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In these days of multiple information platforms, there’s no excuse for ignorance, the sort that makes Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga subject to security searches over and over and over again. Former President Abdul Kalam, former minister George Fernandes, film stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kamal Haasan, and even our very own Rahul Gandhi, to name just a few, all know the feeling.
But these are the rich and powerful. What about the innumerable nameless, faceless harassed simply because of how they look and therefore must be… what? Terrorists?
There was a time when people just didn’t know. But that’s not an excuse any longer. Go to any big city in the world, certainly in the US, UK and India, and you see rainbow colours, hear a babel of languages. As for the cuisine, the variety and authenticity is amazing. It’s the age of anything anywhere.
Yet, prejudice reigns supreme, from the simplest level to the most complex, at home and across the world. In a Delhi college for instance, a student was taking the roll call. When she came to the name of a student from Nagaland, she stopped, giggled, then said she couldn’t pronounce it. It was so ‘different’. An entire neighbourhood and their political backers in another part of Delhi turned against a group of Nigerians because of what was perceived as their ‘strange ways’.
More and more Nigerians, Iranians, Afghanis, Mongolians, Sri Lankans, Malaysians and others are enrolling in Indian universities even as Chinese, Indian, Korean, Arab and students of many nationalities throng US and other universities around the world. When the world today is literally a melting pot with the free flow of information and people, the rise of cultural conservatism is not just inexcusable, it’s inexplicable. There’s just no reason for not knowing any more.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt to laugh things off sometimes as SRK reminded us with his comment that every time you think you’re the greatest there’s nothing like a visit to the US to remind you who you really are. But passing off prejudice as ignorance is not funny. Ignorance can never be blissful.
Senior Assistant Editor
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