Matsyanyaya

For a change today when I write, I do not write as a person of colour looking through his kaleidoscope in to a very white western world. Instead I look without any colour, being a species as complex and diverse as one can ever wildly imagine and simply name them Humans. My writing as usual is an outcome of my day to day interaction with people I have met in a continent which is predominantly white for last four years and through my conversation with my friends.

So the other day I was walking with my friend, a very white man. We both were making racist jokes, but what I suddenly realized was that he has to be much more careful about his choice of words even around his friend than I have ever been. That made me wonder how necessary is this political correctness in our everyday conversation? It is true in recent past parts of the white race have done terrible things to people of different colours, but expecting them to be apologetic all the moment of their existence seems too much to me, especially knowing they personally did not do anything to harm a race.  In fact, I even believe if the white race came together and tried to end the “atrocities” of the coloured races of present day as they tried to do in the past, the former group has a big chance of being at the receiving end considering the coloured people constitute the majority of this world. And on the other hand it is not that in the history of our species, the whites are the only one who have colonized, brutalized, vandalized and everything terrible to other races. It has happened again and again, whenever there was a disbalance of power in this world. The apparently more powerful has invaded the meek one again and again, and all our hands are stained in blood, some is fresh and some has faded away a long back. There is a wonderful word in Sanskrit to describe this animal instinct in us, Matsyanyaya, the instinct of the big fish to gulp down the small ones. And the Hindu tradition justifies the presence of laws and Government and even political correctness to prevent Matsyanyaya because this is not a very desirable situation and hence needs to be prevented from happening.   I do still understand that political correctness is important at spaces out of respect but I would rather make those internalized habits rather than things that you are just supposed to do to have a face in this apparently “liberal” society we live in.

With that key word, “liberal” I move to my next experience. Every time I had to come out in recent years, and if I were coming out to a hijab wearing dark skinned woman I always anticipated hostility whereas when I was doing the same to a brightly make up clad white woman I always thought it would be easier. Interestingly in my personal experience, all coloured people I came out to, they all surprised me by being extremely accepting and made me extremely uncomfortable by making me realize that I have a big bias against my on “sub-species” when it comes to taking them as open individuals. On the other hand I had at least two experiences where the “expected” open race reacted in a way that did not exactly express acceptance. So I wonder if we put too much pressure on these poor white folks by expecting them all to be liberal, accepting and inclusive in their thoughts. After all they all are a product of a damaged social system as we are at the other side of the “darker” world.

What I take away from the history that as a species we all have written is we all have done terrible thing, and we have never learned from it ever. May be it is our time to realize the meaning of the word “Matsyanyaya” from the depth of our hearts for a change and not blame each other for doing wrong. Rather accept that we all have done wrong and learn from it. This I believe will help us, who have been betrayed recently heal and take away the burden of mandatorily being “liberal” from another race.