As a young girl growing up in London I had heard the abuse "Go home Paki" many times from racist bullies who didn't want "foreigners" living in their country.

Fighting back tears, I would respond with, "I am an Indian not a Pakistani, get your geography right."

I knew that for those illiterate thugs the subtle difference between Indians and Pakistanis was of no consequence, because for them we were "all the same" and "Paki" was the abuse they hurled at anyone whose skin colour was brown.

My response stemmed as much from having something to say to the bullies to take the sting out of the abuse as from the fact that I was very proud of my Indian ancestry.

British schools didn't teach Indian history and my family was not affected by Partition, hence a hatred of Pakistan was not ingrained in me. My father, a first generation immigrant to the UK back in the 1960s, had many Pakistani friends because a shared language, culture, geography, history and heritage allowed a bonhomie that rose above politics. You were all "Pakis" together.

However, when it came to political debates, I remember my father becoming extremely patriotic and telling his Pakistani friends very proudly that India was a far superior country because it was secular with equal rights for Hindus and Muslims enshrined in its Constitution, and not a theocratic state like Pakistan.

Like many immigrants he yearned to return to India, but the necessities of a young family and an extremely early death meant his desire remained unfulfilled.

At some level it was my father's love for his motherland that first brought me to India - to get to know my roots. When I decided to stay on and make it my home, people both in India and the UK called me mad. "When Indians are desperate to live in London, you want to go the other way, what is wrong with you?" was a question I was regularly asked. But I dug my heels in and sought to make a life for myself in the country to which I felt I belonged.

In the late 1980s, Britain hadn't yet become its multi-cultural best. We were still "Pakis" to the white supremacists, and to the rest we were "tolerated" as "Asian immigrants" living among them.

I remember telling friends that I felt happy in India because I was not "different", I was not discriminated against and I could walk down the street without anyone telling me "go home Paki" - because I was home.

The next time I was called a "Paki" hurt me much more than the abuse I had heard as a child, because it was used against me by an educated colleague working in the same newspaper in India.

Unlike the illiterate skinhead thugs of England who knew no better, here was a sophisticated journalist who in the early 1990s had decided to align himself with the upcoming BJP, and felt that because I was a Muslim it would be fair to call me a "Paki".

It shocked and saddened more because again I was made to feel like an outsider. This time the abuse was more painful as it was used with the venom that comes from knowing what it really means.

Since then I have heard the abuse more and more often. I and my "community" were called "Pakis" by the late Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, Sadhvi Ritambhara and the rest of the Hindutva brigade during the Babri Masjid/Ramjanmabhoomi movement.

I clearly remember standing in front of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on the 6th of December 23 years ago, watching the mosque being destroyed contrary to the orders of the Supreme Court, when a fellow reporter asked me how I felt as I was one of the few Muslims present, and my answer was: "I feel I am being told I don't belong here."

The "Paki" abuse again resurfaced after the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Narendra Modi as chief minister obliquely referred to his Muslim compatriots as "Pakis" and "lovers of Mian Musharraf" in order to successfully polarise Hindus and Muslims and win election after election.

More recently, the "Paki" abuse has become all too common. It is no longer just hurled at Muslims but at anyone who does not agree with the BJP's ideology.

It is used ad nauseam by the Hindutva trolls who like all bullies shield themselves behind anonymity and hunt in wolf-like packs.

But worse still, it is used by chief ministers, cabinet ministers, MPs, governors and senior leaders of the BJP - people who have taken oaths to uphold the Constitution of India.

All those who use this abuse show themselves to be no better than the fascist thugs of the British National Front who would still like to see "Pakis go home".

So when Modi said "Nobody can raise questions over the patriotism of 125 crore citizens of the country, nobody needs to give certificates of patriotism every now and then" during his speech on Constitution Day in the Rajya Sabha, it was very welcome.

For the first time he spoke like the Prime Minister of the secular India that my father so loved, and not like a leader of the RSS.

The Constitution of this great land gives all its citizens equal rights so no one needs to be simply "tolerated". Neither B.R. Ambedkar nor the other founding fathers would have ever told Indians to "Go to Pakistan".