'Brown Man's Burden' by Kanak Mani Dixit (# 256) reminded me of how America has changed in the last 20 years. When I was in America's heartland, Iowa, in 1987 as an undergraduate student, there was a backlash against brown people right after the Reagan administration's bombing of Tripoli. I almost got into trouble trying to convince a redneck in a local bar that I was not a mujaheddin from Afghanistan. But things have really changed. Everywhere in the United States, be it in Du Pont Circle in Washington DC or Uptown in Minneapolis, you see many brown faces. In recent times, the role of religion in stereotyping identity for Asians and those of Middle Eastern origin has changed post-9/11. Our identity in the western world is based on not only what we think of ourselves but also on what others perceive it to be. The dividing line of our identity is the colour of our skin. The difficulty is in convincing the whites that there is so much diversity among brown people. You could be a fundamentalist, an atheist, a secular, a practicing or non-practicing Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist but at the same time, you are also brown. After a major terrorist attack when sentiment and emotions run high, vulnerability of a possible backlash is higher. This is the sad fact of the contemporary globalised world we live in.

Rajesh Aryal,
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