A Prescription For Indians
To Seriously Fight RacismBy Jawed Naqvi
23 January, 2007
The DawnIndian schoolchildren would laugh innocently at this joke they started some years ago. Question: Why have Indian dogs become so weak?
Answer: Because Dharmendra has drunk up their blood! Indeed, in film after Hindi film the macho actor, now a BJP MP, has abused his foes at will. "Kutte. Mein tera khoon pee jaoonga." Dharmendra is Indian, and so were the men at the receiving end of his scripted ire. Anyone could conclude from the actor's trademark expletives that it must be ok, even worthy of applause, for an Indian to call an Indian a dog.
However, if an Englishman calls an Indian so, he must be a racist.
The Shilpa Shetty affair in which the B grade movie actress from India was called names by a B grade TV star from Britain is hardly worthy of serious discussion. English streets are crawling with racist louts.
But their society also produces the Amartya Sens of this world. And it's not even clear what racist slur was hurled at Ms Shetty, if at all. What is known is that the TRP ratings of Channel 4 have surged.
There's little anyone can do about racism anywhere. Yes, Zinadine Zidanne could be considered a model for the way he tackled his racist abuser during the soccer World Cup. But the price he had to pay was prohibitive.
Before the advent of colonialism in the 15th century, whereby European conquerors came face to face with the natives of the conquered world, surely there was racism in their respective homes, both in the mother countries and in the future colonies. Shakespeare's characterisation of Shylock as a mean Jew, and Martin Luther's anti-Semitic ranting to exhort Christian revivalism in Europe were of a piece with the overall atmosphere of subcutaneous hatred that prevailed during their time.
Centuries later, Adolf Hitler would be carrying out his pogroms of German Jews, not British or Indian Jews, mind you. German Jews. Ergo racism almost always begins at home.
But racism without an economic purpose would be pointless and unsustainable. South Africa's apartheid is a case in point.
Historically, throughout the tortuous phase of the ancient slave society, followed by mediaeval feudal societies and right up to the rise and consolidation of capitalism, racism has been the handmaiden of the ruling elite. Before the arrival of the Europeans, there was rampant racism in South Asia. Post-Islamic Arab society though ordained to be egalitarian by their new creed continued to profit from slave trade way into the 19th century.
Japan's estimated three million Buraku people live in isolated neighbourhoods, have fewer job opportunities and poorer health and living conditions than the rest of the population. The Burakumin minority is indistinguishable by "racial" characteristics, or by religion, from other Japanese. Like the dalits or 'untouchables' of India, the Buraku are defined by their descent, by poverty and by the work they do. Difficult to single out from non-Buraku, they nonetheless face an invisible wall of discrimination held in place by blacklists and hearsay.
Free India's constitution prohibits 'untouchability' but it is practised nevertheless in villages and in towns not only by upper caste Hindus but by Muslims as well. Halaalkhors, bhangis, mehtars are groups of Muslim dalits, who carry out degrading menial work, which includes carrying human refuse. For doing the work they do, they get ostracised. There is however a strong movement picking up across India among the 'ajlaaf' , the lower caste Muslims, against the ashraaf – the Pathans, Mughals, Syeds etc. for equal space. A right royal conflict is brewing. Unfortunately much of the tension at present seems to revolve around the question of who should lead the prayers rather than on any effort to seek equal social and economic space.
That will come with time.
When upper caste Hindus of the religio-fascist RSS sought to prescribe a second class citizen's status for Indian Muslims via Guru Golwalkar in 1939, the idea found resonance, even support, from upper caste Muslims of Pakistan in the 1950s. Maulana Maudoodi of Jamaat-i-Islami bluntly advised Justice Munir, who was investigating the anti-Ahmediya riots in Pakistan's Punjab, that he wouldn't mind if Indian Muslims were treated as low caste shudras and the racial 'Laws of Manu' were applied on them. The exact words are recorded by the diligent judge in his book -- From Jinnah to Zia.
However, by a strange quirk of history the same RSS which was glorifying Hitler and his treatment of the Jews in 1939 found followers who have today become thick as thieves with Israel. It must rank as the strangest paradox in the history of racism that a group that openly idolised Adolf Hitler and under whose watch hundreds of bookstalls at Indian train stations are still doing brisk business by selling Mein Kamf, the bible of racism – that group has become the biggest votary of Israel.
Therefore, racism will be there in India just as it will prevail across the world as long as the ruling classes have use for it. It is common knowledge that the racist Shiv Sena was patronised by Mumbai's industrialists in order to tame wayward communist trade unions – the Girni Kamgar Sabhas of the 1960s. Similarly the ethnic carnage in Gujarat serves the purpose of creating a trouble-free business environment, by changing the discourse away from the fact that workers are losing their jobs to economic reforms and mechanisation. It is odd that a society like India's that finds little or no time to discuss the daily assaults on India's Hindu and Muslim outcastes and the poor gets riveted to a frivolous discussion on Shilpa Shetty.
The howls of protest and the screaming headlines over the Shetty affair not withstanding, the double standards of the Indian ruling elite stand exposed when it comes to seeking an American visa. The story of a former Indian diplomat is illustrative. The self-respecting gentleman, whose professional calibre was once as legendary as his biting humour, was being goaded by his wife recently to meet the American ambassador to arrange their visas. The wife wanted both to spend their summer holidays in the United States. The diplomat was so incensed at the thought of having to give his fingerprints to the immigration officer of another country that he refused to seek a visa.
If Indians are willing to put up a good fight against racism, they should make it mandatory for all the countries that require their fingerprints to reciprocate with their own imprints at Indian airports. If the ultra-nationalist Indians can't or won't do this much, they would hardly have a leg to stand on in the global fight against racism. The alternative is for them to shut up and go to watch a Dharmendra movie instead. That would be less hypocritical.
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