Let’s talk about racism | North Indians are ‘gora-chitta’, dark skin is for the South

[Hindustani78]

I just asked two questions. I don't care about people's assumed identities on the Internet. I was curious about your 'avatar' here.

There are 124,000 Avatars/ Prophets ? which one you want ?

 

[Spring Onion]

There are 124,000 Avatars/ Prophets ? which one you want ?

why bring Islam into your stupid inferiority laden indian mindset about skin.
he was asking about rajni's picture as DP of blackindian on the forum.

 

[maximuswarrior]

why bring Islam into your stupid inferiority laden indian mindset about skin.
he was asking about rajni's picture as DP of blackindian on the forum.

You expect an Indian to behave normally?

 

[Mugwop]

I am not a Muslim. Not a fan of Islam.

Rajnikanth is a true alpha male. Unlike your effeminate bollywood men. He belongs to my tribe. So there you go.

Why bring Islam into this discussion? While accusing others of racism did you realize that you are a bigot yourself also? @Spring Onion @maximuswarrior

Moderators whether you ban this poster or not is up to you but please take the "black" part out of his name. It's really embarrassing.

 

[kvpak]

I am not a Muslim. Not a fan of Islam.

Rajnikanth is a true alpha male. Unlike your effeminate bollywood men. He belongs to my tribe. So there you go.

A few days aqgo Rajnokanthh made a big speech in Tamil Nadu. He said he is not Marathi, not Kannadiga but he is Tamil. He said he was born in Krishnagiri district.

 

[BlackIndian]

Why bring Islam into this discussion? While accusing others of racism did you realize that you are a bigot yourself also? @Spring Onion @maximuswarrior

Moderators whether you ban this poster or not is up to you but please take the "black" part out of his name. It's really embarrassing.

Because @SarthakGanguly asked me If I were a Muslim. I dont become a bigot for pointing out the truth.

 

[SorryNotSorry]

North Indians arent even light-skinned. It's mostly just people from Punjab and IoK that are 'light-skinned', Indian Punjabis are only 'Indian' by nationality while the people in IoK consider Indians as almost completely foreign.

Sorry to burst your bubble -You are very misinformed

 

[SrNair]

So punjabis are the benchmark of beauty now? India has had unfortunate history full of plunder and pillaging. What point do you want to prove?
You do know what the portugese did to the konkastha marathis right?
UP and Biharis have played an important part in bringing up mumbai. All illiterate poor people exhibit the symptoms that you scoff at. I am sure with the amount of unchecked hated you have, a calm discussion is going to be difficult to be had.


what has happened to this forum mate? you have been here for a long time, the quality of indian posters has plummeted.

Some people faces some problems from certain sections .And they will generalise all of them.To be frank a lots of my friends also began to show the same opinions because of their influx.
Main culprit is their nothing for good politicians .Because of them poor people have to look somewhere else.They dont even have basic education.

 

[Sheikh Rauf]

Mom dont have any problem with color .
For mom all kids are equal,that is why our mom gave all those scientific institutions to us.

I dont need a foreigner advice to chose whether those deny or not.

scientific institution lol . smart people always listen or open to advice but i guess indians are asusual in denial.

 

[Mangus Ortus Novem]

Why bring Islam into this discussion? While accusing others of racism did you realize that you are a bigot yourself also? @Spring Onion @maximuswarrior

Moderators whether you ban this poster or not is up to you but please take the "black" part out of his name. It's really embarrassing.

My dear Young Pak Girl,


Our @BlackIndian is can be many things...but he is not a hypocrite. Many indians might be PC but have more darkness in their hearts towards Pak and Pak Peoples...than our BlackIndian here.

We must allow his views and when we feel difference we can engage in discourse... otherwise, be enthrilled students of matters he brings to light... How else, we outsiders would be able to know what is really happening in mighty inida?

Now keep your spear burning red for branding those who are actully ill mannered and black in their hearts Pak state religion and Pak State!

Have a wonderful day,

SPF

@The Eagle @Horus friends, please, don't gag this BlackIndian person... he might appear harsh but he is not dishonest!

 

[SarthakGanguly]

Because @SarthakGanguly asked me If I were a Muslim. I dont become a bigot for pointing out the truth.

So? People ask their backgrounds all the time. The way we grow up is often influenced by our cultural upbringing. Some insecurities and hatred get ingrained into our psyche.

For example, for us all of India south of Jammu is Punjab. Ok, was Punjab. Now we know better. I find you hilarious and hence was trying to find some logic to your regular quality trolling.

Rajnikanth is a true alpha male

Rajni Sir sure is great. Alpha male or not.

 

[Mugwop]

So? People ask their backgrounds all the time. The way we grow up is often influenced by our cultural upbringing. Some insecurities and hatred get ingrained into our psyche.

For example, for us all of India south of Jammu is Punjab. Ok, was Punjab. Now we know better. I find you hilarious and hence was trying to find some logic to your regular quality trolling.


Rajni Sir sure is great. Alpha male or not.

Except you didn't ask and accused him of being a Pakistani or a Muslim. It's in indian psyche to be sadistic and racist dark skin or light skin.

 

[BlackIndian]

So? People ask their backgrounds all the time. The way we grow up is often influenced by our cultural upbringing. Some insecurities and hatred get ingrained into our psyche.

For example, for us all of India south of Jammu is Punjab. Ok, was Punjab. Now we know better. I find you hilarious and hence was trying to find some logic to your regular quality trolling.

No I get it. You are a Kashmiri pundit right?
You are cowards who were humiliated by Kashmiri Muslims. That inferiority complex caused muslim obesession in your mind. You pretend to hate them but in reality you admire their masculinity which you pandits lack. You dont want them anywhere near you but in reality you have a fantasy to watch them with your women.

You effeminate Brahmins just need to embrace your true self. Its 21st century your not going to be put to death for deviant behavior atleast not in India.

 

[Indiran Chandiran]

Illustration: Malay Karmakar (Illustration: Malay Karmakar)
“Aap toh south Indian dikhti hai par aapki behen Indian dikhti hai.” (You look like a south Indian but your sister looks Indian.)

These words from a decades-old conversation with a Delhi beautician came back to me when Tarun Vijay, a former BJP MP and ex-editor of the RSS publication Panchjanya, recently tried to defend India against charges of racism. “If we were racist,” he said, “why would have all the entire south [India] which is complete… you know Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra… why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people around us.” (sic) Many south Indians revealed their own white-skin fixation when they protested against Vijay’s comment by objecting to being termed black. It is just as telling that most north Indians would be aghast if they knew that the racial descriptor “black” is used by Europeans and Americans not for people of African origin alone but for Indians too, and not just the dark-skinned among us. The offensive aspect of Vijay’s statement is not in these sensitivities though, but in his condescension, the implication that the north can choose whether or not to “live with them”, and in the othering of the south.


It was an attitude echoed all those years back by that woman who blurted out in shock on discovering that my comparatively light-complexioned companion was my sibling: “You look like a south Indian but your sister looks Indian.” Because in her view, the standard Indian is gora and from the north, a dark skin like mine could only belong to a southerner, and a southerner is, of course, ‘the other’.

Being a Malayali-born and living in Delhi, I am used to such remarks. In my school years, I remember a reader of The Statesman writing to the editor: “south Indians are our guests” and “we” should be kind to “them”. “You southies have brains, we north Indians have looks,” said a neighbour to Mum one day.

These comments, like the oily-haired, aiyyaiyyo-spouting, vibhuti-sporting ‘Madrasi’ stock character in old Hindi cinema, are relatively innocuous manifestations of a problem so deep rooted that most of us scarcely notice it.

Historical happenstance has situated India’s capital in the north. The further concentration of political power here (thanks to an electoral system that gives you more seats in Parliament if your state sucks at population control) has given north India a major advantage over the rest of the country. As a result, studying the north has become a compulsion for other Indians, but the lack of a reciprocal effort from the majority in the north indicates a barely disguised sense of superiority. What else but ignorance born of indifference explains the vague collective conviction here that the ‘south’ is somehow just one state, ‘Madras’?

Language, for me, is a tool of communication, not ego. I speak Malayalam and Hindi with equal affection. But I am tired of bigots who demand that every Indian ought to know Hindi. An audience member at the Taj Literature Festival 2013 slammed me and screenwriter Mushtaq Shiekh for conversing in English on stage, like speakers before us did. “This is Agra, speak Hindi,” he raged. “What if a Kerala audience demanded that you speak only Malayalam?” I replied in Hindi, before lecturing him at length in my mother tongue just for kicks. Such arrogance is fuelled by the ‘Hindi is India’s national language’ lie that has been perpetuated by Goebbelsian propagandists, ill-informed journalists and citizens unaware of our language movement and Constitution.

I say all this before mentioning the subject of this series, #LetsTalkAboutRace, because racism in the Indian context is intertwined with language, colour, caste, economics, politics, history and more. Take colour, for one, in the Indian mindscape. White is a reminder of our colonisers, black the colour of African slaves; white is the dominant colour of today’s superpowers, black we associate with a poverty-stricken wilderness; white is linked to Brahmins i.e. those who work in the shade, black to lower castes i.e. those who work under the sun. It’s complicated and convoluted. North Indians, who tend to consider themselves universally ‘gora-chitta’, bombard light-skinned ‘Madrasis’ with the inexplicable question, “How can you be south Indian?”, and are cruel to ‘kallus’ among their own. Priyanka Chopra once spoke to me in an interview of the ordeal of being black in a Punjabi household. South Indians too deem light lovelier than dark. Meanwhile, suicides have been reported in both regions by victims of colour-related oppression.

Here though is a twist in my tale. My experience of colour prejudice pales in comparison with the crushing taunts thrown at one of my closest friends all his life. Kaala kauwa, kaala bhoot, kaala kaloota (black crow, black ghost, blacky), black as coal — he has heard it all, from classmates (in a respected Delhi school, mind you), neighbours, strangers, even relatives and friends. I saw his shoulders wilt in humiliation as a child, and each time my heart broke a little for him.

While writing this piece, I asked him why I was not similarly traumatised. Stressing his conviction that the epithets would have remained unchanged if he had been north Indian, he reminds me too that most Indians would not consider me as dark as he is. True. On the Asian Paints Shade Card of Complexions in every Indian’s head, I am 3.946 ‘shades fairer’ than my friend and 5.217 ‘shades darker’ than my sister. In the vocabulary of our contemptible version of racism, then, he is a ‘kaala kauwa’ deserving ridicule, I merit sympathy, and my sister is crowned an ‘Indian’.

So, do I face discrimination as a south Indian living in the north? The answer, like I said, is complicated. It would be naïve, however, to ignore the country’s systemic pro-north bias and skewed balance of political power; the so-called ‘national’ media’s Bollywood obsession, to the virtual exclusion of our other thriving film industries; a journalism scene in which the molestation of a major Malayalam actress this year received little attention, though a similar assault in north India would have attracted wall-to-wall coverage; and the deeply political import of that woman’s words from so long ago, “Aap toh south Indian dikhti hai par aapki behen Indian dikhti hai.”

Anna MM Vetticad is a journalist, social commentator, and journalism teacher based in Delhi. She is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic.


South Indians are running India with their money. GDP of 5 south Indian states with 25% population is more than GDP of 20 North Indian Bhaiyya States. South India only gets 50% of the revenue they generate. Their money gets diverted to Bimaru North by the centre.They are feeding Bimaru Bhaiyyas with their money. Yet they dont treat south Indians as human because they are dark. Bhaiyyas need to be shown their place.
@Sinopakfriend @save_ghenda @salarsikander

In my neighborhood , the so called Uttar Bharatiyas have a running feud with the native born Maharashtrians , which erupted into a fist fight on Sunday night .A few heads were cracked , limbs broken , around 2 dozen casualties reported with 2 serious .The police made a dozen arrests .Since the media both local and national ignored it , should I pen a piece imbuing it with my own petty biases , now that PDF C & SA sub forum has decided to give importance to such weighty matters as skin colour and it's prejudices .

P.S - It all began when the dog of one of the accused started mating with the bitch of the other accused .That's another interesting story .Perhaps , I should pen this one as well .

 

[BlackIndian]

In my neighborhood , the so called Uttar Bharatiyas have a running feud with the native born Maharashtrians , which erupted into a fist fight on Sunday night .A few heads were cracked , limbs broken , around 2 dozen casualties reported with 2 serious .The police made a dozen arrests .Since the media both local and national ignored it , should I pen a piece imbuing it with my own petty biases , now that PDF C & SA sub forum has decided to give importance to such weighty matters as skin colour and it's prejudices .

P.S - It all began when the dog of one of the accused started mating with the bitch of the other accused .That's another interesting story .Perhaps , I should pen this one as well .

Racism might be a petty matter for you Bhaiyyas but it isnt for civilized people like you.

99% of India's problem will cease to exist if you Bhaiyyas cease to exist.