Anti African Racism In India: Some Ruminations
By Joe.M.S.
25 January, 2014
Countercurrents.org
The recent political drama in which Delhi’s AAP party minister Somnath Bharti was embroiled, point to certain unique peculiarities of the Indian mindset. The minister, it seems apparently ordered the police to arrest Africans on a generalised suspicion raised by some people, posing as defenders of puritan culture, that Africans were indulging in prostitution racket. So some poor African women were apparently groped , chased, intimidated and it seems one of them was even forced to urinate publically to test for drugs, though they were later found to be free of drugs. This incident has drawn criticism from the progressive feminist activists (See Kavita Krishnan’s article in kafila
http://kafila.org/2014/01/23/why-aaps-stance-on-somnath-bharti-is-disturbing-whether-he-is-eventually-sacked-or-not-kavita-krishnan/ ) and even from the English media like NDTV. But some regional papers, were biased and gave the news, indirectly supporting the moral brigade, so that it elicited chauvinistic anti-African response from some racist Indians, abusing Africans as prostitutes and stereotyping them as drug peddlers. Even a video which has gone viral has shown AAP member Kumar Bishwas insulting Malayali nurses as darkskinned and there fore unattractive, in a highly racist and sexist manner. But the height of surprise was the mild condemnation and sophisticated defence for such people by ‘progressive’ intellectuals like Yogendra Yadav and Sara Joseph respectively, whom we adored till the other day.
The racial signals emanating from such incidents should make one pause, and demands a dissection of the Indian psyche, which despite the stint with many progressive movements, entertain such racist views. Even the progressive circles are not absolute exception. A look at the matrimonial column itself in India will vouch for it’s racism, as the appetite for white skin is gargantuan.
I myself being a black skinned Indian , could really understand the obsession with fairs kin and fair and lovely fairness creams , even among my own kith and kin- an obsession which literally debilitates many psychologically. Instead of merely theoretically indulging in tracing its aesthetic legacy, some quick fix solution to save many is needed. I have been insulted and subjected to name calling like ‘Nigerian’, in the well educated Kerala, my native place, two decades back. Even in Europe I have been thrown at with eggs by the white teenagers. One has to literally take on the intelligentsia for their tendency to hush up skin colour as a frivolous matter and look at it point blank, bluntly on the phenomenology of skin based racism as it is , to avert untoward incidents like what happened in Delhi.
The media has to share a good part of the blame, as it is the common man’s visual philosopher, cultivating and conditioning their world views. See for instance in one of the last year Tamil super duper hit movie , Singam 2 , the hero Surya, calls the villain words which amounts to an African monkey. And in his earlier movie Ayan, a comedian wonders whether the shit of an African is yellow. This kind of prejudices which passes for comedy, conditions the mindset of the people and such accumulated contempt built over a period of time explodes. This could happen in a state where Periyar, the champion of the down trodden, who uniquely showed atheism can be philosophy for radical social change, is sad. Even in Kerala, all TV comedy shows portray black skin as a thing to be laughed at. Many a black skinned comedian therefore has to indulge in self deprecating humour, making themselves the butt of elite jokes. If this is the case in the reasonably progressive south, one can imagine the outlook of an average person in the Aryavarta, where reactionary forces are deep rooted. One would be totally astonished to find Gandhi’s own views on Africans, in the recently released book ‘Gandhi before India’, by Ramachandra Guha.
Even in dalit intellectual discourse, the problem related to black colour of the skin is given a marginal importance, compared to the chief specifics of Indian caste system . But body, colour and its phenomenological importance is great, though theorising on its historical importance is equally valid. Since, body and skin as such, is the theatre on which the colonial history is acted out, it requires a study in its own right. Darkness and the perception of it as it is, has been deeply informed by the imprint of colonial discrimination and stands symbolically for a history of universal discrimination.
The Dalit Indian mainstream intellectuals has not been as vociferous in condemning the alleged violence against African women in Delhi by AAP, as they had been in the case of Khobragade. This could be because most of them follow in some sense, the vision of Mayawati to embrace a kind of Dalit capitalism, as against any universal left vision. But unlike in the case of America, where a black bourgeoisie could be born due to historical peculiarities at the time of it’s genesis, the hope for the birth of dalit bourgeoisie is all most impossible in this crisis ridden predatory neo-liberlaism, when marginalised native people from Columbia to India, are defending their forest land and way of life against ecological disaster caused by Capitalism. Hence, it was sad to see even an Ambedkarite leftist intellectual like Anand Teltumde, casting aspersion on the very motive of the complainant in the Khobrgade case. This could be the reason we rarely get a Manning Marable, Dubois, C.L.R.james, Cornel West,Bell Hooks or Angela Davis in India. Sharad patil is not the given the kind of limelight given to Chandraban Prasad.
To come to think of the Anti African anti black racism it will be a wonder to many to think that Indians entertain such thoughts , despite the existence many massive leftist parties and their struggles in India. But in India , despite many good people at a personal level, the left worked as a kind of sanitised intelligentsia, positioning them on the supposedly scientific authority of economics, which ultimately amounted to economic reductionism, throwing the question of culture to the endless debate on superstructure and truncated revolution. A rereading of Marx in the Indian context is the need of the hour. An Althusserian African philosopher like Paulin J.Hountondj, is rarely discussed in Indian Marxist circles.
Joe, is a social science teacher from Kerala. Worked in various places of India, now residing in Ireland.
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