The ugly Indian and other stories of racism

I was asked an interesting question last week: Are Indians racist? It was prompted by a news report which reads: “A 27-year-old flight attendant from Meghalaya has alleged that she was recently subjected to verbal racial abuse twice within an hour in Delhi — once in north Delhi’s Kamala Nagar, then on the Metro.”

- Karan Thapar

Her video on Instagram was reposted by the Union minister for minority affairs, Kiren Rijiju, who condemned the incident.

Let me start by answering the question. Td say not all of us and not all the time but, sadly, this is true of many of us and it can be for much of the time.

The facts are stark and probably incontestable. We call Africans habshis. We treat them with disdain. We're reluctant to have them as tenants and very few know them as friends.

In the 1980s, when I lived in Nigeria, the local Indian community was considered more racist than the expatriate white residents. For a very simple reason. We are less adept at hiding it. That's probably also true of Indians in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya and Uganda.

But it’s not just Africans we treat badly. North Indians call Tamils madrasis and people from the North East ch*****, We think it is funny to do so, forgetting it is rude and hurtful.