The George Floyds Of India – Racism Is Not Based On Skin Colour Only

By Debdutta Ghosh

The issue of racism has once again become a hot topic of debate across the world following the death of 46-year old George Floyd, a black man, after being arrested by the police outside a shop in Minneapolis in the United States. 

The video footage that became viral around the world showed a a white officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes while he was pinned to the floor and was shouting “I can’t breathe”. He was pronounced dead later in the hospital, triggering widespread protests across the US.

India too had its own George Floyd moment after a video emerged from Jodhpur in the state of Rajasthan went gone viral on the social media which shows cops throwing a person on the ground and pressing his neck with their knees.

Amid the furore over police brutality on black Americans and other minorities in the US and at other places, this video also caused a flutter and a debate in India.  

While it might seem remote to some, but there racism is also rampantly practiced in India as it is in the US, albeit in a different garb. 

The discrimination in India is more on the basis of religion and caste. Even though on many occasions, such discrimination does not necessarily translate into heinous acts of murder, there are often subtle incidents that reflect the deeply-ingrained nature of the racist attitude prevalent in India. 

Preventing people of certain religions or communities from living in a building complex is just one of the many examples of the forms of discrimination that happens in India. 

In a recent interview, former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan had aptly noted that skin colour and ethnicity is not the only form that racism can take. He said preventing someone following a particular religion from purchasing a house in a particular apartment complex is a form of racism. He was possible trying to indicate issues that have been voiced by a section of Muslims in India 

But that is not limited to religion alone. One can see reports of people, particularly students,  from the North Eastern states of India voicing concerns of being ill treated and stereotyped in some parts of the country simply because they look different. Further, stereotyping of people from particular states or regions of the country is also common. For example, people of Nepalese origin are stereotyped with the profession of a security guard while people from Bihar are stereotyped with labourers and taxi drivers in Mumbai. These are also forms of racism and discrimination that one is able to easily identify in India. 

And then there is the case of dalits – the so called lower caste communities that make up a huge portion of Indian societies. They are often discriminated upon by people from higher castes – similar to the concept of White supremacy that can still be seen in many Western societies.

Discrimination against dalits also often takes on a violent form. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, in all of India, 40,801 atrocities against Dalits were reported in 2016, up from 38,670 in 2015. 

“Caste divisions in India dominate in housing, marriage, employment, and general social interaction-divisions that are reinforced through the practice and threat of social ostracism, economic boycotts, and physical violence. … [Moreover,] Dalits, or so-called untouchables (scheduled castes in Indian legal parlance), [are subject] to a lifetime of discrimination, exploitation and violence, including severe forms of torture perpetrated by state and private actors in violation of the rights guaranteed by the ICERD,” noted the Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law in one of its reviews of India’s periodic reports (16th to 18th) under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). 

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India is known to have recently commented about the widespread of custodial torture and killing of dalits along with rampant rapes and sexual assault on dalit women, and looting of Dalit property by the police “are condoned, or at best ignored.” According to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, the issue of crimes against the dalits seems to be “a lack of political will and immunity laws that shield those responsible for human rights abuses from prosecution, allow the problem of torture and other forms of custodial abuse to continue unchecked.”

Further, the HRW further alleged that there is routine violation of fundamental civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of dalits and state actors as well as private individuals are often the perpetrators. The organization also alleges the police and the state administrations often to not adequately investigate and pursue cases of discrimination against them filed by dalits. And there are still instances of ‘untouchability’ in India where people of certain castes who are also most often the among the poorest, are severely discriminated and people from higher castes even do not prefer to touch them or use anything that was touched by them. 

Therefore this discrimination against large sections within the Indian society is often overlooked by the authorities – sometimes on the pretext of those being a part of the Indian culture and at other times because of such people are mostly poor. 

And yet, while people from India cry out foul and flood the social media with criticisms of the George Floyd incident and racism as it exists in the U.S., there is hardly any protest on the level as witnessed in the U.S. against the racism and discrimination has exists in the Indian society. 

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