Tag Archive for 'racism'

Attacks on Indians in Australia: Is it racism?

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on February 6, 2010
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Rod McGuirk, The Associated Press, from Canberra:

Discerning the truth, amid the back and forth, has proven difficult.

The controversy comes amid explosive growth in the foreign student population in Australia. The Indians have grown the fastest, from 2,700 in 2002 to 91,400 last year. Overall, overseas students rose from 150,000 to almost 400,000 during the same period.

Australian universities expect Indian enrollment to plummet 30 percent this year, in part because of safety fears.

No doubt there is racism in Australia, as in virtually every society. Researchers have found that one in 10 adults here could be described as racist, a proportion that is not negligible, said University of Western Sydney geographer Kevin Dunn.

“It’s good that they’re a minority of people, but what’s bad is if we deny that that’s out there, and secondly, that we don’t do anything about it,” he said. “My concern is the Indians are right in saying that on those latter two points, we’ve got a problem.”

To what degree racism is behind the attacks is another question. More:

Curry bashing?

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on February 2, 2010
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Do the recent attacks against Southasian students in Australia constitute hate crimes or sporadic violence? And has the reaction been more harmful than the incidents themselves? Bina D’Costa, a research fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the Australian National University, in Himmal Southasian:

The story is actually far more complex than either of the two dominant narratives – on anti-Indian racism and students – would appear to let on. The problems not only appear to go well beyond the education sector, but also include class issues within Southasian communities, and racial tensions between South and West Asian communities. Shortly after the student protests, taxi drivers of Southasian origin demonstrated in Melbourne for their own security; many saying they have long felt unsafe driving at night. While those demonstrations were widely reported in the Australian media, the global media – including in India – did not pay serious attention to the pleas of the taxi drivers. But all the while, there was great focus on the plight of the Southasian students, most of them from relatively well-off families. While some Southasian taxi drivers are also students, the recent attacks, portrayed as targeting only Indian students, created a different kind of anxiety about Australia. Both the press and the middle class in India were able to mobilise critical public opinion to pressure the Australian government to respond to the violence. More:

Down Under, India’s Plunder

An Australian perspective on the recent attacks on Indian students. Jane Rankin-Reid in Tehelka:

First, let’s dump some false assumptions about the so called “lucky country”. Complacency about Australia’s tremendous success as a cohesive multi-cultural new world society is both a good sign that co-existence is second nature in our community, and potentially a bad sign of institutionalised insensitivity towards newer, more swiftly changing migration issues. Still, after decades of vigorous political correctness where official language was combed for all signs of offensiveness towards minorities of any shape or size, it is unsurprising that we Australians think of ourselves as some of the planet’s fairest, most tolerant and open minded individuals. We are, if only because by law, we have to be thoughtful and cooperative with one another. Sorry is our second name. But being sorry is not always enough, as indigenous Australians will testify. More:

Nobel winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan not worthy of phone without deposit

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on February 1, 2010
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Amit Roy from London in The Telegraph, Calcutta:

Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan feels he has been deliberately humiliated by the mobile phone company O2 which treated him less favourably than most customers by forcing him to pay a £325 deposit and refusing to budge even after he had explained he was an established scientist with an impeccable record of paying his bills.

“I am actually slightly suspicious that there is an element of racism at play here as well, since I can’t think of a logical reason why I should be denied credit,” said Ramakrishnan, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry, worth $1.4 million, with two other scientists.

The problems began on December 2 last year when Ramakrishnan, a US citizen settled with his wife in Cambridge for the past 10 years, went to a city centre O2 store to buy the highly recommended iPhone 3GS black, 32 Mb.

Ramakrishnan had no difficulty with the young white assistant who served him but the store’s manager insisted he would have to pay a deposit if he wanted the phone. Customers considered credit-worthy are not usually asked to pay such a deposit. More:

Attacks on Indians in Australia: Is it racism?

Published
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on January 9, 2010
in Crime and India
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An Indian man is in a serious condition in a Melbourne hospital after being attacked and set alight by a gang. He is the latest victim in series of attacks and murders of Indians in Australia. Last week an Indian graduate student, Nitin Garg, was stabbed to death in Melbourne.

Last year saw a spate of attacks against Indian students, which has deterred many from studying in Australia. Visa applications by Indians to study in Australia fell by 46 percent between July and October from a year earlier.

Read full story here and here.

Update: Two Indians questioned over an Indian’s murder

And in Sydney Morning Herald: Killing reveals another kind of race problem

In The Australian, Foreign students tell of fear on the streets:

Railway stations in Melbourne’s industrial north and west are the places feared most by Indian students.

It is there, after dark, as they make their way home from part-time jobs as taxi drivers, cleaners, or from staffing the counters of fast-food restaurants or convenience stores that they are most likely to face racist slurs – or, on a bad night, physical attacks.

Their attackers, they say, are Anglo-Australian teenagers and young people in their 20s who, for whatever reason, resent the presence of these foreign students in their suburbs. More

From The Sydney Morning Herald: Horror Indian summer: Indians are 2½ times more at risk of attack than other Melburnians, but the reasons are complicated. Read here

The cartoon above was published in the Delhi newspaper Mail Today.

In Herald Sun, Australia: Police fear an Indian cartoon depicting a Victoria Police officer in Ku Klux Klan garb could inflame racial tensions. Political leaders say the cartoon is “disgusting”. More

On ABC, Australia: Indian editor defends KKK cartoon

I think the reaction is hysterical. A couple of days ago we had Australian political leaders saying that India was getting hysterical but when your children die in racist attacks hysteria can be understood. It’s natural.

But a cartoonist, what he does is he exaggerates things. He forces people to look at a particular point of view which we had thought in a mature society like Australia would lead to introspection rather than it has led to hysteria. More

The bigot in the mirror

Published
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on September 27, 2009
in India and Society
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Indians outraged by racism might want to look closer home for ammunition, says Nisha Susan in Tehelka:

This summer two people, one afflicted by the flu, and the other by sympathy, went to a South Delhi clinic. The flu-bitten woman was leaving the clinic when the doctor told her that she had a ‘pigmentation problem’. The patient was startled. Her deep, smooth darkness has been admired most places in the world. As a Bengaluru woman she had not expected to be feted in Delhi, but she had not anticipated a pink Punjabi doctor saying that her skin could be ‘fixed’. The doctor turned to her companion and pronounced, “You have a pigmentation problem too!” As a Malayali who went to school in Delhi, he was prepared. His earliest memories were of the neighbourhood children refusing to play with him or his equally dark sister. He laughed and tried to calm his outraged friend. Defusing the tension is now as much part of him as his skin. More:

Our racist secrets

Navdeep Singh in Tehelka:

There’s a negro outside”; my sister-in-law runs in, a little out of breath. She’s barely arrived a few hours before from Delhi to visit us in an old Southern California suburb. I peek out of the window to see one of my neighbours washing his car in his yard. Yeah, he’s black. He’s also a doctor. Not that that should be important but, you know. “Is he dangerous?”; she asks, still wide eyed. I’m not sure what to answer. On the operating table, maybe.

“That’s not racism, that’s ignorance”; intones a friend whom I’m recounting the incident to, years later, on a Mumbai terrace. But racism is ignorance. More:

‘India is racist, and happy about it’

Published
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on June 27, 2009
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Diepiriye Kuku, a Black American PhD student at the Delhi School of Economics, narrates his first-hand experience of footpath India in Outlook:

In spite of friendship and love in private spaces, the Delhi public literally stops and stares. It is harrowing to constantly have children and adults tease, taunt, pick, poke and peer at you from the corner of their eyes, denying their own humanity as well as mine. Their aggressive, crude curiosity threatens to dominate unless disarmed by kindness, or met with equal aggression.

Once I stood gazing at the giraffes at the Lucknow Zoo only to turn and see 50-odd families gawking at me rather than the exhibit. Parents abruptly withdrew infants that inquisitively wandered towards me. More:

Theroux on Naipaul

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on April 10, 2008
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In the Sunday Times, Paul Theroux on his one-time mentor

Ten years ago I published Sir Vidia’s Shadow, depicting V S Naipaul as a grouch, a skinflint, tantrum-prone, with race on the brain. He was then, and continued to be, an excellent candidate for anger management classes, sensitivity training, psychotherapy, marriage guidance, grief counselling and driving lessons – none of which he pursued.

Now comes Patrick French’s authorised biography of the man, The World Is What It Is, which makes all these points and many more. It seems that I didn’t know the half of all the horrors.

When the lawyers were shown the type-script of my own book, they were all over me. “Look at this – ‘violent, unstable, depressive’ – Naipaul could prove malice!” And the trump card of the QC, with his lists of deletions and revisions: “Do you know what it will cost you if he sues you?”

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Previously in AW:

Harbhajan is no saint

Published
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on January 29, 2008
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Rediff.com on Harbhajan Singh’s troubled track record.

harbhajan.jpg

Temperamental off-spinner Harbhajan Singh is no stranger to controversy, having been booked five times for violation of the ICC Code of Conduct in his international career so far.

Harbhajan, who escaped with a 50 percent fine in Tuesday’s hearing and managed to clear his name from the racism slur, often ran into trouble because of his volatile temper. Then a rookie spinner, Harbhajan had removed Ricky Ponting, who was to prove his bunny in subsequent years, stumped in the one day match at Sharjah on April 22, 1998.

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Monkey business: Proctor v Harbhajan Singh

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on January 23, 2008
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From the blog Law and Other Things, a full statement by ICC Match Referee Mike Procter, following Harbhajan Singh’s Code of Conduct hearing on January 6.

This matter started at around 2000. I have heard evidence and submissions until 2400 (midnight). It is now 0140.

Present at the hearing were: Chetan Chauhan, India team manager, Dr.M.V.Sridhar, India assistant manager, Anil Kumble, India captain; Harbhajan Singh, India player, Sachin Tendulkar, India player, umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, who laid the charges; Australia players Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds and Mathew Hayden; Steve Bernard, Australia team manager, Nigel Peters QC, member of London Bar, member of MCC committee, who assisted in legal and procedural matters. Continue reading ‘Monkey business: Proctor v Harbhajan Singh’