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We, The Racists
Sach Kanwal Singh
 In a recent TV debate, well known scholar and an expert on
issues concerning the question of caste, Gian Singh Bal, during his
comments on the recent racism-inspired attacks on Indians, gave an
argument to underline the latent discriminatory attitude towards the
Dalits in
Punjab. "Go to
any village and you will see that even a ten year old child from a
Jat household will call a 70-year-old Dalit worker in the fields by
his name, something he dare not do in case of a fellow Jat kin even
slightly older than him," Gian Singh Bal said during the Khabarsaar
program on Zee Punjabi/Alpha channel.
The argument was
simple, almost simplistic, and we can have two views on it. The
first is to dismiss it offhand because it comes shorn of all those
nuances perfected over the years by social scientists, the other is
to stop any further argument simply because deep in our hearts we
all know the deadly simplicity of the argument is troubling because
it is so true.
 Indians
are crying racism at
Australia at a
time when decades after becoming Independent, little has moved on
the caste front; the discrimination is rampant and inherent inborn
deeply entrenched racism in the form of caste is thriving and is
being defended by some of the best minds. Camouflage is the general
tactic, and any equating of Racism with Caste Discrimination, a la
what happened at the recent
Durban
conference, leads to howls of protests.
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If you
are in any doubt about average Indian being a racist, browse
through the matrimonial columns of any day's newspaper. Some ads
border on being egalitarian, with a racist component: "Girl must
be fair and slim; the fact that she may be poor will not
matter." In Australia,
racism is looked down upon, it is marginalised. In India,
caste discrimination is seen as a social reality, and most have
come to accept it. This kind of racism is institutionalized. |
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Every single
person who has incessantly watched the Fair and Lovely skin cream
advertisements on TV interrupting programming from news to soap
serials, and has not felt horrified or vomited or felt like beating
the hell out of the TV honchos who clear such ads and the marketing
gurus who defend them on prime time national TV, has lost the right
to protest at racist attacks in Australia.
Durban
conclave bid was, some argue, aimed at equating what many do not
consider comparable, but what about the blatantly racist overtones
of such mass selling items?
It was very much
in India,
nay, very much in Punjab, that the Mohali team of 20-20 cricket
matches called King's XI that sent back its two black cheerleaders
in 2007 because people, they reasoned, will like only fair skinned
girls dancing at a cricket match. Pubs in the so-called near cosmo
town of Pune have "all black nights", the only occasions when West
Indians or Kenyan students are welcome.
Students from
the North East in
Punjab are
routinely referred to as "Chinese" and the term for them is "chinky".
Almost all TV channels are still running a Fair & Lovely cream ad
that depicts a father breaking into a smile only when he sees the
complexion of his dark and unsuccessful daughter turning into a
fairer one. Also, she then lands a glamorous job. Inference: Dark
skinned people are losers.
 I have known
scores of black students in
Panjab
University, Chandigarh who all know when Punjabi word and one name
known to all Indians. "Habshi" is a word thrown at them at all times
and fellow students, sometimes even teachers, nickname them as "Kalia".
"We grin and bear it, because I have often realized that those who
this to us are often not even aware of what it means," said one to
me.
All South
Indians are 'Madrasis' for north Indians, Punjabis included. Most
Hindus have calendar art at home that depicts
Krishna in
shades of blue and not in black even though Krishna literally means
dark. Gods are almost always fair, demons are almost always black.
Racism is almost always buried deep inside us, and almost always, we
fail to recognize it. Unless of course it happens far away in
Australia.
Best of the
Indian actors promote now a fairness cream for men.
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Australian racist attacks must goad us into looking inwards.
Otherwise it will not be possible, not at least ethically, to
look someone in the eye and say we were the victims. We are the
recent victims. Our only experience so far has been that of
being a victimizer |
If you are in
any doubt about average Indian being a racist, browse through the
matrimonial columns of any day's newspaper. Some ads border on being
egalitarian, with a racist component: "Girl must be fair and slim;
the fact that she may be poor will not matter."
There is an
important difference between the racism in
India and the
one that Indians are suffering from in
Australia.
In Australia, racism is looked down upon, it is marginalised, the
middle class and the ruling class is trying to purge it out of the
system. In
India,
caste discrimination is seen as a social reality, and most have come
to accept it. This kind of racism is institutionalized.
 After all of
this brouhaha over the racism in
Australia, there
is little movement on addressing the racism on the basis of caste.
The fact that this kind of discrimination is happening for centuries
now has only made the Indian people more immune to any change.
This was an
occasion when the Sikh community could have underlined its great
legacy of castelessness, the founding construct of this great
religion, but so deep have the tentacles of Brahmanism penetrated
into an eclectic religion like Sikhism that caste is a harsh reality
even in this community. This is topped further by the Jat versus
non-Jat discrimination and the hold of the Jat community on power
levers. The All Punjab Jat Sabha kind of organisations are dime a
dozen but the worse part is that it is not considered beneath one’s
dignity to be a member of one such forum. Brahaman Sabha, Khatri
Sabha, Aggarwal Sabha, Dhaliwal Sabha functions are covered
routinely in the vernacular media, the same media that is often the
most shrill in covering the racist attacks on students in
Australia.
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In Black
Africa, the same
India
Prakash C.
Jain, a professor at the
Jawaharlal
Nehru University in Delhi, who has studied the Indian Diaspora,
says there has also been an "undercurrent of racism" between
people of Indian origin and Africans in Africa. Traditionally,
most Indians limited social interaction with Africans and stayed
in separate housing estates. Intermarriage was practically
non-existent in South Africa, with just 57 instances from the
pre-World War II era to the '60s, he points out. |
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Of the nearly 1
lakh Indian students in
Australia, more
than 10,000 are from Punjab. What has the Punjab Government been
doing to spread word about the inherent racism among its own people?
What is the SGPC doing about the problem of caste within Sikhism?
Why are we hiding the fact that in hundreds of villages, there are
caste specific gurdwaras thriving? Why is the Mazhabi Sikh not
getting the respect he deserves? Why is there a notion of Mazhabi
Sikh at all?
Australian
racist attacks must goad us into looking inwards. Otherwise it will
not be possible, not at least ethically, to look someone in the eye
and say we were the victims. We are the recent victims. Our only
experience so far has been that of being a victimizer.
1
July 2009
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