The Racist Indian

We Indians are the biggest hypocrites and one of the most unsporting nations in the universe. We cannot appreciate the fact that a sportsman who opposes our team plays well. Instead, we humiliate the man in the most childish way possible, by making monkey faces, and BCCI has to then cover this up by saying that it was not an insult because we worship a monkey god! I’ve always believed that Indians are inherently racist.

If you have any doubts about what I’m saying, just take a look at the matrimonial advertisements posted in our newspapers every Sunday. Never mind how well-educated the groom, he always wants a bride with a "milk-white" complexion. So I’m not surprised that Andrew Symonds, an Australian of aboriginal descent, was treated so boorishly in Wankhede Stadium. It is ironic that we use racial abuse, since we ourselves have been the butt of it as colonial subjects and immigrants to the US, UK and other Commonwealth states. We also use it against the host country--I’ve often heard Indian immigrants to African nations use derogatory terms about the blacks amongst whom they live.

Why is it that we look down on people who are dark-skinned? Does it have anything to do with our scriptures stigmatizing the dark-skinned inhabitants of India as Dasyus? Can’t we North Indians go beyond this and realize that for most Caucasians, all of us are brown-skinned? Do we have to try and take on Caucasian racism, in an effort to be like them? Why can’t we look at the solidarity of the Asian and African races, both of which have suffered so horribly from the effects of colonial and imperial incursions? Incidentally, when I went to Oxford, I learnt from a taxi driver there how the first immigrants to the town were stigmatized by the white community. It was only because the Indians and the blacks stood shoulder to shoulder then that they were able to make a home for themselves in the UK.

I suggest spectators to a sporting event behave themselves. If the sportsmen and women on the field choose to indulge in sledging, that’s their business.