I wanted to watch the ICC 2015 Cricket World Cup final between India and Australia. I need to thank my clients who had scheduled an important meeting which forced me to miss the match and thankfully spared me from the witnessing the humiliating defeat. They sledge you, taunt you, provoke and keep coming at you relentlessly till they achieve their target, which is to crush the opponent and leave them high and dry. They have been doing it for decades and I see no end to this. The impact it creates on an insignificant viewer like myself is I want to see the Aussies lose rather than India win. Am I racist here ? Oh you are an Aussie ? Well, you must be arrogant and so full of yourself and I hope someone gets back at you. I am blinded by drama on field more than reality, but oh well, no one can beat us when it comes to drama in real life !!!
I do not remember exactly when, but sometime in 2008, an Indian Taxi driver was stabbed in Melbourne. In 2009 Australia was in international news across the globe for alleged attacks on Indian students, which surprisingly evoked a response from our then PM who believed in actions speak louder than words claiming that he was appalled by the senseless violence and crime and even stated that some of them seemed racist in nature. Needless to say, what followed this was a circus. Media, who of late is looking to make our living life with anger, resentment, jealousy and starts our day with the most depressing and goriest of news hand picked and delivered just in time for all the self centered and selfish souls to comment on the sad and disgusting state of our citizens within and abroad, had a field day and decided to take the role of the monkey. Political parties decided to take complete mileage of this incident and start discussing their expert opinions with the media. Some of our illiterate educated publicity seeking vultures who do not where Australia is in the world map, write to the Australian PM strongly condemning the attacks. Australia is now on fire with Indian diplomats urging internationally to brand it as a “racist” country with no values. Let me come back to this towards the end of this post, while I would like to look at myself in the mirror.
Bihar, in India, has been a neglected state both by the central government and the state government. RJD which ruled the state for a significant period of time, is accused of heavy corruption and consequently a significant Bihari’s have migrated to a various parts of the country where huge economic and industrialization led to significant need for skilled workers.As an extended consequence, trains and buses to Bihar are always over crowded with no room to even look around and in due course, with no significant move from government to help Bihar grow, Indians from Bihar started to get a bad reputation. They have been subjected to a lot of ridicule and still discriminated and calling someone a “Bihari” has somehow turned out to be an insult. The current generation knows nothing about the history except for the fact that being a Bihari means you are inferior. What do we call this ? Racism ?
African tourists and students in India face a grave threat of being abused and attacked. Indians, the fairest of whom is considered as black / colored / dark by the West apply racism with logic. We attack Africans because they are darker than us !!! Great logic.
Are you from North East India ? Assam / Nagaland / Sikkim / Arunachal / Manipur / Mizoram etc ? Well you are a “Chinkee” then and the rest of the country will not only ignore you and treat you as non existent, but any attempts to settle down in rest of the country would have “consequences”. North east is no lagger now. They retaliate and is there an end to it ? No idea. We are not racists.
A comment from a sweet shop owner escalated quickly out of control and ended up in the death of a 20 year old Arunachal student. It is not known to me what the comment was, but media and politics have already decided that it must be racist and this is a racist attack. We may never know the truth as the “comment” is actually dwarfed by a bigger crime now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nido_Taniam_Death_Incident
We Indians stereotype people based on their state. It does not matter if this branding is genuine or otherwise, but we end up creating races. We do not know the origins, but the racial divide is wide and prevalent in India. We have Gujjus, Mallus, Madrasis, Biharis, Marwadis, Sindhis and many more. We have been conditioned to racially discriminate them and we do it without a second thought in the blink of an eye without even realizing that we are racists. Our media insists that being fair gets you any job. Our corporates insist that applying their facial cream can turn an African into an American (Pardon my racist statement here). We discriminate people based on color, caste, region, language, religion, sex, locality they live, educational institution they work in, car they drive in, place they work in, the brand of clothing they wear and even celebrity status. If a genuinely good bus driver runs over someone genuinely by accident God save him and the bus if the raging public gets their hands on him. However you can drink and drive and kill a dozen on the footpath with your imported car if you are a celebrity. All you need to do is create a charitable organization to legally clean the black money to white (Oops another racist remark) and beg and market for attention trying to erase the ghosts of the past, albeit not in his mind. A right does not make a wrong reverse itself. You cannot right a wrong. The right way to right a wrong is being not wrong in the first place. Of course in this case, as per a few chirpers , about whom the world doesn’t care or even know will squarely blame the victims for being at the wron time in the wrong place. If all else fails, convert real like into cinema. Anyway , back on topic, Dalits are treated like shit all over the country. They are being gang raped when the lust for flesh hits the roof and the very same perpetrators treat them as untouchables under regular circumstances. Double standards or Racism ?
http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/dalit-tortured-for-daring-to-wear-slippers-410219
Well, this does not stop with individuals. We have corporates and institutions doing the same stuff across the world. Educational institutions, which should ideally set this divide right are very well a part of it. Educational institutions subsidize fees and ease out admission pains based on your religion. All you need to do is Google and find out the type of responses RTE evoked from private educational institutions. Racism at is best. They are children and they have a pure non racist mind. Do not poison them . Leave them alone.
With so much diversity, politics is all about vote bank and exploiting this very diversity. Caste based admission and reservation is the cherry on the cake. I still remember when getting a medical seat on merit for a government classified and approved upper caste citizen like me is beyond miracle, much to my anguish and dismay, I see someone who had scored a single digit mark out of 600 get through easily to the medical profession just because, the quota under which he was racially discriminated did not have enough meritorious students to fill the vacancies. God bless his patients. With such a passive and sub conscious support for racism, I wonder why we make such a hue and cry of others being racist towards us. I think we deserve it. Unless we treat human beings as human beings, It just makes me wonder if evolution has actually taken a step back by making humans out of monkeys.
Coming back to the alleged Aussie racist attacks, did we ever think that this could have been a regular mugging attempt ? Do we care about other human beings the same group would have targeted who are non Indians ? An Indian was attacked an murdered in a shady part of Sydney in March 2014. A racist twist was immediately associated with it despite the victim being clearly warned not to use that specific route as it was not safe.
Hate crimes and racism is all over the world. It has been in the historical past. It is happening right as as we speak and will continue to happen in the future. Unless you introspect honestly without trying to extract any sort of political mileage out of it, I am afraid, it is a fire which will never extinguish. Let me close this with a message I received yesterday on one of my social groups.
“Racism will never end as long as white cars are still using black tires. Racism will never end if people still use black to symbolize bad luck and white for good and peace. Racism will never end if people still wear white clothes to weddings and black clothes to a funeral. Racism will never end as long as people who don’t pay their bills are blacklisted and not white-listed. Even when playing snooker you haven’t won until you have sunk the black ball and the white ball must remain on the table. But I do not care, so long as I’m still using white toilet paper, I’m fine!”
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