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We're all racists. Can we change?

Someday I hope to see this on the front page:

The government of India has finally taken notice. The Home Ministry will soon table a Bill that is bound to create controversy. Many observers believe that this Bill assumes that India is a racist country.   Shishi Rudra, an eminent sociologist, says
The government of India has finally taken notice. The Home Ministry will soon table a Bill that is bound to create controversy. Many observers believe that this Bill assumes that India is a racist country. Shishi Rudra, an eminent sociologist, says

 

Last summer, I went to Delhi to work with a law firm. In order to save money, I stayed with an old friend of my father who had just come back after spending thirty years in London.


When I arrived, I didn’t see an Indian really. He was a fair man with a British Accent sometimes twinning with his Irish accent, fairly inherited by his marriage of twenty years to an Irish woman. After surviving for nearly ten years with little company in the one of the costliest cities in the world, he decided to return home. It took us a few days to break the ice and before we knew it, we were getting along fabulously. We would spend hours talking about his life in London and how he went there.. I guess it was liberating for him to speak to someone about a life he once had.


Of all our conversations, I will always cherish one the most. When I told him about how I thought my skin colour affected my self-image, he told me the most beautiful thing –  without this tone of your skin, you’d never be half the man you are right now. You are who you are because of your skin colour.


I had never thought of it like that. I had accepted the fact that we Indians loved white skin. We wanted to date fair girls and liked helping white people. I got through school hanging out with a group of boys who were far too nerdy to make friends based on colour. However, the reason I became their friend was because I didn’t understand how we were so shallow. Only the fair boys and girls dated, and the darker kids were participants in a play they had no role.


No matter where I went, racism was systematic and imbibed. I seldom see Indian companies celebrating our dark skin. The only time we even possibly see a dark person on television is when it’s a fairness cream advertisement. And we keep quiet.


Law firms in India clearly lack a non-discrimination policy. Having worked at some of the top law firms across the country, they all seem to lack a diversity policy. No wonder I don’t see many north-east Indians around. Are they really not smart enough to get into these law firms or is the reason something that goes into the Indian Psyche?

 

There was a movie that Salman Khan acted in some time ago. A cheap copy of Bruce Almighty. In the movie, Salman’s sister doesn’t get any marriage proposals because she is dark. However, when he gets the same powers as God, he makes her fair. Proposals start pouring in from every place on earth. I was disturbed because I knew how this would affect the young minds who would watch this.

 

Everyday we’re bring conditioned to white skin. And I don’t know how or when we’re going to change. Racism is so imbibed in me that it takes me a moment to judge people of different skin colours objectively. I’m still waiting for a day when we start seeing the pattern in which racism in India functions. Maybe then we’ll have our Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

 

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