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Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) defines racism: “Any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise, on equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, or any other field of public life.” According to this definition, there is no individual, group, community, country or continent that is free from racism. A look at history: Jews who escaped Roman persecution came to India where the Christian missionaries harassed them (the Goa Inquisition of the mid-sixteenth century). Now, Jews are driving out Muslims from their lands. Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh drove out the Hindus. Americans and Australians drove native populations into reservations. European colonizers practiced the worst form of racism in Africa and Latin America. Racism as defined by ICERD is everywhere. India alone, as the HT report shows, does not enjoy this distinction.

The concept of racism takes its birth in the stupid hope that God should have created all of us alike in every manner -- complexion, height, intelligence and gender too – and given us a common language so that there would be no basis for discrimination. Here, let us look at media role. Hindustan Times leads every other newspaper in the country in the number of pages devoted to matrimonial advertisements. And what are they if not racism? Telugu men want only Telugu girls. Brahmins want Brahmin spouses. Most of the men, because they are marketable in a country where sons are worshipped, want fair-skinned (racism) girls. There are other divisions like caste, subcaste, gotrams etc. This is true of Christians, Muslims and Sikhs and every other Indian community, whether they live in India or abroad.

To continue with media racism, do you know that before the wage boards came and fixed wages on the basis of the revenues of newspapers, journalists in Indian language newspapers were paid less than those working for English newspapers? Udit Raj or Chandrabhan Prasad will tell you that Dalits have no place in the Indian media. Khushwant Singh knows better than anybody else that Brahmins dominate beauracracy. Is there any place on this planet where men individually and collectively think they are not different from others? The terms majoritarianism and minoritism, so rampant in our media, are products of racist thinking. Racism is only one kind of discrimination that is neither more ethical nor less human than other forms of discrimination.

And, whenever there are communal riots who but the media and the politicians remind you that you are a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh? The height of hypocrisy is to complain of racism and at the same time cry hoarse about human rights to preserve cultural identity. If cultural identities are natural, racism is natural. If a Hindu male or female wants to flaunt tokens of Hinduism, non-Hindus will certainly treat them as Hindus, This is true of any community. Thanks to our media and politicians who tell us every day to what caste and religion we belong, we live up to their expectations by behaving in the manner they expect of us.

Now, a word about the Dutch action. Suppose, the crew suspect that the twelve among the hundreds of passengers are prone to mischief, do they put the lives of the rest in peril giving the benefit of doubt to the twelve? If they did that and some hijack or worse happened, wouldn’t there be charges of negligence and bad judgment? So, the Dutch or whoever they are in those circumstances, will be damned if they exercise judgment and doubly damned if they don’t. Is this caution overstretched even against the background of extremely frequent terrorist attacks? I am not saying that the Dutch are racist or not racist. They are racist in the same way as all of us are. Do you know that the French and the English hate each other even though they are all whites?

In the Hindu mythology, Hiranyakasipa asks his son Prahlada, “Where is God, show me?” The son counters, “Show me where he is not.” Like God, if you believe in one, racism is everywhere and to think Indians or the Dutch alone practice racism amounts to self-flagellation, reverse of chauvinism. Like prophets of all religions who preached against discrimination, we can only appeal to everyone not to be racist. There is no end to differences that visit human communities because they are all born differently. Why do not women’s magazines condemn Marumakkathayam in Kerala that amounts to gender bias? How do you explain children of the same parent working against each other like the Ambanis?

I have read somewhere that religion plays a motivational and ruse factor in various conflict scenarios. So, how many will agree to abolition of religion? Will that not be an assault on human rights according to contemporary thinking? Discrimination, I will call it distinction, is everywhere. Man is different from woman. Black is different from white. Each one is different from the other but not superior or inferior. Instead of emphasizing these differences, some newspapers donate space liberally to writers who emphasize these differences in a negative way and forget to highlight positive instances of Muslims making Durga effigies or the Hindus in the South naming their children after Muslim saints.

Since the advent of man, there has been no period or place that was free from racism as we understand it today. Let us, media, not call it racism and condemn selectively. We must find ways of solving the problem by shedding holier than thou postures and also by not killing ourselves with guilt. Both of them lead to extremism. Do you know that Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena is a product of white collar employees from the South contemptuously calling Maharashtrians as ghatis? Racism is like vulgarity as defined by Oscar Wilde. It is the conduct of others