We can call it racism, casteism, and what not, but the root cause of all lies in the bedrock of hatred and insecurity against diverse cultures, traditions and customs. Seldom do we try to understand the second person's predicament and jump to judgements based on their appearance. Well, before I bore you with my interpretation of such hate'ism let me tell you why I was moved to do so. The attack on a Tanzanian student in Bengaluru-a city supposedly progressive and pluralistic. There was the Dadri, Hyderabad and million other incidents which sparked the Intolerance debate but this happened in a city admired for its acceptance of varied cultures & customs and surprisingly none of the moral police and political honchos raising alarms at the raising intolerance were visible anywhere around the Bengaluru incident - maybe because it is too small a vote bank with no voting rights here.
With all the hue and cry over Indians facing discrimination in the Australia, US and other countries, we ought to be a bit more accommodating when interacting with foreigners in our soil. Although I don't intend to justify the mob's reaction in either case, but the worst part was that they attacked a Tanzanian for an accident caused by a Sudanese. Would the crowd react in the same way if an American had crashed the car and a Canadian came by an hour later? Despite suffering colonialism for over two centuries, are we still not out of our school of thought based on colour?
The genesis of this hatred lies in the insecurity over one's own self. The fear of losing out opportunities, the fear of losing control over the system and the fear of losing a pseudo-social ranking wherein one ranks higher than the other person compound and transform into animosity and grudge.
It definitely gets TRP and attention when someone starts talking about intolerance but very rarely the debates address the root cause of the issue or appeal to the viewer's conscience but are leveraged for scoring political points or staying in the limelight with ludicrous statements. At the end of the discussion it fills the viewers with more prejudice against the other side of the story than before.
It is time viewers started holding the journalists accountable for their presentation of facts and reporting for these are the people offering a platform for the representatives to score political points rather than arrive at a solution.
