Devangshu Datta: The same legacy of hating success

VIEWPOINT

"In my country, there's a problem/ The problem is the Jew/ He takes away my money/ And he never gives it back/" Sasha Baron Cohen 2006, after an old Polish folk song.

Anti-semitism started with the Jewish diaspora almost 2,000 years ago. Forced out of their homeland by Roman oppression, the Jews wandered across Eurasia and eventually, the Atlantic. Everywhere they settled, they made reputations as hard-working over-achievers. Be it in the arts or the sciences, or the professions or especially in business, within a few years the Jews tended to outshine the locals.

This did not ingratiate them with the locals. It didn't stop them being hated and reviled. Jews were lampooned as moneylenders, as "Christ-killers" who followed a different religion, as quintessential "Outsiders". The Merchant of Venice reflects the attitudes and prejudices of 16th Century Europe; Ivanhoe tells you something about the 19th Century and Mein Kampf and the death camps it spawned are testimony to the 20th century.

Over time, Jewish immigrants became physically indistinguishable from the communities they settled among. It didn't matter. They continued to be seen as a people apart. Their visible achievements and prosperity meant that envy was added to hate to create an even more toxic cocktail.

It is important for every modern large immigrant community to understand that legacy of two millennia of hatred plus envy. The lesson: it doesn't matter if you are achievers; it doesn't matter if you are good citizens who are integrated into your country of domicile; a significant percentage of the locals will hate you simply for being different.

If you happen to be visibly prosperous and successful as well, they will hate you even more and be jealous of you in the bargain. In fact, a successful immigrant community may get it in the neck worse because there is a bigger payoff from hassling them. The Nazi Kristallnacht purge was driven as much by greed for loot as by the hatred of Jews. Idi Amin's 1970s expulsion of Asians from Uganda was also prompted by similarly mixed motives.

And that brings us to the desi diaspora. Indians are largely disliked across the African continent in places (Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa) where they have been settled in large numbers for generations. There is racial tension in Fiji and Guyana for precisely the same reasons. In these places, the Indian community is visibly more prosperous than the locals; it has higher penetration into the professions as well. It has been around for centuries and is totally integrated. Nobody denies that""but it has not fostered a warm, loving relationship. The locals don't like Indians.

Over the last two decades, similar attitudes have gradually become the norm in the First World as well. Earlier, there was a more patronising attitude""the white Briton or American thought of Indians as the restaurateurs and hotel-owners with the funny accents and the exotic spices. Or the newsagent who stayed open at all hours. Sure there was also the brown-skinned doctor and the systems engineer and the trading room dealer.

But then "Bangalored" entered the lexicon. And a lot of locals discovered that the "untermensch" with their coffee skins and funny accents not only made more money, they took away white-white-collar jobs as well. That has added a large dollop of envy to the racist cocktail.

Shilpa Shetty and her treatment on Celebrity Big Brother embody this attitude. Shilpa is obviously brighter, more attractive and more successful than the people getting after her. Her English is a great deal better than their Hindi and Kannada. She can cook, she's polite. So? Why would that stop them hating her?

The Jews have paid this price for centuries""the NRIs are the Jews of the 21st century. Successful NRIs have made their own individual accommodations with various avatars of racism. But the diaspora as a whole has to learn to handle it. Hopefully, not for the next 2,000 years, though.