Map of racial tolerance. Image Courtesy: Washington Post

A recent article in Washington Post by a writer named Max Fisher, based on World Values Survey data, named India as the most racist country in the world. This has drawn squeals of outrage from those global Indians who think racism is a terrible thing to be accused of. The question asked of the Indian respondents was wrong, some said. The methodology was wrong, the question of race cannot be measured across countries, different countries got different questions, went the complaints.

It is true that this survey’s results can be questioned. However, the results of all sample surveys are questionable when extrapolated from a sample of 1,000 or 2,000 people to generalisations about a country of 1.2 billion. No one ever seems to question surveys when they like the results.

It is my contention that this survey may not prove we are the most racist people in the world, but it has not been proved that we are not, either. We could well be. There is a good chance that we are indeed one of the most racist societies on earth. Whether we are first or second or third in this is a matter of pointless detail that only the perpetually insecure votaries of “superpower” India ought to worry about.

The word for race in many major Indian languages is “jaat” or “zaat” or “jaati”. This is the word in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese, and so on. It is a word used across India. The same word also means caste. The apologists are arguing that we may be the most “caste-ist” society in the world, but we are not the most racist. The question is, did our ancestors know the difference between caste and race? Do average Indians today know the difference between caste and race?

The word caste comes from the Spanish and Portuguese “casta” which means race. Those people had their own caste system, with a hierarchy that ran from “white” people to “black”. This caste system was applied through the Americas from the 16th century. The word “negro” is the Spanish term for the colour black.

What the imperialists called caste, later came to be called racism. The negative connotations of that term are of fairly recent origin, and the opprobrium attached to the word now is probably due to Adolf Hitler’s terrible reign. Before that, discriminating on the basis of race was a quite respectable thing to do; the British in India, for example, built the British Indian Army from 1857 onwards on questionable theories of “martial races”.

Caste-ism and racism are not very different. The word caste=casta=race=jaati. What we call “jaatibhed” is what the West now calls racism and earlier called caste-ism. We still call it caste-ism, and pretend it has nothing to do with racism. The only difference really is that the races involved in the Americas were white folks from Western Europe, and native American Indians, and blacks. Here, it was more complex and involved different races than “black” and “white”. That was partly because we obviously didn’t have the same races here. In addition, the racism had an added layer due to the varna system of Hinduism.

The populations of different Indian jaatis would obviously be closer to one another genetically than black, white and native American populations. However, the systems of discrimination we are talking about were framed well before genetic testing was invented. It would seem that our ancestors considered different jaatis to be different races, and discriminated against one another on that basis. This would indicate greater racial intolerance than the Spanish, not lesser, because the physical differences between different Indian jaatis are generally not as apparent as those between white and black people.

The caste system in India is far older than the Spanish equivalent. It also has more local variations and flexibility. It survives to this day, and has sanction from all major political parties and society at large. There is a good deal of discrimination that is practised quite casually by most Indians.

The contentious question asked in the survey was whether people here would like to have a neighbour of a different race. The word “race” was translated, correctly, as jaati. According to Washington Post, the survey found that 43.5 per cent of Indians said they would not like to live alongside people of other jaatis.

This is no surprise. In fact, it is a part of the lived experience of daily life in India, and needs no survey to prove it.

Have you ever tried to rent a house in mainland India? I’ve lived in 13 houses in five cities of India so far, and I can narrate from personal experience that even in a cosmopolis like Mumbai, finding a house is a matter of more than mere money. The travails of Muslims trying to find houses have been documented and are known by now, but even Hindus face discrimination. For example, I was told that there were certain building societies where I could not live because I eat meat and fish. Those societies only allow vegetarians to stay. They usually simplify matters by making it clear that they welcome only Gujarati or Jain vegetarians. There are also buildings that are for Parsis only, or Catholics or Muslims. The Tamils live in their pockets, Muslims in theirs, Maharashtrians of different castes in their own. Dalits have their own chawls and buildings. By and large, Mumbai, under its cosmopolitan skin, is a collection of ghettos.

The compositions of different buildings, streets and neighbourhoods in Mumbai or Delhi show that people do in fact live with others ethnically like them. They exclude those who are different.

Apart from the discrimination against Muslims, there is also the discrimination against Northeasterners. The accounts of Northeastern people in mainland India will leave little doubt that Indians are racists. One such account was published in The Hindu after the deaths of two Northeasterners in mainland India last year.

Of course the Northeasterners are guilty of similar behaviour in their own areas back home, so their protestations carry less weight than they otherwise would.

Discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a daily fact of life. India’s fascination with white skin has been documented many times. Every white tourist experiences it when random strangers want to get their photos taken with them. So does every black student. The black student is inevitably called names behind his back, if not to his face. The desire for fair skin is evident in matrimonial ads and advertisements for skin lightening creams for men and women, which do brisk business. The matrimonial ads are also living proof of the cachet that white skin has. It also demonstrates the endogamous nature of Indian castes.

The United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination defines racial discrimination in the following words:

“…any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

Caste is a form of discrimination based, without doubt, on descent. It would therefore be recognised as a form of racial discrimination in the UN definition. Discrimination on the basis of religion, which many Muslims face, is also based on descent for those born into the faith, and is therefore a form of racial discrimination. The discrimination faced by Northeastern people is of an ethnic nature and would be included in the category of racial discrimination. The discrimination faced by people on the basis of skin colour is of course racial discrimination, and is easily recognised as such.

So in sum, this is what I have written here. First, I have pointed out that what is called racism was earlier called caste-ism in the West, and the words for race and caste are same in many Indian languages. The people here were obviously different from the races in South and Central America, and the origins of the caste systems are different, but the practice of caste-ism was similar. It involved a hierarchy based on birth into a certain ethnic group, and systematic discrimination.

Second, I have said that the daily experiences of living in Indian society prove beyond doubt that there is a great deal of discrimination against people based on their ethnic and religious identities and even their skin colour.

Third, I have pointed out that all these types of discrimination are included in the definition of racial discrimination which is accepted by the United Nations.

In conclusion, I would say that Indians are generally unselfconscious racists. There is often no malice or deliberate intent in the racism here. This is because of the widespread acceptance of various forms of discrimination in personal lives over hundreds of years. People advertise for matches of a certain caste without shame, because that is the norm. Landlords and housing societies freely tell prospective tenants that only people of a certain ethnic background can stay there because it has social and legal sanction. It is allowed to discriminate under Indian housing society laws. The fact that our polity is divided along caste lines means there is a mobilisation along those lines as different groups struggle to corner benefits for themselves. This is seen as perfectly fine and part of the task of politics.

We are racists and we don’t know it, and we really don’t care if we show it. Clap your hands?

The writer is a journalist and author. Views expressed here are personal.