About the case in Mumbai

The case of crowd chants in Mumbai is flimsy evidence to make a generalization that Indians are racist. Apart from lack of substantial evidence there is a more critical issue to be addressed. I don't think there was anything even "inappropriate" there at all.

The athlete in question should expect the crowd to take a shining to him given his 'lipstick', hairstyle and temperament. This is no different from Inzi being called 'aloo' - that didn't mean the crowd was calling his race, religion or nation by that epithet, only him. The jokes were pointed at an individual for his individual traits (inzi = overweight, symonds = monkey-like) - not at his race or racial characteristics.

If Indians were racist we would have given the same treatment to Lara, Murali, African teams and blacks playing for England etc. Haven't heard of any such thing before. What are Australia saying? Racist Indians only find Symonds to look like a monkey among all other athletes of colour??? And this has nothing to do with his choice of cosmetics and general attitude on the field? Are you kidding me?

So my argument is that the gestures weren't racial at all. That is, the gesture did not allude in any way to his racial characteristics (including skin colour and facial features).

If we want to understand racism, we should look at the Aussie case, where sledging against teams of colour is uniformly based on race. Australia, for years, had a no-colour (all white racist) policy for immigration. It was instiutionalized and it is still deep-seated though procedures have changed.

If Symonds thinks being called a monkey is racist, then the racism is sadly more in his head than the crowd's. And I can see the reason for that - given he is from Australia and has probably had to face real racism growing up. Now he can't tell the difference - every time someone says something to him he assumes it is because of his race. No, my friend, you're plain ugly - it has nothing to do with your race.

If there's any racism going on here it is AGAIN the international (white) cricket community coming down too harshly on Indian cricket (which obviously includes fans) in implementing the anti-racism code. They'd like to call us racist (show "evidence" of racism in India) to look better themselves.