Run with the hares, and hunt with hounds

A COMMON recurring thread in the thought process of most of the land is that Indians are a racist bunch of people. Julius Malema has been repeating this on many occasions, and Indians have been uncannily quiet.

If anything, Malema’s words over the past few years hit home and have unsettled many who got comfortable in the heyday of apartheid.

Indians are a strangely diverse lot of people. From millionaire businessman to paupers scrounging for survival, from people who gave their lives fighting for freedom, to those who embraced white supremacy, from wealth-obsessed megalomaniacs to common folk fighting to stay above the breadline. Each one with a God to bless and condone our actions.

The Group Areas Act was to place Indians among themselves, and any Indian will tell you that more than being intolerant of other race groups, we are intolerant of our own kind.

The Act initiated an Indian hierarchical system that was based on who became financially successful, and who did not.

Education became that gateway to this success, and Indians homed in on it with full gusto. We began to define ourselves by this education and success, became overwhelmed by a selfish desire for more and, in the frenetic mayhem, we lost sight of the big picture and the millions of less fortunate people being trampled by a suffocating system of apartheid.

Unbeknown to us, we had shed our humility and became classist and race intolerant. In fact, many Indians will admit, albeit reluctantly, that the indentured labourer hands they came with was conveniently handed to Black people as they took up the pen, fork and knife, abandoned their culture, language and embraced a Western-dominated way of life.

It may have been a survival strategy in its day, but it slowly evolved into a sought-after lifestyle. In doing so, many of us became “sell-outs” and inadvertently drew a line in the sand between Black people and ourselves.

Today, we are being asked to explain our wealth, to define our role in an African country, to look back at the people who helped us attain this wealth, and to acknowledge that while we ran with the hare, we also sneakily hunted with the hounds. We benefited more from apartheid than we’d like to admit.

There’s a huge number of us who realise the precarious nature of our existence in South Africa.

We have to share the fruit of the unfair advantage we had. We will have to reclaim those indentured labourers’ hands and we need to re-learn the simplicity that we came here with.

It’s going to take a herculean effort from a society that took off before the starting gun of progress could sound, but if each individual can change and start to make a difference at home, work and in his own mind, then we will see reciprocation from our new leaders. We need to stop pretending that the umbilical cord is still attached to the motherland.

India is hardly a bastion of good race relations anyway. In fact, the caste system is a blemish on humanity that Blacks use as a yardstick to judge Indians.

While there are many of us who are making these positive strides at home and in the workplace, there is no Indian voice highlighting these efforts.

We cannot leave Malema to continuously define us. We have to start defining ourselves. SAILESH RAMCHARAN

Durban