BJP leader Tarun Vijay calls South Indians “black people” -Governance Now

BJP leader Tarun Vijay calls South Indians “black people”

Remark triggers online storm

GN Bureau | April 7, 2017

#racist remarks #Tarun Vijay #racism

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Tarun Vijay has called those who live in South India as “black people”. He later took to twitter to “feel sorry”, but the damage had already been done.

Tarun Vijay was talking to Al Jazeera over the alleged racist attack attacks on African students in Greater Noida.

He said that if India was, indeed, racist, we would not “live with” “black people around us”. “If we were racist, why would....all the entire South – you know, Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka – why do we live with them?” He added, “We have blacks...black people around us.”

Later, when his remark triggered an online storm, he tweeted: “My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad, really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel i said different than what I meant.”

Clearly, Tarun Vijay’s remark is racist in nature. It is an insult and shows how deeply entrenched is the issue of “dark-skin”.

And racism was the word used by African envoys who deliberated upon the attack against African students.

The Heads of Mission accredited to India called the attack xenophobic

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