Prathamesh Themdeo | Jayendra Muley

Amid COVID- 19, when the USA is experiencing the breeze of upcoming presidential elections, a decade-old issue of racism caught fire. The world has a brutal history of Racism. With much racist violence in past, death of Mr George Floyd catalysed the citizen movement to eradicate racism from American society. Racism is one of the most inhuman behaviours which is leading to violence and inhibiting the growth of victim communities from living a peaceful and free life. In the 21st century when the human community is advancing beyond Earth, social issues like racism must not find a place in our society. To support this, the whole world came forward in support of American citizens for fighting against racism. Celebrities leaders, activists and many organisations uplifted the genuine movement. Indians are also not away from participating in this good cause. To the darker side, we as communities have become so impulsive that we uplift social issues to the highest for a certain period only without proper follow-ups and brainstorming for the future. Example of which can be seen from shifting of trends of social talks from COVID-19, border issues, racism, animal brutality to celebrity suicide and police brutality, etc. This shows our restlessness and lack of concern about the topics because we are leaving them and moving on in a way that some issues never happened. Unfortunately, all of us would come back again to the issue of racism in future when the world will lose another George Floyd! But what does racism really mean to India and what can we learn from the current scenario? Racism means an act of discriminating individuals or community based on prejudice. It is an act of considering any individual or institution superior to the other without any justifiable parameters or myths. Racism need not be related to white-black all the time. Now that the people are fighting against racism of colour, we should take this movement further to all other types of racism which are happening knowingly or unknowingly.

Let us see racism through Indian spectacles. India is known for ‘Unity in diversity’ which is undoubtedly a proud compliment for us. But, for many decades we have been misusing our diversity to break our unity. So, this is the time to wake up and prevent ourselves from moving from diversity to discrimination. Passing on prejudices and stereotypes from one generation to other is an early stage and root cause of racism. We can observe racism of various types and at various levels especially in India. We all have experienced or seen it, but either has ignored it or were unaware of the fact. For instance, a common person talking any regional language is comfortably considered as inferior to the one speaking fluent English. Even we have observed discrimination within the same language based on the slangs or vernaculars (For example; Bhojpuri, Varhadi, Kokani, etc.). Critics to this talk about language pride. We must feel proud of our own language but it doesn’t give us right to defame others who speak a different language. Of course, there is historical importance of each language, but conservation should not become a toxic competition to show the greatness of one culture over the other. Also, Indian regions are divided based on geographical borders for administrative propose, but it has given rise to racist behaviour based on region as well! ‘Bihar-Bhayya’, ‘Kanjus-Marwadi’, ‘Gujrati-Vyapari’ are nothing but stereotypes that we Indians are tolerating since years. We have to understand a thin line between ‘diversity’ and ‘discrimination’. People of one state are treated differently in other states denying the fact that we all are Indians. A Bihari travelling to Maharashtra in search of opportunity is nothing different from a Maharashtrian migrating to the USA for a high paying job. For that matter, we can see the evergreen race of development in Vidarbha & Western-Maharashtra to showcase the superiority even though both are the parts of the same state and same country as well. Culture and traditions are many times used to show one’s greatness over other cultures.

Another aspect where people still behave in the manner of superiority and inferiority is the “holy” field of education. Many of us still have an outlook of seeing some field, as a field of luxury and honour whereas other fields as inferior. We still judge people by their field of education and sadly by their income. A father sitting in a couch, listening to the melody of Hariprasad Chaurasia while sipping a coffee try to explain to his child that why he shouldn’t choose to be an artist as a career option. Group of friends while enjoying the luxury of five-star hotel discuss that hotel management is not a good field of making career. These stories can be heard in every second house in our country. The main reason for this is that we often inculcate the thought of superiority of some field, and that superiority is absolutely based upon the income from the field and ready opportunities available. For example, consider two students with bachelorette degree; one in engineering and other in arts. Both are the same level of education, but society considers ‘Arts’ guy inferior because he doesn’t have that many instant opportunities available as that of an engineer. In this way, the output of education is measured based on money rather than knowledge. Roots of this educational racism can be seen at the primary school level when section C students are considered lower than section A student. Also, a student strong in mathematics but weak in History is considered intelligent. Whereas, student strong in history and weak in mathematics is still considered as weak. Why are we reluctant to acknowledge that a student strong in History subject is as intelligent as the one strong in maths? Such wrong beliefs in education are translated directly to the field of work.

Occupation is the next stage of education which has also experienced similar invalid discriminations. To boost the spirit of entrepreneurship (race), drawbacks of doing a job (inferior race) are usually highlighted. Whereas, the working class is the building block of any established business. It is clear that every individual cannot possess business acumen. So, this type of classist behaviour can restrict individuals from giving their best performance in jobs. However, a comparison based on the level of job satisfaction can be a fair criterion. Other than parameters like income and job satisfaction, we often come across racism based on formal education. Irrespective of the expertise and income, some occupations are underrated by society. For instance, an expert and high earning farmer doesn’t get respect as any barely educated working individual. Here, it is important to note that, even though the farmer is educated in his field, society tends to over-rule them just because they are not educated in the formal education system. Funnelling down all the discussed issues, we can always narrow down to many unnecessary divisions in the name of diversity which are acting as roots of conflicts. Our attitude to pamper a certain type of racism while neglecting other types of racism is also a kind of Racism. Therefore, we have to acquire a broader view of our society to treat each person as Indian rather than regional, linguistic or occupational identity. This racism is based on parameters which are mutually exclusive and unhealthy for social integrity. There are many other forms of racism based on caste, creed, sex, etc. which we aspire to discuss separately in future.