Racism’s ugly spectre stalks India

Are Indians racist? If the answer is in the affirmative, is not the platitudinous claim by Indians that they embody unity in diversity utterly hollow? When Indians from the heartland betray racist prejudices and indulge in violence against fellow Indians from the ‘margins,’ what moral right do Indians have to fret and fume against fissiparous tendencies in many parts of the country?

These questions are becoming increasingly relevant as reports of racist attacks in Delhi on Indians from the Northeast appear in the media with sickening regularity. The latest report reveals that the Resident Welfare Association in Munirka Village in South Delhi decided to evict all northeastern residents from the area because “they are spoiling the culture of the place”. That “the culture of the place” did not stir any indignation against the brutal rape of a 14-year-old Manipuri girl by the son of her landlord in the same locality a week ago is hardly surprising because the culture that is sought to be preserved not only condones the excesses of hyper masculinity but also blames the victim for the crime.

The rape of the teenager and the insensitive attempt of the Welfare Association to preempt further rapes by evicting the victims came close on the heels of the lynching to death of Nido Tania, a 19-year-old boy from Arunachal Pradesh, another state in the northeast. That the mindset in Delhi is no exception is evidenced by similar stories from the Indian heartland, including the murder of another northeastern young man in Bengaluru and a calculatedly instigated mass exodus of northeasterners from the city two years ago. Someone commented on social media that “the time may come when a Chinese may be mistaken for a northeasterner and beaten up. And China will not spare India!”

Not that northeasterners are the only victims of racial slurs and assaults in India. Nor is it that racism is a monopoly of North India. Shiv Sena, the Marathi chauvinist party founded by the late Bal Thakeray in 1966, was originally formed for the purpose of driving South Indians from Bombay (now Mumbai). Before he chose the Muslims as a pet target for of his taunts and terror, it was the South Indians that Thackeray and his party demonised and brutalised in the formative period of the party. Raj Thackeray, his estranged nephew and an incorrigible demagogue as venomous as his uncle, keeps the legacy of his exemplar alive by targeting North Indians in Mumbai. The language and idiom used by all these worthies smack of the worst kind of racism, dehumanisation and misanthropy. The language used in interstate disputes, especially when they spill on to the streets — such as between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in recent times — is not much different either. On top of all these flagrant expressions of chauvinism, there are the many stereotypes that each linguistic, religious, caste, and regional group considers as divine truths about Indians different from them.

Racism is perhaps the apt word to describe all these only if we use the term beyond its lexical limitations to include a wide range of deep-seated prejudices and murderous animosities based on differences in colour, sartorial customs, region, language, creed and caste. Indians resent and abhor racism only when they find themselves at the receiving end. A not-so-welcome treatment at the immigration counter in a foreign airport or denial of job abroad in preference for an individual with fairer complexion — Indians are quick to jump to the conclusion that they are victims of racism. But they never introspect as to how they themselves practice myriad forms of racism in their everyday lives, much to the detriment of ‘the idea of India’ that is now under serious existential threat.

The political milieu in India today is perfectly congenial for the growth of not only racism, but also its logical culmination — fascism. That is precisely why we must place the eruptions of chauvinistic furies in different parts of India in the larger context in order to better understand the anatomy of Indian jingoisms. The soaring popularity of Narendra Modi is symptomatic of how easy it has become in India to manufacture consent for murderous ideologies and mindsets. India’s most divisive figure is perilously close to occupying the prime minister’s chair if we are credulous enough to believe the much compromised national media.

The irony of the situation is so bizarre that Modi made hardline BJP leader L.K. Advani look like a secular, democratic dove. The two gentlemen have the blood of thousands of Indians on their hands and neither expressed any remorse to this day. In spite of this blood-stained history, many eminent Indians ranging from corporate honchos and media luminaries to internationally acclaimed academics and pseudo-Gandhians proclaim Modi to be the ideal leader for the country.

When the magnanimity of vision is thus replaced by the naked cynicism of power and the ideologies of hate, it is only natural that all forms of exclusivist mindsets lethally strike the body politic with renewed vigour and confidence.

India may survive Modi and the other minor and major manifestations of ‘Modification,’ but the scars left by the present juncture will take a long time to heal. For the ideology that is predicted to rule India for the next five years is none other than the one that assassinated the Father of the Nation and that incorrigible apostle of peace — Mahatma Gandhi.

Shajahan Madampat is a cultural critic and commentator based in Abu Dhabi.