Selma, Since you are repeating for the second time and that too in short sucession the following: "I grew up in a country that derisively called me Hindi" (a reference to your life in the Persian Gulf), I must clear the air on this particular remark.
Unlike you, I was not born in that region but I enjoyed the best part of my working life there. Never did any Arab call me Hindi to my face though it cannot be denied that they did use the word - and in contempt - to express their anger at a particular person or time. Don't make the Arabs out to be the villains. They are no more that than anyone else. Why don't you balance their "Hindi" with what the Goans or Indians called them? I could write a whole post on it. In conclusion, the Arabic word "Hindi" meant "from Hind" as India was called in their father's times. Did you feel particularly irked at being called "Indian" as many Goans from East Africa still do? Did you, like them want to be called "Portuguese"? A very interesting article for you to read wriiten by Nishta Desai in 1999 of Salgaocar Law College entitled "The Denationalisation of Goans" http://www.lusotopie.sciencespobordeaux.fr/desai.pdf Regards, Roland. On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 4:30 AM, Carvalho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Secondly, provocation is sometimes good. It makes us question the status-quo > in life. There is not wrong is asking about the racial prejudice that would > have existed in Africa at the time. I grew up in a country that derisively > called me, Hindi. Indians in American are derisively called, dot-heads, and > the same in the UK are sometimes derisively called, pakis. We can't tackle > prejudice by denying its existence. We can hope to counter it by writing our > own perspectives.
