Harbhajan guilty of racial abuse – Ignorance raises the temperature

1. Did Harbhajan call, Andrew Symonds a ‘monkey’ at Sydney?
2. Did Harbhajan call Andrew Symonds a ‘monkey’ at Mumbai and thereafter apologize?
3. Was it clarified to the Indian team the word ‘monkey’ would be considered a racial abuse?
4. Is Harbhajan guilty of racist abuse?
5. Is the punishment meted out to Harbhajan justified?

Too many questions and as many passionate answers on the web. But are there enough voices of sanity? Questions 1, 2 and 3 are questions of fact and there cannot be a debate about them. Now if I take the Ricky Ponting’s version on these facts, then Harbhajan is guilty of ‘using a phrase the second time after he was told that the specific phrase is offensive in nature, moreso when directed at Andrew Symonds’. This is boorish behaviour and has no place on the field of cricket. Hence, IF the facts mentioned by Ricky Ponting are right, then the punishment is justified.

Boorish behavior on cricket field by likes of Harbhajan and Sreesanth, and Andre Nel, and many in this Australian team should not be tolerated and it should be dealt with strongly and on that ground Harbhajan has no defense. Slater should have been banned for his altercation with Dravid and so should Mcgrath for taking matters too far with Sarwan. ‘Sledging is part of cricket’ is non-sense which if a necessary trait would have made Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar and Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh and Adam Gilchrist refreshment peddlers in the stands rather than stalwarts on the ground.Yes, it is important to have characters on the ground as it is important to have them in the society, but we dont tolerate miscreants in the society for this reason, do we?

Now that we have set aside the issue of Harbhajan’s behaviour and the punishment, we can focus on (4), which in my view is far more complex. I believe there is substance in the argument that Indians do not understand racism or its symbols as it is appreciated in the west. Not until I started following European football and all the related issues and gossip, did I know about ‘monkey chants’ and their racial connotation. My wife has traveled all over the world, and has lived in Europe, and till last evening she did not know that calling someone a ‘monkey’ would be considered a racial abuse – in India we have a ‘Monkey God’ who is worshipped everywhere and many temples are havens for monkeys who are lovingly fed by devotees! You can jump to call her ignorant, but so would I term more than half a trillion people in the world who wouldn’t know that calling someone ‘Chamaar’ is casteist which can land you in jail in India under a non-bailable offence. India hasn’t been witness to ‘racism’ as the west hasn’t known ‘casteism’. Indian has not been associated with or witness to (a) Slavery, other than Indians themselves having been taken to Caribbean, Malaysia, Phiji etc. as farm labourers (b) Holocaust or (c) immigrant population taking over land and resources from aborginines, as we are the aborigines of our land1. Call us ignorant again, but no Indian would understand the stigma or (in some countries) legal implications of being a ‘holocaust denier’. Since these are three ethnic groups which form the target of most race related issues in the west (and forgive me for clubbing Australia with the west), most Indians lack an appreciation of what comprises racism in the western context. I did a dipstick among half a dozen Indians with post-graduate degree, but those who haven’t traveled abroad – not one knew that calling an African American a ‘Negro’ is racist. You call them ignorant, and I will again give you the ‘Chamaar’ example. Why talk about common man, when even Aussie media has shown complete ignorance of the subject? Andrew Stevensen in Sydeny Morning Herald has written an article about caste as a factor in Indian team composition – while his hypotheses and postulations can be debated – he has got his facts completely wrong. He calls RP Singh a Brahmin (upper caste) while he is Kshatriya, and says Dhoni is from a lower caste while the fact is that Dhoni is from the same caste as RP Singh. – though Dhoni lives in Jharkhand, he comes from Uttarakhand which has amongst the highest percentage of ‘upper class’ population in the country. There more factual errors, which provide enough proof that Mr. Stevensen wouldn’t even know who could be the target of a casteist jibe which could land you in the jail! This ignorance is not only limited to caste (which many Indian commentators with urban backgrounds don’t understand any better) but even regions. David Sygall in the same newspaper quotes an Indian journalist to explain how Harbhajan’s attitude is linked to his being from north without realizing that the enfant terrible in Indian cricket for last eighteen months is Sreesant, a south Indian. So much for complete lack of understanding even amongst journalists, so why act so incredulous when it is mentioned that Indians do not understand racism as Australians do.

Most bloggers have linked the Harbhajan issue to crowd behavior in Mumbai where members of the public were caught on camera making ‘monkey gestures’. I believe that Indian crowd behaviour at many ODIs is appaling that is because most of them are there for a false sense of patriotism rather than any appreciation of cricket. These are people who wouldn’t be at a cricket match if India was not playing and would not be at a match if it wasn’t a Twenty20 or an ODI. SCG had 30,000 in attendance even on week days, and most Indian grounds don’t manage even half that number during test matches which to my mind is benchmark of cricket appreciation. Such hooligans in involved in Mumbai incident should be punished severely, as they are no 'cricket lovers' – they are ‘cricket dumb’ who don’t know the difference between a googly and Chinaman; make Yuvraj and Dhoni bigger cricketers than VVS Laxman – just idiots but no racists. Ask any West Indian team that has visited India? If none of them have faced racist abuse then Andrew Symonds and Australian team need to introspect before making such accusations. Some Aussies say that since they dominate world cricket, hence this different attitude towards them – but so did West Indies during 70s and 80s and they were almost all men of colour (maybe with the exception of Lary Gomes), but did not face such crowd behavior.

1 All Dravidians are certainly the original inhabitants of this land, and many historians argue that even Aryans are.