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DENVER, COLORADO, April 28, 2004: A column by Pius Kamau in the Denver Post has drawn criticism from Indian Americans as “racist.” Pius is from Kenya, of African descent, a surgeon, and columnist for the Post. His column (“source” above), titled “A History of Racial Tension” reads in part:



Some new Indian doctors have been arriving in Colorado, the “whitest” medical community in America. A small nest of East Indian physicians has steadily grown around me. It’s significant since, for more than two decades, I was one of just three black surgeons and one of about 20 black physicians in a huge community of white doctors. They say misery loves company; perhaps the new arrivals will help dilute the vitriol that chokes so many hearts. Dark foreigners have distinct pedigrees. Some Indians are Brahmins, others Warriors; to Hindus, blacks are a rung below Untouchables. Medically, we’re poles apart. We say little to each other to unthaw a natural chill. Every time we cross paths, the past bubbles up. Like the world’s many competing tribes, we suspiciously eye each other from positions defined by history. Ours is a relationship that mirrors my colonial past. In East Africa, we lived side by side. Africans were always Indians’ servants. Indians were second-class citizens. (Europeans were first and Africans third.) Mahatma Gandhi may have led his nation’s fight against British rule, but Kenya’s Indians never joined Africans in their struggle for independence; colonialism was just fine.



Pius’ article goes on to criticize Hinduism and states, “Christianity, it seems, releases the Hindu mind from its rigid shackles, unraveling the tight coils of dogma.”



The local Hindu community took offense at the column, and a rebuttal by Mohan Ashtakala, publisher of The Himalayan News, was published in the April 30 Post. The “Guest Commentary” is available here, and is titled, “African-Hindu Tension a Vestige of Colonialism.” It reads, in part:



It was disappointing to read Pius Kamau’s comments regarding Hinduism in Thursday’s Denver Post, not only for the lack of knowledge about this religion that he displayed, but also because he confuses the reader on the whole issue of racial tension between Asians and Africans in Africa. India was the first of Great Britain’s colonies. As such, it was the scene of many social experiments by the colonialists. One such experiment was to create a class of bureaucrats or administrators, who would run the vast country, on a day-to-day basis, on behalf of the comparatively small number of English overlords. This experiment was such a success that the British decided to import Indian administrators to almost every colonial government that they established around the world, including Africa. Thus, the Indians became the face of colonial administrations around the world and, in some ways, bore the brunt of anger against the oppressors, where the real perpetrators of injustice – the European colonialists – escaped with little blame. Indians, being part of the establishment, naturally became successful in other areas, as Kamau mentions, such as banking and commerce.



Unfortunately, Kamau, instead of giving the historical and rational analysis to this problem, indulges in a long and unfortunate diatribe against the world’s oldest universal religion, Hinduism. In this, he mouths the same old tired cliches that the old-time missionaries used against Hinduism. It is obvious where Kamau got his education: in one of the citadels of Western education in Africa, the mission schools. These, too, are a product of colonialism: English education in Third World countries has been in the hands of the religiously motivated, who used their positions to spread ignorance and bigotry about any religion or culture other than their own.

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