Is India immune to racism? Skip to main content

Is India immune to racism?

Racism

Over the past few days, the whole of world has been discussing over the incident that took place in US which resulted in massive outbreak of protests and even few cases of violent incidents occurred. This incident did not get unnoticed in India as well and people have been supporting this movements happening in US. But in India, is racism an unknown thing?

 

The incident that shook the world

On May 25, 2020 a 46-year old African American man named George Floyd who reportedly died after a police officer knelt on his neck for a long time while he was lying on the street handcuffed. This incident caused a massive unrest in the US and people from all the communities came in front to support the movement; there were incidents of riots as well in few cities. After this incident, several such type of videos of racism surfaced on different social media platforms that showed that this was not just a very unique incident that occurred but one of the several incidents that are taking place on the “black” people in US. Moreover there were also few incidents which showed that some people were deliberately damaging properties just to malign the protests.

Racism has been prevailing for a long time in the field of sports as well, even the famous footballer Mario Balotelli has been the victim of such incidents and several reports of such incidents happened with different sports’ personalities across countries.

 

What is the root behind racism?

Apparently, few of the “white people” have a sense of supremacy over the “black people” because of years of ruling by the countries of Europe such as England, Spain, France, Portugal and others. Due to their skin color being different from the residents of the colonized country, there have been an artificial belief that a person with “black skin” is inferior to a person with “white skin”. And this trend has been continuing for decades. Although science has progressed so much, the minds of few people it seems, have not transformed much. There were even cases where a black skinned person have been compared to a monkey! The irony is, we all have evolved from the same primate irrespective of “white” or “black” or “brown”!

 

Is racism there in India?

Guess what? We are not left behind from the rest of the world and as a bonus, we have casteism as well! But our racism is different from US and Europe.

Casteism is a problem which is specific to India and not the western world and that too is a form of racism. For centuries, people have been divided into four castes: “Brahmins”, “Kshatriyas”, “Vaishyas” and the “Shudras”. The latter one being exploited by the former three just because of the virtue of the family they were born in. It’s very recently, that this system has almost disappeared now and prevalent only in few remote regions of the country.

Being a land of diversity, India has people coming from different traditions and linguistic varieties. But few people has a sense of regionalism in themselves and like to differentiate people based on the demographics they come from----north or south; making a virtual barrier from each other and making fun of each other’s traditions. But the worst face of racism is being faced by the people hailing from the North-eastern part of the country who face a lot of discrimination based on their looks. Their facial features identical to some countries of East Asia, they are often regarded as foreigners and made fun of them by calling some specific names. The humiliation they face in their own country regarded as foreigners and made fun for how they look is no different from how the black skinned people face in the western world. During the Covid situation, there were even reports that a mall had not allowed few of them to enter just on the basis of them looking like “Chinese”!

 

Stop Racism

The obsession with white skin:

Right from our childhood, we have been taught the difference between Beautiful and Ugly with the pictorial representation of a white skinned lady and dark skinned lady respectively. Even a doll has a white skin just because a kid won't like a black skinned doll, such is the kind of discrimination put right from the childhood days! Owning a black car or a black shirt is termed cool and trendy and the reverse when you got a black life partner! Bollywood celebrities tweeting “Black Lives Matters” is kind of hilarious given the fact that they endorse advertisements of fairness creams where it is being shown that a guy is not getting a girlfriend just because he is not fair, and a girl is not getting a husband because she is black; qualifications hardly matter, right? While getting a child adopted, how many would prefer a dark skinned baby? How many would date a girl or a boy who is not fair?

 

Conclusion:

Being modern doesn’t mean to look modern from outside, but you should be modern inside your mind. There is no place in this world to judge a person based on his skin color, neither is there any place for any kind of discrimination. There are so many well-known “black” athletes bringing pride to their country in the Olympics, as well as so many soldiers defending their countries even with their lives without thinking of which color they are doing this for. A life is as same valuable for “black” or “brown” as of a “white” and rather than abusing other races, people should join hands to fight against injustice. Afterall, “All lives matter”!



So what is your view on this issue? Please do share your experience if you had any.

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