Actress Aditi Rao Hydari recently took to social media to write an inspiring letter about her family, religion and much more.
The note follows:
“I had never known in a life in which one’s primary identity was based on religion. My childhood was all about mixed ethnicities, languages, traditions, food…it was all mixed up literally. No lines drawn, no mine and yours. It was always ours and ours to share. Our home was an open home and differences were celebrated”
“My maternal and paternal grandparents had mixed marriages, so did my parents. It was not an anomaly. It was so normal that it wasn’t even something to remark about. Suddenly everything changed. The Masjid was broken…the blasts and subsequent riots in Bombay…and the Gujarat massacres. I remember travelling to boarding school in the nineties. Angry men got on to our train looking for ‘Babar Ki Aulaad’. Our teacher, who was accompanying us told us which trunk to hide. We huddled together and hid the names on our trunks, confused about what and why we were doing so. It seemed ridiculous to us, what was the difference? The only difference we knew was between the mean kids and the nice ones, that was all. What did a name have to do with it?”
Talking about her family, she wrote, “My mother is born a Hindu, she meditates the Buddhist way, she learnt Urdu because it’s a beautiful language. As a child, I remember going to mid night mass, we went to Dargah, the temples of Vrindavan and the Gurudwara. And what always stayed with me and does till today, was the music. The most beautiful music I’ve heard. What I felt sitting there listening, was indescribable. That feeling had no caste, no language and no religion…My father is born a Muslim. Never learnt a word of Urdu, never went to a Dargah or mosque, never offered Namaz. He lived by the philosophy of J. Krishnamurti. The religion section in my form was always filled with a ‘Not Applicable’. I had the freedom to choose my faith even if it had no name or place of worship. Faith in myself, in love, in goodness and in humanity”
“Faith is personal, faith is filled with positivity, with empathy, with sensitivity, with love and hope. How can we let it turn into a war cry that divides us on the basis of names and clothes? Ultimately that’s what it all boils down to – a name? The name of God? It’s the last day of this decade and the last day of a tumultuous year…I will not give up. I won’t give in to fear. I’m even more determined to be kind, to work together through our differences, to be brave and generous and most importantly….to never stop loving. I wish this for each one of us because love makes us stronger” concluded Aditi.
Aditi Rao is one of the very few celebrities who spoke against Citizenship Amendment Act and she also participated in the protests against the same.
