Take off your blinkers and look around

THAT old long-playing record is being played again, raising the ire of the Indian community.

It would have been best to ignore if it came from a racist bigot, but the report comes from the biggest bank in the country with a long tradition of financial excellence.

Standard Bank has many Indian clients and I wonder if it took that into account when it released its controversial report.

But we should be careful not to let emotion, subjectivity and patriotism cloud our judgment.

A mature, enlightened individual will accept criticism, no matter how unpalatable it is.

If we doubt the authenticity of the report, then we could ask some experts to verify its findings before we condemn it outright (“Rich Indians not privileged”, Sunday Tribune Herald, August 14).

Let’s leave the report aside for a moment, take off our blinkers and look at some aspects of the Indian community with an open mind – things which are so apparent that you don’t need scientific research, facts and figures.

In the early days most Indians lived in tin shacks and barracks. Now they live in their own brick and tile homes.

If you need proof of the Indians’ never-say-die spirit, then come to Chatsworth and see how they have turned their hollow block homes into big, palatial homes,

At one time Indians could not afford cars. The few who could, drove around in rattling, rusted jalopies. Now it is rare to see an Indian driving junk.

It is true that “not all were oppressed equally in South Africa”.

The blacks were at the lowest rung of the social ladder under apartheid. They could not own land and Bantustan education received the lowest funding of all the racial groups. It was inferior, meant to keep the blacks down as menial labourers.

But Indians do not have large families and lead promiscuous lives, impregnating school girls.

In the early days a dozen was the norm for a family. Now couples have just one or two children.

Communities did not burn schools, but built their own. More than anything else, education was the priority which made Indians so successful.

If Indians could progress under the restrictions and rigours of apartheid, it is only reasonable to expect them to thrive in a democracy.

A measure of Indians’ hard work and entrepreneurial spirit is the number of their rich. Last year there were 46 800 millionaires in South Africa, of which Indians made up 6 500, a 400 percent increase since 2000. But it’s still a drop compared with whites.

While Indians will condemn the Standard Bank report as mischievous, disingenuous and divisive, we could be the source of envy.

So often we flaunt our wealth, like the uMhlanga family who gave their daughter half a million rand for her 16th birthday party (Sunday Tribune Herald, August 14). T MARKANDAN Silverglen