In the time before I went to London again in 2002, I was in touch with the girl whom I had met in the train from Luneburg to Switzerland. When I told her that I was doing that preaching program for nine days, she decided to make plans for a weekend to come to London to see what kind of program it was. I told her it would be in Hindi but there would also be some chanting and music, so she might as well enjoy it. She came in order to experience something spiritual and to feel the atmosphere there. As my guest she stayed with my hosts, too, and I was happy that someone whom I had met in train had come to London to experience what I was doing. While she was there however, I got confused and irritated about the attitude of Indian people towards her.
I had obviously told my hosts that she would come and they were happy to welcome her in their home. There was a lot going on in their house, as usual when someone organizes such a big program. Many people went in and out of the house the whole day to meet, to talk and to get to know me a bit more in private than in the lectures. Of course the young woman was also there and around me. Although everyone was very nice to her, they cast curious looks in her direction. Nobody said those words to me because they respected me but I overheard someone calling her ‘Swami Ji’s girlfriend’ when they thought I could not hear them.
I did not feel nice about this at all. There was no physical relation in between us and she was really just a guest and a new friend. People had this idea though, because this young woman who did not even understand a word of my lectures had come from Germany up to London to spend the weekend with me. For them it was clear, what other reason could she have for coming? Maybe not everyone thought this but it was the impression that several of them definitely got. And then there was another incident.
One person who had recently come from India to London for the first time stayed in the same house where we were staying. When she was resting one day, he went into her room and started touching her inappropriately, trying to kiss her and said with broken English ‘Only one time, please.’ She did the only right thing: she kicked him and shouted at him and practically threw him out of her room. Sometime later, having calmed down after this incident, she told me what had happened. He had wanted to have sex with her!
I was unhappy to see that my guest, a friend who was visiting me, had to make this kind of unpleasant experience. She was obviously a bit shaken and angry but had already had time to settle her feelings a bit. When I later asked the Indian man why he had done this, he already regretted his actions. He said ‘It was my mistake, I could not control myself’ but he added another sentence ‘You know, for Europeans it doesn’t make a difference!’. This really upset me and I told him angrily about inappropriate behavior, dignity, respect towards others and more.
Imagine my situation there and what I was thinking. There was this one European woman among all Indian people and what did everybody think of her? Some people thought that I had a kind of affair with her. One other person thought ‘well, it doesn’t matter, I can have sex with her’ and he tried. It was obviously a very common idea for those Indians who did not really have much experience with Europeans that they would have sex with everyone. With these thoughts I remembered the Indian woman who told me after a few meetings that we would already have had sex if she were a white girl. I thought of the girl in Luneburg who had told me that she had several partners at the same time and I remembered that my friend told me that there were many people who accepted this kind of lifestyle for themselves. On the other hand however I had met married European couples whom I believed to be faithful to each other and now there was this German woman in London who was misjudged by the people around her.
I know for sure that not everyone in the Indian community had this mentality, especially not those who were born in London and grew up there with many English friends. They had a better picture of the reality than people coming from India with prejudices about Europeans and westerners in general. There were however many people who had a wrong idea, too, and this impression and mentality of some individuals did not feel nice to me at all.
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Mmh, difficult statement. As someone who grew up in one culture and moved to a completely different one in teenage time, I have to say that it is not always easy to remain free of prejudice. When you grow up in a country where everyone is about the same like you, it is much easier to establish an identity that fits to your surrounding. When you are in the process of creating that identity and then are planted into another society with different values and a completely different lifestyle, your identity will form in another way. It will keep some parts of the old society but adapt to the new one, too.There will however be some aspects that cannot be adapted and where cultures clash. If you additionally live in a community that is kind of separate of the rest of society, people won’t even try anymore to understand those points. They will teach their own children that those points don’t match and that’s it. This is where difficulties are rooted in my experience.
It is actually this kind of attitude of people that makes real integration so difficult. I know that the Indian communities have this one fault: they have a lot of ideas about westerners that won’t change. They also only marry among each other (with some exceptions) because they believe they don’t fit with westerners. It is less their religion that keeps them away but more such prejudices. I am with you when you say be open!!!