"Diversity" In India

If facts carried some weight with those who are politically correct, the recent outbreak of savage and lethal violence in India's state of Gujarat might cause some reassessments of both India and "diversity."

This is only the latest round in a cycle of violence and revenge between the Hindus and the Moslems in that country. The death toll has reached 489 people in a few days. That includes the Hindu activists firebombed on a train returning from the site of a razed mosque, where they planned to build a Hindu temple, and many Moslems then slaughtered by Indian mobs in retaliation.

These mobs have burned Moslem women and children alive in their homes. Nor is such savagery new in India or limited to clashes between Hindus and Moslems. At other times and places, it has been one caste against another, locals versus outsiders, or the storm trooper organization Shiv Sena against anybody who gets in their way. In some places, thugs resentful of Western influence have attacked shops that sell Valentine cards.

None of this fits the pious picture of peaceful and spiritual India that so captivates many Americans. India has served as one of the foreign Edens to which those Americans turn, in order to show their disdain for the United States.

At one time, the Soviet Union played that role, then China, then Cuba, and for some, India. What happens in the real India doesn't matter. It is the symbolic India of their dreams to which they impute all the virtues they declare to be lacking in the USA.

It is not India's fault that some fatuous Americans want to put Indians up on a pedestal, in order to score points against their fellow Americans. But we need to be aware of the truth as well.

Those who are constantly gushing about the supposed benefits of "diversity" never want to put their beliefs to the test of looking at the facts about countries where people are divided by language, culture, religion, and in other ways, such as caste in India. Such countries are all too often riddled with strife and violence.

India is one of the most diverse nations on earth. No more than one-third of its people speak any given language, and the population is divided innumerable ways by caste, ethnicity, religion and numerous localisms. Lethal riots have marked its history from the beginning.

When India gained its independence in 1947, the number of Hindus and Moslems who killed each other in one year exceeded the total number of people killed in race riots in the entire history of the United States. Yet we are told that we should be like those gentle people, as if India were a nation of Gandhis. In reality, Gandhi was assassinated for trying to stop internecine strife in India.

If there is no need to impute wholly unrealistic sainthood to India, there is also no need to single it out for demonization. Many other countries with the much-touted "diversity" have been racked by internal slaughters and atrocities.

Only about 20 miles away from India, the island nation of Sri Lanka has suffered more deaths among its majority and minority populations, as a result of internal strife and civil war, than the much larger United States suffered during the Vietnam War. Other such "diverse" countries as Rwanda and Serbia have a similar catalogue of horrors.

"Diversity" is not just a matter of demographics. It is also a matter of "identity" and identity politics. Sri Lanka was one of the most peaceful nations on earth before demagogues began hyping identity and demanding group preferences and quotas in the 1950s.

Demographically, the United States has always been diverse, having received immigrants from all over the world. However, until recent times, it was understood by all that they came here to become Americans -- not to remain foreign. By the second generation, most were speaking English, and by the third generation they were speaking only English.

Today, however, our citizen-of-the-world types are doing all they can to keep foreigners foreign and domestic minorities riled up over grievances, past and present, real and imaginary. Above all, they want group identity and group preferences and quotas.

In short, they want all the things that have brought on the kinds of disasters from which India and other such "diverse" countries have suffered so grievously.

Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college.

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