The Fury Over India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and The Silence About Hindu Persecution
Four days into my first student teaching placement in a second-grade classroom on the Upper East Side was the day the planes hit the towers. In the days and weeks that followed, my shoulder was gripped by a dull throbbing every time I rode the bus between home, school, and Teachers College. It escalated into chronic pain that led to a diagnosis of a torn supraspinatus tendon. Two years of physical therapy and I gradually regained full movement. But, as is the nature of these injuries, I was never the same.
I remember the intensity of knowing I was being watched while I was on the bus, even when someone wasn’t muttering at me or spitting on me. Not everyone would glare, and those who did represented different races and classes. (O, the beautiful diversity of New York City public transportation!) I could feel my entire body tense up, hardening in order to deflect hate and misperception, feeling the rage of strangers’ stereotypes about me. It made sense that a part of my physical body tore, my shoulder that carries the weight of my world. I had been jarringly ripped out of the fabric of my own city, shoved into the role of Other, because some people felt it was patriotic to be suspicious of people who “seemed” Muslim.
