Finding Peace within Diversity

By Mahima Varma

India is a world of contradictions – the hand-pulled rickshaw parked near a bright red sports car. A tin-roof dwelling resting precariously on the wall of a multi-storied building. A mosque sharing a wall with a Hindu temple. A goddess worshiped in a temple, and a woman attacked not far away from it.

My identity as a woman growing up here, too, held several, very contradicting connotations. I grew up belonging to the top 5% of Indian society – sheltered and protected. I went to a convent, all-girls school, surrounded by superwomen – my teachers. And I come from a lineage of empowered women – my mother, grandmothers, aunts – all foremost in every field they pursue. But I also grew up in an India where a girl gets killed on a moving bus for being out alone with a man at night; In which I face the stark realities of rich and poor, haves and have nots; In which, my chauffeur laments about having a 5th daughter – another burden, another dowry.

My identity got even more complicated as I started to explore and understand each aspect of it. What does it mean to have a house, a car, an education, the comfort of three full meals and so much more? The privilege I gain by economic status, I lose by being a woman – or is it the other way around? And then – even more contradiction. How do I take on the world as a girl raised in a Hindu family, educated in a Christian school, living in a majority Muslim neighbourhood?  

I realised that the peaceful existence I was able to embody, was another instance of my privilege, something I had taken for granted as natural. India, or even the rest of the world, is not that simple. Conflict creeps into the mundane – be it by gender, by race, by caste, or religion. The more I confronted conflict, the more obsessed I got with tracing its roots.

My role as a woman plays foremost in my identity, and my passion took me to paths I never saw for myself. However, the more I explored conflict, inequality, oppression, the more I was brought back to the simplicity of my own existence. The contradictions in my own country might make room for hope – hope for freedom of identity and existence.

 My belief is simple – if conflict can be reduced and peace can exist in one person, one school, one neighbourhood — there has to be a way to bring it to the rest of my country if not the world.

Mahima Varma

Mahima Varma is currently writing a book on what it means to be a woman in India, and strongly believes women's safety in India is a public health crisis that every individual is responsible for.

She recently graduated from Duke University majoring in Sociology and Psychology and has conducted extensive research with refugees in Jordan and Rwanda. She hopes to use narrative as a catalyst for social change.

Mahima loves to make fun movies, write extensively, celebrate extravagantly and obsess over her dogs!