Nov 03, 2003: Hate crimes against Indians in US on the rise  
 
Recently the US media had come down to downright racist abuses when the golfer Vijay Singh, one of the best international players, questioned the wisdom of inviting women golfers to compete with their male colleagues in top golf tournaments in the world. A Fijian by birth and nationality, Vijay Singh is obviously of Indian origin. That was enough for the self-righteous pundits in the US to denounce his Indian heritage. The preaching Americans held that India was a primitive land where things like gender equality were unknown. In other words, Vijay Singh represented an uncivilized society and, hence, had behaved true to form.

And true to the India’s “primitive” and “uncivilized” traditions, the insults were quietly stomached by the Indian media, golf players (mostly big sahibs) and the (supplicating) government. The US, after all, is the sole super power. Displeasing anyone in that god’s own land can be pretty risky. So the US remains free to give sermons to India on gender equality, human rights and many other related and un-related issues-except one. And that is “hate crime”.

After 9/11 it is clearly kosher in the US to insult and harass and even kill-brownskinned people. Indian politicians, captains of industry and film stars, all have been subjected to humiliation in the US-some of them, in fact, when they were on way to the US in an airplane! But one does not expect the US government to apologize or express “concern” at such incidents. Contrast this with what happened a few years ago when, if memory serves right, the US threatened the tiny Island State of Singapore for daring to inflict its severe traffic offence punishment on a US youth.

It is perhaps a peculiar “pastime” of a “primitive” country like India to convey regrets and sorrows, often with personal visits by officials, to the unintended victims of any harassment.
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Hate crimes against Indians in US on the rise
http://samachar.com/features/090703-features.html
By: Allabaksh Hyderabadi