Last week’s article with the above title provoked a rash of raw passions among a broad swath of Nigerians. Unfortunately, for reasons...
Last week’s article with the above title
provoked a rash of raw passions among a broad swath of Nigerians.
Unfortunately, for reasons of space, I am only able to share just a few of the
torrents of reactions I received. Enjoy!
Since
I arrived in India in January this year I have not faced any overt form of
racism or discrimination. I don't know what is done or said behind my back, but
my classmates, teachers and fellow students on campus have been very cordial.
In fact they are overly sympathetic as if the image of their country hangs on
how well they treat me in particular, and as if they are compensating with
extra kindness for what they think I should be missing as a foreigner.
"Are you bored?", "do you like our food?", "how do you
find this place?", etc., they would ask so frequently that I felt I must
have looked so weak or miserable and was being turned into an object of pity,
and decided I needed to liberate myself from their "crippling"
kindness by projecting an image of a happy, tough and comfortable foreigner.
Most of them don't even think highly enough of their country to even
contemplate looking down on others.
Some professors here wondered aloud why I did
not go Europe or America for my PhD. This is clearly the attitude of an
educated person who lives on a university campus and who is conscious of the
place of his country as a sea of Third World with sprinklings of First World
features here and there—seen in some of Indian hospitals, factories, laboratories,
agricultural practices, space stations, etc. Partly because of xenophobia,
ignorance and the rigid caste system in Hinduism, attitudes outside the
confines of a university, in the larger society, may differ as we have seen in
recent happenings in Goa. It would not be in India's interest for its citizens
to treat foreigners badly because India stands to lose much more if other
countries retaliate.
Living abroad is a familiar turf to Indians.
Many students have asked me if they would get jobs in my country. Their country
has more manpower than it needs or is capable of accommodating now. A professor
here told us there would be serious crisis of unemployment if all the millions
of Indians living abroad were to return home. There is a category of Indians
officially identified as NRI (Non-Resident Indians)—Indians who live abroad and
maintain some link with their country of origin. They are clearly better off
than the average Indian, and when they come home as students they are made to
pay more in school fees, perhaps because they don't pay taxes to the Indian
government.
Murderers, drug peddlers and other criminals
should be treated as individuals not as members of a nationality. Criminals
everywhere should be defined by what they do, not who they are or what they
are. This view may be simplistic when diplomacy intervenes in a tribalistic way
to defend the interests of compatriots living abroad. It is instructive that
the Nigerians who had rightly protested the brutal murder of their compatriot
suddenly disappeared on the streets of Goa when the police turned their
searchlights on illegal immigrants. And the fact that there is no police record
of the involvement in drug-related offences of the murdered Nigerian is not a
sufficient proof that the victim was not a member of a drug gang. Drug dealers
are notorious for settling their conflicts themselves in their own ways without
involving the police. Imagine a drug dealer reporting to the police that a
fellow drug dealer has double-crossed him!
There
are important lessons in these incidents: we Nigerians should keep our house in
order, we should respect each other and generally treat each other well at
home, create opportunities for our youths at home, and generally govern our
country well. For example, none of the Indian universities is in the category
of the top 200 in the world rankings (a few are found in the top 400), but a
Nigerian must be deeply impressed with how universities are managed here
especially with regard to funding of research and provision of laboratory
facilities.
You
would understand ASUU better when you come here. Our maltreatment is not
limited to India. My colleagues in Malaysia tell me they face discrimination in
public places because of the crimes of their compatriots in that country. Some
of them had to buy cars to transport themselves to the campus because they
could not stand the vicious snobbery and discrimination meted out to them in
public buses.
Abdulrahman Muhammad, Ludhiana, Punjab,
India
What
about Indians in Nigeria? Are they not also involved in high-profile economic
crimes in cahoots with our leaders? Even in the era of the Chagourys scandal,
Nigerian did not show any xenophobic hatred towards Indians. it is a pity that
our citizens are involved in survival crimes in foreign lands, which most times
are small-scale, while foreigners in our shores are involved in big-time
organized economic crimes, but due to the weakness of our enforcement system
and the protection accorded these foreigners over here, nobody talks about
their criminal activities.
Indians
and Lebanese are also involved in criminal activities all over the world. If
the attacks continue and our government is compelled to reciprocate they will
realize how much they have also benefited from the Nigerian economy where they
use our citizens as slave labourers without complying with basic safety
standards. But, in all, I blame our past leaders who have failed to develop our
economy for production. I believe that if we succeed in entrenching fiscal
federalism Nigeria’s production capacity will be unleashed and Nigerians will
no longer be treated like vermin in useless foreign countries like India!
Razaaq Musa, Abuja
I
want to commend you for an excellent write-up as always (your column being one
of the major reasons I buy Weekly Trust
every weekend). However, when I come across such xenophobic attacks on
Nigerians, I mostly blame our leaders for failing to provide a conducive
environment for the majority of our people to stay within the country despite
the abundant resources the God has blessed us with. It is a pity.
I
read your article with rapt attention and interest because it captures what I
as black Nigerian pilgrim experienced in Saudi Arabia during the just concluded
Hajj. I want to tell you that even the Indian Muslims are racists and bigots.
It is really appalling that racial prejudices should guide our thoughts at this
age.
Muhammad Abdullahi (sarkimaje@yahoo.com)
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