Newspapers across India have been reporting the case of violent racial discrimination in India where a 21-year-old Tanzanian girl was repeatedly beaten and made to parade around naked while the police was watching all this. This is pathetic and painful, to say the least. Here is a
link to the article
This is not an isolated incident. A documentary by the Times of India shows how bad our behaviour has been towards our darker skinned brothers and sisters from other countries.
It is no secret that ours has been a country of racists... It has gained deep roots into our popular culture too. For example, our movies openly promotes discrimination based on skin color. Here is a clip from the movie Sivaji that shows how accepting we are of racism. The director and the "Super Star" in this movie think that this is funny! What a shame!
It is no secret that ours has been a country of racists... It has gained deep roots into our popular culture too. For example, our movies openly promotes discrimination based on skin color. Here is a clip from the movie Sivaji that shows how accepting we are of racism. The director and the "Super Star" in this movie think that this is funny! What a shame!
What is surprising is that the true cultural heritage of this country suggests that we have celebrated diversity in skin color in the past. We have colored our gods black, blue, green, red and white... So perhaps the widespread racism could be attributed to some extent to our colonial past. Whereas our colonial lords discriminated us based on our skin color, we have silently aspired for fairer skins to gain a sense of superiority from the rest of us and equality with our colonizers. This is probably why brands like fair and lovely thrive here. It is high time we acknowledged that we are infested with this disease and actively vaccinate against it. The role of the government is paramount in this endeavor. The government has to actively step in and crack down racism in our country... be it against foreigners or locals.
3 comments:
If racism is from the deep mindset of people, what can government do to end it?
If racism is from the deep mindset of people, what can government do to end it?
Cultural practices don't emerge in isolation, there are often exogenous factors that contribute to it - trade, conquests, geography, laws, etc. The Indian geography has only made us multi racial and we have embraced our pluralism for the most of our documented history. If the British racial laws could lay seeds of Racisim in our otherwise color neutral eyes within a matter of a few decades (remember Gandhi Ji joined the freedom struggle only after he was exposed to violent racism in South Africa), then our current governments can enact laws against racism that will make us color neutral again. Some milder means would be educating our people about race and racism by emphasizing these issues from early childhood education to workplace training to advertisements condemning racism. Some slightly stringent means would be to crack down on movies like Sivaji and Vadivel Gorilla comedy that consider it ok to make fun of ones color or origin. A more stringent option would be putting the willful racists behind bars.
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