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Beware of the Next Cartoon
Sach Kanwal
Singh
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Vishwajit Singh’s maiden
cartoon for the WSN |
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Vishavjit Singh
of the Sikhtoons.com fame was quick off the block to react with a
rather pithy cartoon depicting Prince Charles with a Nazi swastika
symbol emblazoned on his arm after the Royal father-son duo got
embroiled one after the other in controversies involving use of
racist terms. Prince Harry had called a fellow “Paki” while his
father Prince Charles, never at a loss for appropriate words, got
the acidic taste of the cartoonist’s quill because he had called a
Sikh polo-playing friend “Sooty”.
Clearly, both
usages were linked to the tone of the skin color and by all means,
the cartoonist’s subdued and controlled anger was fully justified.
Some may actually have wanted him to add a few sharp words too.
But as the great
Sufi tradition goes, when you find something good in the other
person, try to emulate it. And more importantly, when you stumble
across something you really find galling, look inwards to ensure
that you don’t have the same affliction.
The British
Royals have once again given us an opportunity to look inwards, and
by all indications, the debate that it may trigger in our hearts
will not be a simple one. How many times do people in
Punjab and
members of the Punjabi Diaspora refer to migrant laborers from Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar as “Bhaiyas”? Most of the debate in Punjab against
the migrant laborers impacting the Punjabi demography, culture and
language is often punctuated with diatribes and vituperative terms.
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Scenes of migrant labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh often
remind one of Surjit Patar’s poem Aya Nand Kishore, a
poem about the contrast between a Bihari migrant labourer’s
daughter learning Punjabi in a dilapidated government-run school
against a landlord’s grandchildren being chauffeured to town,
to learn English |
While the
language of discourse and public debate may be still acceptable, or
at least somewhat tolerable, the terms used in the security of the
four drawing room walls about the migrants or about lower caste
people in villages and towns will shame human beings scoring much
less on the decency scale.
It is not for
Vishavjit Singh to draw all the cartoons at the same time or put all
strains and threads of a complex debate into the same cartoon but
the talking point that he has created with his very first cartoon
for the World Sikh News should be the beginning of a considered
debate about banishing from the Sikh community any undue references
to people on the basis of birth or blood.
At a time when
the
United States is being led by the first Black president in history
and the world has better hopes of a more equitable society, it is
time the Sikhs came up with their own contribution, inspired by the
great teachings of and the ideals set by the Sikh Gurus and martyrs.
We need to push the credo that “I am a Sikh, therefore I cannot be a
racist.”
But Race is not
the only construct abut which we need to be careful. In the American
context, surely Race is something that we need to contend with and
engage with and understand it. The WSN had particularly hailed the
Philadelphia speech of President Barack Obama during the Democratic
nomination campaign. But for the Punjabi Diaspora, we need to
contend, other than Race, even with the constructs of caste,
religion and region.
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How many Sikh teenagers have gone through the experience of a
dear friend seeking their permission before narrating a joke:
“Excuse me please, but can I tell you a real wonderful Sardar ji
joke?” The malicious and degrading sub-text of the permission
seeker’s light-hearted banter in friendly company and setting is
where the abuses and racial prejudices seep into our minds,
language and mental furniture. |
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And we need to
first of all acknowledge that there is a deeply ingrained prejudice
and it has seeped into our mental furniture; it is an
almost-unnoticed part of our daily lives and conversations.
References to our “Madrasi” friends when they don’t even come from
Tamil Nadu or descriptions of North-East’s residents as “Chinki” or
“Chini” are horrible by any standards, but perhaps the realization
seeps only into those who are at the receiving end.
“Paki” as an
insult makes its presence felt only when a Sikh from Gurdaspur gets
called that on the
Oxford Street
simply because his skin color is brown.
Indian college
and university campuses ring out with words like Bongs, Panjoos,
Chinkis etc with an innocuousness that only underlines that entire
generations may fail to register the violence of such references.
Ethnicity defines your particular insult in
India when Race
doesn’t.
Five years ago,
Professor N Jayaram wrote an essay titled ‘Identity: A Semantic
Exploration in
India’s Society
and Culture’. It listed the words used in different parts of the
country to denote outsiders. In Goa, words such as “Ghati” (someone
from across the ghats) or “Bhilo” (Konkani for outsider) are used in
a derogatory sense. Similarly, when someone in Bangalore refers to a
Tamilian as “Konga”, it’s usually said in a derisive tone.
Jayaram says,
“The biases are deeply embedded in our psyche and operate at a
covert level. We may come across them in our daily interactions but
may not take them so seriously. Only when they get malicious, we
notice them”. The professor, who heads the
School of Social
Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, cites the word
“Bhaiyya”, which is used to refer to people from Uttar Pradesh. It’s
the context that denotes whether it’s respectful endearment or
abuse.
Kuldip Dhillon
may contend that he did not feel insulted and that Prince Charles
was not being racist and that the word was a “term of affection” but
the real crux is that it is the context that defines the abuse. By
themselves, the words are innocuous. It is their use that makes them
acceptable or unacceptable.
How many Sikh
teenagers have gone through the experience of a dear friend seeking
their permission before narrating a joke: “Excuse me please, but can
I tell you a real wonderful Sardar ji joke?” The malicious and
degrading sub-text of the permission seeker’s light-hearted banter
in friendly company and setting is where the abuses and racial
prejudices seep into our minds, language and mental furniture. The
answer is not to seek an advance permission to tell a Hindu joke
next. The answer is to engage in a debate that is aimed at banishing
the abusive subtexts from our conduct.
A columnist of
The Times of India, while venting out her spleen against prejudiced
Indians, recalled the words of Dalit writer and activist Chandra
Bhan Prasad who claimed that “he always finds it demeaning when
people would refer to former president KR Narayanan as an
‘exceptional Dalit’, (which) unwittingly suggests that other Dalits
are undeserving or unworthy.”
Chandra Bhan
Prasad is right, but is the columnist too not committing the same
mistake by referring to Chandra Bhan Prasad as a “Dalit writer”? I
mean when was the last time you read about Brahman Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru or a leading Brahman lecturer on college campus or
a Kshatriya Chief Minister’s press release?
Chandra Bhan
Prasad can call himself a Dalit writer, it is his prerogative, but
he does not go around calling people Brahman writers!
Many Punjabis,
and that includes endless number of Sikhs, use the term Bhaiya as an
abusive hailing out term. Calling someone a “Choohra”, “Chamar”
or “Bhangi” is becoming increasingly unacceptable even
within the confines of the drawing room; many of us now try not to
use the term “Bhaiya” because it is so clearly pejorative and
prejudiced, but new terms are being coined so that our drawing room
conversations can retain the sickness of our deeply-held prejudices.
Hence, we are now hearing the term “quotawallah”. We all know what
we are trying to say about a vast section of the humanity by using
this term
 and we all know that Vishwajit Singh will not rush to draw
a cartoon about it because he too knows that we will all miss the
point.
It is time we
prepare ourselves for that future cartoon from Sikhtoons.com and
when it comes, we have the satisfaction of telling ourselves that we
are not the subject of his quill’s lines. We cannot be casteists
because we are Sikhs. Are we?
21 January 2009
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