Racism and Hypocrisy

Went out for an “Indian” with a friend and some of his friends. Apparently, a common chat-up line for subcontinentals in the UK is “D’you like a good Indian?” Nice one, that. Suppose it wouldn’t work for anybody who wasn’t Indian, though. “D’you like a good Pakistani?” isn’t quite the same.

The friend’s friends were these good old guys, salt of the earth types. English earth, that is. Judge for yourself what they were like, based on these remarks – “You’re not turning Muslim, are you?” – in response to something about the drinks being delivered by a waiter, not waitress. Or “How was the bomb-making course, then?”, when said friend mentioned he read chemistry (He wasn’t Muslim, just for the record). Or again, about disliking Thai food “Just don’t like anything to do with slitty-eyed people”.

Now here’s the thing. These remarks were made openly, addressed to my friend and me, both of who are obviously of south Asian extraction. I’m confused about how to react. Or if I should react at all. From one angle, it’s as if we were part of the “inner circle”, where one could make remarks like that and get away with it. Certainly my friend acted like it.

From another angle, one could interpret it to mean that the people making those remarks were prejudiced about Muslims and East Asians, but not Indians (The fact that we were at an Indian eatery and all of them were Indian food fanatics lends weight to this theory). But how do you know that they wouldn’t make similarly erudite observations about my type of people when there weren’t any of us present? (Difficult though it is to get away from us these days).

Third, and here’s where I struggle a bit – is it sheer hypocrisy for me to be disturbed by this? Back home in India, racism as defined here is so casual as to be mainstream. “Chinkies”, “Mozzies” and “Kalloos” pepper our conversation, and belonging to an “upper” caste carries with it a feeling of smugness. So should I interpret tonight’s remarks as healthy, just like it was back home, or admit to myself that back home is a place that is truly rotten to the core?