03-25-2006, 05:12 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->OUT OF LINE- Neither fair nor lovely
 Indians are perpetrators as well as victims of institutionalised racism
 BY RUCHIR JOSHI
 Link
A FOREIGNER friend once asked me: âWhat is it you hate most about Indians?â The question had me silent for a long while because the list was a very long one. How to pick and privilege one thing from such a full cornucopia of detestations? We are dirty and unhygienic. We are corrupt, greedy and smallminded. We are braggarts who are actually full of self-pity. As individuals we tend to have contempt for anyone who has less money than us or is âlowerâ in the caste ladder. As Indian men, we have taken misogyny to greater heights than most other societies in the world. We are violent and cowardly... Ah yes, âAs a society we are deeply, deeply racist,â I replied.
What I should have said is we are very racist towards others but even more so towards ourselves.
Itâs shameful but true that we are institutionally and individually racist towards people with dark brown skin, especially if they come from Africa rather than from America or Europe. Equally, anyone possessing what our upper-middleclass poetically calls âchinky featuresâ â whether they be Tibetan, Nepali, or from parts further south and east â will have experienced at least unspoken racism. Some from the North-eastern states will even have faced it from the muzzle of a paramilitary semi-automatic rifle.
Now, itâs bad enough that a majority of us think of other people of colour as strange and inferior. What is worse â the flip-side of our projected racism â is that we have swallowed and made part of our psyche the skin-hierarchy of our erstwhile masters. So deep is that training of over two centuries that, even 60 years after Independence, generations of Indians who have never known the Raj still tend to go into ji-huzoor mode before a Whiteskinned person.
This bowing and scraping acceptance of the superiority of those, whom one Jamaican lady in London used to refer to as âpinkypeopleâ, goes from the surface into much deeper areas, into places of the being where it can get hard to pinpoint.
At the most obviously visible level you have the grotesque servility of staff at tourist-heavy sites. Watch hotel door men when they open doors for goras, and then compare this to when they open doors for the darker pigments. Itâs not just âbig bakhsheeshâ you will see turning in their eyes as the bow goes just that teeny bit lower and the smile just that fraction wider. Even though service people depend on all customers for their livelihood, they donât do the same fawning, kow-tow dance for, say, Arabs or rich-looking Malaysians and Koreans, and very rarely for a desi, unless he happens to be well-known or a billionaire.
You can observe the same thing with waiters and barmen. Wait and watch at any busy 5-star bar or cocktail reception and you will see the pinky-person automatically getting served first. Itâs not even as if he or she has to do something like actually jump the queue (though some do, with an ugly insouciance). Itâs just that the waiter with the tray of drinks will magically reach them first. Or the barmanâs eyes will tunnel through everybody else and find the one Caucasian face thatâs there with a cheery âAnd what can I get you, sir?â Switching from this, let me recount two recent meetings with friends, both of whom have spent a long time working in India for quasigovernmental organisations of two different First World countries. Sitting with the first friend, I got into a discussion about money. Because he had worked for nearly 30 years for a rich Western country, I assumed his salary would reflect that. Not a bit of it. When we reached that stage of the evening when one can discuss salaries and incomes, he told me his pay â the equivalent of what a middle-level TV or ad executive would earn, say someone in their mid-30s whoâd been working at the job for five or six years. âAnd what does your boss get?â I asked, his boss being a younger know-nothing from the mother country of the organisation. âOh, her⦠she gets the pay she would get at home, naturallyâ (i.e., a huge amount for India.) When I tried to probe a bit deeper, my friend, on whose clever and indefatigable shoulders the entire organisation has run for a quarter-century, put a lid on the discussion: âForget all the liberal veneer. Fundamentally all these guys are racist.â A similar discussion with my other friend, who had just left the job sheâd been doing for 15 years, yielded the same words. âAt first I thought it was just one or two odd people who were like that. But now I have to accept that most of them have a gora aadmi-kaala aadmi divide in their heads. They are, most of them, racist.â Now, I have known both these friends for a long time and I would not say they were unhappy in their jobs on a daily basis. They are both strong, self-respecting people and I wouldnât imagine either would put up with out and out racism for a moment. But the subtle, ongoing, bland, institutional âthis is not us, this is our systemâ had finally got to both of them. The question, of course, is how come they put up with it for so long?
I donât think the answer is in their paychecks. I think the answer is that civility, intra-personal war mth and the edifice of each countryâs âsystemâ fooled otherwise intelligent people into believing they were getting the best deal possible. As Indians.
Move away from this and think about the visits of Clinton, Blair, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush. Or move away even from the well-fingered Anglo-Saxons and try and recall the footage of the visits of Chirac or whichever German Chancellor who came last. Forget about the main players, (I would especially exempt the Sardarji who shuffles along affably no matter who is walking next to him) but look closely at the minor ministers and Indian officials at the margins of the frame. Again, compare their body language to when they receive someone like Mandela, Assad or Suharto. What you will see is the extra bend of the waist, an extra stiffness whenever there is a pinky VIP around, and a much more relaxed air when itâs a person of colour not Condi Rice.
The fact is, some bizarre genetic and historical programming has made us servile and sycophantic by default when we come face to face with people of Euro-Nordic descent. And this cuts from grand state dealings to the micro-daily exchanges on our streets.
Itâs as if a cancerous fairness cream that has trickled into our DNA controls us whether we are discussing the purchase of fighter planes and nuclear technology, the commissioning of a TV documentary for a European channel, the delicate pan-fried bekti on the a la carte menu or the purchase of a camel belt at Pushkar. Itâs neither fair nor lovely, and itâs about time we washed it off.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
 Indians are perpetrators as well as victims of institutionalised racism
 BY RUCHIR JOSHI
 Link
A FOREIGNER friend once asked me: âWhat is it you hate most about Indians?â The question had me silent for a long while because the list was a very long one. How to pick and privilege one thing from such a full cornucopia of detestations? We are dirty and unhygienic. We are corrupt, greedy and smallminded. We are braggarts who are actually full of self-pity. As individuals we tend to have contempt for anyone who has less money than us or is âlowerâ in the caste ladder. As Indian men, we have taken misogyny to greater heights than most other societies in the world. We are violent and cowardly... Ah yes, âAs a society we are deeply, deeply racist,â I replied.
What I should have said is we are very racist towards others but even more so towards ourselves.
Itâs shameful but true that we are institutionally and individually racist towards people with dark brown skin, especially if they come from Africa rather than from America or Europe. Equally, anyone possessing what our upper-middleclass poetically calls âchinky featuresâ â whether they be Tibetan, Nepali, or from parts further south and east â will have experienced at least unspoken racism. Some from the North-eastern states will even have faced it from the muzzle of a paramilitary semi-automatic rifle.
Now, itâs bad enough that a majority of us think of other people of colour as strange and inferior. What is worse â the flip-side of our projected racism â is that we have swallowed and made part of our psyche the skin-hierarchy of our erstwhile masters. So deep is that training of over two centuries that, even 60 years after Independence, generations of Indians who have never known the Raj still tend to go into ji-huzoor mode before a Whiteskinned person.
This bowing and scraping acceptance of the superiority of those, whom one Jamaican lady in London used to refer to as âpinkypeopleâ, goes from the surface into much deeper areas, into places of the being where it can get hard to pinpoint.
At the most obviously visible level you have the grotesque servility of staff at tourist-heavy sites. Watch hotel door men when they open doors for goras, and then compare this to when they open doors for the darker pigments. Itâs not just âbig bakhsheeshâ you will see turning in their eyes as the bow goes just that teeny bit lower and the smile just that fraction wider. Even though service people depend on all customers for their livelihood, they donât do the same fawning, kow-tow dance for, say, Arabs or rich-looking Malaysians and Koreans, and very rarely for a desi, unless he happens to be well-known or a billionaire.
You can observe the same thing with waiters and barmen. Wait and watch at any busy 5-star bar or cocktail reception and you will see the pinky-person automatically getting served first. Itâs not even as if he or she has to do something like actually jump the queue (though some do, with an ugly insouciance). Itâs just that the waiter with the tray of drinks will magically reach them first. Or the barmanâs eyes will tunnel through everybody else and find the one Caucasian face thatâs there with a cheery âAnd what can I get you, sir?â Switching from this, let me recount two recent meetings with friends, both of whom have spent a long time working in India for quasigovernmental organisations of two different First World countries. Sitting with the first friend, I got into a discussion about money. Because he had worked for nearly 30 years for a rich Western country, I assumed his salary would reflect that. Not a bit of it. When we reached that stage of the evening when one can discuss salaries and incomes, he told me his pay â the equivalent of what a middle-level TV or ad executive would earn, say someone in their mid-30s whoâd been working at the job for five or six years. âAnd what does your boss get?â I asked, his boss being a younger know-nothing from the mother country of the organisation. âOh, her⦠she gets the pay she would get at home, naturallyâ (i.e., a huge amount for India.) When I tried to probe a bit deeper, my friend, on whose clever and indefatigable shoulders the entire organisation has run for a quarter-century, put a lid on the discussion: âForget all the liberal veneer. Fundamentally all these guys are racist.â A similar discussion with my other friend, who had just left the job sheâd been doing for 15 years, yielded the same words. âAt first I thought it was just one or two odd people who were like that. But now I have to accept that most of them have a gora aadmi-kaala aadmi divide in their heads. They are, most of them, racist.â Now, I have known both these friends for a long time and I would not say they were unhappy in their jobs on a daily basis. They are both strong, self-respecting people and I wouldnât imagine either would put up with out and out racism for a moment. But the subtle, ongoing, bland, institutional âthis is not us, this is our systemâ had finally got to both of them. The question, of course, is how come they put up with it for so long?
I donât think the answer is in their paychecks. I think the answer is that civility, intra-personal war mth and the edifice of each countryâs âsystemâ fooled otherwise intelligent people into believing they were getting the best deal possible. As Indians.
Move away from this and think about the visits of Clinton, Blair, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush. Or move away even from the well-fingered Anglo-Saxons and try and recall the footage of the visits of Chirac or whichever German Chancellor who came last. Forget about the main players, (I would especially exempt the Sardarji who shuffles along affably no matter who is walking next to him) but look closely at the minor ministers and Indian officials at the margins of the frame. Again, compare their body language to when they receive someone like Mandela, Assad or Suharto. What you will see is the extra bend of the waist, an extra stiffness whenever there is a pinky VIP around, and a much more relaxed air when itâs a person of colour not Condi Rice.
The fact is, some bizarre genetic and historical programming has made us servile and sycophantic by default when we come face to face with people of Euro-Nordic descent. And this cuts from grand state dealings to the micro-daily exchanges on our streets.
Itâs as if a cancerous fairness cream that has trickled into our DNA controls us whether we are discussing the purchase of fighter planes and nuclear technology, the commissioning of a TV documentary for a European channel, the delicate pan-fried bekti on the a la carte menu or the purchase of a camel belt at Pushkar. Itâs neither fair nor lovely, and itâs about time we washed it off.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->