Indian racism: real or fake

The old debate has been reignited once again as an angry mob attacked a Tanzanian girl during their  protest against a road accident. As is natural for Indian media honchos, the self-flagellation has already started and rims of papers have been wasted on explaining the racism among Indians. There are two big issues that need to be addressed head on in this context- over-hyped individual incidents and buying the racism dictionary from west. The first is a  more pressing concern as the second will need changing the whole victimhood discourse copied by local coolies from their western masters.

So, lets analyse the angle that MSM trumpets only negative stories about India. If you look at all the stories highlighted in the past, they were of very local nature and would have been brushed aside as stray incidents by any sensible media- Church attacks, Dadri and now this Tanzanian girl. All of these events were reprehensible but in no way a sign of collective malaise or failure and should have been reported sensibly without any stereotyping as mentioned by Rupa Subramanya in her tweets:

If you look at the current incident involving Tanzanian girl, there was a policeman on the spot who decided to look at the incident as a helpless bystander rather than act. It is failure of the state machinery but given that Karnataka is currently ruled by Congress, it is given a free pass. Instead the blame has been completely shifted to the whole Indian society rather than parade the inefficient Karnataka govt. because that does not fit in the “Adarsh liberal” scheme to bash anyone else other than Modi led govt. or the people who elected him. The identity of the mob has also been completely whitewashed by the media but given that the accident victim was Shabana Taj, it is hardly any surprise for anyone to guess why MSM removed this fact from the public attention.

While the event should have been used to build some pressure for changing the current state of law and order in India, the usual TV honchos have refused to notice the elephant in the room. The frequent interference of the politicians have completely eroded the reputation as well as functioning capability of the state police. But there is hardly any discussion on Police reforms or judiciary. One should not be surprised if the Supreme Court as well jumps up tomorrow to take some random suo-moto action on this issue. But of course, none of these attempts would be serious and will die down as quickly as they rose up and the prime time debate will go on while throwing more muck on Indian society.

This brings us to the second and more important point about importing and super-imposing western concepts on India. Unlike the western imperialistic nations, India does not have a history of racism or slavery and there should be no guilt associated with it. For eg. Most Indians of the past and even the current generation have grown up with facing the choicest of terms- kaala, patlu, motu (black, skinny, fat) etc and did not have any psychological breakdown. Rather than run away from their identity, Indians have learnt to not take them too seriously and grow out of it. Now Indians too have started to give too much importance to these western psychiatry concepts which has fuelled the victimhood narrative among western people and increased the number of depression patients. There is a perfect reason for Americans to feel guilty about calling their own blacks as niggers, but Indians do not have such past and there is no reason for them to associate themselves with this same guilt. Indians have known very well to live in a diverse society and these imported terms that fuel victimhood narrative only vitiate the atmosphere and do not help in mutual respect and coexistence. So, Indians should not adopt this victimhood narrative and take their life a little bit less seriously.

Although, all Indians would love to have a white bride but given most brides in India are not white, this fetish for white colour is only apparent in the matrimonial and skin cream adverts, and should not be blown out of proportion and equated with racism. Similarly the terms used for south, north or north-east Indians can be broken down easily and proved to be perfectly harmless. Sadly, it is not true any longer as the politically correct crowd came and beat up everyone with their irrationality (i.e. Political Correctness) into submission. So next time you call you call your miser friend a “bania”, you have to be very careful.

But denial of racism in India also brings one directly in confrontation with people, who will chant casteism at the top of their voice and equate it with racism. But even in case of casteism there is no race involved, except in the mind of AIT proponents, who think Aryans were a different race and constituted the current upper caste. There is discrimination there but it is not similar to racial discrimination as seen in the US. Indians need to take care of it, but should not use every incident to build fake victimhood as happened in the case of Rohit Vemula.

The way forward from here is to stop choosing the worst highlight of the day from stray incidents around India. It is a big country and has much lower crime rate than the “so called” developed countries of the world. Self-criticism is good but self-flagellation over non-issues does not help either. When the country should have been mourning the death of ten brave soldiers in Siachen, it is a shame that the top media houses decided to highlight this one incident for the whole day. Any other self-respecting country would have definitely chosen to give proper dues to its lost soldiers.