The race drum sounds

Mar 14, 2015 Editorial

The Times of India is the largest English language newspaper in India. It is a daily publication that examines sensitive issues in the country. Recently, it examined politics in India and the issue of racism. The comments follow.
Where have India’s political voices against racism gone? Indians are some of the most racist people on earth, thanks to the caste system and its culture, of which an aesthetic that valorises a fair complexion is an integral part. It comes naturally to Indians to practise vicious racism at home and still wax outraged when Indians abroad come up against racial discrimination.
This makes a mockery of not just India’s claim to the mantle of opposing discrimination, harking back to Gandhi’s role in South Africa, but also of the Indian Constitution and the process of forging national unity in this ethnically, regionally and linguistically diverse land of ours.
In the national capital, insularity combines with brutality quite often, to attack people who look different every now and then. People from the northeast and African nationals in residential colonies and on the Metro have fallen foul of racial prejudice in some recent high-profile incidents. Bangalore offered sordid solidarity to Delhi’s bigotry in an episode of violence against northeasterners for their crime of not knowing Kannada. While such depravity is unfortunate, it is not wholly unexpected. But what is truly astounding is the political class’ collective silence on the subject.
Politicians are opportunists. Their short-term interest lies in currying favour with the majority, complete with their prejudice. Therefore, local politicians in sites of racial attack are likely to identify with, and even help, the aggressors. But some politicians also aspire to be statesmen, because the scale of their ambition transcends the locality, if for no grander reason.
Such people at least should come forward to denounce racial attacks and uphold the values of the democratic Republic they swear to uphold. We do not want to hear pious declarations that the law will take its course, when racial attacks occur. We must hear senior politicians to whom large numbers of people look up condemn such violence and such attitudes. This is imperative, if the force of the state as well as the moral authority of leadership is to be brought to bear against such crimes, if India is to strengthen as a nation.
India is the largest democracy in the world with its people spread across the globe. Guyana is home to a few hundred thousands who still look back with longing to the Mother Country. The question of racism affects Guyana the same way that it does in India and influences decisions in the country.
It is not that the people of Indian ancestry introduced racism to Guyana. Rather, it was the colonial master who was bent on controlling the population. He adopted a policy of divide and rule and applied it successfully.
Ever since then there has been what is now called ethnic insecurity. When elections come around, the people see themselves as being distinctly different and let their distrust of each other be known.
Things reached the stage where the government moved to establish an Ethnic Relations Commission. Today, with the advent of every election there is a media monitoring unit. Some years ago, the international community was afraid that Guyana was heading the way of Rwanda. The country had gone down that road before back in the 1960s.
The United Nations sent a special rapporteur, DouDou Dienne, from Senegal, to investigate the situation and to make recommendations. He concluded that while racism existed, the situation had not reached crisis proportions.
Another election is approaching and again there are faint stirrings of the race drums. More than three years since the last elections, former President Bharrat Jagdeo recalled that the main opposition went to the bottom houses and whispered the vow to oust “coolie people”.
No one recalled hearing any such things back then and none has come forward to say that such a vow was ever made.

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