Home › Articles › Why we need to worry about the recent racist attacks in India

Why we need to worry about the recent racist attacks in India

By vinodnarayan on October 16, 2014 • ( 0 )

If India falls into racist divide in any level it can be catastrophic and if not controlled it will be a major taint that cannot be washed and cleared that easily…. Any sign of racism should be dealt with an iron hand, strict anti-racism laws, fast track court, public outcry and influential citizens coming out to condemn it…. anything that can stop it from spreading..

We saw Nido Tania die earlier this year and though there was an outcry, it all fizzled out with time….. then the recent attack on the Manipuri student in Bangalore and now the Gurgaon incident where the Nagaland Youths were beaten… just tells that it is the need of the hour for the Government, law makers and citizens to ask why this is happening…..

Though many would like to believe these are one off incidents,they are wrong, especially the pattern that we see here….We need to understand and address this with urgency and care…… because racism can spread like fire unknowingly till it blazes and burns down societies

Why I said racism can be catastrophic for India has to do a lot with the country we are … Our country still has casteism burning in its underbelly…. Educated people who forcibly want to be ignorant and uneducated people who are not being made aware…. People even today without guilt are able to reason casteism into the way they look at the world…

With casteism as a major evil and the many languages and different cultures that exist, intolerance on any level can always spiral out of control….. though there can be an argument that the diversity of India (language/culture) in itself will contain/curtail large scale divide… this is something worth an interesting debate…. But inherently we have this tendency to stand separate claiming different identity

India has always had its share of strife between locals and people moving in for work and education, Mumbai has it, Bangalore has it and many other places…. Primarily as cities and areas expand and become more inviting for people all around the country this conflict happens in a country like ours….

It also becomes easy for local organizations/movements to make the locals feel threatened with new people coming in….. these local associations break outside their real existence as language/cultural torch bearers and become power beds where politicians sleep…. they all together the call people to reclaim their identity to the language, culture, race and anything that differentiates them…

This divide is something political parties feed on…inherently what these movements do is ask people to group together to identify how differently superior they are from others….”Differently superior”

But new laws and fast track courts might just not be enough…… Alex Haley the author of Roots who told us the story of Kunta Kinta has said “Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.”

This is a very important statement that needs to be understood well in detail…. Yes racism is not automatic, it is learned, so we need to have programs that will help people unlearn it and ensure that it is not taught to the next generation in anyway……