Mood:
spaceyNow Playing: PLAYING TO THE GALLERY AND CHEERING CROWDS
Topic: RACISM
Why is there so much outrage over the killing of three Indian students in Australia and all the urban violence? There is a dire need to disabuse people of all misgivings about living Down Under. Australia is still a much better place to live in than many of the metros in India. Let's take it point by point as Arun Jaitley often does on television.
In the 90s when this reporter asked a widely-travelled American tourist at Mumbai airport, according to him which is the most unfriendly country, he promptly said, "India is second only to North Korea". Moments later the blood drained out of his sun-tanned face. He knew what he said was so politically incorrect. Though people around took umbrage of his no-holds-barred opinion, it was more interesting to know how would North Korea beat India in its own game. North Koreans, the American ventured to say, are bred on Leftist ideas which constantly implore them to fight for everything in life. The underlying philosophy of Communism is that unless you fight for everything you will never get what you deserve. Struggle, dissent and, more often than not, violence, unbridled and unapologetic, are fashionable and justifiable. Singur is the best example of the Left getting the taste of its own medicine.
One should admire the Australian prime minister and his ministers trying to calm the situation by being defensive. It was a civilised response and the need of the hour. After Raj Thackeray beat up Bihari boys at Kalyan station near Mumbai, the Congress chief minister of Maharashtra Sushil Kumar Shinde actually told the press that he supported Raj Thackeray on the son-of-the-soil issue, but was only against Raj's violent ways. That is like saying you support Hitler, though gas chambers are unacceptable.
Looking at the way the Australian police picked up Indian students who had blocked traffic at peak hour, again one admires their sensitive handling of people which.Indian news channels called brutality. Australian police should learn brutality from their Indian counterparts. Ticket collectors in Mumbai are seen herding groups of ticketless travellers by a rope. The justification is usually about how people should be humiliated to teach them a lesson, be it ticketless travelling or speeding on highways.
As pointed out in this blogsite long ago even Hindi movies project images of forthright, no-nonsense police officers slapping customers at dance-bars during a raid. That is so close to reality. Indians cheer loudly while watching such scenes, as in the hugely popular Hindi movie, Page 3. A dance bar in Mumbai is a place known for all the vices possible -- but not much of them are illegal and they conform to modern ways of thinking. The Australian lawyer who appeared on News Now was rational enough to point out that every society has its share of racists. And we in India have more than our share.
In a reported case in Mumbai, a young MBA graduate gave up her well-paid job after she was slapped by co-passengers while travelling in train, that too in the car reserved for ladies. In Mumbai suburban trains, passengers are stopped from travelling short distances, and people who defy this unwritten code get a taste of Indian vigilantism. Indians don't cover themselves in glory when they carry their home-bred traditions like eve-teasing onto the global stage. When young men from India get rounded-up for creating a racket at train stations in Japan, police are at a loss to understand their strange behaviour. No one in Japan treats women like that.
Tokyo police also get into frequent engagements with Indian and Pakistani residents, who after a drinking binge would create a racket in the dead of night. And needless to say, the two communities who live together in the same apartment get into violent brawls discussing political issues of their home countries. The best parallel to be drawn to these unruly behaviour is that of Israelis and Palestanians getting into street fights in Baroda (Gujarat). The police in Baroda remain a mute bystander as both communities have enough political clout to even escape rape charges in India. The gravity of misbehaviour in foreign soil can be guaged from the fact that in most residential areas in Japan local people refrain from flushing their toilets after midnight for the fear of disturbing the neighbourhood! We Indians have a long way to go.
Not long ago, a series of rape incidents at Kovalam beach brought forth the issue of security, or the lack of it in God's Own Country. In spite of all the rape victims being white, there was not even a restrictive travel advisory issued by any European country or the US, leave alone charges of racism. The perpetrators were all locals. The local media had stopped short of blaming white women sun-bathing in the nude to be the cause for giving local young boys the uncontrollable urge to rape them. Very similar to what is being said about Indian students' imprudent ways of living in Australia.
TV channels' penchant for shrill reporting, anchors bouncing on their seat and reporters peddling personal opinion as groundswell support for or against their pet themes have become an established form of journalism in India. The news reporting on the attacks in Australia was so devoid of objectivity or rational thinking that the evening news had become another TV soap -- replete with name-calling, grandstanding and manufactured outrage. Boston Legal series does not have the drama and colour as English news channels in India. News reporters anywhere in India should just get on to the streets near their office and they won't have to go far to find a more outrageous story of racism, facism and violent arrogance.
If police action on students in Australia was really so bad then someone needs to sensitise our own forces in India, before laying charges of brutality for holding up boys by their limbs and clearing the streets for rush-hour Melbourne traffic. The Bihari boy in Mumbai who raided a BEST bus with a gun gave up the custody of all the passengers within minutes. Later he was taken into police custody where he is known to have died. The forensic reports suggest that he was not killed during the police encounter, but in custody with a shot in the head. The presence of gun powder around the bullet wound, according to forensic reports, only mean he was shot at point blank by the police when in custody.
Racism is such a prevalent factor in India that in a city like Bangalore rickshaw drivers get cheeky if you do not speak in Kannada. Bangalore is also the place most known to the developed world, so much so that the name has become a verb. The attitude of the locals do not instil confidence in people from other states with their parochial behaviour. Driving in Bangalore with a Tamil Nadu registration number on your car can be a harrowing experience, as locally registered vehicles would deliberately try to nudge you out of the road.
Television reality music shows in India often brazenly propagate racism by granting marks to contestants singing local language songs as against candidates singing in the language of a neighbouring state. Racist tendencies are so commonplace in this country that Indians are quite inured to that. Aamir Khan's advertisement on harassment meted out to foreign tourists is the best example that could be quoted as a reality check for our chest-thumping national pride, that most often edges on hypocrisy and disdainful arrogance. Have you ever, ever come across an Indian who thinks his culture is outdated and all bunkum. One would rarely find an American who sings peaens to his own culture and lifestyle. Yet they, without any long-held traditions, live a much better and stress-free life in the US than we Indians do with all our cultural baggage. Just because Hollywood movies and American TV shows have a propensity to self-degrade themselves, mock at their own lifestyle and on some occasions, be extremely critical of their national and international state policies, Indians get a stick to beat the US with. Australia is no different, except that in the scale of arrogance it is a notch higher than Europe or the US. But most certainly Australia is much lower on the scale than India. As Mahatma Gandhi once pointed out quite eloquently, "if you point your fore-finger at someone you should realise that the other three fingers are pointed towards you". For India's it's probably all the other four fingers.
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