My views on Harbhajan's racist remarks

My second post in as many weeks is a testament to fact that I had been slightly less occupied in past few weeks. Another reason being that my statcounter account tells me that the frequency of visitors on the site has increased, hence the enthusiasm to spill more nonsense on this blog. Though I am, now a days, groping for words more than ever, but still I will carry on writing this piece and bore readers to death.

Well, lets start with checking my progress on learning driving skills. Its hearting to realize that I still can learn quickly enough. I am now driving to my office everyday. Although thanks to one of my colleagues (Mudit) who has been kindly accompanying me to the office in my car. It is always conforting to know that somebody is sitting besides me who knows driving. And if anything goes wrong, he can take over from me and drive. Thats about my driving then.

Another issue that comes to my mind is the recent racism debate around Harbhajan's racist slur ("monkey") on Andrew Symonds. Well, I do not have a lot of knowledge on the history of racism, and hence I may not be absolutely aware of the implications of this racist slur. But I have traveled a lot around this world and have been subjected to acts of racism, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. Hence I think I can write on this piece without being insensitive to the issue. So, in my opinion, this Harbhajan incident must be viewed in the context of the broader picture. Without undermining the severity of the offense I must say calling black a black is not as sinister as being committing cowardly malicious acts against a race and denouncing them. The way Indians were treated on the pitch by the Australians players and all the three umpires in the panel, I must way that itself was an act of racism against Indians and was much more sinister than what Harbhajan did. I would not like to condone Harbhajan for what he did, but at the same time I personally would like to see racism charges against the umpire panel and Ricky Ponting, if not the whole Australian team and see that they get more severe punishment than what Harbhajan gets.
Its hilarious the way media portrays this incident. I can remember one of the TOI articles suggesting that since Hanuman (one of the holy Indian deities) was a monkey, so Harbhajan 's racist slur was not a slur but a compliment to Symonds. I think popular newspapers like TOI should refrain from publishing such articles.