Durban has belied all expectations, producing a world order privileging Islam and its original Arab adherents and turning the traditional definition of race on its head. Press reportage of the World Conference Against Racism has generally been poor, and makes the United States appear unreasonable for walking out in protest against hateful language about Israel. The European Union has similarly been projected as indulging in First World solidarity for sharing Washington and Tel Aviv’s concerns, though India also found the description of the latter as a racist, apartheid state, guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as unwarranted.
The fundamental question that arises as WCAR barely escaped collapse, is its definition of racism. Until this meet, the established wisdom was that Arabs and Jews are both Semites (doesn’t this mean race?), with common Abrahamic origins, and religious differences going back to the time of the patriarch. Do current-day religious-political tensions overnight yield a new race line? At Durban they have, and I am amazed nobody took Mary Robinson to task for such arrant nonsense. Even Michael Bamshad, who is struggling to project upper and lower caste Hindus as separate races on account of allegedly distinct male bloodlines, would be hard put to explain this. So having ruined the conference by giving vociferous NGOs and anti-Zionists their head, Robinson sought a “viable” cause (sic) in India’s Dalits, disregarding the fact that they are neither a separate race nor victims of state discrimination.
Focusing on larger issues of race, Durban nearly failed to address the demand for reparations for slavery and colonialism with its obsession to equate Zionism with racism. The African-Black American solidarity, however, ultimately prevailed and slavery and slave trade were declared “crimes against humanity”. Reparations have been mooted in the form of debt relief and aid, and India too, can benefit from this milestone development, as argued later. The return of plundered wealth and cultural treasures to former colonies can also be taken up as amends for these crimes.
WCAR was most disappointing because sordid instances of racial and related discrimination could not get adequate attention due to Left-Muslim filibustering. These include the genocide of Tibetans and the deliberate distortion of Tibet’s demographic profile by China’s occupation army; the Kurds in Turkey, who comprise eighteen per cent of the population but are denied their language and even the use of Kurdish names; the Berbers of Algeria, who form forty per cent of the population and have a distinct language and script; and Sri Lanka, where there are statutory limits on the induction of Tamils in the universities and civil service. The plight of Albanians in Macedonia and Blacks in Sudan is equally serious.
I was saddened to note the absence of reportage on the presentation by the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), especially as Fiji is again in the news for concluding its first post-coup election. The GOPIO explicitly raised the issue of continuing discrimination against millions of people of Indian origin who were taken to various lands as indentured labour, but have now lived in these countries for several generations as lawful citizens. Yet they are being denied full political rights and frequently experience overt and covert discrimination.
The absence of pre-conference planning caused Indians to get short shrift at Durban. Apart from Zionism, the burning topic of the day was the slavery of the past that equally put America, Britain, Holland, Spain and Portugal on the mat. A little homework by Indians across the globe could have checkmated the Left-Muslim domination of WCAR and put the issue of Hindu slavery on the map of world consciousness. While educated and self-confident Hindus wish to restore this piece of erased history, some are still squeamish about it.
Marxists will, of course, scream “saffron” should we dare resurrect this banished past. But the fact that there was a flourishing trade in Indian slaves during medieval times is well documented, and as such, could have been included in an official Indian presentation on past slavery. If European nations can be pilloried for slavery, India, which became the major supplier of slaves to the world after slavery from Africa was abolished, should not deny its sufferings at the hands of Muslim invaders.
To launch the debate, I will cite some reputed sources. Mr. Scott-Levi, University of Wisconsin, Madison, has, on the basis of records in the archives of Central Asian countries themselves, established that Indians were sold as slaves in Central Asian slave bazaars during the Mughal period. Hindu slaves were in fact, a major export-earner in this period, and their prices were determined on the basis of the slaves’ skills. Prof. Indrani Chatterjee, Rutgers University (Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial India, OUP, India) has, on the basis of British archives of court records, shown that there was a flourishing slave trade by some nawabs during the British Raj. Not only were the British aware of this throughout their rule; they looked the other way as it suited their interests. Muslim scholars from the tenth century onwards have also documented the killing of kafirs and the taking of their wives and children as slaves.
Alas for India, instead of these issues, she encountered Robinson, who seemed to have come to WCAR determined to legitimize the anti-India Dalit campaign. But the National Human Rights Commission took the cake, vacuously extolling the “opportunity to openly and courageously deal with casteism”. Is NHRC aware that modern era social reformers and political leaders have been actively engaged in fighting caste divisiveness for nearly two hundred years?
I have little patience with the abuse of so-called lower castes, especially women, and have over the past few years argued for a separate law to recognize and punish “caste rapes.” This means molesting women of particular castes (locally) in order to humiliate an entire group or family, or deflate assertive women. Unfortunately, even educated Dalits have not taken up the demand, or come up with it themselves.
The story of caste in India is long and complicated, and has more fluidity than rigidity. Still, this is not the time to indulge in academic debates on the origin of varna and jatis, and their coalescence into caste hierarchy. The need is to address the sufferings of the present. The issue of who is responsible for atrocities on Dalits – upper castes, backward castes, upwardly mobile Upper Shudras – is largely irrelevant, because they, too, are our own people. What the abused need is justice.
Nevertheless, we must firmly rebut falsehoods about generational genocide and ethnic cleansing of Dalits. Free India has not waged war on any section of its citizenry. It abolished Untouchability and took affirmative action to uplift Dalits. Political reservations were provided to give them political voice; reservations in government jobs for economic empowerment. Indeed, they have done very well in the latter department. But if this has not given the desired results overall, it is because of the suffocating sway of Nehruvian socialism that de facto propped up the former zamindars and kept the rural poor (mostly Dalits) enmeshed in poverty (besides being captive votebanks). The absence of a free economy in which to market their skills or labour, coupled with the cynical denial of education, promoted a vicious spiral of poverty and violence, of which Bihar is only the most telling example. As a nation, we need to break this impasse.
The Pioneer, 11 September 2001