Is All Criticism of Indians and Indian Culture Racism?
Executive Summary
- To deflect criticism, Indians often claim that their detractors are solely motivated by racism.
- We review this claim for accuracy.
Introduction
This website has over a hundred articles on Indian IT that chronicle many topics ranging from Indian discrimination to Indian corruption. I have received several comments on this article that either make an accusation of racism or state that I “hate” Indians.
These “arguments” seem to be deliberately designed to skirt the issue with Indians and Indian behavior in IT. It is also amazing to me that I would put as much effort as I have into investigating issues, be careful in how I have explained the relationships, and then have the comments, after all the evidence provided in the article that the only explanation for the conclusions in this article are due to racism or hatred.
Racist Against Indians?
First, for the charge of racism.
Racism is now the universal charge brought by people unable to make actual arguments. Everything now is either racist or sexist or perhaps transphobic. Even the Lord of the Rings has been accused of being racist.
The logic?
The movies did not cast black actors or actresses. An actor made this claim against Game of Thrones.
“There are no black people on ‘Game of Thrones.’ You don’t see one black person in ‘Lord of the Rings,’” Boyega said in a recent interview with GQ. “I ain’t paying money to always see one type of person on-screen. Because you see different people from different backgrounds, different cultures, every day. Even if you’re a racist, you have to live with that. We can ruffle up some feathers.” – The Atlantic
This is, of course, illogical. Game of Thrones is based in a European fictional setting, although some parts are based in other settings, and there are different races represented. However, the idea that every movie must have people of different races or “backgrounds” is ludicrous. In 12th century Japan, there were no Norwegians or Pacific Islanders. It would not make much sense to place people of these races in such a movie.
What is the Definition of Racism?
Racism means denigrating groups or categorizing them as inferior solely based upon race.
There is nothing in any of the articles at Brightwork R&A that makes any statement about Indians being inferior to other races. The focus is on the Indian culture. Secondly, Indians in the US and worldwide have demonstrated an off-the-chart pattern of engaging in discrimination, so Indians are in a poor position to be accusing anyone of anything regarding racism or any other “ism.”
How Critiquing Massive Discrimination by Indians is Cynically Called Racist
We cover this in the article. How Indian IT Workers Discriminate Against Non-Indian Workers, and in the article The Amazing Fact That 99.7% of Tata Consulting is Indian. Essentially, the argument presented is that Indians are routinely engaging in discrimination against non-Indians (and Indians, by the way, that are not Telugu speakers or are not Hindi) is a type of racism. Indians who make this claim are doubly confused as India has one of the most formalized discriminatory systems in existence. The vast majority of Indians in the US come from the Brahman or Kshatriyas – who discriminate extensively versus the other castes. Most Indians in the US support the Indian PM Narendra Modi, who kills people with impunity in India — but which most Indians in the US like because he is moving India towards being a Hindu state, where all other religions are relegated to discriminatory status.
India also ranks as either the worst or one of the worst places to be a woman, and Indians do not focus on reform and have made no social progress since gaining independence. Indians do not improve things, and they exploit existing systems. This is why India is in the state it is.
Therefore, it is challenging to take comments seriously from Indians about racism or open-mindedness. These same Indians have, in most cases, mistreated Indians from lower castes and would not think of marrying a woman from a lower caste. I like to say Indians would like to aspire to be just racist. Still, they have so many discriminatory patterns within racist groups that they have not yet graduated to merely racism.
The Reality of the Caste System in India
Let us review how the upper caste can treat lower caste people in India.
The 19-year-old woman was cutting grass to feed the family’s five milk buffalo in Hathras when she was taken away by a group of upper-caste men on Sept. 14, according to her brother.
Her tongue was cut and her spinal cord was broken after she was dragged by her neck with a rope, the brother said. He said that arrests came only after days of complaints to the police. His sister was initially treated at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh before being transferred to New Delhi.
And do Indians in the US protest this?
No.
Their bigger issue is arguing for more H1-B visas, which is far more important than any injustice in India.
Therefore, readers who make this argument do not appear to understand the circularity of their argument nor Indian culture.
- The Indians that make this comment simply do not want US domestic workers to protect themselves from Indians. So they will say anything and level any evidence-free contention to keep their scam going. Remember, Indians have no apparent morality.
- Non-Indians who make this argument are both unoriginal and simply don’t understand anything about India’s history or its present.
Hating on Indians?
Several articles on this site explain that Indians work against the vast majority of those in the US and other countries where they immigrate. That is, Indians target domestic US workers. I wrote a similar article, Why Brightwork Research & Analysis Has No Relationships With Vendors, which describes how Brightwork stopped interacting with vendors, as after years of experience, the only objective of vendors that we could see was to consume our time for free or try to get free coverage for their products. However, we have not been accused of hating vendors.
In fact, the term hatred is a curious one. Because is it not natural to hate bad things? The critique of hatred makes it sound like the observer of terrible things is the one who is guilty of the misdeed. This is false. The hatred, unless irrational, is the reaction to the event. There are things we should hate.
Finally, the comments found in The Brightwork Survey Results on Indian Discrimination in IT illustrate very clearly that many people share similar feelings towards Indians.
In fact, observe this question from the survey.
All of the firms that we follow that are of Indian origin have high levels of corruption. India itself ranks highly in corruption. The idea of corrupting being imported to countries from India is rarely covered in IT media. Of the Indians you have worked with, how would you rate their forthrightness versus other domestic workers you have worked with.
Dalits are particularly vulnerable to caste-based discrimination, and Dalit women are singled out for sexual attacks thousands of times a year, according to human rights organizations.
Gruesome reports of rape, often followed by retaliatory violence if victims or their families speak out, have become painfully familiar in India. Whether a rape report rises above the din to receive national notice is often determined by class and caste dynamics. – New York Times
The lower castes in India are treated appallingly and, in most cases, lack legal protection from upper caste Indians. But Indians are naturally in a position to explain tolerance to me.
The US will become more progressive by importing people from India? How does that work exactly?
Close to 90% of those that work with Indians in IT consider them less honest than other domestic US workers.
Read the comments. They are quite illuminating. Are all of these respondents haters and racists also?
These same people that offer critical comments appear to be fine with the reprehensible behavior of Indian firms, Indian recruiters, etc..
- Brightwork is, unlike most Indian firms that operate in the US, not involved with H1-B fraud.
- We did not obtain a 98+% margin on Indian workers by paying them Indian salaries while on B1 visas while billing them at US rates, as we cover in the article How Infosys Violated B-1 Visa Law and Charged Clients a 98.6% Margin.
- Why? Well, I opposed labor exploitation and have written extensively about it. However, Indians generally do not oppose labor exploitation. It is how things are done in India.
Conclusion
I very much doubt that Indians themselves believe the claims they make about racism. The entire point of calling criticism of Indians racism is that Indians have no interest in addressing the criticism and oppose anyone who publishes any criticism of Indians.
References
*https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/asia/india-rape-caste.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/in-middle-earth-must-all-hobbits-be-white/343239/