How Not to Count Indians

Sometime in February 2011, our doorbell rang. A woman in her thirties stood outside, carrying a sheaf of papers and a pen. She spoke politely, asked the name of my father, the number of people in our family, confirmed our mother tongue. The interview lasted for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. She thanked us and left. In the whole process she didn’t ask for a single document.

India has conducted the census exercise for nearly 150 years, starting in 1872. It happens every ten years. The 2011 census covered all 8000 towns and more than 600,000 villages. A total of 2.7 million officials, such as the young lady who visited our house, successfully counted India’s 1.21 billion (121 crore) people. Like India’s democratic elections, census data collection is the pride of India. The next census will be concluded on 1 March 2021 for most of the country.

The discussion about CAA/NPR/NRC has left many people confused. Will India count its people two, three, four times? And why? To remove the confusion, I will clarify four concepts. (a) Census (b) National Population Register (NPR) (c) National Register of Citizens (NRC) and (d) Aadhar card.

Census

Census is the largest single official source that collects statistical information on different characteristics of India’s people. It happens in two phases: house-listing that focuses on things such as the presence or absence of toilets, drinking water, electricity, television, vehicles. The second phase is people count. This pertains to questions about age, gender, religion, language, employment. Census offers a macro picture that helps the government in the planning process. No single individual is a focus of the census, no documents are asked for. People could lie if they wish to, but there is no real reason for people to lie or hide any information.

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National Population Register (NPR)

NPR is the register of the usual residents of India. Usual residents are defined as those living in India for at least the past six months, as well as those who intend to live in India for at least the next six months. The objective is to create a comprehensive identity database of residents, including their demographic and biometric details. If census is “Macro”, NPR is “Micro”. NPR includes citizens as well as foreigners, both legal and illegal. All of them will be included as long as they are “usual residents” as per the definition. 

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National Register of Citizens (NRC) or National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC)

If NPR is merely about a person’s identity, NRC looks at the legality of that identity. Residing in India’s geography is enough to be part of the NPR. To be part of the NRC, the Indian government needs to confirm you are a legal citizen. NRC also includes Indian citizens living outside India.

NRC= NPR plus Indian citizens abroad minus legal foreigners resident in India minus doubtful and illegal residents.

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Aadhar card

When NRC was conceived, so was a “National Identity card”. The Indian government successfully managed to create that card, called it Aadhar. Aadhar is now the world’s biggest biometric database with more than 1.2 billion entries. But the government blundered, and Aadhar became an NPR card (residence), rather than an NRC card (citizenship) as it was supposed to be. In other words, foreigners, legal or illegal, usually residing in India can get Aadhar, whereas Indian citizens abroad are prohibited from applying for it.  That is one reason Amit Shah, India’s home minister, repeatedly says Aadhar is not valid for citizenship claims. He is upset about two things. First, the Supreme Court repeatedly struck down the government’s attempts to make Aadhar mandatory. Secondly, for Shah, the most upsetting aspect of Aadhar is that it doesn’t mention religion.

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National Citizenship Register (NRC) in black and white

It is claimed people are protesting the NRC prematurely. Only the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has been published, there is nothing about the NRC yet. PM Modi said NRC was never discussed. These claims are incorrect.

Detailed information on NRC has existed in black & white for 16 years. On 10 December 2003, India’s Home Ministry issued the NRC rules. The current Home Ministry has referred to those rules at least on two occasions in its notifications, in 2015 and 2019.

The background for NRC was twofold. One was the mass migration from war-torn Bangladesh to Assam, and the demographic change that followed it. But the 2003 rules were mainly triggered by the India-Pakistan Kargil war in 1999. Pakistani operatives had infiltrated part of Ladakh pretending to be Kashmiri militants. The BJP was in power, and the home ministry was in the hands of L.K.Advani, an incendiary politician. The 9/11 attack in the USA reinforced the paranoia about the damage Muslim illegals can cause. Possibly as a result of Kargil followed by 11 September, L.K. Advani, the demolition architect of Babri Mosque, issued the NRC rules in December 2003. The rules were never enforced because within five months the BJP government lost power (2004 elections). It may be wise for Modi and Shah to reflect on that sequence of events.

The amended NRC equation

It is also claimed that there is no connection between CAA and NRC. I will now show mathematically how they are connected.

We saw above that

NRC= NPR plus Indian citizens abroad minus doubtful and illegal residents.

I will now break the formula further.

NRC= NPR plus Indian citizens abroad minus doubtful and illegal non-Muslim residents minus doubtful and illegal Muslim residents.

By offering amnesty and citizenship to non-Muslims from three countries, CAA has altered the equation.

NRC= NPR plus Indian citizens abroad minus doubtful and illegal non-Muslim residents minus doubtful and illegal Muslim residents.

NRC is now a weapon directed exclusively at suspecting and scrutinizing India’s Muslim residents. 

India-born Muslims

Since 1 July 1987, Indian citizenship, as explained in an earlier chapter, is jus sanguinis (by descent) and not jus soli (by birth). Like asthma, diabetes and obesity, being illegal in India is a hereditary disease. Once a person is illegal, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren born after 1 July 1987 are all illegal. In the NRC equation, when we talk of doubtful and illegal Muslim residents, their India-born descendants are also included. As to how a Muslim born and raised in India can be called an infiltrator, only the Home Minister knows.

Doubtful citizens

This mortifying term was introduced by the 2003 Home Ministry rules. In Assam thousands of d-voters were robbed of their right to vote.

Now if India were to implement NPR or NRC (NPR minus doubtful Muslims), each Muslim will need to prove legality of himself, his family and ancestors. India introduced the Birth Registration Act in 1969. The related rules were published in 1999. Most Indians above fifty years of age don’t have a birth certificate.

If you read the NRC rules, 2003, you will notice it contains a series of petty bureaucrats empowered to scrutinize a person. Like in Assam, there may be a foreigners’ tribunal, a body to which a doubtful Muslim can appeal before going to jail. In theory, while in jail, he can even go to the High Court and the Supreme Court.

India has the largest number of illiterates in the world. The 350 million (35 crore) illiterates include 56 million (5.6 crore) Muslims. (One could argue that making people literate is the responsibility of the State.) The 56 million Muslims who can’t read or write are now expected to provide documentary evidence proving legality of their own and ancestors’ existence, argue with the petty bureaucrats, defend themselves in the tribunals and courts. No wonder they have intuitively understood the threat and would rather spend months protesting at Shaheen Bagh.

Illiterate population and illiterate minister

Amit Shah wants to conduct the NRC exercise in order to find infiltrators and imprison/deport them. No democratic country on earth has ever managed to do it. If an illegal immigrant decides to hide in the Himalayas, no NPR, NRC or any other exercise is going to find him.

USA, UK and Europe, far more developed than India, and far more attractive for migration, have admitted they have not enough resources to identify illegal immigrants. They try to focus on potential terrorists, and as 9/11 showed, they are not successful at that either. In those countries, visa overstays outnumber those who cross borders illegally. Trump can build a beautiful wall to stop Mexicans, but he can’t stop the thousands who enter USA legally and overstay their visas. That includes Indian illegal immigrants as well. Bangladesh sends the maximum number of tourists to India every year. India has no mechanism to catch those who overstay their visas.

India’s population exceeds the combined population of USA, EU and UK. It is evident that the “security” that is offered as the reason for NRC is impractical. The intent is clearly to target and intimidate Muslims in India.

Much to fear

Modi assures us that no Indian Muslim has anything to fear. This is patently false.

The dates for NPR are announced: 1 April to 30 Sept 2020. As we saw above, this exercise is the basis for NRC (=NPR minus doubtful and illegal Muslims). It can be assumed that the NPR data collection will probe every Muslim to decide whether he/she or his/her ancestors are doubtful or illegal.

The 56 million illiterate Muslims have much to fear. Many of them are unlikely to have credible documents. None of them can defend themselves against the belligerent bureaucracy, expensive tribunals and courts. The illiterate Muslims can be bullied, blackmailed, harassed, threatened and some of them imprisoned.

The India-born young Muslims (under 32) with illegal ancestors have much to fear. They are not even doubtful, they are illegal. The law doesn’t offer them protection. Their families are liable to be imprisoned for three years without bail. Since it is unlikely any country will take back India-born Muslims, their fate after three years’ imprisonment is unclear. They may rot in jail till the end of their life.

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India has been counting its people over the past 150 years. This is the first time the government wants to count the population in order to eliminate part of it. 

Ravi

References

(1)   http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/NRIC.html : This link gives the NRC (NRIC) Act and rules as well as information about the population register.

(2)  http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Act&Rules/notifications/citizenship_rules2003.pdf : NRC rules issued in December 2003 by L.K.Advani, India’s Home Minister.

(3)http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Act&Rules/notifications/NPR%20Updation.pdf and http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Act&Rules/notifications/NPR%20Updation.pdf : Notifications issued in 2015 and 2019 by the Home Ministry that refer to the 2003 rules.

(4)  https://uidai.gov.in/aadhaar_dashboard/ At the time of posting this article, 1.255 billion people have been issued the Aadhar cards.   

(5)  https://www.orfonline.org/research/literacy-in-india-the-gender-and-age-dimension-57150/ Literacy in India report

(6)  https://cmsny.org/publications/essay-2017-undocumented-and-overstays/ Illegal immigration USA. Visa overstays significantly exceed illegal border crossings.

(7)   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/01/us/undocumented-visa-overstays.html  Except Mexico, India has the highest illegal immigrants (visa overstay) in the USA.

R.

Silence of a Billion

I don’t know if feedback is the breakfast of champions, it certainly is the breakfast of writers. Writing is a dialogue with the readers. When I wrote two articles on India’s new controversial legislation (CAA/NRC), I expected the readers to join the debate. Other than the anticipated abuse from known and unknown readers, following are some of the emails I got. These are not excerpts, but complete responses.

·         I have stopped taking sides on these issues, so can’t comment whether I agree or disagree.

·         Was trying to know as much about the issue as possible. An article from you is much valuable.

·         Thanks for your articles. Belated happy birthday to you.

·         I am completely un-political (sic). I don’t vote in any election, on principle.

·         For me, have to know enough about something to have an opinion. And nowadays, as a global phenomenon, it’s very hard to find someone you trust who can present an unbiased view on things like this.

·         Your study and analysis about the topic are terrific. I am unable to react as my knowledge is not up to date.

·         Thanks for your last two articles. How do I pronounce the Russian word you mentioned in your article?

Wow! What a range of innovative ways to voice their silence. And these respondents are my friends, some of them PhDs and MBAs.

You don’t really need years of study to answer questions such as: (a) Do you approve of the construction of detention centers across India to exclusively imprison Muslims? Yes/No. (b) Do you approve of imprisoning Muslim babies because their great-grandfathers were illegal immigrants? Yes/No. (Mind you, the government manual mandates each detention centre to have a crèche facility. Have you ever heard of crèches in prisons?).

Answering these questions requires not a PhD degree but only conscience. It also requires fearlessness that allows you to express your opinion. Above responses suggest to me that those readers, all of them Indian citizens, are terrified of expressing their opinion in black and white. They prefer to stay silent rather than end up on the wrong side of the debate.

Dictatorship

I have developed a formula for dictatorship.

Dictatorship= those who knowingly support minus those who knowingly oppose plus those who are knowingly silent.

Dictators always project silence as support. In a corporate board meeting, or even in a family gathering, the loud mouths usually end up making decisions. The silent members later fume or protest, privately, for having to abide by the decisions thrust on them. But it’s too late.

Not using free speech is like engaging in a battle but refusing to use your ammunition.

Applying the formula:

Dictatorship= Supporters (20%) + Silent (50%) – Opponents (30%) = +40%. Though opponents (30%) may outnumber the supporters (20%), the silent crowd (50%) becomes the decision-making force. They crush the opposition with their silence.

The threat to be imprisoned may prevent people from protesting or expressing their honest opinion. But the moment they are afraid, they have already entered a prison.

Imprisonment of minds

Conventionally speaking, imprisonment is putting someone behind bars. But imprisonment can be of minds, not just bodies.

Each and every citizen of North Korea, except Kim Jong-un, is in prison. Most North Koreans sleep in their own houses and are not chained. But their minds are in prison. They have absolutely no freedom of expressing their thoughts, and an eternal fear of saying something wrong. Every day, school children and factory workers must sing a hymn “We will follow you only” dedicated to Kim Jong-un, in front of cameras wherever possible. North Korean YouTube (called Uriminzokkiri) allows condemnation of South Korea and the USA, nothing else. North Korea’s caste system Songbun classifies citizens into loyal, wavering and hostile. This is based on ancestry as well as behavior.

North Korea is an extreme example. In most nations, even democratic ones, people often speak on party lines (Republicans must support guns and oppose abortion), family loyalties (my parents vote for Congress, so I do as well), religion (we are Hindus, so I support awarding citizenship to Hindu illegal immigrants), employer loyalty (I pay bribes on my company’s behalf, because our business will not grow otherwise) etc.

If you can’t think independently, or express your thoughts fearlessly, at least some part of your mind is in prison.

Trump can’t be a dictator

Donald Trump is racist, xenophobic, a liar, a bully and a narcissist thug. And he is in control of the nastiest nuclear weapons. Other than Lincoln, he is the tallest president in America’s history. His handshake is made of iron. And yet he can never become a dictator. Why?

America’s constitution? More than two centuries old, it talks about separation of powers, offers safeguards for individual liberties. However, parts of that constitution are as rigid as the Koran is for Muslims. Despite perennial rampage killing incidents, the purchase and use of guns is easy. The Second amendment which allows such man-made tragedies is dated 1791.

America’s Supreme Court? Not really. For a democratic nation, the USA Supreme Court is biased. The president nominates the Supreme Court judges, and several verdicts are given on party lines. Trump managed to appoint Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh thereby ensuring a conservative majority in the Supreme Court. In the USA, Supreme Court judges are in office until they fall dead. Making the SC conservative has been one of Trump’s greatest contributions to his party.

The reason Trump can’t become a dictator is not America’s constitution or its Supreme Court. It is the fearlessness of America’s people. You can see it in media; CNN is on a relentless anti-Trump campaign since before Trump became president. On my FB wall, I see my American friends and relatives trashing Trump tirelessly. Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Bill Maher, and dozens of other comedians have got a new lease of professional life. They are not shy to use all kinds of obscenities when addressing their president.

Losing comedy is Russia’s tragedy

Vladimir Putin, in physical comparison to Trump, is a midget. If he was not what he is, you wouldn’t notice him on Moscow’s metro escalator. How did the world’s largest nation get trapped in the fist of this short man? Twenty one years so far with no end in sight?

Putin came into power in 1999, promising law and order, an end to corruption. Little did the Russians suspect that dictatorship is worse than lawlessness and corruption. Because under dictatorship, police and courts become subservient to the dictator. And corruption always becomes worse. The looters are stronger than before.

Boris Yeltsin’s regime in the 1990s was chaotic and traditionally corrupt. But Russia experienced democracy for the first time. Russian people were outspoken. You could be afraid of the Mafia but not of Yeltsin or his government. Kukli(puppets) was a weekly TV show of political satire. All of Russia, including the politicians who were ridiculed, loved the show. This weekly comedy came very close to American openness.

And then Putin happened. In 2002, Kukli ended. Since then, there is no political satire on Russian TV.  In clubs and cafes, comedians need to be very careful. Two weeks ago, Alexander Dolgopolov, a 25-year old standup comedian fled Russia after making jokes about Putin and Christianity. In America, his anti-Putin lines may have gone unnoticed: Our population has split into two camps. On one hand there are those who support Putin, on the other, there are those who can read, write and are logical. He had also joked about Christ and Virgin Mary. A former communist atheist, Putin has introduced strict anti-blasphemy laws.

In Yeltsin’s time, Russians proudly carried the sword of free speech and used it. In Putin’s time, they hide it in a sheath of silence. And now with disuse over two decades, they don’t know how to use it, even if they wish to. They have mastered the art of self-censorship. For Putin’s one-man rule, the silence of the Russian people is as responsible as Putin himself. “Puppets” closing marked the end of the Russian democracy.

India’s stand-up comedians

The good news for India is that the majority of the CAA-NRC-prison supporters, Islamophobes, radicalized zealots are not young. They are closer to crematoriums than to their maternity hospitals.

In the gym I regularly visit, most members and trainers are in their twenties and thirties. They don’t give a damn about Ram temple, cow worship, patriotism as defined by someone else, illegal immigrants or India’s partition (that happened before their parents were born). Not only that, they virally spread the clips of the stand-up comedians who ridicule the ridiculous. I am attaching a sample of performances. Kunal Kamra, known for the recent flight ban controversy, actually comes to my gym, when he is not performing. His JNU, BJP andMuslims, Abijit Ganguly’s CAA-NRC, Modiji and Amit Shah, Varun Grover’s Modiji, BJP and cows are top-class acts. Even if you support Ram-mandir or want to be silent about building prisons for Muslim babies, you may want to watch these clips. They are great fun. More importantly, they show fearlessness and sense of ridicule are still present in India. My gym friends circulating these clips make me believe that none of CAA-NRC-Detention camps are ever going to happen.

Public opinion

CAA legislation passing in both chambers is not the end of the process. Any new legislation still needs to pass the Supreme Court and public opinion.

Supreme Court judges don’t have the choice of remaining silent. They are obliged to form an opinion and to express it.

In any serious debate, I always consider myself to be a Supreme Court judge. That allows me to keep a clear mind and judge a particular issue objectively. Muslims protesting against CAA-NRC is natural; they are the victims of the legislation. Non-Muslims are also capable of forming an objective judgment. Not only do Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi have a right to protest, Deepika Padukone has it, too. When people in thousands, in millions, abandon their silence, and voice opinions, it becomes Public Opinion.

If you support Islamophobia, xenophobia or legislated discrimination, it is fine if you wish to remain silent. Because your silence is deemed as support anyway. But if you are against such initiatives, and remain silent, then you are pushed into the support camp. Politics is different from art, music, Netflix, sport. You are free not to watch Netflix or not to have any opinion on art or music. But nobody can be apolitical. Because your taxpaying, house-buying, marrying, banking, driving, drinking and even whether you should be free or in prison is decided by politics.

George Orwell, 75 years ago, wrote:

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends on public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. If public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. (“Freedom of the park” in Tribune: 7 December 1945)

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How incredibly relevant is Orwell’s quote even after 75 years.

Ravi

Stereotype, Prejudice, Discrimination

Moscow, 1998

On a relatively cold evening in 1998, I was walking down a street in the south-west of Moscow. My hands were inside the pockets of my bluish jacket. A large vehicle stopped next to me. Before I realized what was happening, two Russian policemen pointing guns alighted and ordered me to raise my hands. As soon as I complied, they rushed towards me, twisted my hands behind, and handcuffed me.

“Заткнись!”  (Rude translation of Shut Up), said the blue-eyed, blond policeman as I tried to say something. They made me walk with them to a building nearby. It had a room which they used as a makeshift police station. The taller man frisked me in a humiliating way. He asked me to remove my jacket and realizing I couldn’t do it with my hands shackled behind, took off the handcuffs.

Once I removed the jacket, he took a pair of sharp scissors and unceremoniously cut its entire lining. Vigorous shaking of the jacket convinced him there were no drugs hidden inside. By now, I became bold enough to take out my “accreditation card” and give it to them. The Russian policeman glanced at it briefly before giving me the torn jacket and letting me go, without so much as a simple ‘sorry’.

Warsaw, 1999

A few weeks later, my employer, British American Tobacco, said they were transferring me to my next posting, Warsaw. Nothing to do with the incident above. I had been in Russia for too long. I went to Warsaw on a two-day look-see visit. Before I left Warsaw, one of the directors there told me that the Polish management would prefer to have a Polish guy take the position offered to me. It was nice meeting you, but sorry, we would prefer a local guy.

Over the next few months, BAT’s Polish directors tried everything to stop my transfer. But BAT’s head office was in London. After lengthy arguments between London and Warsaw, six months later, my going to Poland was officially announced. With a compromise: I should prove myself in the first six months. If not, the Polish management had the right to replace me with a Polish guy.

In the first two months, the Polish management tried to make my life miserable in every which way. I was refused a three-room apartment I chose, though a British guy a level below me was given a two- story house. The justification was that he had three kids and I none. The Polish Board hurriedly met and passed an emergency policy change to link the size of the flat to the size of the family.

I scientifically devised and sent across Poland a price-list for our products, part of my marketing job description. I was made to retract it, because it would upset our competitors.

UK, 2003

I moved to the UK after Poland. On two occasions, English boys, complete strangers to me, called me “Paki” in my face.

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Stereotype, prejudice and discrimination  

Psychology textbooks talk about stereotype, prejudice and discrimination.

Stereotype is our pigeonholing the behavior of a whole class of people. This can be positive, neutral or negative.

Women are emotional, men are rational, French are romantic, Muslims are dangerous, Jews are intelligent and business-minded, Americans laugh too loudly, British are hypocrites, Asians are dirty, Africa can’t produce chess grandmasters –these are examples of stereotyping.  

Prejudice is, as a rule, negative. “Women are emotional” is a fairly neutral statement. That stereotype may be positive or negative depending on the context. But “women are bad drivers” is a prejudice. The prejudiced person knows that every woman drives badly.

Discrimination is a step further than prejudice. It is acting based on the prejudice. A bank chairman thinks a male CEO is needed to run the operations of the giant bank. That is his prejudice. As a result, he rejects all female candidates (despite politely talking to them) and appoints a man as a CEO. That is discrimination because the activation of the prejudice has been unfair to some.

Yesterday, Trump announced names of six more countries, including Africa’s most populous Nigeria, as part of the US travel ban. Prejudice against those nations clubbed each and every citizen into one pigeonhole- BAD. Ban them from travelling to the USA. This is an example of a state-sponsored racial discrimination.

My experiences

In light of these definitions, let me analyze the three experiences I narrated earlier.

I was a perfect stranger to the blue-eyed, fair-skinned, Russian policemen with Slavic features. They could have mistaken me for a Chechen, or simply assumed that a dark man with dark hair and dark eyes must be carrying weapons and/or drugs. This was their prejudice and they acted on it. I consider myself a decent, respectable person. Certainly respectable enough not to be handcuffed without reason. However, my features were part of a stereotype that was not respectable from the viewpoint of the Russian policemen.  

In Poland, the discrimination against me by the Poles stopped after three months or so. After interacting with me on a daily basis, they realized I didn’t fit the stereotype. I was far more experienced and competent than any local candidate they had in mind. It’s possible some Poles didn’t like me, but that was no longer a class-prejudice. Once I began speaking with them in Polish, they gradually forgot I was a foreigner. My promotion happened without anybody discussing my six-month probation.

This is the difference between judging a class (stereotype) versus judging an individual. The visa process is a good example. US and Europe institute visas for Indians as a result of racial prejudice. But through the detailed visa process, they assess an individual. Based on that assessment, visas are issued to individuals. Trump’s blanket ban is anti-individual.  

Coming to my UK experience: Paki.  Those Brits who use that racial slur can’t distinguish between Indians and Pakistanis. I would say they are giving vent to their prejudice. The true spirit of democracy allows you to hate anyone, and true freedom of speech allows you to insult anyone. Racial slurs are prejudice-driven; by themselves they are not discriminatory.

There is a noteworthy difference between the racial discrimination I experienced in Poland and Russia. The discrimination practiced by the Polish Directors of the company was private- not state supported. They could harass me, but not handcuff me.

In Moscow, the Russian uniformed policemen handcuffing me were State supported. On that day, suspicion could have also prompted those militiamen to kill me. And nothing serious would have happened to them.

This is the reason the State-sponsored discrimination is the most dangerous, most lethal. Because the state can arrest, imprison or kill any person with impunity – even in a democratic state.

USA and Japan

I will give a historical example of State-sponsored racial discrimination by quoting a passage from a book.  

The Japanese, all American patriots knew, were Apes, monkeys, reptiles, insects, mice, rats, vipers, rattlesnakes. The slogan was: Good Japs are dead Japs. … General Slim, veteran of the Burma campaigns, reckoned that the allies had kicked over an ant-hill (another name for Japan)… now was the time to stamp on them.

While the US and other Allied armed forces were comprehensively exploiting plain racism in confrontation with Japan, thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans were being incarcerated in concentration camps in the United States. The “treacherous Japs” in America could not be trusted: If America was at war with Japan, only one course of action was possible. Congressman Ford of California represented a common view, maintaining: “that all Japanese, whether citizens or not, be placed in inland concentration camps…

There were no signs that the American-Japanese were about to pose a security threat to the United States in the Second World War, but this very lack of evidence was a damning circumstance. Thus the US army issued its conclusive judgment: the very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.

By 11 August 1942, some 110,000 Japanese in America had been forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and confined in transitional concentration camps before final relocation in permanent ones. The result was racial harassment and abuse, the break-up of families, suicide, the collapse of businesses, and the demoralization and despair of the ethnic Japanese in the United States.

[Vietnam Syndrome by Geoff Simmons (pgs 126-127)]

As we know well, America not only imprisoned 110,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, it pulverized more than 200,000 innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb; Harry Truman, the US president who ordered the strikes, Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, the pilots who dropped the bombs, and majority of the American population were overjoyed after killing 200,000 Japs. This is what state-sponsored war hysteria does. State discrimination legitimizes imprisoning and killing an ethnic group.

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Today, USA and Japan are close allies and partners. People of the two countries view one another favorably.  Japanese cars and consumer electronics are particularly popular in the USA. USA takes care of Japan’s defence.

What does this tell us? That nothing is intrinsically wrong with any race or religion. State-supported discrimination and war hysteria are capable of poisoning sane minds. Prejudiced citizens are willing to support their state’s discrimination campaign. Empowered, the state can arrest, imprison and kill innocent people in thousands.

Political prejudice

Prejudice and discrimination based on race, religion and gender are well-known. I would like to add a new 21^st century category to it: Political prejudice.

“Oh my god, how could he vote for Brexit? I thought he was of a sound mind.”

“I saw his FB posts on Modi. I can’t believe he is the same person I knew for so many years. I have unfriended him.”

“Fox News should be banned. It’s a Trump channel. How can they be so biased?” and so on.

The Political prejudice of the 21^st century is inflamed by social media. Earlier we were not aware of the opinions of our friends, family members on political issues. For decades, communities could enjoy life without discussing politics. Now FB and WhatsApp have given everyone a platform. Opinions are visible. Hate groups can be formed quickly. Halo and horn effect have gripped the population. Meaning if I love Modi, then everything he does is good, and if I hate him, everything he does is nasty. Not only that, if I love Modi, everyone I love must love Modi as well. If they hate Modi, I must start hating them. This is the modern political prejudice.

There is no human being without prejudices, neither you nor me. Because we can’t always control our brain. If it wishes to create a stereotype, or a prejudice, we can’t stop it. But we don’t need to act on our prejudices. Unless we lose our minds (which happens when minds are brainwashed), we can control our actions. By not acting on our prejudices, whatever they may be, we avoid discrimination.

Termites

India’s home minister has so far called the Bangladeshi illegal immigrants “termites”. That could have been discounted as election rhetoric or personal prejudice. But now with the introduction of the CAA-NRC-Detention camps package, that prejudice has been converted into State-Sponsored Discrimination.

Applied history tells us that unless such discrimination is nipped in the bud, it eventually leads to intense hatred, war hysteria, concentration camps, and massive destruction and casualties.

Ravi