Home Page of Dr. Saumitra Mohan

The Great Indian Nation: Are We Racist? *Saumitra Mohan We, as a nation, have been very sensitive to ‘racism’ for a long time and continue to be so. The recent times have seen a lot many issues relating to race and racism hogging media attention. The recent attacks against Indians in Australia have also kept the racism debate alive in this country. It was our own Mahatma Gandhi who had taken up the cudgel against ‘apartheid’, the dreaded racist policies in South Africa of the yore. His first encounter with racial discrimination at the Pieter Maritzburg railway station in South Africa towards the end of 19th century became the symbol of a fight against the colonial powers all over the world. When India became independent, non-discrimination on the basis of race was included in Article 15 of the Indian Constitution. Later, India also joined and signed various global instruments including the International Convention against Racial Discrimination. But one finds it really surprising w...