Ethnic slurs, Bo Yang, The Ugly Chinaman and national character

What the heck is a “Pajeet”? Han Feizi must have seen the term half a dozen times on Twitter before figuring out that it was an ethnic slur directed at Indians. You know you’re getting old when you’re no longer on the cutting edge of racial slurs. Denizens of Twitter (now X) who follow international politics will likely have seen the term bandied about by creepy crawly accounts engaged in ethnic flame wars.

Some Indians have been caught off-guard by the new pejorative. For most of living memory, Indians were the subject of small-ball racism like Apu in the Simpsons and Mujibur and Sirajul on David Letterman.

While many Indians have been the victims of post 9-11 anti-Muslim collateral damage, the new slur is disconcertingly targeted toward Hindus. Somewhat mysteriously, malicious anti-brown prejudice has suddenly become all the rage on social media.

Just yesterday, ethnic Indians basked in the international sun while:

• serving as British prime minister, first minister of Scotland and taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland;
• running for US president; and
• gracing the CEO chairs of major multinational corporations (Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Pepsi, among many others).

And now we’re dealing with a “Pajeet” situation. Drilling down, we can find immediate causes – backlash against sudden prominence, Hindu nationalism in India, a recent surge in Indian migrants to the Anglo world, the China-India border conflict and millions of newly online Indians raucously trolling on social media.

On many levels, this slur means Indians have arrived. Reactions of Indians to this new prejudice seem to run the gamut from being aghast at the sudden vitriol, resigned fatalism at the suffering Indians must endure and, creepily, a headlong dive into