When an Indian student is mocked abroad for their accent, when a family is denied a house in London because of their surname, when someone is stared at in America for their skin colour or food — we feel angry. And rightly so.
No one deserves to be judged for where they were born, what language they speak, or what they look like.
But before we get angry at the world, maybe we should ask ourselves one honest, uncomfortable question:
Do we do the same to each other, back home?
A South Indian feels more comfortable with South Indians. A Punjabi finds his people in a new city and sticks with them. A Marathi group in a college or office naturally becomes close. Old friend groups don’t always welcome new people. We tell ourselves, “It’s just comfort. It’s just our culture. It’s just language.”
And often, it is just comfort. There is nothing wrong with loving your language, your food, your festivals, your people.
The problem starts when comfort becomes closed doors.
When we don’t invite the new person to lunch because they don’t speak our language.
When we laugh at someone’s accent from another state.
When we assume someone from a particular region is rude, lazy, loud, or untrustworthy.
When we prefer fair skin in a rishta, or judge someone by their caste, religion, or village.
When we say, “These people are like this only.”
That is also differentiation. We just give it different names — regionalism, casteism, community preference, tradition.
In other countries, they call it racism. In India, we often don’t call it anything. We call it normal.
But the feeling on the receiving end is the same.
Think of the student from the Northeast who is called “Chinese” in Delhi. Think of the Bihari worker who is mocked in Mumbai. Think of the Tamil person who feels like an outsider in a Hindi-speaking office. Think of the Dalit child who is made to sit separately. They feel exactly what we feel when we are treated as outsiders abroad — small, unwanted, and judged for something they didn’t choose.
We cannot have it both ways.
We cannot demand that the world treat us as individuals, while we treat people at home as just their community.
This is not about hating India. India is beautiful because we have so many languages, foods, and cultures living together. This is about living up to that beauty.
Being proud of your community is good. Being closed to other communities is not pride, it’s fear.
So here is a small challenge, not a lecture:🙏🙏
Next time you are in a new group, invite the one person who is not from your community.
Next time you hear a joke about another state or religion, don’t laugh just to fit in.
Next time you judge someone by their accent, ask yourself — would I like it if someone judged me for mine in London or New York?
If we want the world to stop differentiating us, we have to start by not differentiating each other.
Change doesn’t start in other countries. It starts at our dining table, in our office, in our college canteen, and in our friend group.
Let’s be the kind of people abroad that we wish others would be to us — and let’s be the same people at home.
Sources :
Are we a racist society? The majority of us say no – but science begs to differ | Science and nature books | The Guardian https://share.google/FS2FymXrmcNgKd3sZ
Leave a Reply