Someone called my defence of Vir Das’ monologue as ‘the poverty porn made for white people by brown slaves and self loathers, suffering from an inferiority complex and Stockholm syndrome, beholden to their colonial masters, sickulars, and wokes…’Nice list of adjectives. However, I think it’s a bit rich for right-wingers, forever struggling under the insecurity and inferiority complex of so many things that the only short way to define all of those under a single umbrella would be to recognise the complex as ‘Not Nehru, not even close,’ to talk of liberals as wanting to please white folks.
Just to be clear, these are the very people who like to attach the names of NASA, UNESCO, UN, Harvard etc to any claim they make because they think it lends a certain ‘authenticity’ to it. These are the very people who will take a knee for BLM (without ever standing up to the white man in real life) while ignoring the rampant casteism at home. These are the very people for whom someone working as a janitor at McDonald’s in Slickpoo, Idaho is somehow a better match for their daughter than someone who is a resident Indian. These are the very people who think a white woman is more beautiful/sexy/desirable than an Indian one. These are the very people who will make heaven and hell meet to ensure their kids go to ‘English school’. These are the very people who will keep trying again and again and again for an American visa, and then boast about it when they have it. These are the very people who will emigrate, legally or otherwise, to any white-majority country in the world on one foot if only they could. These are the very people who think anyone who speaks good English or wears a suit is better than them. These are the very people who think white people are more trustworthy (if you know any business people in India, you will know what I am saying) and foreign banks are safer for business. These are the very people who consider anything made abroad (specifically a white-majority country) as of better quality and worth more than anything made in India. These are the very people who will be tongue-tied in the company of white people, more so if there are women involved. These are the very people who will buy (in black) and hoard US Dollars as a hedge against the Indian Rupee. These are the very people who will keep asking a visiting white person how much they like their town/state/country/language/costume/food etc hoping to get something complimentary, however vague, said about something, anything Indian. These are the same people who will behave in perfect civic manners in white-majority countries while immediately regressing to mean as soon as they land in India. These are the same people who are ashamed of their pronunciation and are in awe of ‘foreign’ accents. These are the very people who are intimidated by white managers, white tourists, white artists, white designers, white architects, white actors, white sportspeople, and white people generally who they consider somehow innately better than their brown counterparts. These are the same people who, while we were being ruled by Britain, collaborated, colluded, and cooperated with the white masters while squealing on the freedom fighters, both the revolutionaries and the pacifists. These are the same people who wrote mercy petitions and confessions when the colonialists as much as looked at them in anger. These are the people….you get the point.
The Indian right-wing, specifically, the vast Indian urban and semi-urban right-wing Hindu majoritarian upper-caste middle class that forms the vote bank for the current ruling party is perhaps the most servile to whiteness of all kind ever in the entire world. They are all at once, lusting after validation of and hating on the white people. They are jealous of those that achieve to be lauded by the whites (though don’t tell them that almost every person in Vir’s audience at the Kennedy Centre was most probably of desi origin) not because they refuse validation from them, but because they want it themselves and cannot stand anyone else getting it, specifically someone who does so on his own terms and without relinquishing his Indian identity.
They are not unhappy that someone said something they think was detrimental to India and got a standing ovation. They are unhappy that the someone who got a standing ovation was somehow, as per their own narrow standards, not worth it, while they, the epitome of worthiness, are left holding their dicks.
These people are the very definition of incels. And they speak of liberals carrying around an inferiority complex. Ha! Fool someone else. I have grown up with you all my life. You are the most frustrated lot of silly self-pitying overcompensators I have ever had the misfortune to be around. Go, play with someone your age. This conversation is for adults.
