Indian hypocrisy on racism

The recent attacks on Indian students in Australia have sparked off a major slew of protests down under, which threatens to strain Indo-Australian diplomatic ties. These attacks have taken on a completely different face because of them being labelled as racist in nature. The Indian government has publicly supported Indian protesters in Australia, implying their support of the 'racism' charge.

Strictly speaking, the word 'racism' applies to the concept of a perceived superiority in individuals belonging to one race with respect to individuals belonging to another race. However, independent of semantics, the root cause of this is seated within human nature itself. Since time immemorial, there has always been a need to identify with a community. Probably, communal behaviour led to human civilization itself! As communities mushroomed in various parts of the world, there was bound to be friction, especially in times of scarce resources. And somewhere in history, aeons and aeons ago, occurred the first communal riot. I firmly believe that human beings have not really evolved mentally over the millennia. We are painting a new picture on a new canvas today, but the paints are still the same. Is there even a solution to communal hatred? Is this a nasty side-effect of human civilization? These are all really tough questions to answer.

Anyway, in today's world that strives to be an egalitarian utopia, there exist some rules of morality and equality. While India draws its gene pool from many ethnic groups, such as the Dravidians, Aryans (Europids), Central Asians and Mongols, to name a few, the populace has amalgamated into a union over the centuries. But, as is the nature of humans, there are new differences to manufacture so that each person can have something to identify with.

I believe that, when the union of India was formed, it was a huge mistake to draw state boundaries on the basis of language. It merely gave people another opportunity to be divisive. If you think about it, one's principal language is one's principal identity in India. To compound issues further, there is the plainly visible difference in skin colour between the Northern and Southern Indian people. So often I have heard women advising other women, “Don't be out in the sun too long, you will get all black like a Madrasi!” It is a challenge to even begin criticizing such a remark. Should I first question this woman's intelligence because she clubs the four distinct Southern states as “Madras,” or should I feel utter disgust at her expressed displeasure at being dark-skinned (as though it were some unequivocally detestable fate) or should I rant about the mindless Indian obsession with fairness? We are a brown-skinned people with white-skin ambitions. Implicit in this statement is our acute sensitivity towards skin colour, which itself reeks of racism.

Tweak this with the addition of religion, and then tweak it further with the addition of castes, and finally tweak it even further with sub-castes! You don't really need to be Einstein to figure out the cause-and-effect relationship between caste identity and caste-based discrimination. And caste identity will never cease to exist as long as its active reinforcement remains a part of national policy. Caste information is sought at every educational and employment tier, caste-based benefits are provided, caste-based votes are sought, caste-based political gimmicks are staged (Meira Kumar, GMC Balayogi) and, in countless ways, caste is entwined into the fabric that is Indian life. I never knew my caste till I was out of school, and I never bothered to know my sub-caste till I was even older. I was forced to find out because I was entering a government-aided educational institution. Of course, people like me are probably very few, and mostly urban, because in the semi-urban and rural parts of India, caste is life. “Jo kabhi nahi jaati, wohi jaat hai” (Caste is that which one can never cast away). Let's not forget that India is where the concept of untouchability came about, and still exists in some rural pockets.

Communal tolerance is a dying a slow death in India. Men in power, frequently associated with the government or politics, incite communal tensions and forge communal rifts. Flared tempers and rampant disinformation synergistically turn fordable rifts into impassable chasms. This is the reality of India. Countless communal riots, ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, neglect of the North-East, anti-North Indian campaigns by self-important no-good morons (SNM, perhaps) in Maharashtra, the list is endless, much like government apathy.

The hatred between communities is simmering for so long in India that it takes very little for this black cauldron to boil over and scald everything in its wake. Whether to term this as 'racism' or 'communalism' or 'casteism' is a matter for the academics to decide, but the root cause is singular. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet (and its thorns would prick as deep). Indians should take a look a long, hard, introspective look into their own backyards before pointing fingers at other nations, which have a far cleaner record than their own.

I was in awe, too

Though I started off on an independent train of thought, it seemed appropriate to link this title to an article I read on Veena's blog. (I hope I don't hear you say “Awe, they are writing coordinated blog posts!”)

Over the years, a large number of trivial entities has been the reason for me being awed. The earliest such event that I can remember happened when I was in kindergarten. I had a neighbour who was a couple of years older than I (a very significant age difference, at that age... one may say 50% older!) who mentioned a certain “double-lined book” in conversation. With all the wisdom and experience of a 6-year-old, she explained that these books are used to write Hindi or Marathi script. So amazed was I at this complex entity (books were either blank or ruled... what is this new variation?) that I accompanied her to the stationery store to see for myself! The store was far, near the edge of my recognizable walkable universe, but I still went. Such is the power of curiosity!

Another such incident that I vividly remember occurred during my standard 1 exams. We had to write our answers on the question-paper itself, in contrast to the standard 2 students (who we shared the bench with), who had separate answer sheets. The teacher supervising the exam would occasionally hand out a “supplement” (one of the longest words I had ever heard back then! Aside: one of the proudest moments of standard 1 was when I spelled the word “umbrella” correctly during a “dictation”!) and students had to tie the supplement to the 4-sided paper they started out with! Wow! You can actually tie papers in an exam? Once I saw the guy sitting next to me perform this magical task. I shuddered at the thought of performing this herculean task the following year... I didn't know how to tie a paper! I knew how to tie shoelaces, but those knots are meant to come off easily too. What if my exam paper comes off? Oh, the stress!

And things didn't just stop with that. If activities of those one or two years older had such a profound impact, you can probably imagine my utter and incomprehensible awe at what my 7-year-older brother did! He went to boarding school for two years, at a time when I was 5 years old. My parents probably wanted me to try out boarding school sometime in the future as well, but to even begin to think of living away from home for a year, with strangers, where the only people looking after you were teachers (evil tyrants, cruel taskmasters, people who give homework – that infernal thing – and shout at us if we don't do it, and prevent us from talking by sternly reprimanding us with “finger on your lips!”) was inconceivably traumatic. I may have considered the possibility when I was a bit older, but the fear I had as a 5-year-old never really went away. It was a reputed school and I enjoyed visiting the place, but I could never think of living there. The day he left for boarding school for the first time, I was probably asleep at the time he left; and I had forgotten that he was to leave that day. I remember searching for him around the house... even under the cupboards and beds (which had a ground-clearance of 3-4 inches... how can a kid get under that, you ask? Well, I guess I lived by Sherlock Holmes' words even then... see the quote in the sidebar).

There were many such incidents at numerous points. In standard 12, my biology professors scared all those who were intending to enter medicine by telling us the size of medical books. Gray's Anatomy is so big that you will never have a chance to read anything a second time, so you have to pay more attention when you read your books, they said! As I compose this post, I see all my medical books sitting in my bookshelf and then I see my degree on the desk that attests that I have read all those tomes, and I smile. I never did own Gray's Anatomy, or read it even once, let alone come back to read something twice!

The fact is that time marches on relentlessly, without heeding one's insecurities. We adapt, we improve and we manage to overcome the situation. It is really not such a big deal. I would wonder if I could go through reading my standard 12 books: measly little booklets of some 300-400 pages each, compared to the 1200-page volumes I was reading a year later, and 2500-page volumes I was reading three years later! A million people, just like you, went through this before you, and so will you. This concept has blunted my awe of things, and I no longer react the way I did growing up. More accurately, it has blunted the negative emotions (the insecurity and anxiety) attached to the awe. And I think that's a good thing.

Much '49-O' about nothing, and other political issues

I am sure you have received those forwarded emails urging you to go to a polling booth and not register a vote. These emails have been around for years now, and I do remember some newspaper reports of disgruntled citizens who were disallowed from casting such a vote even during the previous general elections of 2004. The famous Rule 49-O of the Conduct of Election Rules, which govern how the process of elections is conducted in India, is what gives a citizen the right to go to a polling booth and register the fact that he/she does not want to vote. It was intended to prevent bogus voting on the said person's behalf, but has found a new use in today's politician-bashing educated society.

I think it's quite dumb to go and cast a 49-O vote at this point. It amounts to a wilful wastage of your vote. This new phenomenon originates from the attention-grabbing email publicity of its existence. The emails go on to add that, if the number of such no-votes registered outnumbers the votes received by the winning candidate, a re-election would be held with none of the current candidates being allowed to contest. However, this is not true. There is no provision to hold a re-election or bar the candidates. See the 49-O info website for more on this [www.49-O.info].

The number of people casting the 49-O vote is so insignificant, even in this election (going by newspaper reports), that even if bogus voting was done in all those people's names, it wouldn't affect any electoral race. There are 543 seats and about 550 million eligible voters, making each seat voted on by an average of 10 lakh (1 million) people. Of these, assume 50% turn up to vote, i.e. 500,000, and the main fight is between 2 or 3 parties. Are the 10 or 20 or even 100 people who cast a 49-O vote in each constituency ever going to affect the results? Well, they may in the odd seat that may go down to the wire. In the 2004 general elections, only 2 seats had a victory margin of lower than 500! And all this is assuming that the 49-O voters' names will be used for bogus voting. So, on the whole, casting a 49-O vote is a waste.

A few days ago, I had a long discussion with a few friends about whether we voted for local issues or with a particular political party at the centre in mind. The group was evenly divided and it made for a very loud, interesting and colourful debate. Of course, it helped that a couple of them were slightly inebriated! In a city like Mumbai, most “issues” candidates fight elections on do not even apply. In a rural area, a population of one constituency (~1 million) would cover at least 500 villages and a few more semi-urban areas. Building roads, constructing schools and hospitals, providing water and electricity, demolishing X's place of worship to build Y's etc. are probably the major issues there. In my constituency, in the heart of Mumbai's suburbs, roads are handled by the BMC or MMRDA, electricity comes from Reliance, schools are run by the BMC and private concerns, and the BMC even provides water! So, the candidate who sits in the central government really has very little to do in my constituency!

In urban areas, where a lot of the basic amenities are available to the populace, we find other issues to talk about, such as the 26/11 terror attack. However you look at it, and even if Shivraj Patil deserved to be sacked, the fact remains that the police, coast guard, RAW and whoever else was supposed to be vigilant, was caught unawares. The incident was the last straw that broke the camel's back for Patil. But how can that one man be held responsible for what happened? Isn't it foolish to use this incident as something to base one's vote upon? The point I am trying to make is that, in urban areas, we have very few local issues that we can justify our vote on. Besides, I feel that the 26/11 terror attack can hardly be referred to as a local issue.

So, the educated urban voter has to usually vote based on national issues, or for the guy that comes from his caste. Surprised? Well, the caste identity is highly entrenched in all levels of society, and education has nothing to do with it. This is a reason why caste-based reservations in India (aimed at giving higher education to “backward castes”) will never wipe out the caste system – the root of the problem. Anything that reinforces caste identity can never wipe out the caste system. Anyway, that was not the point. I am also a firm believer in voting with selfish motives. A great disadvantage of democracy is that everybody's vote weighs the same. So there is no point in wasting your vote based on highly romanticized issues that are most relevant to somebody else. When these selfish reasons get multiplied by 250 million (low voter turnout, you know), we get the collective voice of India. And this voice can be truly representative only if each has thought about himself/herself.

This was the first election that I voted in, despite being eligible in the previous one. (Aside: In my enthusiasm to be the “responsible youth”, I had filled out all the requisite forms, stood in queues and produced proofs to have my name registered, all in vain. The responsible youth had met the irresponsible bureaucracy.) Having put forth my case for voting with the central leadership in mind, I examined my options. Realistically, there are two major players. The first party currently has a very respectable prime minister, but has a tradition of nepotism. The person leading it and calling all the shots (the “high command”) was a bartender in Italy, before marrying an Indian pilot. Oh, but that pilot was plucked out of the sky because he had to become India's prime minister one day... by his mother whose only claim to fame was that her dad was involved in India's freedom struggle. And, yeah, make no mention about the fact that his greed for power probably led to the division of the nation and bloody communal riots. A few years ago, this very party's government passed a law that would severely curtail my chances at pursuing my future education in a field of my choice. [More about this law here]

The second party used to have a highly respectable leader, known for his mild manners and cross-border peace initiatives. With him passing the baton to the new leadership, this party seems like a much less attractive proposition. This party's prime ministerial candidate, and his deputy (a Chief Minister from a Western state), are known to be fiercely communal in their outlook. The deputy will definitely hold a significant portfolio, such as the Home Ministry, if this party comes to power. Workers driven by this party's ideology tore down a religious place in 1992. Riots broke out in major cities, killing more than 2000 people. In 2002, the deputy allegedly supervised and orchestrated communal genocide in his state, in which more than 1000 people lost their lives. (News has it that this loser was denied a US visa on two occasions because of his involvement in such criminal activities!) A leader from this party had openly led mobs during this rampage.

Well, much as I detest the policies of both parties, I had to vote for one of them. Effectively, that is how things work in India. At the end of the day, one of those two parties will form the government. If voting “for” a party doesn't work for you, it is practical to vote “against” the one you hate more. It is way better than casting the insipid 49-O!

No matter how much development comes about in that Western state, I cannot get myself to vote in a leadership that has the blood of thousands on its hands. This was the most important factor on which I based my decision. It is quite ironic that, within a month of the results being announced, I plan to leave for the USA for my further education and I am likely to be there till after the government elected this time finishes its term!

Did the title strike you as odd? '4' looks like 'A', '9' flipped is 'd' and 'O' is 'O'... much ado about nothing!