Black, Brown and White...

Finally, the media houses have woken up and decided to give this "Racial Attacks in Australia" some decent amount of airtime. It is indeed nice to see that. Even the blogging community has taken up this issue of 'utmost importance' and expressed its anger in the strongest possible words. Well it is nice to see that too. Tomorrow, if half of India gathers outside the Parliament, and protests with a candle light march, I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if we hear reports of Ram Sene or Bajrang Dal, catching hold of a couple of Goras, and beating them black and blue. But what would surprise me is if this issue lingers on for more than a fortnight. I would be SHOCKED... yes sir.. you saw the spelling too.. its all in capital letters!!! I would be that shocked.

Racial discrimination is nothing new to us. What is this crap about "white man's syndrome"?? Why blame the entire white community for a racial assault committed by a few of them. We never look within ourselves, and seek to blame others for all our misfortunes. "To err is human, and to blame it on others, is even more human"!! Yay!! We are more human than anyone else. Nice .. Nice!! "A white man called me a pig".. and we'll scream Racial Discrimination at the top of our voices. But when we call South Indians as Illads, North East Indians as chinkis or chow chows or when the South Indians pass derogatory comments at North Indians, then we don't seem to care. There are many colleges down South, where North Indian students get ragged only cause they are north indians and the vice versa up North. All Nepalis become bahadur... Why don't we take up such issues too?? I think that the reason why it doesn't bother us, is because racism is ingrained in us... so much so that we don't even know when we discriminate on the basis our race, colour, sex etc... But in a pluralistic country like India ,which seems united on the outside, but is fragmented in the inside, it is not surprising to come across such cases.

Problem arises when we go abroad, and become a part of the minority... second class citizen, as they call it. Then all these things suddenly become so obvious. Back home, we were cursing each other with racists remarks, but here abroad, we become the butt of those racist comments. Big deal!! The biggest problem which we have is the lack of respect for each other's culture and background, and also we lack the will to accept the flaws in us. Everything is someone else's fault. We can never be wrong. On a personal note, I feel that the west is more appreciative of our culture than us, ourselves, but along with that, they also continue to be who they are. For quite of few of us, the moment we land on a foreign shore, our accent changes and we blindly try to be 'a gora'. Sighhh!!

But, why blame the whites for our obsessions with the fairer skin tone?? The Britishers occupied India for 250 years... so does that mean that we have been suffering from the 'white man's syndrome' only for the past 310 yrs? It would be foolish to believe so... even before they came to India,we Indians were trying out various herbs and treatment to improve our skin colouration. Now whom do we blame??? Now do we blame the Muslim invaders from central Asia??? They'll say.."Dude, yeah, we invaded India, but most of us belong to the same race man!!" Then whom to blame?? Ultimately we'll end up blaming the Lord himself, for having made us this way! Exactly.. how can we be wrong... blame the Gods!

We are brown because the climatic conditions require us to be brown so that we can live in a hot tropical country like ours. Thus, the Lord made us brown. We can work under the sun for hours without fainting like whites do. Whites are whites because they are native to the cold countries. Whites are not native to Australia anyway... In India we want to be white, while in the west, people see a tan as a sign of affluence, showing that the man has enough money to sit for hours at a tropical beach, tanning himself and doing nothing. Funny how things are in different parts of the world. We human, are never happy or satisfied with anything. Reminds me of a poem "The Human Abstract" by William Blake.

The Gods of the Earth and Sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree,
But their search was all in vain,
Coz there grows one in the Human Brain!

The 'Tree' here refers to a tree , borne out of seed of evil, thriving in the human mind. The poor Gods searched all of Nature, trying to find that tree, unaware that such a tree doesn't exist in Nature. Nature doesn't offer explanation for a mystery which is nothing, but malice, and that grows and thrives in our minds. How so true! I think this issue gained importance, not because it was a case of racial abuse, but more because it involved assault and now a student is battling for his life. Expecting the Indian government to do anything more than "condemn" the attacks, is like expecting Mayawati to say anything more than "Main Dalit Ki Beti hu..(I'm a dalit's daughter)". The Indian government cannot arm twist the Australians into taking any sort of action. The only option is to prevent students from going to the kangaroo land, for higher studies, but that too would be very foolish. I pray the government does something to improve the quality of education in our country. Atleast that way, many of our bright students won't rush abroad for their degrees, and it should help the Indian economy as well. Instead of spending a crore, gettin a degree abroad, we can spend only a couple of lacs to get the same quality degree here. Hmm.. food for thought.. any netas listening???

I don't say that we Indians are cowards, cause we can't protest. I feel that even if we protest, our government will never back us. (Be it the UPA or the NDA). Why won't they back us?? Simple...
a) most of our netas are disconnected from our problems
b) now that the elections are over, its like.. "public??!! who????"
c) Our leaders have greater things to worry about... like how to please DMK.. TMC.. etc
d) most don't even know what the need for good education is.

The plight of the citizens havs never concerned any government so far. Be it Indians in India, or Indians living abroad. As long as the money keeps coming, no one bothers.

Hmph... I hope things change and we first change ourselves. The pride which our forefathers had in being INDIANS, must be restored. We lack that greatly. We need to broaden our minds and think beyond racial divides, castes, sex, colours, religions and lets the world know that we are Indians, and we are Proud of being one.

PS: As USUAL, maybe I've misunderstood the meaning of "white man's syndrome"... My apologies.. I thought it wasn't just accepting them as a superior race, but also our continual efforts to be like them... Aplogies again.. Thank You KISLAY