Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:09, 13 January 2008

Template:Discrimination2 Indophobia also Anti India Sentiment refers to hostility towards Indians and Indian culture especially in the Western world and in many South Asian countries neighbouring India. Indophobia is formally defined in the context of anti-Indian prejudice in East Africa as follows: "Indophobia is a tendency to react negatively towards people of lndian extraction against aspects of Indian culture and normative habits"

Historical Anti India Sentiment

By the late 19th century, fear had already begun in North America over Chinese immigration supplying cheap labor to lay railroad tracks, mostly in California and elsewhere in the West Coast. In xenophobic jargon common in the day, ordinary workers, newspapers, and politicians uniformly opposed this "Yellow Peril". The common cause to eradicate Asians from the workforce gave rise to the Asiatic Exclusion League. When the fledgling Indian community of mostly Punjabi Sikhs settled in California, the xenophobia expanded to combat not only the East Asian Yellow Peril, but now the immigrants from British India, the Turban Tide, equally referred to as the Hindoo Invasion (sic)..

Among Nineteenth-century Indologists

The term "Indophobia" was first coined in western academia by American Indologist Thomas Trautmann to describe negative attitudes expresed by some British Indologists against Indian history, society, religions and culture . Historians have noted that during the British Empire "evangelical influence drove British policy down a path that tended to minimize and denigrate the accomplishments of Indian civilization and to position itself as the negation of the earlier British Indomania that was nourished by belief in Indian wisdom."

In Charles Grant highly influential "Observations on the ...Asiatic subjects of Great Britain" (1796), Grant criticized the Orientalists for being too respectful to Indian culture and religion. His work tried to determine the Hindu's "true place in the moral scale", and he alleged that the Hindus are "a people exceedingly depraved".

Lord Macaulay, who introduced English education into India, claimed: "I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." He wrote that Arabic and Sanskrit works on medicine contain "medical doctrines which would disgrace an English Farrier - Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school - History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long - and Geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter".

One of the most influential historians of India during the British Empire, James Mill was criticised for being prejudiced against Hindus. . The Indologist H.H. Wilson wrote that the tendency of Mill's work is "evil". Mill claimed that both Indians and Chinese people are cowardly, unfeeling and mendacious. Both Mill and Grant attacked Orientalist scholarship that was too respectful of Indian culture: "It was unfortunate that a mind so pure, so warm in the pursuit of truth, and so devoted to oriental learning, as that of Sir William Jones, should have adopted the hypothesis of a high state of civilization in the principal countries of Asia."

However, the Indologists were also often under pressure from missionary and colonial interest groups, and were frequently criticised by them.

Contemporary societal Indophobia

Contemporary Indophobia has risen in the western world, particularly the United States, on account of the rise of the Indian American community and the increase in offshoring of white-collar jobs to India by American multinational corporations. Societal prejudices against South Asians in the west manifest through instances of intimidation and harassment, such as the case of the Dotbusters street gang.

Pakistan

Anti-Indian sentiments, coupled with anti-Hindu prejudices as well as prejudices directed at Indian Muslims have existed in Pakistan since it's formation. In particular, racialist ideas such as the Martial Race theory were central to the Pakistan Army which believed that since the Pakistan Army comprised soldiers of the "martial races", they should easily defeat India in a war, especially prior to the Second Kashmir War Based on this belief in the martial supremacy, it was popularly hyped that one Pakistani soldier was equal to four to ten Hindus/Indian soldiers (including a large number of Sikh soldiers and officers), and thus numerical superiority of the foe could be overcome. However, the Indo-Pakistan Wars of 1947 and 1965 proved otherwise as Pakistan Army lost more men and land than India in its many attempts to gain the entire Kashmir region.

Contemporary Indophobia in Pakistan continues to exist, coupled with Anti-pakistan phobias in India, due to the fact that the two countries have warred with each other, off and on, throughout the second half of the twentieth centurym primarily over Kashmir and Bangladesh.

Bangladesh

Historically, anti-India sentiments were expressed during the liberation of Bangladesh from foreign domination by Pakistan by pan-Islamist groups sympathetic to the Pakistani regime, such as the Razakars, al-Shams and al-Badr Islamist militias, who were, in part, responsible for the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities. These attitudes were vigorously encouraged by the East Pakistan administration. Often, racism and prejudice directed at Bengalis (Hindus, Muslims, Indians or Bangladeshi bengalis) incorporated Indophobic attitudes, given that Pakistani occupiers viewed the Bengalis as "inferior Hindus" or "inferior Indians" regardless of their actual religion or nationality. The term "Indophobia" is first applicable to denote these prejudices when they began to morph from traditional anti-Hinduism in the Muslim communities to political accusations against Bengali Hindus specifically pertaining to dual loyalty with India. Such prejudices have been compared by many outside observers to the anti-Semitic propaganda of Nazi Germany..

The Muslim identity of present-day Bangladesh was sought to be established way back in 1901 and 1947 during the partition of India, and although a sizable Hindu minority remained in East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh), growing anti-Hinduism caused steady migration into India. The phobia that had grown from anti-Hinduism into Indophobia is also a part of ethnic Bengali Nationalism in the country, which continues to mark an average Bangladeshi’s perception of Indians. The ruling Bangladeshi class had realized this soon after the formation of Bangladesh and consequently made successive attempts to project not only the anti-India stance of the country, but also Islamic extremism which came to be basis of anti-India propaganda.

Political disputes like the Farakka Barrage, Indo-Bangladesh enclaves and Indo-Bangladeshi barrier have created rift between the two. Persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh by the rising tide of militant Islamists and cross-border infiltration into India by illegal Bangladeshi immigrants has created likewise anti-Bangladeshi sentiment in India. Indophobia in Bangladesh is coupled with anti-Hinduism in Bangladesh, whereby Bengali Hindus are persecuted and accused of dual loyalty with India by militant Islamist parties such as the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Former British colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa have many citizens of South Asian descent. They were brought there by the British Empire from British India to do clerical work in Imperial service. In academic discourse, racial prejudices directed against these people from their host countries fall under the rubric of Indophobia. The most prominent case being the ethnic cleansing of Indian (sometimes simple called "Asian") minority in Uganda by strongman dictator and human-rights violator Idi Amin..

According to H.H. Patel, many Indians in East Africa and Uganda were in the sartorial and banking businesses, where they were kept forcibly by the British colonialists. Since the representation of Indians in these professions was high, stereotyping of Indians in Uganda as tailors or Bankers was common. Also, some Indians perceived themselves as coming from a more advanced culture than Uganda, a view not appreciated by Ugandans. However, such thinking was cultivated by the British, who held similar views, to cultivate racial divisions as part of a divide and rule campaign. Indophobia in Uganda thus predated Amin, and also existed under Milton Obote. The 1968 Committee on "Africanization in Commerce and Industry" in Uganda made far-reaching Indophobic proposals. A system of work permits and trade licenses was introduced in 1969 in order to restrict the role of Indians in economic and professional activities. Indians were segregated and discriminated against in all walks of life. After Amin came to power, he exploited these divisions to spread propaganda against Indians involving stereotyping and scapegoating the Indian minority. Indians were stereotyped as "only traders" and so "inbred" to their profession. Indians were attacked as "dukawallas" (an occupational term that degenerated into an anti-Indian slur during Amin's time).Indians were stereotyped as "greedy, conniving", without any racial identity or loyalty but "always cheating, conspiring and plotting" to subvert Uganda. Amin used this propaganda to justify a campaign of "de-Indianization", eventually resulting in the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Uganda's Indian minority.. Most of the expelled Indians settled in Britain

Depictions of Indophobia in popular culture

The Indophobia of the Ugandan regime under Idi Amin was depicted in the 1991 film Mississippi Masala directed by Mira Nair. Also, in the 2006 movie The Last King of Scotland, Idi Amins Indophobia was depicted by award-winning veteran American actor Forest Whitaker playing the role of Amin. In the motion picture, Amin publicly referred to Indians as "leeches" and "parasites". The discrimination against and eventual expulsion of Indians was also depicted in the motion picture.

See also

• Indology
• Indomania
• Anti-Hinduism
• Antiziganism
• Pakistan Studies

Notes

1. Ali. Mazrui, "The De-Indianisation of Uganda: Does it require an Educational Revolution?" paper delivered to the East African Universities Social Science Council Conference, December 19-23, 1972, Nairobi, Kenya, p.3.
2. Chan Sucheng,Asian Americans: An Interpretive History,Twayne 1991
3. "Shut the gate to the Hindoo invasion", San Francisco examiner, June 6, 1910
4. Closed Borders and Mass Deportations: The Lessons of the Barred Zone Act by Alicia J. Campi
5. Aryans and British India By Thomas R. Trautmann
6. Trautmann 1997:113
7. Grant, Charles. (1796) Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals; and on the means of improving it, written chiefly in the year 1792.
8. http://www.atributetohinduism.com/FirstIndologists.htm
9. Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1835:242-243, Minute on Indian education.
10. Trautmann 1997:117
11. H.H. Wilson 1858 in James Mill 1858, The history of British India, Preface of the editor
12. Mill, James - 1858, 2:109, The history of British India.
13. Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat Richard H. Shultz, Andrea Dew: "The Martial Races Theory had firm adherents in Pakistan and this factor played a major role in the under-estimation of the Indian Army by Pakistani soldiers as well as civilian decision makers in 1965."
14. An Analysis The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-59 by AH Amin The army officers of that period were convinced that they were a martial race and the Hindus of Indian Army were cowards. Some say this was disproved in 1965 when despite having more sophisticated equipment, numerical preponderance in tanks and the element of surprise the Pakistan Armoured Division miserably failed at Khem Karan
15. United States Library of Congress Country Studies Most Pakistanis, schooled in the belief of their own martial prowess, refused to accept the possibility of their country's military defeat by "Hindu India"
16. Indo-Pakistan War of 1965
17. End-game? By Ardeshir Cowasjee - 18 July 1999, Dawn (newspaper)
18. India by Stanley Wolpert. Published: University of California Press, 1990. "India's army... quickly dispelled the popular Pakistani myth that one Muslim soldier was “worth ten Hindus.”"
19. Cite error: The named reference Cohen was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
20. According to sources in Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 Pakistani fatalities range between 30% - 200% higher than Indian fatalities including the Operation Gibraltar.
21. Pakistan backed troops were always the first to be sent into Kashmir during 1947, 1965 and in 1999 kargil conflict with aims of capture, instigation and intrusions. For details/sources, see relevant articles.
22. O'Leary, Brendan. Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders P179 (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199244901. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
23. Taj I. Hashmi, Islamic Resurgence in Bangladesh: Genesis, Dynamics and Implications, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies
24. U.S. Consulate (Dacca) Cable, Sitrep: Army Terror Campaign Continues in Dacca; Evidence Military Faces Some Difficulties Elsewhere, March 31, 1971, Confidential, 3 pp
25. Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971,gendercide.org
26. Library of Congress studies
28. Bangladesh slammed for persecution of Hindus, Rediff.com
29. The Hindu Minority in Bangladesh: Legally Identified Enemies, Human Rights Documentation Centre
30. ^ General Amin and the Indian Exodus from Uganda Hasu H. Patel, Issue: A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1972), pp. 12-22 doi:10.2307/1166488

External links

• Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, University of California Press (1997), ISBN 0-520-20546-4, chapter 4: British Indophobia
• http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0047-1607(197224)2%3A4%3C12%3AGAATIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23
• Idi Amin & Indophobia: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0047-1607(197224)2%3A4%3C12%3AGAATIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23
• http://www.apcss.org/Publications/Edited%20Volumes/ReligiousRadicalism/PagesfromReligiousRadicalismandSecurityinSouthAsiach3.pdf
• http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/Research/OPs/Saikia/SaikiaOP.pdf

• Indology
• Anti-Indian sentiment