usenet

US and them

Editorial
The Pioneer
Established in 1864

Friday, June 27, 2003

The vicious assault on an Indian graduate student of the
University of Massachussetts, Saurabh Bhalerao, would
have passed off as just another case of attack and
robbery in Boston, had it not been for the fact the three
men who tortured him kept calling him a Muslim and asked
him to "go back to Iraq". Such incidents of 'hate crimes'
are becoming increasingly common in the US. What stands
out in the present instance is the particularly brutal
nature of the assault. Bhalerao, now recovering in
hospital, was robbed, beaten, had his face burnt with
cigarettes and was packed inside the boot of his own car.
He was stabbed thrice after he managed to get out and
tried to escape, and his assailants-all less than 20
years of age-left their victim for dead in the middle of
the road before driving off. All three have been arrested
and charged with civil rights violation, abduction and
armed robbery, and the pre-trial hearing is to take place
on July 24. While the law machinery was commendably quick
in responding to the hate crime, the incident itself
points to growing intolerance in American society, and
the dark underside of the US's war against terrorism.

Indeed, the US is no stranger to race-related crimes.
These have occurred in the past even when there was no
significant threat of terrorism. One may recall the Ku
Klux Klan. More recently, the 'dot-busters' have been
known to indulge in violence against the more
identifiable expatriate groups, particularly from South
Asia. With the war against terror, however, political
neo-conservatism could be said to have travelled
downwards and, in absence of guidelines to society at
large on the issue of inter-racial relations, such
incidents have risen alarmingly. The Bush Administration
may not have helped matters by toughening its position
vis-a-vis immigrants and visitors through enactment of
laws that make their stringent screening-including
fingerprinting from January 2004-at airports mandatory.
Such racial profiling has sent a very negative message
down the line. A new set of US Government guidelines to
come into effect from August 1 calls for greater scrutiny
of foreign students, and it is not surprising that
independent educational groups have called for a re-
evaluation of regulations that will force many scholars
and scientists to miss the initial days of their session.

The US needs to strike a balance between its legitimate
security concerns and the openness of its society that
has long been a beacon for those in pursuit of the
American dream. Human liberty has been a sacred code of
the American way of life, and it is this that is under
threat as a result of the rise of American insularity. US
policy-makers must, therefore, adopt a course that
preserves the country's traditional strength-which has
been its high degree of openness to educational,
scientific and cultural interaction-and evolve a more
acceptable symmetry between liberty and the US's security
considerations. With its heavy-handed clamp-down on
students and other visitors, the Bush Administration is
only contributing to a surge of jingoism that today
stands in the way of individual freedom, the very thing
that America has always self-avowedly stood for.

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Panchaang for 28 Jyeshtth 5104, Friday, June 27, 2003:

Shubhanu Nama Samvatsare Dakshinaya Nartana Ritau
Mithun Mase Krishna Pakshe Shukr Vasara Yuktayam
Rohini-Mrgashir Nakshatr Shool-Ganda Yog
Vishti Karan Chaturdashi Yam Tithau

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