New Delhi: There is an old adage that goes like this — Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin — Congress leader Sam Pitroda, has once again cooked up a political firestorm with his controversial statements on India’s diversity, and this at a time when the Congress party is staring at a possible Lok Sabha defeat.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, compared the looks of Indians from different parts to that of the Chinese, Arabs, Whites and Africans while citing an example of India’s diverse culture. While many may dismiss this as his droll sense of humour, some members of the Opposition party have called Pitroda’s statements vile.
What he said? “…we could hold country together as diverse as India where people in East look like Chinese, people in West look like Arab, people in North look like maybe white and people in South look like Africa. Doesn’t matter, we are all brothers and sisters,” he remarked. In this article, we intend to analyse with three broad reasons as to why Pitroda’s remark is misguided.
First, Constitutionally speaking, discrimination in any form is frowned upon. There are positive clauses in the Constitution with the objective to offer equal opportunity to all by prohibiting discrimination and to taking away disparities between the privileged and underprivileged classes. That is why our Preamble begins with “We, The People Of India…” and our Constitution is represented by “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States…”
Under the broad spectrum of the Right to Equality, Articles 14, 15 and 16 collectively represent the general principles of equality before law and non-discrimination, while Articles 17-18 seek to further the cause of social equality. Article 15 of the Constitution of India, for instance, forbids discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, gender, or place of birth. It applies Article 14’s general principle of equality in specific situations by forbidding classifications made on protected grounds.
Thus any talk on discrimination (appearance included) is seen as opposing our regard for the Preamble and the Constitution that follows. A sociologist from New Delhi says differentiation based on appearance of people from a particular region should be considered a crime. One of the most damaging stereotypes associated with Northeast Indians is the perception that they all look alike. “We have heard such juvenile references before when people of the North-East are compared to Chinese and others from the South-Asian countries because of their yellow skin-tone and their eyes. Not only are these references faulty, they are heavily misguided and should be treated with contempt,” argues Professor Dheeraj Sharma, who teaches in School of Social Sciences, JNU.
Stereotypical representations of Indians by Sam Pitroda, be it comparing people from South India to African nationals or saying that people from North India look “white”, can have serious real-world consequences. These callous statements can lead to discrimination, harassment, and even violence against people from the region. Furthermore, these stereotypes perpetuate an inaccurate view of India and its people, which ultimately prevents people from fully understanding and appreciating the region’s rich cultural diversity.
Second reason being our cultural diversity which binds us together as One Nation. According to a shloka in the Vishnu Puran, one of the eighteen Mahapuranas, and a genre of ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism – The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhāratam there dwells the descendants of Bharata. The key to India’s success is its diversity and our diversity is the core that makes us so unique. But is the diversity defined in terms of facial appearance only? Is it not a racial discrimination if we identify people’s faces against the region from where they belong?
“People from different regions will look dissimilar depending on their genetic conditioning and many other factors but to classify them against a western notion, like dark skin means descendants from Africa etc is fallacious both culturally and scientifically. Taking the culture context, particularly in India, this kind of a facial differentiation could mean creating major fault lines in terms of geographical distinction,” adds Sharma. He also argues that such a kind of a differentiation could have an adverse impact on the culture of the country.
Indian culture needs to be seen as a WHOLE and not in parts (in accordance to the region) as in suggested by Pitroda. There is scientific evidence too that nullifies his theory of diversity on basis of facial distinction.
Third, there is some scientific evidence that proves that irrespective of region and language, most population groups in India can trace their ancestry to the first humans who migrated out of Africa and reached India. In fact, scientists propose that modern humans descended from two populations that lived in Africa for a million years individually before merging across the continent, indicating that there is no single birthplace of humanity. “These genetic finds impress upon us the commonality of our ancestry,” said writer Tony Joseph who was speaking at the fifth annual Dr TK Ramachandran Memorial Lecture on ancient migrations and the politics of prehistory.
Although global genetic sequencing efforts have largely ignored India, scientists believe most Indians are primarily a mix of three ancestral populations which include hunter-gatherers who lived on the land for tens of thousands of years, farmers with Iranian ancestry who arrived sometime between 4700 and 3000 BCE., and herders from the central Eurasian steppe region who swept into the region sometime after 3000 BCE., perhaps between 1900 and 1500 BCE.
A research conducted in 2019 indicated that it was multiple ancestral groups from across Africa that contributed to the emergence of Homo sapiens in a patchwork manner, migrating from one region to another and mixing with one another over hundreds of thousands of years.
So, India is home to one of the most diverse assemblages of people, a mélange of different ethnic identities, languages, religions, castes, and customs that makes up the 1.5 billion humans who live here. But what unites them is the feeling of being Indian. To suggest that we can discriminate between people basis the region from where they come from, to say that people from the South look like Africans or that people from the north-east resemble Chinese, is not going to #passthevibecheck.
Sam Pitroda will learn this the hard way.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone. The opinions and facts in this article do not represent the stand of News9.)
We (Look Like) The People Of India: Sam Pitroda's racial rant is as malevolent as it is puerile
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08.05.2024
New Delhi: There is an old adage that goes like this — Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin — Congress leader Sam Pitroda, has once again cooked up a political firestorm with his controversial statements on India’s diversity, and this at a time when the Congress party is staring at a possible Lok Sabha defeat.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, compared the looks of Indians from different parts to that of the Chinese, Arabs, Whites and Africans while citing an example of India’s diverse culture. While many may dismiss this as his droll sense of humour, some members of the Opposition party have called Pitroda’s statements vile.
What he said? “…we could hold country together as diverse as India where people in East look like Chinese, people in West look like Arab, people in North look like maybe white and people in South look like Africa. Doesn’t matter, we are all brothers and sisters,” he remarked. In this article, we intend to analyse with three broad reasons as to why Pitroda’s remark is misguided.
First, Constitutionally speaking, discrimination in any form is frowned upon. There are positive clauses in the Constitution with the objective to offer equal opportunity to all by prohibiting discrimination and to taking away disparities between the privileged and underprivileged classes. That is why our Preamble begins with “We, The People Of India…” and our Constitution is represented by “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States…”
Under the broad spectrum of the Right to Equality, Articles 14, 15 and 16 collectively represent the general principles of equality........
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