The recent hate episode reminds me of the fact that the average subcontinental Indian has scant respect for our brethren from North East. Just a few days back, I was sitting at a small Indira Nagar restaurant whose only waiter happens to be a guy with predominantly “Mongoloid/Asian” features. I shared my table with a group of 20s something guys who kept calling him out to him as Nepali, Chinki and Chinese etc, and the chap kept attending to them with a smile. Then they started abusing him for no specific reason with some snide racist comments. Luckily I knew the waiter’s name thanks to my friend Shashank Srivastava. All I had to do was just call him by his name aloud every time the boys called him a Nepali or Chinese. His name incidentally was Rahul (Naam to suna hoga fame), and this silenced the youngsters. Then I had a chat with one of the guys from the group, and told him that Rahul is an Indian from Darjiling. That guy immediately realized that he was being racist and started apologizing to me, and said that it was all for fun, and they never meant anything. I guess 95 percent of us are like these boys, we laugh at a racist joke, share one and join the fun without ever meaning to really hurt people. But it is that 5 percent who clearly needs to be taught a lesson. They exist everywhere, in every city and every state. What we need is clear education on the rights enjoyed by every Indian. The fact that you have a right to speak your language, practise a religion of choice and be what you want to be anywhere in this country. Also that it is important for us to recognize that we have absolutely no right to infringe on that right of a fellow Indian.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 02:20:06 +0000
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