Ironic - maybe not..

Most of us have heard about the aussie attacks to students in australia. What intrigues me that these attacks are only hinted at the students? What about the Indian professionals working there.. Have they been mysteriously excluded from these attacks? That possibly cant be true. Racisim cant be just limited to the student community. So - how has Australia- the continent with perhaps the lowest population come to be a racist country? Surely they need "outsiders" to fill in the gaps they themselves cant fill. Be it a university or be it any job. They cant go about with the excuse that they dont have enough money to educate themselves. All of us Indians know how we educate ourselves at these foreign locations. Its through loans, a lot of hard work and our parents hard earned Indian money. Plus we vie for scholarships. To add to that we need to understand the culture and how we can make ourselves the extra money on the side. Surely this is much easier for a citizen of that country. So what makes them not go for it. The answer is simple. The government helps them out in terms of compensations or community jobs or something easier that makes them not go for the hard work in life - that is study or a 9-5 job. So why the anger at people who want to work hard and get themselves a degree and a better quality of life. It looks like pure jealousy to me.

Now this has raised an interesting point back home. We are a multi-cultural country ourselves. "Racist" tendencies perhaps are more likely to be present here than anywhere in the world.Most countrymen say - why blame other countries - apne andar jhanko. But inspite of that - as a country we are tolerant - perhaps more than the world, else we would have such incidents on a regular basis reported in India.
Yes, you might look at incidents like the MNS declaring war against the Biharis or the South Indians turning their nose up at the North Indians or internal dislike between certain South Indian states. But do we consider them "serious"? Some we find politically motivated. THe MNS incident is more the need of a person wanting to make a political name at the cost of certain people. It insitgates some to think, maybe act - but turn violent? Nope, not unless they are getting paid for it. The inherent divide of the Northies vs the Southies is again something that is relative and perhaps will never ever merit a violent attack. Its more fodder for our gossip for our grannies or parents. So is the internal South divide. If you try to dissect I am sure we can easily get each state declaring a war against the other due to some reason or the other. Reasons could be as mundane as "we dont like the way they talk" to "what do they eat, you said??" to "is that the way they dress there??".

But Indians - I am proud to say - dont harbour a mean streak. We wont resolve to passing a screwdriver to some poor mans head just because we dont like the way they talk or because a community happens to earn more than ones community. So no - we cant compare international incidents to ours and say its the same. Most cases that I know have been politically instigated (that includes the horrific Godhra riots) rather than a normal bypasser or teenager bashing another guy - just because he felt anger within him to do it.

Its time we woke up to understanding and appreciating our Indian culture. And stopped lapping up everything given by the western culture. They have some positives but as apparent there are gaping holes in their acceptability of other cultures. I would like to point out that these incidents have come to light in Australia, but these exist all over the globe. There is low acceptability of cultures which are not western in the western countries. Take a look at UK/Europe/US and you would know what I am talking about. What? have you forgotten the great Shilpa Big Brother Shetty incident?

As a world - its the western countries that need to learn from a country like ours on what tolerance is and then label themselves "developed". Plus I dont get the third world country tag - who gave it and why are we one(topic for another post:) )? Why look down on someone who is not in the race for development - YET. Look where that got our world anyway - we are in a bad mess of global warming gases. Is non development criminal OR is being non human and a barbaric more criminal?

So garv se bolo - Jai Hind!