BJP leader in colour gaffe, apologises
new delhi — On Friday, a former member of parliament and a champion of Hindutva, Tarun Vijay, said during the course of a panel discussion on Al Jazeera channel, that India was not a racist nation as South Indians were black and that North Indians like him have had no problem with them. “If we were racist, why would we live with South Indians? We have black people around us. We live with them.”
The implication was that the dark skinned south Indians were being tolerated to be a part of India out of generosity of spirits like Tarun Vijay. He was, in one word, trolled, and survived to tweet his desperate apologies.
The week before, a group of African students in Greater Noida were hunted down and beaten in public because the mob believed they had sold narcotics to a teenager, Manish, causing his death.
Al Jazeera was holding a discussion on the African students’ allegation that India is largely a racist country. If proof was needed, Tarun Vijay supplied it every time he opened his mouth on the channel.
Tarun Vijay later said his words were “ridiculous and very bad”. Most agreed.
Tarun Vijay is the former chief editor of Panchjanya, the official journal of the right wing RSS (Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh), the parent body of the ruling BJP. So it is not a totally tenable excuse that the choice of words was accidental. More likely, his words are a reflection of a certain upper caste attitude in some North Indian circles. In these circles, traditionally a fair skin facilitates kinship.
Throughout the longish TV session, Tarun Vijay came across as a white Indian. Though Tarun Vijay is not an Anglo-Saxon by birth, it seemed clear he considered himself quite close to that race in terms of self-styled historical and cultural superiority.
The traumatised students articulated their bitter experiences. They said they were isolated as a community in Noida because of their skin colour. They were clear that the attacks on them were racial as their friends who had nothing to do with
if we were racist, why would we live with South indians? We have black people around us. We live with them. Tarun Vijay, BJP leader
When Tarun Vijay said ‘we live with blacks’, i ask him who is ‘we’? Was he referring to BJp/rSS members as the only indians? P Chidambaram, Congress. leader
the death of the youngster had been attacked. They said most Indians they knew believed Africa was a country, not a continent.
One woman was dragged from a car and beaten up. A man was set upon right in the middle of a mall. The four Nigerian students alleged to have supplied drugs to the diseased were questioned by the police, but allowed to go free as there was no proof of their involvement in any illegal activity. There are thousands of African students doing their higher studies in India.
Officially, the Indian government had maintained that “the nature and reason for the attack” were not racial. It was merely criminal. Tarun Vijay plied the same line. He came across as patronizing at his best moments. He said it was easy to “spread poison” of hatred. And that the African student community must “trust Indians, and love India”. He said India welcomed African students and “India loved Africa”.
It was while he was trundling along the path of these platitudes that the reference to the South Indians came. It was clear how he — and possibly, some of his RSS friends — looked at the problem of skin colour.
South India — Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala — is generally viewed by a section of upper caste North Indians as a different race. In their mind, North is associated with Aryans, a race purportedly from Central Asia; South with Dravidians, the natives driven down the plains when Aryans invaded, according to myth, close to 2,000 years ago.
Despite the helpless sneer that some in the North deploy while talking about South, the 200 million strong Dravidians south of the Vindhyas — a low range of mountains dividing North from South — are ahead in all walks of life.
Per capita incomes in the south have risen fast, and poverty has declined in recent years, thanks to quality of governance, better leadership, and political stability, according to a study conducted by the Public Affairs Centre.
On an average, the weighted per capita income in the southern states was Rs19,531 whereas it was only Rs8,951 in the northern states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh).
South has been ahead of the north in literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy, fertility rate and other factors that contribute to greater productivity.
Right after the discussion, Tarun Vijay caught on to his gaffe. He tweeted: “Feel bad, really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant.” And, again: “I can die but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly framed sentence.”
South India for sure is thinking. But there seems not much scope for misinterpretation where Tarun Vijay is concerned.