Identity has many meanings!

Split(2017)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Identity means different things to different people. For some, it is all about religion. No matter which part of the world they practise their religious rituals, it remains uniform. They wear their similar-looking tunic on their sleeves as their badge of honour. 

On the other spectrum, a new generation of society swears by the gender they identify with. It is immaterial to them the chromosomal makeup they carry and how they look phenotypically. In fact, they also believe that gender is so fluid that they may decide to don the gender they feel at the drop of a hat or the side of the bed they get up from. 

Identity sometimes overlaps, too. People who identify themselves as great outdoors enthusiast may also click with bibliophiles. A person in one group may be a member of another. Businesses have long known this, and they sell their products under the guise of lifestyle choices, e.g. targeted mechanise to meet their so-called lifestyle. Politicians use the identity of race, religion and siege mentality to rally voters to their side. Statesmen use sports and flags to stand under the identity of a nation to push its citizens to greater heights. They identify the 'others' who do not share these sentiments as the enemies of the State.

Ancient wisdom needs to appreciate the concept of State-Nation. There is a Man and his relationship within his community. His identity morphs in tandem with the change in his responsibility within his community. A newborn is ushered into the fold with rituals. Once a child reaches puberty, an initiation ceremony, be it a celebration to promote her marriageable status after her menarche or tattooing of boys to honour their entry into manhood. Then, the marriage, the delivery, the funerals and so forth. 

A person's identity changes within his or her lifespan. Even at any time, he has to don different identities: a son, a brother, a friend, a student, a husband, a father and so on. Sometimes, he has to take multiple identities to play his role. His demeanour may alter as and how the role demands him to be. His base is the same, but he has to wear different hats.

The occurrence of multiple identities, even in psychiatrists' experience, is rare. This is different from the ebbs and waning moods that all of us are prone to. We are talking about a total change in personality, mannerisms, accents and demeanour. Of course, for the sake of telling stories, authors push their creative licence to the limit. 

In 2005, Kollywood came forth with 'Anniyan', a nerdy do-gooder Ramanujam transforms into Remo, a vigilante alter-ego who tries to correct the wrong things that Ramanujan is too meek to do.

As part of a trilogy between 'Unbreakable' and 'Glass', M. Night Shyamalan's 'Split' tells about a seriously mentally disturbed with 32 personalities. He suffers from DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder) and has a penchant for kidnapping teenage girls.

At the end of the day, people with vested interests use identity politics to create mayhem everywhere. Instead of coming together as one human race and aiming for utopia, the anarchists and communists, and even neocons, want to press the red reset button at the earliest time possible. For the anarchist, destruction is the seed for a new beginning. For the Commies, armed struggle is the way to change. The Neo-Cons care a damn. Since they have accepted God, for all practical reasons, they are ready for Armageddon. At the End of the Days, they know they have a reserved place in the Lord's bosom in His Kingdom. The Mozzies use identity politics as a victim card for more concession and no contribution.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.