We Indians embrace prejudice, of course, and it ranges from skin-colour induced to cuisine-born, or even cultural. There’s North vs South, Northeast vs the rest of India, Hindustani (music) vs Carnatic, veg vs non-veg… The list goes on. And associated with this propensity to turn our noses up at difference are a host of slurs (‘Madrasi/Bhaiya/Chinki/Ghati/Panju/Bihari’ etc.).
Each generation also seems to come up with their own set of slurs. Maybe that can’t be helped. But we needn’t kill each other on this account. Not in today’s India in any case, when cross-state border/religion/country marriages are so frequent as to even invite notice. You only have to look around—if you’re too busy or poor to afford a Kashmir–Kanyakumari–Dwarka–Dibrugarh vacation—to realize that together, we Indians can brag about a more mind-bending array of skin types and eye shapes and gastronomic wonders than the rest of the world put together. So, while you continue to throw slurs at each other, do keep your fists (and daggers and kattas) firmly inside your pockets. If you want to violently exhibit righteous indignation, join the finest armed forces and police forces in the world. They will make you yearn for abiding peace.
I’d also like to stick my neck out and say we Indians aren’t really ‘racist’, in the real sense of that word. The only time I ever met a truly racist person was during a visit to Sri Lanka; the Sinhalas and Tamils were throwing slurs at each other at the time, and eventually the temperature went up so much that the Emerald Isle lost three decades to a violent conflict. See where it got them! But no, they weren’t the ‘racists’. That honour should go to the elderly Englishman we met in the queue to board a ferry back to India. He took one look at my friend and me and spat, “Indians!” To this day I can’t divine what bugged the Brit. Was it the lack of privilege? After all, his forebears had ruled both nations until some decades ago, and there he was in a queue behind a ‘subject’ race. Or was it the smell of our spicy sweat that easily overwhelmed his bland perspiration?
