On Privilege
Privilege. A funny thing, one hell of a loaded word.
Interestingly enough, it’s one of those things that you don’t realize you have till you’ve lost it. Like much in life, to invoke that cliche.
My family was privileged in pre-Independence India. They were members of the Muslim aristocracy. The aristocrats of Hyderabad, my family’s hometown, had land, money, and power. The Nawabi class (as they were called) were not unlike the lords and ladies of the British nobility.
Well, that was until a little thing called Partition came along in 1947.
Almost overnight, our ancestral lands were seized by the new Indian government, bank accounts frozen, and a complete reversal of power had taken place. In the years that came after, my grandparents’ generation had to rebuild from what they had lost. But the memories and bearing of privilege remained–as well as the damning realization that privilege is a flimsy and fleeting thing. As easily as it is bestowed, it is taken away.
That bitter knowledge was transmitted to the next generation–my parents, and eventually on to me. And now it comes full circle, as I attend school replete with the children of wealthy American aristocracy, “legacies” and the like who have lived so fully and blindly within their inherited money and privilege that they hardly even realize that its there.
It’s all sardonically entertaining to me, as I grew up on the opposite end of the stick–public school, state college, and little money–inherited or otherwise. But I did grow up knowing full well that my family HAD been uniquely privileged once.
But having seen two sides of the coin, I find myself in a unique place: To view aristocracy, privilege, power remotely and see it for what it truly is. That elitism is as much pageantry as it is actual power, that it is fully constructed and ultimately transitory, and how social status is an tool of economic and political advantage like no other.
Privilege is power, power is privilege. And unless you’ve had it taken away, little do you know how key it is to your success.
