Justice for Macacas and Monkeys

The two stories here are a few days old and I had not planned on writing about them.  But the recent distasteful experience of watching the movie "Borat," got me thinking about racism, prejudices and what place they occupy in our national discourse. It also made me think of macacas and from there, of monkeys.

The recent defeat at the polls of Senator George Allen of Virginia was widely interpreted as the direct negative consequence of his insulting treatment of a young American man of Indian origin. Allen called S.R. Sidarth, a campaign worker of his opponent Jim Webb, a "macaca" a term commonly understood to be a racial epithet. The fact that Allen with the breezy air of a seasoned bully, proceeded to "welcome" the American born Sidarth to America, was correctly understood by Indian and Asian Americans as an illustration of the uncomfortable fact that to many Americans, they are not seen as "authentic" Americans. There has been much discussion in the Indian and Asian Amerian communities whether the racist insult to a "brown" American was in any way responsible for sinking Allen's political boat. In my opinion, that was probably not the sole reason although it contributed substantially to the anti-Allen momentum.  The "macaca" incident actually opened up the flood gate of revelations about Allen's many tiered prejudices, particularly against African Americans. Added to that, the secretiveness and discomfort that Allen exhibited regarding his Jewish ancestry on his mother's side, reinforced the impression that Allen was a white good ol' boy wannabe not comfortable in his own skin.  Not a good quality in a leader, especially one whose ambition had the US White House in its focus. It is ironic that no one probably will call Sidarth a macaca to his face again but journalists now routinely refer to Allen as Senator Macaca. Mud slung at others sometimes has a way of splashing back on the perpetrator.

Last Sunday, Sidarth the target of Allen's race based derision wrote an editorial in the Washington Post about his experience and what he hopes will be the lessons of this fiasco. An excerpt:

"This past summer, between my third and fourth year of college, I decided to volunteer for the campaign of Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb in my home state of Virginia.

Then, on Aug. 11, my experience took a strange -- and now famous -- turn. On that day in Breaks Interstate Park, located on the Kentucky border, Allen acknowledged my presence for the first time in one of his stump speeches. I was singled out at a GOP picnic, identified as "macaca or whatever his name is" -- despite the fact that Allen knew my name, as we had been traveling the same route for five days -- and then "welcome[d] to America and the real world of Virginia."

After Allen's remarks, my heritage suddenly became a matter of widespread interest. I am proud to be a second-generation Indian American and a practicing Hindu. My parents were born and raised in India and immigrated here more than 25 years ago; I have known no home other than Northern Virginia.

The larger question that this experience brings up is: How far has society progressed on the issues of race and openness? Webb's victory last week gives me hope that Virginia will not tolerate playing the race card. .... The politics of division just don't work anymore. Nothing made me happier on election night than finding out the results from Dickenson County, where Allen and I had our encounter. Webb won there, in what I can only hope was a vote to deal the race card out of American politics once and for all."

While Asians and other minorities probably feel vindicated by Allen's defeat, there is a cautionary tale here for everyone. Racism is not restricted to the majority community.  I regret to say that I have heard Asians, Jews and African Americans express shockingly harsh racist sentiments against others of different religions and skin color. The "macaca" incident should be of particular interest to minority communities for not just its overt connotation but also for its less obvious implications. Although Allen has denied it, it is generally accepted that he may have learnt this particular slur from his own mother, a French speaker from north Africa where the epithet is routinely used to denigrate dark skinned people. If so, the tragic irony here is that the prejudice was perpetuated by a woman who herself was so ashamed and terrified of revealing her Jewishness that she supposedly hid that fact from her own adult son until very recently.  Those who are dealt the harsh hand of persecution and humiliation are not above doing the same injustice to others.  Minorities who raised a hue and cry about Allen, would better watch what they themselves think, do and say on matters of race and prejudice. Even in the privacy of one's own home where no stranger can hear them, surely their children can. A day may come when minority children raised in the shadow of their parents' prejudices, will suffer the same fate as George Allen, if in a moment of cockiness they too expose the ugly imprint of racism that their parents may unthinkingly brand them with.  And You Tube doesn't spare anyone.

(Mommy monkey and baby crossing a main thoroughfare near the Presidential Palace in New Delhi: photo from Time.com) 

Now, on to the problem of real monkeys.  This matter is not as emotionally fraught as the "macaca" story but it is a problem, at least in India.  Not many non-Indians know that the cow is not the only common animal revered by Indian Hindus. Monkeys (both the large and the smaller varieties) also occupy a place of pride and privilege in the Indian society. The best known Hindu religious epic  tells the story of a valiant army of monkeys who faught on the side of the most beloved warrior hero of ancient Indian mythology. Monkeys are thus a protected species in India - killing them is a crime. The Indian government severely restricts the export of rhesus monkeys for medical research.  But monkeys are monkeys and show no reciprocal respect for the humans. Exploding monkey populations now menace city dwellers.  And believe me, they are menacing - I say that from personal experience. They attack, threaten and on the whole make a nuisance of themselves although they are quite cute and amusing from a distance. The monkey population in Indian cities, including the capital New Delhi, has become the cause of such concern that the Indian Supreme Court is set to review the fate of these pesky animals. Relocating them to rural areas is proving to be difficult.  Villagers don't want the urban monkeys in their neighborhood because the the animals bring with them "hooligan city habits!"

And here I was, thinking that it was the US Supreme Court that was involved in monkey business when its members selected Bush for the presidency in 2000.

"India's Supreme Court is to review the fate of 300 monkeys captured roaming on the streets of the capital, Delhi.

The court had ordered that the monkeys be relocated to forests in central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. But the animals are proving unpopular there and locals there have lodged an official objection to the plan.

Thousands of monkeys roam Delhi, mostly around government offices, and are considered a public nuisance. For years the wild animals have caused havoc, riding on the city's metro trains, roaming through parliament. They have invaded the prime minister's office and the Defence Ministry, helping themselves to top secret military files.

They cannot be killed because many Indians see them as sacred. Instead they have been captured, their fate decided by a bench of Supreme Court judges headed by India's Chief Justice. Some 250 monkeys have already been relocated by a court order to forests in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. But many people there are now objecting, saying the animals are bringing with them their hooligan habits learnt in the city and are terrorising rural villages.

So the Supreme Court has been asked to find another solution. The monkey menace is proving a tricky issue, exercising some of India's most eminent legal minds."

(See a similar story in Time.com accompanying the photograph above)

Comments

[Sujatha]

A couple more (real) monkey tales here: On an 'ecotour' in the Western Ghats a couple of years ago,when we stopped for a snack at a small store, my daughter dropped her popsicle, which was promptly pounced upon by one of 3 monkeys loitering near us. The successful scrounger deftly removed the wrapper with his teeth and proceeded to gobble it up and threw the stick away.A smaller monkey had to settle for sucking discarded popsicle stick.

Another time, near the Courtallam waterfalls, we saw a whole harem of monkeys with their babies clinging on their back. The alpha male moved menacingly towards me, and I had to beat a hasty retreat from videotaping them.

Let the monkey tales continue- I'm sure many have their own funny (or not) monkey encounters to relate!

[Sujatha]

Talk of synchronicity, I came upon this photo on the Internets within a few minutes of my monkey comment. The ultimate in outsourcing, I guess!

[Ruchira Paul]

Did you notice that they prefer attacking women and children?

There was large monkey (a langur or hanuman) who lived within our school compound in New Delhi. He was a pampered beast. The school janitorial staff fed him lavishly. The monkey lived in a grove of trees that was adjacent to the science building and the school gym and the sports fields. My friends and I in the science department were acutely aware of his presence because we saw him all the time through our class room windows. The humanities students, on the other side of the school did not register his presence as well. Every day during lunch recess, when most of the girls congregated around the fields, some one (mostly a humanities student) would have her lunch stolen in a sudden and sometimes violent swipe from the monkey. There was a comic angle to it. Like in a bad movie, where everyone except the victim knows what is coming next, the monkey would find a suitably distracted girl and divest her of her midday meal. It happened without fail - the sudden swoop, the scream and dropping of the lunch box. And it was invariably funny. Amazingly enough, no one got seriously hurt and no one in the school ever thought of getting the menacing simian out of the school premises.

The funniest "monkey see, monkey do" story that I have heard was from my mother. In the large garden of the home where she grew up, there lived a sizable group of monkeys. One morning, one of them stole the eye glasses of an uncle who had dozed off on the backyard verandah while reading the newspaper. The monkey proceeded to put the spectacles on his own nose and it wasn't until mid-day that they were recovered. The story sounded particularly hilarious because as my mother told us, it was clear from the clumsy and tentative movements of the bespectacled monkey that he couldn't see very well through the glasses but still refused to give up his booty!

[Anna]

I love monkeys! This gut emotional reaction does not constitute particularly incisive commentary, but so be it. Once, upon returning from a trip with my family to Southern Spain, which included visiting the stunning Alhambra, charming Sevilla, etc., I was amazed to realize that I'd used up something like 20 out of my 36 exposures of film taking pictures of monkeys in Gibraltar, a destination not really worth recording for posterity, except maybe for the evocative view across the straits to Africa, and the banal peculiarity of 1) encountering an existing British colony in Southern Spain and 2) recognizing the silhouette of the Rock, and mechanically thinking, "that looks just like the Prudential logo," then, "oh. duh." I'd like to say this incident happenned when I was, say, 11 years old; in reality, I believe I was 21.

Exciting as they were in person, the monkeys looked pretty weedy on film once the pictures were developed, and it occurred to me that if I lived in Gibraltar, I might well think of them as sort of large, aggressive, and troublesome squirrels. Still, it's hard, as a child of monkey-lacking North America, to override that over-excited, photo trigger finger pulling response: "Monkeys!"

I think communities whose social/economic position is less secure, which includes minorities and people of all ethnicities who struggle financially or are disparaged by other groups, are often more openly prejudiced, on the pathetic logic of, "I may be [fill in the speaker's group], but at least I'm not a sorry S.O.B. like those [fill in another group]." One particularly odious aspect of Allen's story, though, is that he does *not* fit this model: he's a rich kid from Rancho Palos Verdes playing besieged, Southern good old boy. Perhaps his mother's self-loathing spite mixed with a rich kid's sense of entitlement to create a particularly hateful brew. That explanation fits with Ruchira's excellent point about the subtle lesson for all minorities in Allen's defeat. But it still leaves out the predatory calculation with which Allen used racism as an attache case for a false persona. Blech. A man I'd happily see booted from politics entirely.

Interestingly enough, tying together Ruchira's posts, the monkey that so captured my imagination and colonized my film role was the Barbary Macaque.

[Sujatha]

"But it still leaves out the predatory calculation with which Allen used racism as an attache case for a false persona. Blech. A man I'd happily see booted from politics entirely."

Exactly, Anna. Talking of false personas, it makes me wonder, what pearls might Borat have convinced Allen to come up with that might have possibly been worse than 'macaca' or the n-word.

[PIAW]

Here's another perspective on this issue.

As a Maharashtrian and as a native of Bombay, when I was growing up, I came in contact with people from various parts of India who were, for all practical purposes, immigrants to Bombay. Whenever I would hear them refer to all Maharashtrians as "ghat"s I would feel quite offended. (the term refers to people from the poorer hinterland of Maharashtra who also immigrated to Bombay and worked as domestic servants).

My discomfort was not because I was being considered equivalent to the servants. I didn't care about that. Rather, it was that the immigrants in our midst were completely and often wilfully, oblivious of the culture, history and nuance of the city that had welcomed them and that they called home.

Unless circumstances force them to confront the symbolism of their choices, most people tend to waft through life without much thought.

[Ruchira Paul]

The Barbary macaca is gorgeous! I too love monkeys even though I have seen thousands of them since childhood. I told this story once before but will repeat it again. My mother, a very gentle and kind woman, did not particularly like to have animals in her immediate vicinity. But because of the rest of the animal loving family, particularly me, she patiently put up with dogs, cats and an aviary of birds in the home. But when in my late teens, I started toying with the idea of a pet monkey, she put her foot down with uncharacteristic determination.

The part of the story about the New Delhi monkeys that I found most amusing was that the villagers don't find these city slickers suitable for their own bucolic surroundings!

The worst behaved monkeys in India live in holy places of pilgrimage where they live unmolested, second in importance only to the reigning deities.