What’s your opinion?

I was not very regular with reading news. I prefer a physical newspaper, but not subscribed to one in US. Well you can say, I have been lazy to log on to the internet and check the news daily. One of those days, I got to know about the attacks on Indian students in Australia. I was taken aback by the incident. I had heard about racists acts in Australia, but never imagined it to be a prolonged incident. These incidences have attracted attentions from various well known personalities as well as governments, appealing to stop these attacks and take necessary action.

Today, I remember two incidences of racism. A friend of mine was completing her graduate student in Australia, where she was a victim of a racist attack. The culprit forcefully grabbed her mobile, broke it into two pieces, and threw it back on her. She was badly hurt. She filed a complaint with the police who caught the culprit and was put behind the bars. She raised her voice, fought against it.

Another incident is my personal experience. My friends and I were waiting for the T (Train service in Boston, USA), when a man started abusing us, making racist comments. It was difficult to fight back, as it were our initial few days on a foreign land. We walked away, without protesting.

Two different situations handled in different ways, but one commonality – Racism.

When I look back to current incidences in Australia, I am puzzled, weather these incidences are really racist attacks or a mere co-incidence? Australian police did mention that some of these incidences were not racist attacks, which makes it clear that some incidences were racist. So the big question is the purpose behind the racist attack. Definitely these students are brings good business to the Australian government. And along with that it also gets access to qualified human resource and revenues from tourism.

Let’s look at the racist incidences in a different setting. If international students or for that matter anyone from other country, especially African countries come to India, would we, as Indians, say that we are not racist? In this regards, I would like to mention two reports. Firstly, a post by Jug Suriya on Times of India blog, impressed me. His topic “We’re even more racist than Aussies” is so honest, and I must say I agree one hundred percent with him. Another report which I remember was aired on one of the Indian new channels few years back, which dealt with people with darker complexion, especially citizens of the African countries who were victims of racism in India. With the light of these reports can we say India a racism free country? In my opinion we are racist. So what can we say about the attitude of Indians?

What’s your opinion?