After hundred years of suffering imperialism we Indians should have become sensitive towards discrimination of all sorts. We should have been able to shed the rancid stench of castism, bigotry and insular thinking that followed us for over hundreds of years but here and now I can say that we may have gained physical freedom but our minds continue to remain enslaved to ideas archaic and destructive that could rip the very fabric of society.

We remain divided on the basis of caste, creed, gender, language and for the diminishing natural resources. The fight for 'me and mine' continues on the roads and communities , no one is willing to give another a willing hand, no one willing to stand up for justice, averting their eyes when women and children are abused or neglected, where greasing the palm of a pencil pusher is accepted.

But, today I say enough is enough. Today I ask my nation to grow up. To step up to the role the world expects us to fulfill. To be political correct, to realize that castism is no more than a skin we should have shed long before we gained our freedom, we should realize that the color of skin does not make one superior to another, we should rise beyond the superficial concept of what makes a man or a woman appealing or what makes a child intelligent or demeaning those who are different from us.

Names with racist connotation continue to be used rather innocently, words like Habbshi , Madrasi grate my nerves.
The nasty characteristic division of people according to the states they hail from reeks of out and out bigotry. For each state there is a negativity. Punjabis are considered to be crude, lying businessmen, Rajasthanis unreliable gypsies, Biharis sweet tongued liars, Uttar Pradesh people are again crude banyas and down south people are together clubbed as Madrasi religious muggpots.

I'm sure, right now some of you who are reading my post are either uncomfortable or mad with me for stating the truth with such bare faced bravado. But there is no going around the truth and the best way to cure a sickness is to first diagnose it, to confront it, to accept it and then destroy the virus forever.

We are a racist superficial lot! Know it and accept it. It still is very difficult for most of us to accept or better still to value a human being for just being human and therefore give the same respect to a poor man as we would give to the rich.

Why is it that our poor balk at entering a normal mall? They look like lost children looking into a world that would never be theirs, why do we still hanker after the blond, the fair, the blue eyed, the aquiline nosed beauty? Why are we still remembering our masters of the past?

Why are we still stuck in the quagmire of wanting what we can never be? Never be white enough? Never be superior enough to be comfortable in our skin?

There are so many whys that need to be pondered over, so many nasty ingrained attitudes that need to be addressed that at times I don't even know were we we should begin.

But the starting point has to be with each one of us. We need to look within ourselves and check for bigotry for it exists at some level or the other in each of us for that is what makes us Indians.