The Language of Belonging

A personal reflection by Dhiva Krishanan in conjunction with Malaysia's Merdeka celebrations.

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Every time I fill in a form, the answer is simple.

Race: Indian. Religion: Hindu.

Those two boxes have never been difficult to tick. On paper, my identity has always been clear. Yet growing up, I often felt as though I was standing just outside the edges of it. It began with language.

Tamil was always around me. My parents, grandparents and relatives spoke it fluently, Tamil films played in the background at home, and it formed the soundtrack of many family gatherings. Somehow, though, I never truly learned the language. English became the language I thought in, while Bahasa Malaysia was the language I used most at school. Tamil remained familiar enough for me to recognise, but distant enough that I rarely felt confident speaking it. On its own, that probably wouldn't have mattered very much. Children learn at different speeds, and language can always be learned later. What gave it so much weight were the stories that gradually attached themselves to it.

As a child, I was also deeply shy. Speaking itself never came easily to me, so every attempt at Tamil felt like exposing something I wasn't good at. Family jokes about "not looking like us (Indian)", "actually Tibetan", or "probably adopted" were said with affection, but they quietly settled into my mind. Children have a way of believing these things more literally than adults intend. Over time, I started wondering if perhaps I really was somehow different from everyone else.

That feeling only became stronger at school. Whenever something related to Indian culture came up, my instinct was usually to step back and observe. If people switched into Tamil, I stayed quiet. If conversations revolved around films, songs or cultural references that everyone else seemed to know instinctively, I listened rather than joined in. On the occasions that I tried speaking Tamil, I was sometimes told to stop because my pronunciation sounded strange, or that I was "more Chinese" or "more Western" than Indian. The issue with language then started bleeding into identity. One memory from primary school has stayed with me ever since.

I studied in a Sekolah Wawasan, where Malay, Chinese and Tamil language primary schools shared the same campus. One day, our teacher came into the classroom to announce that the Tamil school was organising a cultural event. She called out the names of the two other Indian students in my class and told them to gather downstairs at noon.

I sat there waiting.

After a moment, I raised my hand and quietly asked, "Teacher... what about me?"

She looked at me for a second before replying, almost casually,

"Oh... I forgot you were Indian too."

I still remember how strange that sentence felt.

There were only three Indian students in the class, and I was sitting right beside one of them. I wasn't invisible. I remember looking down at my own hands, almost wondering whether there was something about me that everyone else could see but I couldn't. What did she mean she had forgotten? Had I somehow become less Indian without realising it? Looking back, I don't think that moment created my insecurity around identity and culture.

It simply gave it a voice.

It became one of many moments that quietly reinforced an idea that had already begun to take shape: that perhaps I didn't quite belong to the identity I had inherited. It wasn't only the language that felt distant; it was the culture itself. This insecurity then made me gravitate more towards non-Indian friends, because at least there, the feeling of not fully belonging could be attributed to something else—not my own shortcomings. There was more grace in being allowed to learn, stumble, and fail in spaces outside my own community than within it. Over time, that distance only widened the gap I already felt, making it harder to step back into the spaces I was quietly withdrawing from.

The irony was that my family had never rejected our culture. We celebrated Deepavali, visited temples and observed many of the traditions that had been passed down through generations. Our version simply looked different. Looking back now, I realise I wasn't disconnected from my heritage—I just wasn't experiencing it in the same way as many of my peers.

As I grew older, I developed a deep appreciation for Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, Hindu philosophy and the stories that have shaped Indian civilisation for centuries. Yet even as that appreciation grew, there was still a lingering feeling that I was arriving late, as though everyone else had been born with knowledge that I was only beginning to discover.

I still experience that feeling in temples. Every time I visit a temple, I find a sense of peace that is difficult to describe. However, even till today, I sometimes catch myself pausing at the entrance, watching the people around me.

Which shrine do they visit first? Which direction do they walk? Which prayer comes next? There have been many occasions where I have quietly followed the person in front of me, copying their movements because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. Years ago, that would have filled me with embarrassment. I felt that by adulthood I should already know these things, and asking questions somehow confirmed that I wasn't "Indian/Hindu/Tamil enough."

Looking back, I realise that the greatest obstacle was never language or ritual. It was shame.

Shame convinced me that culture was something you had to inherit perfectly. That if you missed pieces of it growing up, you had somehow lost the right to reclaim them later. It made every question feel like an admission of failure instead of an opportunity to learn.

Letting go of that belief has been quietly transformative.

These days, I watch Tamil films with subtitles without feeling self-conscious. I ask people to teach me the correct pronunciation of Sanskrit prayers. I read Indian classical literature (translated with interpretation guides, of course) that I once assumed were beyond me. If I need to follow someone around a temple until I understand the flow of worship, I do so gladly. None of these experiences diminishes my connection to my heritage. If anything, they deepen it, because they are driven by genuine curiosity rather than fear of being judged. Learning is not evidence that I don't belong.

Learning is how I belong.

As an adult, I have also come to realise that very few people embody their culture completely. No one knows every story, every tradition, every recipe, every ritual or every historical event. Every family passes on different pieces, and every generation inherits them differently. Yet somehow, we often hold ourselves (and others) to impossible standards of authenticity.

That realisation has changed the way I think about identity altogether. For years, I believed belonging was something other people decided for me. It depended on whether my Tamil was fluent enough, whether I recognised the right cultural references, or whether I knew how to perform the rituals correctly. Today, I see identity less as a checklist and more as a lifelong relationship. Like any meaningful relationship, it grows through time, attention and genuine care.

Perhaps this is also part of what it means to be Malaysian. Ours is a country where many of us inherit culture in fragments. Some of us speak our grandparents' language fluently; others don't. Some know every festival but not the prayers behind them. Some discover their heritage later in life through books, music, food or travel. None of those journeys are more legitimate than another. They are simply different paths leading towards the same question: "Who am I?"

This Merdeka, I find myself thinking about freedom in a slightly different way. Beyond the story of a nation's independence is another kind of freedom — the freedom to stop believing that we must earn our identity by passing someone else's test. There is freedom in asking questions without embarrassment, in learning traditions later than expected, and in accepting that belonging is not measured by perfection.

Today, I am proud to call myself a Malaysian Indian. My journey has not been the most conventional one, but it is honestly mine. Every conversation, every temple visit, every page I read and every hesitant sentence I speak in Tamil feels less like catching up and more like coming home. And perhaps that is what identity has been all along. Not a destination we arrive at, but a relationship we continue to nurture throughout our lives.