Lets clean our own house first

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups.

The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.

Google trends tells me that ‘racism’ is one of the most ‘googled’ words in the recent times – thanks to the recent racists attacks on Indian students in Australia. All the news channels have suddenly got another ‘breaking news’ soon after the elections got over. Arnab Goswami, with his new found confidence of being the Number-1 English News channel, has been discussing these attacks with different guests on “Newshour debate”. Other channels are also following the story regularly and the whole racism saga has managed enough media attention in the last couple of days.

It seems that the whole country has come together to condemn these attacks on our citizens. Angry reactions are coming from all parts of the country, including the normal citizens as well as the politicians. Newly appointed External Affairs Minister, Mr. S. M. Krishna wasted no time in talking to his Australian counterpart and even PM Mr. Manmohan Singh condemn the racists attacks on the Indians in Australia.

Everyone seems to be accusing the Australians of being racists. They are racists because few of them hate the Indians (for whatever reasons) and want them out of their country.

Now compare the situation to that in our own country. I could take many examples but I’ll take the most recent one. Australians are racists because they don’t like Indians and want them out of their country. There are few in Mumbai who don’t want ‘North Indians’ in Mumbai and want them out of here.

Australians are racists because few of them attacked Indians. What about those who have been using violence against the North Indians in Mumbai?

Australians are racists because few of them make ‘racist comments’ on Indians. What about those who make ‘hate speeches’ against the North Indians in India?

We Indians, with our new found confidence, thanks to our growing economic power, have this habit of condemning everything that happens against us in other countries. We leave no stone unturned to make sure that no injustice is done to any Indian abroad. All of us are accusing the whole of Australia of being a racist nation. But what about our own country? Are we not a racist nation?

According to United Nations, the term “racial discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

Well, going by the UN definition of racial discrimination, we are one of the most racist Nations on Earth. How many times we discriminate our own countrymen based on race, color, descent or ethnic origin? Its everywhere in our country.

The Australians don’t want us there and are trying to throw us out of their country. Aren’t we used to such behavior in our own country? We do face discrimination and we do discriminate, based on caste, religion, regionalism etc.

So, do we have the right to brand a whole country (in this case Australia) as racist when we also practice the same? I think we need to clean our house first before accusing others. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘ There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self’.

 

An eye for an eye makes the world blind

 

“An eye for an eye, makes the whole world blind.” But nobody seemed to be bothered at this point of time. Thanks to few fanatics and our politicians (no less fanatics themselves), we are slowly becoming an extremist society. Though the use of the word ‘extremist’ might raise a few eyebrows.

 

For long, the word extremist had been attached to ‘Islam’. If you do a google, 8 out of first 10 results refer to Islam. Invariably, we relate these terms like extremist and fundamentalists to Islam.

 

But lets face it – we are no exception. No matter how much we deny it, every now and then, we, as a society, show glimpses of extremism in our behavior. What is more worrying is the ever increasing frequency of such behavior in recent times. We have had two very disturbing incidents recently which corroborate the history of our extremist behavior.

 

• Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur was arrested for her alleged involvement in the recent Malegaon and Modasa blasts

   

• A young man from Bihar Rahul Raj was killed when he was trying to hijack a bus to protest against the recent violence against the North Indians in Mumbai

 

Mumbai ATS arrested the Sadhvi from Surat. Apparently, Pragya Singh Thakur was part of a Hindu right wing group which carried out the blasts to avenge the killings of Hindus by Muslim extremists.

 

What is more scary is the fact that people are coming out in open to support the Sadhvi and her acts. I’m not going very far – my cousin thinks this was needed to teach a lesson to the ‘Muslim fanatics’. And everyday, while traveling in the local train, I hear people supporting the Sadhvi. The disturbing fact is that these are all educated people who, somewhere inside, support the usage of violence.

 

Not the ones to be left behind – the political parties are all geared up to reap the maximum out of the situation. The Sangh pariwar has openly come out in support of the Sadhvi and Bajrang Dal has already branded her as her modern day Goddess Durga.

 

In case of Rahul Raj, a 25 year old young man from Bihar was killed by policemen when he was trying to protest (?) against the recent attacks on North Indians by a political party.

 

His method of protesting – hijacking a bus full of innocent commuters with the help of a country made pistol. I don’t know what his intentions were or what was he trying to achieve. To be very honest, i doubt we’ll ever come to know what was going through his mind or what exactly happened there – thanks to the ’swift’ action by our police, who, on other occasions have been found wanting.

 

Though personally I condemn the action taken by the police (they didn’t even try to catch him alive), I don’t want to get into the debate – simply because we don’t even know what happened there. Did the boy actually fired 3 rounds of bullets on public (if he did, then what the police did was right), was he just trying to protest against a particular political party (even in this case, I personally don’t approve his method) with no intention of harming anyone..there are so many questions that need to be answered before justifying or condemn the action taken by the police.

 

To be honest, not many people know what conspired at ground zero. But my point is that there is no way you can hijack a bus, point a pistol at people and then justify your actions. This was totally uncalled for.

 

And as usual, our politicians left no stone unturned to add fuel to the fire. Without knowing the details, almost all of them tried very hard to take the centre stage by hogging the limelight. All of them gave interviews and addressed the news hungry media without any proper knowledge on the incident.

 

The State Home Minister justified the killing by saying that the ‘mad’ man deserved to be shot and that bullets were an answer to the bullet shot by the young man (wonder why he has double standards while dealing with the goons of a particular political party which started the whole drama).

 

All the Bihari leaders got together for the first time to justify the young man’s action by saying it was the result of the hatred caused by the political parties in Maharashtra (they simply ignored the fact that the young man hijacked the bus and was pointing pistol at local commuters).

 

Next day, another leader came up with another shocker. He expressed his satisfaction by stating that a Bihari goon was killed Bihari style (not to mention that it was his party which started this whole communal and regional divide). He is the mastermind behind many of the Hindu – muslim & Marathi – north Indians riots.

 

The bottomline is that both these incidences have set a dangerous precedent. In the first case, we saw a Hindu Right Wing party using violence to get back at the Muslim fundamentalists. The second one is equally horrifying. A young man deciding to prove a point against the constant acts of violence against a section of the society.

 

In fact, slowly but surely, all of us are getting involved in it. We need to save our society not only from muslim extremists but also from Hindu extremists, Bihari extremists and marathi extremists now. Because an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

 

We must act now. This must stop. We need to realise that this dirty politics of caste, community and regionalism is taking us nowhere. We must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.