INDIA:Some Indian newspapers have been drawing readers' attention to a few uncomfortable home truths. Rahul Bedireports from New Delhi
While condemning "racist jibes" thrown at the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty in Big Brother, several major Indian newspapers yesterday suggested the country should examine its own prejudices before taking umbrage at the British.
"Discrimination on the basis of colour is ingrained in the psyche of most Indians," the Hindustan Times said in an editorial headlined "Colour of prejudice".
"What else explains the quest for the holy grail of fair brides across the country?" it asked.
Although many other nations are characterised by social inequality, perhaps nowhere else in the world has inequality been so elaborately and inescapably constructed as in the Indian institution of caste, which has its origins in the 3,000-year old Aryan concept of varna, loosely translated as colour.
A large proportion of India's population of over one billion still live within a hierarchy imposed by the Hindu caste system, which subtly celebrates fairness and prevents the untouchables, or dalits, from entering important temples - decades after such discrimination was outlawed by the constitution in 1950. Dalits constitute over 30 per cent of Indians.
In many rural parts of Bihar state, for example, dalit women were often raped publicly in villages and small towns by upper caste men to keep them "in their place".
Lower castes live in ghettos, and their attempts to drink from public wells can result in violence. In most instances such horrific incidents go unpunished and unreported; the upper caste police simply refuse to register the crime, while upper caste journalists refuse to report it.
Fair and Lovely is one of India's fastest-selling creams marketed by a multinational that "guarantees" its users they will become fair, which across most of India, equates with beauty.
Offensive advertisements on popular television channels portray dark women finding jobs and husbands only after they begin using the cream. Matrimonial columns across the country are riddled every weekend with ads from grooms demanding fair brides "only".
The attitude on many university campuses towards African students, of which there are many, is often pejorative; westerners are sometimes derogatorily referred to as "goras", or white skins.
An entire genre of offensive and politically-incorrect jibes and jokes featuring both communities abounds.
"Indian responses should also factor in our own record of prejudice . . . If racism is a fact in many interactions in British society, prejudice is a quotidian reality of Indian social life," an Indian Express editorial said.
While in Britain, it added, there were institutions in place to deal with discrimination and Western nations were alert to racist attitudes, in India the victims of such abuse often had nowhere to turn.