Bad Parenting: Vegetarian Bullying

[This follows Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency]

Where do we get our prejudices?  How do we form our biases against certain kinds of people?  How does discrimination perpetuate through generations? 

The answer lies in bad parenting.

The parents indoctrinate their kids with habits, ideals, values and most importantly prejudices.   I argue in Indian values are actually habits I and Indian values are actually habits II that Indians equate habits with values.  What this means is that Indians give precedence to dietary habits, like not eating meat or not drinking alcohol over other values such as honesty or integrity, or not taking bribes. 

 

Segregation in India 2: Indian Muslims are not Khans or Kalams

India constantly refers to many Muslim Presidents they have had to showcase its tolerance and equal treatment of Muslims.  Nowadays many Indian Hindus repeatedly take the example of our erstwhile President, Abdul Kalam.  They say, ‘Look! We have had a Muslim as our President.  And he was selected by a Hindu Party!’ By saying this, they want to showcase India as a tolerant and magnanimous country that allows anyone to become the President of India, even a Muslim.  These Hindus also refer to the three Khans who dominate Indian Hindi Cinema – Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Amir Khan.  And they point out the cricketers like Yusuf Pathan and musician like AR Rahman.  They use these examples to say that Muslims are not discriminated in India, that they are not marginalized, that they get the same access to education and opportunity, that they are not unequal, that they are not second-class citizens. 

According to these Hindus, the Muslims are in fact ‘appeased’, they are given certain sops unnecessarily, like subsidies on Haj, and they are given special treatment unnecessarily, like special personal laws.  These people think that these ‘appeasing’ measures have a definite purpose - only to win votes.  They believe that Muslims are so naïve, so innocent that they could be beguiled by such silly sops, like Haj subsidy, to form a single vote bank.

Segregation in India: Plight of Muslims

After winning the American Civil War for Northern States, Abraham Lincoln went about abolishing slavery in United States of America.  The Congress and Senate passed three landmark amendments attempting to change the fate of African Americans in that country.  The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery, the 14th Amendment made blacks equal citizens, and 15th Amendment gave them right to vote.  In the next ten years of Reconstruction, many black leaders emerged to occupy positions in Senate and Congress.  It almost looked, for a while, that this new nation would correct the mistakes of its past and reverse the effects of slavery it imposed on black people.  However, the whites of America were not ready to give blacks an equal status in their country.  They started to dilute these amendments by creating a notion called ‘separate but equal’.  They imposed segregation in the country through a series of measures called Jim Crow laws. 

It started with disenfranchising many blacks, then creating separate schools, separate seating in travel and restaurants, thereby institutionalizing discrimination.  They created two Americas, one for the privileged which was mostly white, and the other was for the underprivileged which was mostly black.  The Jim Crow laws completely negated the three amendments passed during Lincoln’s times.