I was told to ‘go back to Portugal’. Is this Indian modernity now?
If my story is unique to me then it need not go any further. But I believe it is symptomatic of the mindsets that have grown not just across the country but also in families and neighbourhoodsPeter Ronald deSouza
Nov 16, 2024 16:18 IST
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A few days ago, during an argument, I was told to “go back to Portugal”. Not one to take such abuse without a fight I responded and asked my adversary to “go back to Afghanistan”. He was outraged. “I’m not from Afghanistan,” he roared”. “Well, I’m not from Portugal,” I said. Two things come together in this brief exchange that are worth thinking about. My name and his outrage. For him I was obviously the outsider and, equally obviously, he was the insider. Both for him were self-evidently true. In this exchange, my argumentativeness faced his righteous anger. He said he was confronting me because I was evil. That we went to school together more than half a century ago did not matter.
(To be continued as screenshots, as the whole article is behind a pay wall ...)