Discrimination in India

I recently read Chetan Bhagat's book 2 States (which was very good by the way, it had that same feeling of Five Point Someone to it) and the most recurrent theme discussed by him was discrimination. Unlike other countries, in India it is not just your skin-tone that matters - your caste, state, religion, cultural background, monetary resources, gender, etc. all create divides in society. It sickens me that even after more than 60 years of independence, we are still suffering from this discrimination. 

It is really sad that for a marriage to happen in India, we have to look through all that and then only agree. Not to mention the disgusting practice of taking Dowry, but I am getting off topic. Why am I going to marriage, in my school, Malayalees have always been downsized. We have been stereotyped and anything we do wrong just gets us the statement " Mallu no? Figures". What people from other parts of India can never do anything wrong? I'll admit the problem has gone down in recent times but it still exists. Another example was brilliantly showed in the Hindi movie Kaminey - native Maharashtrians discriminating against immigrants. And don't even get me started on gender discrimination - that will be a whole another article by itself.

North Indians always look down on the South Indians as backward people with no urge to become modern. South Indians always think of North Indians to be too proud of themselves and overly modern (the word they use being Westernized or Americanized). Truth is we all have our own good qualities and bad qualities. And these qualities are what makes us Indian.

If this fighting goes on it will only lead to Civil War like racial discrimination did in the US. Fighting has already started..... in the Kannur district of Kerala, at least 4 people are killed in the name of Religion every single day. There's a saying in Kannur, "If you go out and come back with your head, consider yourself lucky". Why do we degrade our country's reputation by fighting over something so petty as religious differences? 

I know of many people who complain that India is a bad country to be part of. To tell you the truth, I feel like punching those people in the face. If you consider India to be a bad a country, that is no one else's fault but your own. By you I mean every single citizen of India, myself included. Discrimination is carried out by people not the country. You have no right to say anything against our country and whats wrong with it if you are not doing anything to fix it.

In conclusion I would like to give you what I think to be the first step in eradicating discrimination. Stop thinking of yourself as North or South or East or West Indian, as Hindu or Muslim or Christian, think of yourself only as Indian. It is our generation's greatest goal as the generation of change to fix India, so lets do just that.


Shreerag Plakazhi