When an outsider displays racist behaviour towards us we all wag our fingers, cluck our tongues and shake our heads in disapproval. But do we stop for a moment to think that we are guilty of the same thing?
Recently, a video of an Indian facing racial abuse outside a shopping centre in Poland’s capital city Warsaw was posted on Twitter. The disturbing video quickly went viral, with other social media sites and even news media sites picking it up. In the video which broke the Internet, a man who identified himself as an American is seen approaching the Indian man and calling him names. The unidentified Indian, who had apparently done nothing to provoke the white man, can be seen asking why he was being filmed. He gently asks the man to stop recording him without his consent and tries to get as far away from the heckler as possible. However, the offender follows him and keeps hurling racial slurs at the Indian, asking him, “Why are you in Poland? In America, there are too many of you guys. Do you think you can invade Poland? Why don’t you return to your own country?”
The response of the Indian is very dignified as he just keeps his cool and tries to get away from the irritant that keeps following him. As an Indian, it made my blood boil to see a compatriot being treated this way. I’m not sure I would have behaved in such a calm and peaceful manner if it had been me. So, I am not surprised that people on social media who saw the video were angry and upset too, with many calling out the West for its racist behaviour towards Asians, and Indians in particular. The feeling of anger and frustration was a shared one across the nation and there were cries of racism, which were totally justified.
However, this incident and the reactions of the Twitterati and Netizens made me think of how we behave in our own country. With our own people! The Net is full of videos of atrocities that we commit against each other. Last month a stomach-turning video of two young men torturing a divyang at a drug de-addiction centre in Mayurbhanj in Odisha was doing the rounds. The shocking video shows one of the men wielding a stick threateningly and forcing the hapless man sitting on the ground to lick the feet of another person. Crying piteously, the victim pleads with the man to spare him but is threatened with dire consequences if he refuses to follow orders. Meanwhile, the other man is seen with his bare feet close to the victim’s face. Helpless, the victim finally licks the feet of the bully wearing a yellow T-shirt. After that, he desperately tries to clean his tongue but is again threatened by the person with the stick, who grabs his hair and forces him to lick the man’s feet a couple of times.
