was no definition. There was no definitive theory. There were no
definitive scholars. It seems like a fleeting idea. An eternally
ephemeral idea. An idea which is shifting through sands of time.

And against this fuzziness of the title I see an image of Mr. Nilekani
smiling and I felt utterly disgusted at myself for not understanding
this apparently simple concept. I have to give it to Mr. Nilekani, he
makes –identity- seem so simple. I feel like fool whenever I see him
wearing that smile on his face. Especially, that particular one, you
know the one with a deliberate slow movement of the cheeks which is
often strangely accompanied by a steely determined look.

That night Mr.Nilekani’s smile appear more like a smirk to me. Or maybe not.

Then somehow I started to dream about a fisherman. Strangely he looked
like Mr. Nilekani. Same face. Same moustache. Same steely look. Same
height.  Except that he was a fisherman. He was definitely not Mr.
Nilekani. I am sure about that. This fisherman had a serious face. He
was focussed. He knew what he had to do. He had to catch fishes. That
was his job. More fishes meant a meaningful day. So anyways.

This fisherman was standing on a boat. That boat was anchored in the
middle of a small pond. The fisherman casts his net wide. It’s a
really wide net. I cannot forget that net. The scale of that net was
something that I had never seen. Then I saw fishes just flying out of
the water as they try to flee. Some fishes were dead, you know, others
just did not bother.

The fisherman was now wearing a glee. Actually I am not sure whether
it was a smirk or was it more like a leer of a cynical, cold,
calculating handler. It was at this point that I woke up. I clearly
remember this was a few days back. But I still do not know why the
title of that book called –identity- started to waver and become fuzzy
when I was trying so hard to look at it.

I am sure you must have read my last post
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2010-May/025072.html

You see in that post, I have tried to think about approximately the
same notions which you bring up, that is, IDENTITY of SOCIAL CONTRACTS
or SOCIETAL IDENTITY or whatever it is supposed to mean. You see you
are not alone in being fuzzy about thinking on identity. However I
would like to know your views on it.

Do you think that the act of UID to force other Indians by seduction,
threats or diktats to give information regarding an aspect of their
selves i.e. their personal identity, could be thought of as akin to a
slave trader capturing human beings and using them as objects, as
tools and as instruments? Do you think we can access our identities
when it goes to those databases? Would they inform us before they will
put data gathered from clustering our identities to determine untested
policies? Would they let us know how and when and who will access the
information regarding our identities?

Warm regards

Taha