Indians beaten up in Germany

Posted on :

http://www.topix.net/world/germany/2007/08/german-mob-attacks-8-indians-at-a-fair

Please don't distort Japanese history to suit your arguments. One of the fundamental strengths throughout Japan's past and present has been its ethnic homogeneity. Japan is one of the most homogeneous countries of all, before the Meiji Restoration or after. Borrowing from Chinese or Indian cultures does not make it multicultural in the ethnogenic sense, as it increasingly the problem with Europe.

Europe's woes are not on account of India. It is, as ex-British PM Tony Blair said in one of his rare moments of brilliance, an ideological issue. Indians like you and me are only caught in the crossfire between Caucasia and Islam. In the great battleground of Europe, the latter obviously seems to be winning, much to the detriment of the security of Indians in Europe like those merchants, who become easy non-violent hate targets.

With regard to these Indians that were beaten up by East Germans, they may not exactly be deserving of all this sympathy. Having seen the way most Indians live for decades together in foreign countries clinging to our beloved "culture", and having no regard or adaptability whatsoever towards local languages, cultures or etiquettes, it is quite possible that these merchants got what they deserved. From what I read, there was a strong local sentiment against these guys.

If you love and respect a foreign culture, you will get love and respect in return. You travel around and do business with a really thick head, taking away from the local society and economy what is rightfully theirs, this is what you might expect, especially in the relatively poorer areas of Europe.

But what I am really surprised is at the kind of moderation in such forums. I can see some obviously vulgar language, disgusting posts and pointless arguments that don't go anywhere, that have been published above, while an earlier note which I had posted, and which was pretty insightful in my opinion, was rejected. Hope this one is accepted.

Renting in the US

As temporary migrant workers, we can only rent homes. Buying or leasing is out of the question.

Rented apartments are a big organized business here.

Its not like the fragmented side-business which rich people in India practice on their own and rent out their apartments. Whole buildings are let out on rent, and there are an official staff to handle all issues. Plus the service is absolutely prompt, because the longer an issue (like a pipe leakage for example) goes on, the more will be their repair costs when they sell the house to somebody else.

We have to pay big money for the rent. To the order of $800 a month, though people can get it for $600 with lesser facilities. We get cable, heating, trash free and there are 2 electronic washers/dryers for every apartment block (which too, are promptly maintained)

The Shahs, Mehtas and Dholakias of India can't come up with these business plans because they never want to do long term business. They want to make a fast buck, building a house and making crores of rupees within a year or two, and then forget all about it, moving on to kicking out some poor native families out of their century old home and earning more money selling it to urban yuppies.

Renting in the US is a service industry, one that requires dedication and the right attitude.
Plus, both renters and rentees are protected by a solid legal framework, a powerful and effective law enforcement department and a comprehensive insurance protection program.
On the whole, renting in the US is an excellent outcome of true, organized capitalisism. Not third class opportunism of desi builders.

The Immigrant

I've seen a lot of immigrants (or would be immigrants) who retain their own culture and show it off proudly when in a foreign country. Many more, like European Moslems or Asian or Hispanic Americans demand that the local population be more broad minded, tolerant and accepting of their foreign culture, which they will blatantly demonstrate, rather than changing themselves. If the locals do not co-operate, then they are called xenophobic.

I live in India which is a terrible mix of language, ethnicities and religions. Since my childhood I have lived among people who speak a certain language. Now, and especially since 1995, since entrepreneurship, capitalism, communication and corruption have all got a massive boost in India, neighboring ethnic groups have made such inroads into my hometown that the culture which I was brought up with is next to being inundated. Things have reached such an extent that my native language and culture is now ridiculed and is considered lower class in the region that I once used to call home. On the other hand, native speakers have become such an insignificant economic and numeric minority that they lose out in democracy because few if any who can vote for them, speak their language. It doesn't help that most people who speak my native tongue, (themselves an extremely heterogenous and fragmented mix of ethnicities who happen to speak the same language) seem to have become short-sighted (perhaps always were) and fail to see a bigger Kashmir or Palestine-like pattern slowly emerging before their eyes. But as a local I am expected to absorb all of that change and not react to the immigration that has resulted in a complete change in the living patterns that I have been accustomed to since my childhood. If I so much as open my mouth, I am not sure whether I will be called a fundamentalist or worse.

Its the same in the United States. Americans have a set way of life. Foreigners like us come into their country. They have the right of way, not us. If anything, we need to be more accommodating to the local culture than expect them to understand "our culture", which is the worst thing you can say in a foreign country. They have built, generation upon generation a culture that is free from vanity, divested themselves of their immigrant ethnicities, and homogenized themselves through inter-marriage. When the ancestors of modern Americans have came into America barely a few hundred years ago, many of them cast their cultural baggage into the Atlantic. They came to this nation, not with the ghost of a 5 thousand or a 1300 year past, but with a 50 year future ahead of them.

But we Indians don't seem to appreciate that. Even Indians living here for a longer term are still, and will always be, hyphenated Indian-Americans. And as far as temporary Indian workers like us go, often brilliant with mediocre intelligences and negligible creativities, the love for our native cultures is immense. And what is worse, after living in the United States of America or Canada or the United Kingdom for long, we cease to be Indians, and become Punjabis or Gujaratis or South Indians or Bengalis or Marathis. This is not my limited observation speaking, this is an acknowledged fact that an immigration study sponsored by the University of Michigan found.

That Americans do not behave with us like a barbaric Arab or Afghan/Pak NWFP group would behave with a Hindu Indian family if they are one day found wandering in an area under their control is testimony to their civilized, well-mannered and tolerant ways. Indians in the Middle East have no intellectual freedom. That is not the case with Indians living in the United States. I'm sure there are some paranoid Americans who "hate all things foreign" and some of them can become barbaric and savage too, in a land where gun manufacturers rule. In such cases, it is up to the immigrant to decide the pros and cons of staying in that place. For instance, there are still some neo-Nazi Americans who live in remote farm areas, maybe in the Dakotas or Kansas or maybe Georgia, who have built a parallel universe around them. I wouldn't wish to live in those parts. Nor in states like, for example, Alabama or Mississippi, with their history of the Klan (funny it should be spelt German-style) !

But these remote examples apart, America is a welcoming nation. It is the immigrant whose responsibility it is to adapt to the ways of the local population and not expect that the local population adapt itself to your ways. Of course, thanks to the often bashful behavior of many immigrants in my own home ground, I have learned this in contrast - always respect the culture you go to, and when in a foreign place, try to appreciate the local culture, learn as much as you can, and become a part of it, instead of trying to teach them to appreciate your culture. If you want them to come over to your culture, invite them over to your home, will you? Otherwise what would we be? Non-violent versions of those savages of history - the Ghaznavids, the Mongols or the Moors?

And that is the policy I have kept to when in America. Cheers to the Angus!