hello world!
I know, I know, it’s been a while. Whether you clicked follow last week or last year, thanks for sticking around, and I hope that 2018 has treated you well! A lot has changed since I last logged onto this account, and it didn’t feel entirely right that I walked away without so much as a goodbye. So, here I am, nearly two years later, bearing some reflections I wanted to share with you.
The main thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you for sending in your selfies, stories, experiences, and messages of support. Thank you for every like and positive comment you left on another’s submission and for fostering a sense of community here. Thank you for your trust, your generosity, and your forgiveness as this space has grown and evolved over the years.
I also want to thank you for the personal growth you have sparked in me. Curating this space has been one of the most formative experiences of my life. Thank you for holding me accountable each time I made a mistake and for ensuring I confronted and acknowledged my own privileges. I have learned what it means to be a more patient, articulate person and a better, more empathetic listener.
At age 15, I started this page with a whole lot of passion but not a whole lot of understanding about the intricacies of South Asian cultural and religious histories. I did not know many details about the background of the bindi itself, to be honest. Facing pressures of assimilation in my daily life just made me want to speak up in some way. This campaign ultimately arose from a desire to find solidarity with others walking the tightrope that is life in the South Asian diaspora.
However, #reclaimthebindi neglected to fully account for a lot of things, such as the ways issues like casteism, antiblackness, or transphobia play into this conversation. There is no excuse for how this space further perpetuated such issues, and I am grateful for your willingness to call out and engage critically with this campaign. Every critique written about #reclaimthebindi has challenged me to adjust my understanding of the world and the ways this space fits into it.
In turn, I want to apologize for the voices I may have spoken over or failed to acknowledge. I want to apologize for moments where I may have conflated myself with being the spokesperson for all South Asians or my views with being those of “the space.” In Issue 2 of the RTB Zine, I wrote that the mission of the campaign was “to amplify South Asian voices that have been silenced and South Asian experiences that have been erased. To amplify voices that for example aren’t just fair-skinned, straight, cis, Indian, Hindi-speaking and/or Hindu.” I am not sure whether the campaign achieved this goal, but I greatly appreciate that you gave it (and me!) a chance.
Since logging off, I have been accepted to and now study at my dream university. In my classes, I am privileged to have the opportunity to think more deeply about some of the issues of inter- and intra-community oppression that I was first exposed through this space. At age 19, I have now found an amazing group of South Asian folks who are willing to have some of these tougher conversations with me in real life.
As for the reason I left without notice, I did so with a lot of uncertainty. I didn’t have much of a plan for my return. At first, I definitely used the excuse of changes in my personal life: exams, graduating high school, moving to college, etc. I ended up shutting #reclaimthebindi out of my day-to-day life and ultimately out of my memory for a while. Truthfully, however, it was also because I was afraid what to do with this space.
Despite trying to ignore it, I could see that that the conversations were changing. Sure, cultural appropriation was an issue, but this wasn’t really the most important, pressing topic that needed to be addressed, was it? What was this space actually doing to fight the systemic and symptomatic issues that surrounded appropriation? What was this hashtag doing for bringing awareness to widow’s rights or for dismantling colorism in the South Asian community?
Maybe it was presumptuous of me to think that one social media page should tackle some or even all of these topics, but if it wasn’t amplifying the right conversations, then should it even be a part of the discussion at all? I lost confidence in the purpose of this campaign, and along the way, in what my own personal activism was.
These two years away have given me a chance to reflect, though I have yet to come up with any concrete answers. I considered simply shutting down all the #reclaimthebindi pages, but that felt selfish. Who was I to disband this network of civically engaged South Asians simply because I could not come up with a better idea or improved iteration of this campaign? It felt like a disservice to make that decision on my own, and so I pushed off thinking about it for far too long.
Now, I turn to you, the community that has taught me so much over the course of this journey, for guidance. If I end up closing these pages, I want it to be an informed choice. What would you like to see here, if anything? How can this space evolve? What were your favorite and least favorite parts of this campaign? Should its name be changed to signify something broader about South Asian social justice? Should only the zine continue to exist? If not me, are there others interested in transforming this platform into something that continues to be meaningful to the South Asian diasporic community? Please feel free to message me here or send an email to [email protected] with any and all input you might have! Your thoughts and ideas have always been the driving force of this campaign, and I welcome any feedback you have as I navigate the decision of whether to maintain these accounts.
I was honestly surprised by my sudden desire to write this reflection after so much time away. But I think it’s because I am finally ready to envision what else this space could be. I am still grappling with what activism is to me now that a social media hashtag doesn’t encompass it anymore. Though I am not entirely sure what it will look like yet, I am excited to figure it out in the new year!
Sending love and light to you and yours, Shreya
