My parents weren't as religious as my grandmother (my father's mother) would like. Perhaps she thought that if she started early, she could prevent me from falling into their godless ways. One day when I was about four, she said, "Your father says he doesn't believe in god, but in fact he does. If I ask him to kick an idol, will he do it?" This seemed like a convincing argument at the time, but later I decided that the conclusion didn't follow. Respect for a symbol and its cultural associations is not the same as belief.
Around the same time, just to see how I would react, she asked me, "তুমি কি মুসলমান?" ("Are you a Muslim?") I wasn't sure what a Muslim was, or whether I was one, but I hated confessing ignorance. Besides, I had heard adults using the terms "Hindu" and "Muslim", and had formed the vague impression that we were in the former camp. So I responded somewhat emphatically, "না, আমি হিন্দু!" ("No, I'm a Hindu!") This became a popular party piece, and my grandmother took to asking me the question in front of visitors. And because it seemed to amuse them, I would always give the same answer.
This game stopped after a few months, but until I was sixteen or so, when filling up forms which asked my religion, I continued to give essentially the same answer. Even though I didn't believe in reincarnation, the divinity of the Vedas or the existence of a Supreme Being and I didn't observe any Hindu rituals in daily life, on forms I would automatically select "Hindu". I would do so because this was what I had always done, and because my parents were Hindu. When you think about it, this line of reasoning was hardly more sophisticated than that which led me to proclaim to my grandmother all those years ago, "No, I'm a Hindu!"
