Racism and Castes

The Anti-Racist Terror
Among the incantations that play a hypnotic role in the verbal magic of our times and are used to manipulate public opinion to the very extent to which their ambiguity lends them a sacred tone, the word racism ranks in the front line. This term also often confuses the recognition of different human families that have distinctive physical characteristics and aptitudes with the realities of civilization, religion, ethics, and customs, which may merely represent ways of life, or a precious cultural heritage.

The fear of infringing taboos concerning the blasphemous use of forbidden words means that the greatest thinkers, sociologists, biologists, psychologists and historians employ astonishing circumlocutions to avoid being accused of racist heresy, which would immediately condemn their work. This is very apparent in works such as Le Sang et l’Histoire by Jean Bernard. Blood is clearly a transmittable racial characteristic and its relationship with certain cultural forms is evident. The American publisher of one of my works asked me to suppress an important quotation from the Vishnu Purana which would have tarred me with the suspicion of racism, whereas I am clearly not responsible for a text that is more than two thousand years old.

The racism that justifies conquest, slavery, and the elimination of peoples and cultures and the sort of antiracism that promotes assimilation and the negation of differences are, in fact, two faces of the same imperialism. Any system that strives to recognize and respect the proper qualities, virtues, traditions, and autonomy of the various human groups, races, religions, and cultures and to grant to the various human societies the right to be different, to prevent minorities from being persecuted, flattened, or converted by the majority, sees the three imperialisms--Christian, Islamic, and Marxist--rise against it in the name of an egalitarianism that is simply a tool for domination, genocide and generalized mediocrity.

The stereotyped descriptions of Indian society that we have inherited were invented in the nineteenth century to justify colonialism and its benefits. They must be considered cautiously. Many of the problems of modern India are the result of Islamic and Christian proselytism, employed to destroy the traditional concepts of social justice. In India, as in Europe, certain more or less Marxist individuals currently use the pretext of the wretchedness of the less-favored classes--largely created by an industrial civilization--in order to destroy society instead of seeking to improve the conditions of its disinherited sections. Social injustice exists everywhere, together with people that are despised or wretched, ineffective or good-for-nothing. There is no evidence that its proportion in India is greater than elsewhere. Hindu society cannot be judged by the immense camp for refugees from Bangladesh that Calcutta has become after the partition of India, or by the industrial areas of Bombay.

Is India racist? Clearly it is so, from the point of view of Western permissiveness, because it is against racial mixtures, against marriage between different communities, and is only interested in the quality of the child’s genetic heritage. At the same time, it is the only truly antiracist country, since it has allowed all races, all religions and all communities to co-exist harmoniously for thousands of years, making place for and ensuring the survival of all the peoples and religions that are persecuted elsewhere.