by Veera Hiranandani
What Are You?
This is a question I’ve received many times in the context of my religious identity. I think many children of interfaith marriages get asked this question. I also don’t consider myself a religious person in the traditional sense and, at first, I wasn’t even sure what to write about for this post. For someone, however, who doesn’t label themselves as religious, I spend an awful lot of time writing about my character’s religious identities. In fact, I think about religious identity all the time.
Organized religion has always been a confusing area of my life. I was raised in a mostly secular home with a Hindu father who immigrated to the United States from India and a Jewish mother born and raised in New York. My parents married in 1968 against their families wishes. When I was born, however, both sides of my family had worked through their issues enough for my sister and I to feel embraced by both sides of the family.
I don’t think my parents found much comfort through religion. First, it threatened to separate them. There’s also a lot of pain and prosecution associated with religious identity in both of my backgrounds. My father’s family had to leave their home during the religious conflicts that created the Partition of India in 1947. My grandfather on my mother’s side immigrated to this country from Poland to escape the Holocaust.
In my first book, The Whole Story of Half a Girl, I wrote about a character who, like me, has Hindu and Jewish parents and tries to figure out how she identifies. For my most recent book, The Night Diary, I wrote about a child living through the Partition of India who has a Hindu father and a Muslim mother and has to decide where she belongs as her country is being torn apart along religious lines. For my next book, I’m writing about a young Jewish girl growing up in Connecticut whose older sister elopes with an Indian Hindu college student in the 1960s.
These stories are inspired by my own family history and all of the main characters question what religion means to them and how it compares to those around them. I’ve wondered many times if I feel “more” of one religion than the other. Growing up, my household practiced more Jewish traditions than Hindu ones, but my parents ultimately left these questions up to me. When I was young, I felt confused. I wanted a clear label for myself because it seemed like everyone around me had one. Later, I studied Hinduism in college to try and understand my background more, but after 47 years on the earth, I still don’t know the answer. The main difference now is that I’m stimulated by these questions and understand that religious identity can be murky for many. In some ways, it’s become my muse.
At times I have wondered if it would be simpler to let the questioning go and reject my religious identities altogether. I’ve heard people say, including my own parents, that the world would have less conflict if we didn’t have religion. I disagree. Yes, we have seen organized religion tear people apart all over the world. Sometimes people claim their religion as the “right” one and feel prejudice towards others who don’t share their beliefs. But I have also seen religion bring great comfort in dark times and make happy milestones even more meaningful. I have seen it provide community and structure in people’s lives. I have seen members of temples, mosques, and churches come together and work hard to help those in need.
In all religious groups, there are extremists who use religion to gain power through violence and domination. Many wars have started in the name of one religion or another. I see this as sadly part of the human condition, the underbelly of something meant to make people feel less alone in the universe. To me, that is the main purpose of a higher being—to provide a certain companionship to the human soul. I truly believe that if humans weren’t fighting about religion or using religion in their wars, they would choose something else. And, as we know, religion is just one of the many identities we fight about.
I think we created religious philosophies to provide structure and community, to answer the unknown, and to have something to believe in that feels bigger than ourselves. There are many ways besides organized religion to satisfy those needs and I find that a buffet works for me. I take a little of this and that and cobble together my own form of spirituality. If you asked me if I believed in god, I would say no, but if you asked me if I believe in something bigger than myself, I would say yes. I feel connected to both my Jewish and Hindu identities and still practice certain traditions in my home. They provide comfort, ritual, and connect me to my ancestors. So, what am I? I plan to spend the rest of my life enjoying the pursuit of that question.
Veera Hiranandani is the award-winning author of The Night Diary (Kokila), which received the 2019 Newbery Honor Award, the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award and the 2018 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature. The Night Diary has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, is a New York Times Editor's Choice Pick, and was chosen as a 2018 Best Children's Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Amazon, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews, among others. She is also the author of The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Yearling), which was named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book and a South Asian Book Award Finalist, and the chapter book series, Phoebe G. Green (Grosset & Dunlap). She earned her MFA in fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she now teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College's Writing Institute and is working on her next novel.
Find out more about Veera at: https://www.veerahiranandani.com
