Sunday, February 3, 2008

Are we Racist?

This is a topic which has been eating my head for the last 1 month since the Harbhajan - Symonds incident. Are we Indians racist by nature without being aware of it. There are lot of things which i can think of which could be termed as racist. Terms like "goora" or "vellai karan" for a white skinned man, "golti" for the telugu ppl, "tam bram" for the tamil brahmin, "bong" for the bengali, "madhrasi" for any one south of the vindhyas, "northi" for anyone not belonging to the 4 southern states and so on. There are many terms like this which can be listed endlessly here which we Indians use on a regular day to day basis. I am not sure if these are racist terms, and if yes or no, why for both the cases will be an interesting argument. I would like an answer to this if i can get one. Blog readers kindly answer me.....

2 comments:

shub said...

Can't decide...where do we draw the line, actually?

Kavya said...

Well, I think we're probably not racist in the actually sense of the word, because, its not like we ill-treat "northi"s just cos we're "tam-brams". We do tend to classify people, but that I think is natural tendency. As in, its human to classify, I mean, look at how we've classified plants and animals into so many categories...
You're right! There is a lot that can be said on this!