I along with a lot of fellow Indians were shocked and disgusted at what happened (rather is happening) in Australia to Indian students. It was indeed an outrageous incident. And the Indian media was ready to jump in and go ahead with an all-out attack on the Aussies. That was reasonably expected behaviour considering the trigger-happy nature of our media and their undying thirst to proclaim – “Your channel brought this to you first”.

Now while this is happening; I wonder how many of us looked in the mirror and pondered how racist we too are. How comfortable are we with people from other countries living amongst us? Let alone that; how comfortable are we to have people from other states living amongst us? The honest answers would be in different shades of gray. But as I see it; in the overall picture every one of us has some racism inside. As we put pressure on the Australians to protect our citizens; it would also be good to think about how we can make ourselves better. After all   ‘Adhiti devo bhava’  shouldn’t be limited to tourism department ads.

I read a comment in one Aussie newspaper the other day that summarizes my thoughts pretty well – ‘Every country in the world is racist, but most are experts in acting that they are not. The best we can do is to improve our act.’

Update: Read Jug Suraiya’s post too. Totally agree to what he’s said.