I’m sorry, but I have very little sympathy for that kind of sentiment. For one thing, the lists of ‘crimes’ are filled with half-truths and ‘perceived’ wrongs and some of the worst racial ideologies ever.

The recent unrest in Uganda was because an Indian conglomerate wanted to utilize protected forests for sugar cane farming. The rally which was called to protest the government concession started out masked as concern for the environment. But as the crowd grew larger, the xenophobic sentiment reared its ugly head and they rounded up and lynched an Indian man.

These Indian businessman are ruthless people. They use their power and position to foster uncompetitive and unsustainable practices–don’t forget corruption. They show very little concern for the environment or people, for that matter. Like monied people everywhere, they don’t care for anyone who doesn’t have it… regardless of race.

Unfortunately, when there is a backlash, they are the one’s who already have houses in other countries. The Indians left behind to deal with the mob violence are the unfortunate ones.

Regardless, the EMPTY ideologies which pop up to scapegoat Indians in these countries have to be pointed out.

Until they come up with evidence that Indians are getting bank officers to deny them loans to start businesses, I will have very little sympathy for them.

Every diaspora country is different, and every Indian diaspora group has a different, often complicated, relationship with the country. Racial politics and economic politics are not the same thing, even if the economic conflict takes on racial tones.

What has made Indians so successful in places where economic opportunity is limited is that Indian diaspora groups are really good about leveraging collective resources, exploiting family and community ties, sharing profits, and taking care of each other. It’s like the law of compound interest. For many years, there is little to show, but after a decade, Indians can become quite wealthy, even in places with little wealth. And it’s not just one fat cat, but the whole community. So the locals resent without understanding.

This is not all necessarily to the long-term good. Indians in East Africa were active early on in the political systems of the various countries, but over time (and for many reasons) have abandoned politics (there are few Indian MPs, mayors, etc.). South African Indians have been, and still are, very politically active–and they are not a market-dominant minority and are not as wealthy collectively as their counterparts elsewhere in Africa.

I don’t think that the characterization provided by the Malawian is entirely accurate, but I do think there was a bit of a skills vacuum after the initial expulsion. As Akash mentions, there was also resentment that people don’t invest locally and that they don’t promote/train black Africans or treat them fairly. I heard both complaints fairly regularly when I was in Jinja (Uganda) — that 1) Indians always send their money “back home” [to India], and 2) that they don’t treat us as human. Exceptions were of course viewed that way — as exceptions, that those people were “good Indians, more Ugandan than Indian” versus “bad Indians” who send their money oversees and treat you like a thief.

The person who pointed out the lack of a political voice as the cause for the problems in India hit it directly on the head.

This is not so much true in the other places. But in those places, there is a great deal of xenophobia that is riled up by politicans to make people fear ‘Indian domination’ (a message that has the same effect on voters everywhere from Guyana to Fiji).

But, underlying it all is the kind of sentiment reflected in my previous post.

http://www.culturecult.com/spiked1a.htm#dereliction

At a dinner given in his honor Theroux meets the vice-chancellor of the University of Malawi and a sometime Malawian ambassador to Germany. The subject of the expulsion of Indian traders and shop-keepers comes up. “The Indians were chased away,” says the ex-ambassador. “We wanted Africans to be given a chance to run the shops. So that Africans could go into business. The shops were handed over. I bought one myself!”

With what result? asks Theroux.

Ha-ha! Not much. It didn’t work. They all got finished!

The result of this deliberate destruction of Indian commercial activity was that throughout Malawi’s rural areas there were soon no shops at all—“and, twenty-seven years later, still no shops.” When Theroux points this out the ex-ambassador turns to ridiculing Indian business acumen as a contemptible numerical obsession. “They sit there, you see, and they have these little pieces of paper, and have these columns of numbers. And one Indian is running the calculator, and another is counting the sacks of flour and the tins of condensed milk. One-two-three. One-two-three.”

Theroux comments:

What this educated African in his plummy British voice intended as mockery—the apparent absurdity of all this counting—was the description of people doing a simple inventory of goods in a shop.

“We Africans are not raised in this way,” the ex-ambassador goes on, nodding to the others for approval. “What do we care about shops and counting? We have a much freer existence. We have no interest in this. Shops are not our strong point.” Then as the evening draws to a close he finally acknowledges another problem—the inability, in societies dominated by family, clan, and tribe, to protect one’s property from communal exploitation by parasitic relatives:

I’ll tell you why these shops didn’t work out, said the former ambassador, addressing the table at large. When Africans run businesses their families come and stay with them and eat all their food—just live off them. As soon as an African succeeds in something he has his family cadging from him. Not so?

That is true, brother, the other man said.

And we are not cut out for this shop-keeping and book-keeping and (he winked at me) this number crunching.

This infuriates Theroux:

I had never heard such bullsh*t… The man was saying: This is all too much for us. We cannot learn how to do business. We must be given money, we must be given sinecures, because we don’t know how to make a profit.

I said, If you’re no good at book-keeping and keeping track of expenses, why do you expect donor countries to go on giving you money?

Bangladeshi Castrated In Haa Daal Horror Death

As a brown person, the greatest thing about America is how little people here hate the rich. Most middle class Americans dont hate Sergey Brin or Bill Gates. Rather, they want to be as successful as them. Its only the extreme left of academia that breeds resentment of success these days. As long as business people are not hated in America, I will feel safe as a brown guy.