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”!
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”!
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