From ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ to ‘Operation Ganga’ – India has done it once again, we’ve achieved the incredible feat of bringing back our own, home safely, this time from war-torn Ukraine. While the world is watching in awe, India has managed to bring back around 3,000 students home on 19 flights within a short span of time. In sharp contrast to India’s magnanimity is the hypocrisy of the western world. Even at such a difficult time, the obvious bias and racism of the western world have been on full display.
While India has been unabashedly slammed by the west & needled on ‘secularism’ has displayed its grit, valour and unity by bringing not just Hindus & Muslims but also Turks, Nepalese, Pakistanis and others back home safely, the western world is totally divided & split right in the middle. Several videos that have emerged on social media indicate that foreigners, particularly, people of colour, were openly discriminated against by Ukrainian soldiers.
Shocking videos where Indian students have been kicked, assaulted, and deliberately deboarded from buses and trains going to the border areas have emerged.
Videos accessed by NewsX also show Ukrainian soldiers allegedly blocking Indian students from boarding a train out of Kyiv. An Indian student studying in Ukraine told NewsX that “Soldiers behaved badly with us, only foreigners were treated in such a manner”. He also accused Ukrainian soldiers of manhandling female students and said, “Girls were pulled by their hair.” These videos emerged at a time when Indian nationals were heading towards the western part of the country in order to cross over to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries from where Indian repatriation flights are being operated.
A CNN journalist, Bijan Hosseini, also took to Twitter earlier this week to narrate the ordeal of her adopted sister of African origin who fled Ukraine amid the crisis there. According to Bijan, based on her sister’s account of events, Ukrainian border guards at a border crossing with Poland were segregating people on the basis of skin colour and letting fair-skinned Ukrainians cross the border first.
The Western media coverage of the crisis in Ukraine has drawn flak for carrying a racist overtone. Social media users called out a CBS correspondent, Charlie D’Agata, who drew comparisons between Asian and European countries during his reporting on the conflict and said, “This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan… This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city.” While Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor David Sakvarelidze described the events in Ukraine as emotional because in his words he saw, “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed every day”.
These incidents highlight not only the privileged attitude of the western world but their inherent racist mindset which rears its ugly heads even in difficult situations like the current crisis. The world must introspect if it’s time for them to learn a lesson in humanity from India instead of questioning us time and again.
