The Age of Prejudice
We live in dark times. We live in times when prejudices abound. The prejudices shared by the fair-skinned and not so (or not at all) fair-skinned against the darker brethren of humanity that range from various forms of racial discrimination and extend to find echo in a mother-in-law’s ecstatic “Ooh! It’s a beautiful ‘white’ baby!”. The prejudices shared by the urban and rural majority (read belonging to both ‘Bhaarat’ and ‘India’) against what they term as the ‘indecency of the well-heeled and minimally garbed women’ who, in their words, ’invite rape’. The small prejudices that we allow to crawl into our minds when say, a new neighbor /colleague/daughter-in-law enters the confines of our neighborhood/workplace/family. Someone (mostly, a supplier of gossip) would say, “Aha! Do you know that he/she said/did THAT, or behaved like THIS.” And foolishly, unsuspectingly, we’d say “Really? Oh my!” letting ourselves fall prey to yet another prejudice. Why can’t we train our minds to respond, “
