Reverse Racism - & Contempt for Servants

One thing the European visitor notices almost immediately is that his skin-colour will mark him out for special treatment. You might say that that would be blindingly obvious, but the fact is that India is one of the world's leading nations (in the top twelve states in terms of GDP, believe it or not) - so it has no reason to be over-respectful to the outsider. So, I was surprised.

But, frankly what is more interesting, is that, while it might also be said that class-distinctions among Europeans are gradually disappearing (though Europe has much to learn in this respect from the Australians and Americans), a person’s class seems to me a disproportionately major factor among Mumbaikers.
And in one of the world’s most established democracies, that observation struck me as being very curious. More later...

Back to colour. Here in Mumbai, there are both advantages and disadvantages to being a white foreigner.
As an Indian friend coyly said, after I was charged ‘foreigner price’ for mangoes: “You are, I’m afraid, a victim of your colour.” Very amusing.
But one can forgive it I suppose. It’s true that prices are regularly a third of what I would pay back home, so I can afford ‘foreigner price’. In fact it becomes a sort of tax for living in a country I love living in… and taxes are inevitable.

What is less easy to take is the reverse – what might be deemed by some as an ‘advantage’ but in fact is something that just feels rather creepy: it’s the obsequious behaviour of flunkies in opulent hotels and expensive shops.
Examples: the fawning displayed by shop assistants in rich people’s department stores; the self-debasing eagerness of some lift attendants in well-off apartment blocks; the humble, self-effacing way subordinates just accept the open contempt of their employers.
Now, it’s not just the foreigners who get all this bowing and scraping stuff. Peons will debase themselves as much before members of the Indian professional classes.

To a Westerner, who will often be a firm political egalitarian, this obsequiousness just appears like a lack of self-respect from these employees, or, worse, an unmanly fear of the 'boss'; in fact, this kind of behaviour appears to be simply demeaning to the person exhibiting it, and, well, just plain sad.
(Yes, yes, I know, some visitors, like me, are quite flattered by this excessively boot-licking attention at first. Believe me, it just gets tiring to have to deal with it after a while though).

So... why do (some) Mumbaiker working-class people do it?
After all, they are a minority. Out on the streets, at roadside vendors’ stalls, in small cafes, in independent shops, in government offices even (!), there is no such behaviour. Mumbaikers here can be as rude and as peremptory as any other folk on Earth!

No, the toadying that I refer to most often occurs in places that the well-off and/or the professional classes inhabit. Why?
Are the assistants told to behave like this by their managers? But then... are the managers stuck in some ancient past where “kow-towing to a master” was demanded? And do they think most modern foreigners find it pleasant?

It struck me (though I know very little about how caste actually works), that these assistants might just be observing the rules of caste, they being lower-caste, those they serve being upper-caste. But then why bother scraping to a tourist like me? Tourists are not from a higher caste (are they?). Tourists are from no caste at all – surely.
I guess that’s where one’s white-skin might play a role; and if colour does play a part, then such behaviour really is truly unpleasant – it’s a sort of reverse racism that does neither party (those who behave obsequiously, and indeed those who accept it) any credit.

However. Some people I have spoken to say that it’s more than just obsequiousness before Foreign Riches, but also has undertones of the colonial past – and that some Indians find it difficult to shake off memories of the days of the sahibs. Could that be possible? If so, I find it truly odd – as it is now some sixty long years after the bitter Independence strggle.

But… and here I might be getting into really hot water… let me point the finger elsewhere to explain at least part of this behaviour.

From what I see on the streets of Mumbai or in the more expensive homes and restaurants of the city, there are members of the Indian professional classes who seem to have little ability to communicate with members of the lower classes.
I have been shocked by the rudeness and arrogance shown by otherwise extraordinarily cultivated people toward their own servants or to shop assistants or waiters. In the US, in ninety per cent of cases, those people would have not been allowed to get away with it, as the abusers would quickly have been equal measure back.
Don’t forget, when I say ‘professional classes’ I mean people like dentists, or small-businessmen, or teachers – that is to say, relatively ordinary folk. Yet, sometimes, I have been so embarrassed that I have had to look away when they are so curt and harsh and rude to their ‘inferiors’ – which, to the shame of all, seems somehow acceptable.

And, do you know what I think is at the root of this bad behaviour? (Oh dear, here I get into more trouble). My answer: widespread use of domestic servants.
I can think of very few other democracies where the ordinary middle-classes have full-time domestic help (usually ‘maids’) as a matter of course.
Sure, in Britain, a middle-class home might have a cleaner who comes in part-time, but even in America, it is only the upper middle-class that will have live-in servants. But here in Mumbai these maids or ‘boys’ are common to many households, even quite ordinary ones. They are often brought in from rural India, or the city’s slums, and are on long hours and very meagre wages (which is why they can be afforded in the first place of course).

The trouble is that because these servants are often so badly trained, poorly-paid and so lowly, the people in the household, including older children, often feel they can be openly contemptuous of them. (Though, there are exceptions to this rule, where some servants are treated like members of the family; that is true too, I admit).
These servants, who have few options open to them, are often cowed by their employers’ arrogance and abuse.

This kind of relationship seems to me an unhealthy one all round, and yet it seems to be a defining characteristic for how certain other exchanges take place outside the home and in Indian society at large.
For example, as this particular wheel turns, you can see how it manifests itself in industrial companies, where I have seen managers rant and rave at unhappy and powerless employees for hours – all the while accusing their employees of not showing initiative (as if they dared!).
I leave it to sociologists to suggest how much such powerlessness affects a man’s or a woman’s attitudes. But it must have some effect.

So… here is a final (I hope interesting) thought – wouldn’t it be better, in the drive toward a truly equal and classless society in Mumbai, if the middle classes learnt to stop looking down on someone simply because he or she is employed by them, and started to wash their own socks?

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