The Racist Within!!

Watching on T.V. and reading in newspapers about the racism in Australia makes everyone's blood boil. Thousands of parents are anxious about their children living in the Oz. They don't know who will be the next Indian on the hit-list of Racist attacks. Its a grim situation.

But this has been the reality that always existed below the glamour of foriegn travel, stay or study. Its just out in the open now. Such incidents have always been there and almost everyone who is an NRI would have known and prepared for the racist incident happening with them at some point of time or other.

As we see the country united in action against the racists, it makes me wonder when we are pointing a finger outside, there are four others which are pointing at us. Don't we need to tackle the racist within to tackle the racists outside?

Yes, the racist within has also lived for decades but the difference is that we don't recoganize it in the open. We as people have been showing this racism in some form or other. Whether it be calling being late as Indian Standard Time, or calling all Indians corrupt when being at trouble at some goverment office, or when being at a traffic jam saying that Indians don't have a driving sense, or simply watching garbage on streets and saying that Indians don't have a sense of cleanliness etc etc etc.. and we keep saying all this and say that ''Yeh to India  hai yahan kuch nahi badal sakta''.. We take great pride in saying that, '' Mera beta to videsh se padh ke aaya hai, wahan woh 3 saal raha tha'' and when someone talks of Indian education and the great Nalandas and Takshashilas that India has created we say that ''come on, get a life dude''

Yes, not all of the above is unreasonable on our part, but to think about it we are creating a culture of racism within. When parents make such derogatory statements in front of young kids, the kids develop a similar mindset.

I want all of us to ask ourselves that until we gain that self respect, how can we expect others to respect our race? If we look at Germany, they take such pride in their race and identity which propels them to work hard and do the best in whatever they do to show to the world how great Germans are. And the kind of progress that they have made by the drive they get from the feeling of nationalism in the past fifty years after being a completely broken country and economy in debt makes the world take notice and respect them.

I remember fighting with a student in my IMS group discussion class who could said , ''what has B****Y India given me?, i will take my first flight to US when i clear GMAT'', as the instructor told me to calm down but i walked out of the GD saying I care a damn about the GD and the same for the people who don't care a damn for my country.

I would end this post by refreshing our memories to the amazing prayer that we all used to sing in school days, ' humko mann ki shakti dena mann vijay karein, doosron ki jai se pehle khud ki jai karein'

Jai Hind