Friday, June 12, 2009

Indians willl have to guard themselves

Obama has exhorted " Indians and Chinese are coming" . There are a lot of job losses in US as the companies transfer jobs to cheaper Indian locations. Australians have plenty of race attacks on Indians. Indians are one of the most richest diaspora in the US. India has the highest remittances in the world. A lot of companies have Indian CEOs.

Why I am mixing the stuff. Aren't these things are unrelated to each other?

I guess not. That Indians are targets of hate either at physical , verbal or mental level is a fact. We have been meek sons of soil, who worked very hard to make money. We have come quite far in life and our success is not based on manufacturing. We are kind of loners. We perform very well individually but in a team we break apart because we do not have leaders who have a vision. But even then , so many people performing consistently and may be just of acceptable quality at quite a low cost, is a adrenaline rush for cost-cutting hungry corporations of the world. They are eager to get the job done at a fraction of the cost even with some inconvience.

That is so far positive side. What is negative? A slow and rising hatred against everything that has Indian written on it . The incident where Indians are constantly attacked in Australia, the web site in BBC where Indians are ridiculed even for sending a cost effective mission on moon, just because she has poverty and finally the anti-outsourcing brigade that exists in all parts of the world.

I have worked aborad and seen the welcoming smile vanish when I tell them that I am an Indian. I think what they are thinking is how this 'slumdog' can ever manage to take away their jobs. Jobs that they thought only they were capable of doing. Unfortunately , we are still give technical work while they keep all the real work ( business) with them . Still they dont like it .

Also it is quite hard for a 'White man ' to understand that how come a brown man of a continent that is so shrouded in poverty, nuclear race and mindless caste system is able to say things that'he is not able to imagine. Even once on a project back home in India the racist attitude of a funny Australian manager was quite palpable. He used to fart in the room and then jokingly told his female colleague 'Hey I guess I gave them a good one' . In the same project , it were mostly the Australians who shouted in top of their voices to disturb and trouble everything that Indians were doing .

This is not to say that whole Australia is racist . There were some fantastic managers and also visitors from australia who had deepest regards for Indian culture and the people . But as people say that one Indian can destroy reputation of India , it applies to everyone else.

This blog is not about asking people to get aggressive about racism but to accept it as a reality. Till we start respecting ourselves, treating ourselves not as victims of colonial rule but as makers of our destiny , it is not possible to ask world to accept us. Racism exists at all levels in all countries. Even many of our NRIs become racists against native Indians . They have to change and view India in a different light.

Indians have to guard against nice speeches that make them complacent, lowering the guard and making sure that we do not become lazy. We have to accept that no one in this world is going to help us if we are down, its only us. We may have friends but they are only till the time we are good to them . People will praise us , flatter us but they will also try to deceive us. We have to keep focus on bringing our country back on its feet. Then only world will respect us