Its an issue that keeps bothering me every now and then. Be it the euphoria around the success of an "Indian origin" (latest example a candidate for Britain's speaker) person or be it our hypocrisy of dealing with issues of discrimination on the basis of caste / race / religion.
Lets face it, once and for all, any success of an Indian origin person is at best his own success or of his/her respective nation. India's got nothing, absolutely nothing to it. Vikram Pandit left India when he was sixteen and Indira Nooyi may owe as much to Yale (if not more) to her success as much as IIM-C does. So lets study their success with as much objectivity as we can to look within ourselves instead of just laying ourselves down on our bellies to roll a red carpet just for their Indian roots. Its perhaps more than a slap on our face that an Indian sportsperson looks to foreign shores for training while any engineer / MBA looks to Ivy League as ticket to success. Till such time we look within and do something about it, we would perhaps continue to beat our chests for hollow pride in the colour of our skin (read Indian origin).
That brings us to the other issue of current racism crisis in Australia. Haven't the stories suddenly died down? What happened? Indian students urged Indian media to play it down and our media heeded? Why did Indians urge so? Why are they hesitant to come back if there is so much of fear? Simple, its too lucrative to let go. Australian dollar is still earning more than an Indian rupee! Then why crib? Any country goes through cultural transformation when faced with an immigration flux. Nowhere I intend to downplay the issue. But then, lets also look what we do on a day to day basis. Reverse racism as some people call it, is as rampant as one can imagine. Be it the fetish for the fair skin to the hatred for black or fear of a beard. I'm not even getting into the casteism. It smacks of such blatant hypocrisy that it makes me squirm.
Though the two topics above may seem disconnected but I feel they are symptomatic of a common disease (if I may call it so). Its a serious lack of esteem or a complex of hiding behind the wall of jingoism or perhaps just a lid on the darker side of our psyche. Which in turn prompts us to jump at the first instance of success for brown skin or a collective mob behaviour when a specimen is under threat or is undone by a wrong.
Honestly this is what I feel. High time we became more mature in handling things and stand up for ourselves. Introspect. Amend. And progress. Till such time maybe the question will keep lingering.
Do you agree?
