There is racial abuse in every country, including in India. Blaming all Australians only makes things worse.
While it’s natural to feel agitated by the recent attacks on Indians in Australia, we’d do well to remember, in a mind free of nationalist rancour, that, if these attacks are a shame, which they are, retaliation and angry public rallies to protest these attacks are a bad strategy and are misguided. Such demonstrations of anger by foreigners in a foreign land don’t solve anything. They only generate bad publicity, blow things out of proportion, antagonise public opinion, and actually trigger more attacks instead of stopping them. No nation likes to see accusing foreign fists raised at them on their own soil. It is simple as that.
Racial abuse of foreigners takes place in most countries and societies, in one form or another. It shouldn’t, but it does. The Sikhs were attacked in the US after September 11, 2001. Two years ago, there were brutal neo-Nazi attacks on Indians and Africans, among others, in Germany. In 2004, Russian skinheads in the central Russian town of Voronezh attacked Asians and Africans, shouting “We will kill all foreigners.” Last year, thousands of foreigners were displaced by xenophobic violence in South Africa. But nobody held the respective governments responsible for those outrages.
So, why are we up in arms against Australia in particular? Criticise, by all means. Lobby local pressure groups. Lobby the local media. Lobby for more intense diplomatic initiatives. But why condemn the nation as a whole? Why retaliate? Why confront? The way even some responsible sections of the Indian electronic media earlier on were engaged in fanning up anti-Australian sentiments, playing the nationalist card and flashing such provocative slogans as “Racist Australia,” suggests we aren’t any less racists ourselves.
Would we, for example, tolerate, say, American tourists blocking up Connaught Circus in New Delhi, or forming vigilante groups at tourist spots to protest rapes or abuses some of them suffer in India, and implicating the Indian government for their plight? The home minister of Goa, Ravi Naik, wouldn’t even take note of what the Russian Consul General in Mumbai had to say in connection with the mysterious death of a 19-year-old Russian girl in the territory. “Who’s the Russian Consul General to tell us what to do?” was his arrogant response.
Let’s not forget that racial abuse occurs in India, too, and not too infrequently. To some of us, even Indians from another part of the same country are foreigners. Remember what happened in Mumbai, not too long ago, when people who hailed from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar came under vicious attacks? Remember the anti-Bengali riots of the mid-1960s in Assam, or the anti-Bihari movement in the same state in 2003?
For foreigners in a foreign country, the sensible thing to do under such trying circumstances is to register complaints with the authorities, have faith in their goodwill, lobby the home government, but never lose one’s cool in public. One has to be careful how one behaves in public, too. In a foreign city, one always learns to take routine safety precautions such as looking for a place in a relatively crime-free neighbourhood, avoiding roads considered unsafe at night, and not taking the last bus or train out when few passengers are likely to be on board.
Whether it is India or Australia, rowdies will always look for easy targets. And policemen will always be policemen, doubtful of a foreigner’s complaint against a native. It’s hidden nationalism that exists in most of us. Hidden racialism may erupt when two different colours are pitted against each other, as when white cops in Los Angeles, six years ago, booted and shot dead a black man running from them in fear. If the policemen in Melbourne dragged resisting Indian protesters across the road to waiting prison vans, they were not being different. Our policemen do it all the time. They even tie protesters to their bikes and drag them along.
In the end, not even one’s own government can provide full redress. It can try to exercise political pressure, even threaten to exercise economic pressure, but don’t expect it to push its relations with a friendly country to the brink. In today’s interdependent world, neither politics nor economics works that way. The problem has to be settled at a personal level. Mindsets don’t change on demand. No law can be expected to be powerful enough to fully stop hit-and-run strikes. If one doesn’t like a country or want to face the risks, one should simply leave. There’s no need to stay on and suffer humiliation.
It’s very unfortunate several Indian students have had to suffer racial attacks in a foreign country, but it would be a greater misfortune if Indians in Australia were to choose public confrontation to get redress. In doing so, they will harm not only the students’ interest, but also that of thousands of other Indians happily settled in Australia.
