What is worse? Is it racism or casteism? Both are equally malevolent social evils, I would say. India has the double, dubious distinction of being home to both evils. If you add communalism, regionalism, extremism, jingoism and other isms that are present in huge measures, then what we have here in India is a stockpile of evils, almost like a hydra-headed monster. That’s sad for a country that boasts of an ancient cultural heritage that the West looks up to for spiritual food and holy guidance.

India is a land of multiple races, scores of languages, countless dialects and diverse cultures. So it’s not surprising that there are divisions, dissensions, tensions and conflicts in the country. The evil isms that plague India will continue to batter its social fabric. They cannot be wished away, brushed aside or buried under the carpet. But to pretend that we are a land of sages and have vast reservoirs of spirituality and pearls of wisdom to offer to the unenlightened West is risible. At best, the learning between India and the West should be mutual. Both can learn from each other’s mistakes.  

Talking about India, our brand of racism is as colour-based as the West. For instance, so-called ‘blacks’ are discriminated against even in cosmopolitan metros. African guests are taunted and called ‘dirty negroes’.

The Indian obsession with fair skin is evident in matrimonial advertisements that seek a ‘fair and beautiful bride’. Bollywood superstars like Shahrukh Khan brazenly appear in fairness cream advertisements for men, earning millions of rupees because of India’s weakness for fair skin. “Fair and handsome,” sings a television advertisement as Shahrukh pirouettes before a young man (who has become fair skinned after use of a fairness cream) being wooed by a bevy of fair beauties.

In India, racism has its roots centuries back when the fair-skinned Aryan invaders subjugated the local, ethnic dark-skinned Dravidians. The ancient Vedic texts legitimised the caste system by laying down four hierarchical classes of Brahman (priest), Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya (trader), and Shudra (menial or labour class).

As if casteism, racism, communalism, regionalism and extremism are not enough, economic growth in India has made capitalism seem like another evil ism, when it should have led to prosperity and equality. While incomes have grown, the income gap between the rich and poor has widened. It has created a new breed of racism – the racism of riches.

This is evident on the streets where there have been cases of drunk, rich kids running over poor people with their posh cars and in colleges where these nouveau-rich kids arrive in their chauffer-driven limousines. When these youth go overseas for studies, they transport with them their penchant for vulgar display of wealth and outlandish living, making them vulnerable to attacks by locals in their host country.

In fact, the attacks against Indian students in Australia are being seen by commentators as less of a case of racism but more of an assault by jobless local youth hard hit by recession, against the shameless display of wealth by rich students. The Indian media and politicians have raised a hue and cry against the racist attacks in Australia. But some analysts point out that what is happening in Australia is nothing compared to the diabolical racism and casteism seen for centuries in India and continuing today without letup. 

In an article in Indiancatholic.com (owned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference India) Father Cedric Prakash says, “What is happening in Australia has to be condemned in no uncertain terms! However, what we desperately need at this juncture are louder voices and shriller protests at home to set our own house in order.” He adds, “We have to protest when our rights are trampled upon when we are abroad; however we have a greater responsibility to protest when our own fellow-citizens are denied the rights and freedom which are legitimately theirs!”

Father Prakash in his article has mentioned the attacks against people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states in Mumbai by local residents, citing it as a case of regionalism. They were attacked because they were ‘outsiders’ from states outside Maharashtra but were working in Mumbai. In Gujarat, huge billboards proclaim a “Hindu Rashtra (Hindu State).” In several cities and even villages in the state, Muslims have been confined to ghettoes or are forced to live in peripheral areas, says Father Prakash. Muslims in Gujarat are still treated as second class citizens with little or no access to quality education and employment opportunities.

Christians too in many parts of Gujarat are subjected to the same fate.Father Prakash has not mentioned the planned assault against Christians in Orissa (which belies India’s claim to being a free, ‘secular’ country where all religions are treated as equal) and incidents of violence against the minority community that keep occurring from time to time.

If the attacks against students in Australia are being termed as brutal, then the assaults against minorities in India and so-called lower castes or Dalits that occur with sickening regularity is nothing less than genocide.