In Bangalore, a Manipuri engineering student is roughed up for not speaking Kannada. In Gurgaon, two Nagaland students are beaten up by a gang of seven locals. Three African students are assaulted near a Delhi metro station.
Each hate-filled action of the young attackers shows the depths of depravity of our youth and the reluctance of the law enforcement agencies to rein them in. These incidents, and many more of them, occur despite the protests that Delhi saw earlier this year when Nido Tania, the son of an MP from Arunachal Pradesh, died after an attack on him. Nido was attacked with iron rods by shopkeepers in South Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar market after an altercation. The shopkeepers had allegedly mocked Nido’s hairstyle and he had in turn thrown a stone at the store.
For a country that prides itself for following the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and refers to his protest against the racism of a railway ticket checker who threw him out of a whites-only compartment in South Africa in 1893 despite holding a valid ticket as a source of inspiration for India’s struggle for Independence, this would appear to be a crying shame.
Yet, time and again, almost daily, there are acts of downright racism committed by Indians in their own country, not only against dark-skinned foreigners, especially those from African countries, but also against their own compatriots from the north-eastern states. In the case of the assault on African students in a Delhi Metro station, the attackers actually screamed Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata ki Jai. Coming on top of all the attacks on north-eastern students in Delhi in the past couple of years, including killings, and a brutal assault on a Rwandan student in Chandigarh in 2012 that left him in coma, this is further proof that by and large Indians harbour strong racist prejudices.
In Mumbai and other cities, the prejudice against the Africans and residents of Northeast is sought to be justified on the grounds that they have cultural habits that are at odds with Indian ones. What is distressing is that the police seem to be infected with the same prejudices, be it against Africans or the north-eastern Indian citizens.
Invariably, the women, in both cases, bear the brunt of this bigotry, which translates into daily harassment in the form of lewd comments, offensive stares and even propositions on the streets with hardly anyone else intervening or coming to their defence. In all such cases, it is rejection of people “different from us” in looks and cultural habits—a strange trait for a nation that takes pride in its multi-culturalism and jeers at the West for its alleged non-acceptance of the same.
While the incidents in public of racial hatred keep happening with greater and greater frequency, the law enforcement agencies must be geared up to act swiftly and firmly against the perpetrators of such acts. Equally important, the civil society must launch a campaign to eliminate our belief that it is okay to attack, jeer and ridicule the dark-skinned and the different.
India needs to replicate its ‘Nirbhaya moment’ on the issue of racism, an occasion for us to acknowledge and confront the reality of racial prejudice and violence in towns and cities across the country. Indian politicians and civic leaders need to address racism toward Africans and north-eastern Indians on an urgent basis.
If India is trying to project itself as a modern inclusive nation, then this kind of racism goes against the grain. While we feel free to attack foreign nationals and even our own people who look different, we are touchy about any form of prejudice against our citizens in foreign countries. We must realise that if we expect others to show us respect and understanding, we should do the same to those who are ‘different’.
preetha.thomas@yahoo.in
Thomas is associate professor at Barkatullah University