Friday, February 29, 2008

To Cricket Australia Officials

Sir

Allow me to henceforth refer to Sir Matthew Hayden as "An Obnoxious Fat Pig". So the "Obnoxious Fat Pig" called one of our players "mad boy" in one of the games and I have reason to believe that "boy" when used to address persons from the subcontinent is a racist term.

This is because in history since people from the subcontinent were short in stature and used to work as "coolies" in Africa the Europeans often referred to them as "coolie boy", hence the connotation.

Needless to say I am deeply offended by it. It could well be that you had never had any idea of this just like we never had any idea that "monkey" was a racist term, however that should not matter, and something must be done to redress the insult we as a race have felt.

It is possible that you may not find any writen documentation on this and you may accuse me of creating this as a figment of my imagination. Let me assure you that in Indian culture passing of knowledge has largely been verbal and not documented and I can vouch that this knowledge has been passed on to me via my family right from the time of my great grandfather's second cousin's father-in-law who was similarly racially insulted when Britain ruled over India.

I hope you realize that every culture needs to be respected and our tradition of passing on knowledge verbally needs to be too. I hope you will act upon my grouse.

Sincerely