Video of African woman stripping to protest inside Delhi Metro shows Indians at their lowest
Those who undergo the daily "trauma" of boarding a Delhi Metro train know what it means to be travelling in it - it's either a seat in Metro or your self-respect that you get to keep.
Worse, if you are not the quintessential North Indian, and lack the zeal.
A foreigner? Sorry, nobody here can guarantee your safety!
A foreigner and black too? Chances are you'll end up getting heckled, asked to de-board or face further humiliation.
Among the numerous fights over the coveted seat in Metro, a video surfaced on YouTube showing a two African women surrounded by co-travellers shouting at them - "bahar nikalo inhe (throw them out)".
The two women put up a fight, saying: "You want to fight? Let's fight." Other passengers in the train are heard demanding that they be de-boarded.
According to The Indian Express, the scuffle broke out over a seat and the situation aggravated.
But what perhaps made the video go viral was the fact that one of the women is seen taking off her T-shirt, telling a man that she was ready to take him on.
Passengers could be heard screaming "us ladke ki koi galti nahi hai (the man is not at fault)."
One man though comes forward and tries to calm things down asking both the parties not to fight. Although the video was uploaded on YouTube on May 3 (the exact date of the event couldn't be unverified), the incident comes barely a month after the alleged racial attacks against African students in the National Capital Region.
In March, residents of the National Security Guards Black Cat Enclave, Greater Noida, barged into a flat of five Nigerian students in search of a missing boy, and accused them of eating human flesh (suspecting that the boy is dead and his body parts eaten). They also accused the Nigerians of supplying drugs to the boy, who was later found dead of drug overdose. Several African nationals were assaulted in Greater Noida following the boy's death after a candle light march in his memory got out of hand.
While many outraged over the attacks and called them racially motivated, the government found it hard to believe so. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had said, "Before the inquiry is completed, please do not say it is driven by racial discrimination. We do not immediately say that attacks in the United States are due to racial discrimination."The minister's response came after the African Group Head of Missions accredited to India called the attacks "xenophobic and racial".
The events leading to the latest incident (inside Delhi Metro) couldn't be confirmed independently by DailyO, and it will be unfair to hastily conclude that it was a result of racial abuse.
But we also can't deny our deep-entrenched bias that has often led to similar attacks on anyone we consider an outsider. Can we?Of course, our hostility and anger increase when it comes to Africans, but even fellow Indians who look different from us (because of their physical features) have fallen victims to the same mentality.
The incident inside the Metro only reflects on us, how we treat our fellow human beings, especially women, how we readily jump into arguments over something as small as a seat in the Metro. How we feel we not just have the right to access public services, but are also entitled to abuse and fight over it.
And we don't need a brawl inside Delhi Metro to tell us how unforgiving and crass we are when it comes to sharing public services.
It was just one more example of our sense of entitlement.