Racial attacks on Indian students abroad

Hi,

I have been reading stories about the racial attacks on Indian students all over the world, especially in Australia, and the emotional outbursts of the entire student community fueled by the media and politicians. It pains me to read that my fellow countrymen are under attack at various countries where they had gone to study/work, for just being Indian. I want to make my position clear – I stand in support for my countrymen now, every time and always. Having said that I also want to state that we need to balance our emotions and introspect at times like these.

Some of reasons quoted in the hate mail and blogs posted by the Australian students mention about the reasons why they don’t like the Asians are:-
(a) they always herd around in groups, sometimes more than ten – they even block the way and don’t understand give way gracefully.
(b) they keep talking in asian language within themselves even in the presence of others.
(c) they don’t want to merge with the society, but party and get-together only amongst themselves.
etc..

It is understandable that a student from India when he/she goes abroad to a strange country to feel insecure and indulge in all these activities mentioned above to feel secure. It is worthwhile to consider how the citizens of the host country see these activities. Does these make them uncomfortable, impinge on their feeling of security within their own country. We can see that in our country, the Parsis have integrated themselves into the Indian mainstream gracefully without causing any insecurity for the majority of us, while the same cannot be said about certain other minority groups – which continue to brew communal tensions.

I think we need to aim for such seamless merging into the society of people in the host country. There must be a way of feeling secure abroad without making the host feel suspicious and insecure. I want the student community the think hard and long.

Remember, we Indians are no less racial than anyone in the world. This is the country that segregated its own people by birth for centuries and created the caste system, which imposed ‘untouchability’ on its own brethren, excluded fellow humans from all kinds of occupation except collecting human excreta, banished entry into places of worship, denied livelihood and reduced life to that of animal hood from which people could not emerge free even after many centuries after.
Sometime during my early days of my college , I came across the works of the famous poet-philosopher ‘Khalil Gibran’. I consider the following words of his are worth pondering now, with respect to the issue at hand – racial attacks in Australia. Some of the student community may rise in protest against the relevancy of this paragraph here. Nevertheless, I present it here. You may go ahead and dislike me for this.

“And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree. So the wrong doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.

The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder
And the robbed is not blameless on being robbed.

U cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked. For they stand together before the face of the Sun even as the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look in to the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.”

Feel free to disagree.
Nakkiran