Celebrity Big Brother moved from being a just another TV entertainment to an international race debate. Indian actress Shilpa Shetty won the British reality TV show after enduring alleged racial bullying that sparked off a nation-wide furore. Ever since that she has been branded as an international anti-rascism icon. Apparently this is not something new. You probably know about the recent Arcelor-Mittal merger, where the very idea of racism aroused a strong feeling of hatred and anger towards the West. Undoubtedly we Indians are the biggest targets of racism in the world. For a country that lived through more than a 100 years under the "White's rule", we have always considered ourselves as victims. However, when it comes to racial discrimination, knowingly or unknowingly we Indians are big hypocrites.Our idea of racism is a well defined color code. White is superior and beautiful while Black is inferior and not even close to beautiful hence undesirable. Just look at our fairness creams ads and matrimonial ads in our newspaper and youll know just how obssessed we are with the skin color. Dont stay black or else youll remain unmarried and jobless, instead use our whitening cream, turn fair in a week and boys and jobs both will come begging to you, so claims our fairness products' ads. Try spotting one famous black model or actress in India and see how terribly you fail. Recent reports that immigrants from Africa were being denied housing clearly shows our attitude towards color.
Color apart, racism in India can also be discussed in the context of caste discrimination. Caste discrimination is very much alive even so many years after its abolition. The many recent horrifying stories on the injustices done to the dalits across the country by the so-called upper class people justifies the point. Not to forget the religion and language barrier. The Madrasis dont get along with the Punjabis and a hindu getting into a mosque or a church is considered as a blasphemy. Its even more shocking to see young people, the so-called future generation of India practice racism and castism. Its really disheartening to see some of my own friends join online communities like the brahmin community or the mullus or gujjus community.
Why dare to stand up as one nation when we cant see our own compatriots with equal eyes? Why is it that we are developing on all grounds but yet refusing to grow out of underlying social malpractices? Are we really developing without morality?
7 comments:
hehehe... interesting how you transform conversations into blogs [if i remember correctly, we had a small convo on this]...
i wud have said, kajol is a famous dark skinned actor, if i didnt know better. She is not dark skinned in the sense of the word.
great views...with a lil bit of ignorance thrown in..
well people joining linguistic groups on orkut or any other online community doesn't amount to racism..
consider this, i am a member of some mallu communities, the foremost of them aptly called 'FRAUD MALLUS'...
nowhere's is it written that one can't how interest in one's community...and traditions...one can't be sacrificed at the expense of the other....
a great example of racism is tamil nadu, where the national language is not given any importance...one of the recent head lines on this front being the move to make tamil the only language for high court proceedings where all the judges are from some other linguistic group...it would be enough if it was made mandatory for the high court judges to learn the local language...
another form is discrimination on the basis of caste...there are some temples in the india, managed by the private trusts of upper classes(brahmins mainly) where the lower castes are allowed only on special days...they can offer their prayers from outside and go...but the cant step inside...there's one in kerala...where the lower castes are allowed only on 4 days in a year...nairs and other upper castes have access 24/7, 365 days a year...the discrimination here is only with regards to access...the lower castes can make the same offerings(archanas) as the uppercastes, and prasadam is distributed to all...
in this case the lower castes are to blame as much as the upper castes...that's because people still keep thronging the temple in hordes...doesn't make a difference if you're allowed or not...
the most blatant form of racism is judging people by their skin colour...you can't escape that in any part of india!!!
Being from an orthodox background myself, and confused by the hypocrisy, i once asked my dad [long ago, in my childhood :-) so you can assume it was innocent] why we were supposed to take a bath after a haircut from the local barber.
Dad's answer echoed the racism-approach, saying that the barber was a "bhaiyya", meaning North Indian, and was supposedly unclean. When i failed to get it, he explained the issue from a health-oriented point of view, putting basic cleanliness as the reason.
My point here is that, "upper-class" people have inculcated an alternate and more worldly reason for maintaining certain very racist practices. Probably they are aware that the old reasons - "lower classes are impure" and all that - no longer work with an increasingly secular population, so they have changed their tack.
That little story of mine also echoes a very prominent divide: that between south and north indians.
Since childhood I remember being called a "Madrasi" :-)
@Vishy.. yes, Kajol is not dark skinned in the sense of the word. She is probably just dusky. I bet she wouldnt have got famous had her mother not been a famous actress too...
@Draco..These are just few of the social malpractices.. things are worse...america has issues??? like what??
@Humbldevil...Thanks for your comment (post rather..:-))
true..ones interest in his community shouldnt be sacrificed..but at the same time people should respect other communities too.. which they usually fail to...
this is not some random post... Ive grown up experiencing these things..
My classmate (when i was in the 5th std) called me westIndian when we had a fight..(since when did westindian become an insult??..but you can see the mindset of kids here)
My Hindi teacher once said openly that she hates tamilians..
A hindu friend of mine refused to enter a church with me and another muslim friend of mine refused to enter a temple...
examples just cant be clearer...
"A hindu friend of mine refused to enter a church with me and another muslim friend of mine refused to enter a temple..."
Examples of God being "partitioned"...
as far as ur views on casteism are concerned, i agree with u completely. the saddest part is, the new and educated generation seems to be as backward. yes, we dont seem to be developing collectively as indians. the moment we leave our state, and go to live in another state or another country, we instantly start searching for people from our own state.....i guess it will take centuries for us to change our basic mindset, but i wish we change....
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