Race Race Go Away

The title might remind you of the nursery rhyme we all sang leisurely long ago....
"Rain rain go away, come again another day".But this time you would rather wish this four letter word goes away forever.

With the growing racial attacks on Indians, racism has suddenly got its undue share of media space...again. The last time it was in limelight, it was for the infamous Shilpa Shetty and Jade Goody spat. Someway or the other the subject neither fades nor fails to catch our attention. And every time its brought up, it always show Indians at the receiving end.
And this is exactly what makes it popular, for viewer consumption back home.

For some reason, may be because of our colonial background, the common but misplaced notion about racism is that, its only against the blacks or browns by the whites. Having said this, I would like to add that the first racist theories to be published and pursued as science (called Eugenics) was done in a country we all look up as a guardian of democratic and human rights, the United States. In fact it was from here that Hitler took the cue for his own racist theories.

But, that's what history says. And this is where I would like to differ.
In fact race theories and strategies were first devised in India. How??

India, which has the oldest civilization had perfected the art of selective discrimination against section of its people by the now infamous "Caste System", long before the whites realized ,they were whites. The manner in which the society was segmented, brutalized and exploited is something we all know. But, interestingly that's not all. In fact we have practiced racism ,very consciously, in aspects of our lives. The North-Indian's dislike for the dark Dravidians of the south, the mainlands step-motherly attitude towards their mongoloid brothers in the east, the massacre of non-locals in Assam and Manipur, Sikh massacre of 1984 to the very common Hindu-Muslim riots, in fact all smack of the same underlying thoughts and fears of racism. If your community doesn't figure in this list, it doesn't mean it is any way better. Its just that we may not know all about it.

In fact racism seems to be so ingrained in our minds that we see some inconspicuous displays of it, too. The darker of our brothers looking for the fairest of the brides is of the same mindset . In fact in communities where sacrifices are common, the machete always fall on the black animal. The white is spared, as its thought to represent peace and purity. The black in contrast is supposed to be the epitome of all evil. The same idea has also made inroads into colloquial dialects. In Bengali, the dark complexion is known as 'Moila' which means dirty. There may be countless other examples which will point towards the same prejudice.

All these just re-emphasize that live in a highly racist society practicing it in a number of overt as well as inconspicuous ways. It just needs to be seen how long mankind takes to realize the foolishness of these conflicts. With more and more interactions between different communities, it is desirable that they realize the commonalities and understand the futility of these parochial and archaic mindsets.

Amen