NRIs and Casteism

Indian newspapers often brag about the accomplishments of NRIs. Recently there was news which talked about how NRIs have a chokehold on the spelling competition in the USA. It seems that 12 out of the last 15 competitions have been won by NRI children. I also had heard ignoramuses in USA were writing a lot of racist stuff on twitter and other social media saying that it was an American contest meant for Americans to win. Of course those morons do not know that every single one of those kids was born in the US and thus as American as any of them. But that is beside the point.

I decided to read the coverage of this news on the Washington Post which is one of the biggest papers in the US. I read the report which was as complimentary as it could be. Then I decided to read the comments following the report. Now these comments are often unadulterated sentiments of the readers emboldened by their anonymity. Most of the comments were a mishmash of the usual and the insignificant but one of them stood out. This guy whose username suggested an Indian origin took the pains of demonstrating the caste of all the Indian winners of the past. His point was that the group comprised of mostly Brahmin kids and very few other upper caste kids with no one other castes and religions were represented.
As someone who thinks that casteism is the bane of Indian society, I was aghast. Even after being removed from the country and exposed to one of the most barrier free societies (keyword being “MOST”) this jerk still is holding onto an social evil which is holding our society from breaking free. Very recently a dalit boy was killed in Maharashtra because his phone had a ringtone extolling Babasaheb Ambedkar. When a dalit gets killed for sitting in a chair do we feel proud of the system or do we want to get rid of it?

What this jackass does not realize that before 2000 which triggered the Y2K fears (which led to the hiring of enormous numbers of Indian IT professionals) only students used to go to the US for higher studies and that too students from the IITs and some RECs. Most of these students happen to be from the privileged classes (it is not just hard work but also opportunity that helps the privileged classes). Children of those people are now participating in these competitions and doing well. So what we have is children of the best of India are doing well in the US. Are we really surprised?

On the other hands there is another section of Indian society which finds itself in the US i.e. non-professionals from Punjab and Gujarat. Now none of the spelling competition winners are Gujaratis or Punjabis but they are some of the wealthiest Indians in the US. Do they get rich being stupid and lazy? Clearly for a lot of people, winning in a spelling competition is less important than becoming rich. As one Gujarati told me – we don’t do MBA degree, we just hire them to do our work.

While most of the comments following the articles complimented the NRI children and ridiculed the racists, these moron brought in caste system and vitiated a good discussion. I will bet that this same cretin complains about racism in America all the time.

What really upset me is that Indians in the US complain about racism and yet practice casteism and regionalism even when they are far from home. These are some of our best representing Mother India abroad. With that in mind what prayer do we have of getting rid of these evils IN India? That is what broke my heart.