For months, India and Australia have been sparring over attacks on Indians Down Under, which India alleges are racially motivated. 'Curry bashings' have dominated daily news in both countries, provoking New Delhi to issue travel advisories, straining diplomatic relations and prompting many Asian students in Australia to return home in fear.
Last month, Canberra condemned a cartoon in an Indian newspaper showing an Australian police officer dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member. The advice this month from a top Australian police officer to Indian students to 'try to look as poor as you can' to avoid attacks was met with equal disgust from Indians.
Things have got so bad that, at one point, the Indian Premier League, cricket's new money spinner, seemed in jeopardy as Hindu fascist party Shiv Sena threatened that it would not allow Australians to play. And therein lies an irony.
Being an Indian working abroad for years, I know a thing or two about racism. No, I have never been roughed up by bigger white men in dark alleys. Neither have I ever been shouted at by complete strangers for no reason. Racism often comes in far subtler forms, showing you your place without violating the norms of human interaction.
But being an Indian, I also know that Asians should not be talking about other people's racism. We are among the worst offenders. The irony of the Sena's rage against 'racist' Aussies is that its own political fortunes are built on racist and parochial attacks directed at fellow Indians. Apart from routinely telling Indian Muslims to 'go home' to Pakistan, the Sena, based in west India, and an even more rabid splinter group these days are saying the same thing to north Indians, whom they portray as culturally inferior subhumans usurping local economic opportunities. Thanks to them, a low-skilled north Indian worker in the western city of Mumbai today feels much more insulted and insecure than any Indian in Australia.
And, racism extends far beyond the so-called lunatic fringe. Skin tone is a national obsession in India. Ask a dark-skinned Indian woman looking to get married, or look at the ads for 'Fair and Lovely', where the whitening cream rescues the dark and ugly. Though there is debate over likening the caste system to racism, if racism is defined as an instrument of social exclusion, the caste system must be the most elaborate architecture designed by mankind to perpetuate discrimination.
