Topic started by TPFKAA (@ 203.106.162.169) on Thu Nov 14 23:59:36 .
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White man's burden?
Francois Gautier
Why do Indians have such an attraction towards white skin? I am a White and a born Christian - but even after more than 30 years in India, this
attraction in its people still baffles me. I have looked in my mind for answers.
When I see Mr Bill Gates coming to give charity to the poor and ignorant Indians, who do not know how to handle sex and are on the way to becoming
the largest AIDS reservoir in the world, I wonder: Do Indians really believe in what the White man says? Do they need a White man to tell them what to do and what not to do? Actually the funny thing is that this AIDS scare is an old trick of hostile NGOs, Christian organisations and the enemies of India.
It is true that AIDS is the scourge of the 21st century, the great black plague of our era. But more is being made of it than is necessary,
especially in the Indian context.
World health organisations are fond of saying that India has the largest population of HIV contaminated cases - some even speak about 25 millions by 2010. But as every one knows, AIDS spreads through three agents:
Homosexuality, hypodermic syringes of drug addicts and prostitutes. Yet, whatever Deepa Mehta or Shabana Azmi would like us to believe, homosexuality is not very common in India's villages, which comprise 80 per cent of the population; one-sided homosexuality is a Western phenomenon and it is brought to India by Westernised Indians.
As for hard drug addiction, again it is not all that common in Indian villages, except in some of the North-East border states, many of which
incidentally happen to be Christian. The prostitutes carry the greatest threat of spreading the disease, particularly in big cities like Mumbai.
Then in turn, those men who have contacted it will bring it to the villages, when they have intercourse with their wives. But 25 million AIDS
cases?
Again, when I see the fascination that Indians - old and young, rich and poor, whether from the Congress, the CPI or even the BJP - have for Congress president Sonia Gandhi, I wonder: Does India, one of the great ancient civilisations, need a White woman to govern it? I am sure she has great qualities, but are Indians so backward that they cannot find amongst themselves someone intelligent enough enough to lead them? And what about this craze for Mother Teresa? She may have been a saint, but nobody has harmed India's image in the West as much in the 20th century. When you
mention India in the West, their eyes light up and they say: "Mother Teresa/ Calcutta/ poor eople/ starving people/ who do not know how to care after their own underprivileged/ who need a White woman to show them how to pick-up those dying in the street and to look after orphans."
Is this the image that Indians needs today - one that is harming them,which is stopping Western investors from investing in India? Yet Mother Teresa is worshiped here, from Calcutta to Chennai, and when she will be made a saint by the Vatican, perpetuating this colonial, superior- minded, Christian symbol of White superiority over the Brown/Black man, the whole of Indian
media will rejoice in their own mental slavery and the Indian Government will probably declare a national holiday!
Why don't Indians understand that Brown is beautiful? White people spend hours in the beach and put a hundred cream and lotions to get banned. Why this obsession in Indian woman to have white skin? And why this growing trend to colour their hair blonde? How come the two most popular actors in India, Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan, have very fair skins and blue eyes? Why this craze about "fair" brides? If you find the answer to that, you will understand the reason behind Indians' fatal attraction towards Mr Bill Gates, Ms Sonia Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
Obviously, colonisation has frozen the Indian mind in certain patterns and the British made sure, through Macaulay's policies of leaving behind them an enduring complex of inferiority amongst Indians, by constantly harping on the flaws of Indian culture and inflating them. This is why Indian intellectuals today repeat what their masters said before: "Hindus are fundamentalists/ Brahmins are exploiters/ Golwalkar was a Nazi/ Indians are corrupt and no good." But that does not explain everything: Most colonised countries have aped their masters after having hated them. No, in my mind the greatest factor behind India's love of the White is the absurd theory of Aryan invasion.
According to this theory, which was actually devised in the 18th and 19th century by British linguists and archaeologists, the first inhabitants of India were good-natured, peaceful, dark-skinned shepherds called the Dravidians, who had founded what is now known as the Harappan or the Indus Valley civilisation. They were supposedly remarkable builders: Witness the city of Mohenjo-Daro in Sind. But they had no culture to speak of,that is to say no literature, no proper script even. Then, around 1500 BC,India
is said to have been invaded by tribes called the Aryans: white-skinned, nomadic people, who originated somewhere in Western Russia and imposed upon the Dravidians the hateful caste system. To the Aryans are attributed
Sanskrit, the Vedic-Hindu religion, India's greatest spiritual texts, the Vedas, as well as a host of subsequent writings, like the Upanishads.
This was indeed a masterstroke on the part of the British: Thanks to the Aryan invasion theory, they showed on the one hand that the Indian
civilisation was not that ancient and that it was secondary to the cultures which influenced the Western world, and that whatever good things India had developed had been as a result of the influence of the West. Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being known as the mother of all Indo-European
languages, became just a branch of their huge family; thus, the religion of Zarathustra is
said to have influenced Hinduism, and not vice versa.
On the other hand, it divided India and pitted its people against each other, rifts which still endure. Yet, most recent archaeological and
linguistic discoveries point out that there never was an Aryan invasion and many historians, including Romila Thapar, are distancing themselves from it.
Yet, most Indians still believe in this absurd theory.
It is time for you Indians to wake up. You are as great, if not greater, than the White man. You can do as well, if not better, than the White man. Not only did your forefathers devise some of the basic principles of mathematics, astrology, or surgical medicine, not only are your people today amongst the most brilliant in the world - half of Silicon valley is of people of Indian origin; 30 per cent of UK's doctors are Indians - but you still hold within yourselves a unique spiritual knowledge, which once roamed the world, but which has now disappeared, replaced by the intolerant creed of the two major monotheistic religions, which say: "If you don't believe in
my true God, I will either kill you or convert you." Wake-up India.
Brown is beautiful, smart and it is the future.
Note: Bill Gate has appointed a Christian Ashok Alexander to head his AIDS
initiative in India. Ashok used to work with Mckinsey earlier.
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