False alarm

Indians in the US are living in a culture of fear. Why can't they live their lives without being profiled, harassed, investigated or spied on?
Barely a few weeks after the Virginia Tech massacre shook the whole of US, one got to read of the big price that Kazim Ali, a professor of English literature at Shippensburg University, had to pay for trying to recycle old poetry manuscripts.It began when Ali, by his account, parked his car on a campus street, "grabbed a box of old poetry manuscripts from the front seat" and put the box near a recycling trashcan.
What followed was cancellation of classes of 7,500 students for a day with emergency police and a bomb squad stepping in to clear things out. Ali was detained by the police till a few of his colleagues intervened. While the university authorities claim that Ali's South Asian descent had nothing to do with the action, Ali himself is far from convinced.
He tells us, "It certainly had something to do with my ethnicity as this piece of information was included in the call made to the police. It was me placing the box down that made the box a 'suspicious' item. It was because of the way the man saw me, because of his fear of the brown skin. In spite of my peacefulness, my committed opposition to all aggression and war, I am a threat by my very existence just living in the world as a Muslim body. And this culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion is being very carefully cultivated by both the media and the government who claim they want to keep us safe."
This entire incident once again brings us to question the current plight of South Asians in the land of El Dorado.
As hordes wait to take the next big flight out for academic or professional purposes, those settled out there still continue to face discrimination.
As Tonnistha Kanungo, who is based in the US, says, "While you cannot generalise the discrimination, it exists. For instance, they would always greet a white skin more warmly than they would greet us." She recalls an incident when she stepped into a departmental store in a salwar kameez and was curtly asked to return to her 'country'. "I was mistaken for being from one of the Muslim countries. They treat all brown skinned alike."
Jayati Mukherjee, who shifted base to the States to study right after 9/11, says, "If you are waiting for a salesperson to attend to you even at one of the campus stores, be sure to be the last person to be attended to if there are other whites around."
While Kazim is severely shocked at the way his actions were misconstrued, he is keeping his fingers crossed about the future. "The government has been very successful at playing on people's fears in order to advance their own political agenda in the Middle East. It is deemed appropriate behaviour to spy and report on one another. But the American people are smart enough and may soon start seeing through this," he reasons.
For all those hundreds who are all gearing up to catch the next flight out to the US, we sure hope so.
riddhima.seal@timesgroup.com