Current Events
The Four Most Intolerant Countries in the World -
International Study by Swedish Economists
MAX FISHER
India is one of the world‘s least tolerant countries, says a new study just released by two Swedish economists.
India shares the honour of being the worst in the world with Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong.
Their findings are based on “The World Values Survey”, which is the result of extensive measuring of global attitudes and opinions over the course of several decades.
When the Swedes had set out to examine whether economic freedom made people any more or less racist, they knew how they would gauge economic freedom, but they needed to find a way to measure a country’s level of racial tolerance.
Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races.
The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society.
Here’s what the data show:
• India, Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong are by far the least tolerant in the world. In only four of 81 surveyed countries, more than 40 percent of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. This included 43.5 percent of Indians, 51.4 percent of Jordanians and an astonishingly high 71.8 percent of Hong Kongers and 71.7 percent of Bangladeshis.
• Anglo and Latin countries are the most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its adjacency to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also scored high.
• Wide, interesting variation across Europe. Immigration and national identity are big, touchy issues in much of Europe, where racial make-ups are changing. Though you might expect the richer, better-educated Western European nations to be more tolerant than those in Eastern Europe, that’s not exactly the case. France appeared to be one of the least racially tolerant countries on the continent, with 22.7 percent saying they didn’t want a neighbor of another race. Former Soviet states such as Belarus and Latvia scored as more tolerant than much of Europe. Many in the Balkans, perhaps after years of ethnicity-tinged wars, expressed lower racial tolerance.
• The Middle East not so tolerant. Immigration is also a big issue in this region, particularly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which often absorb economic migrants from poorer neighbors.
• Racial tolerance low in diverse Asian countries. Nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where many racial groups often jockey for influence and have complicated histories with one another, showed more skepticism of diversity. This was also true, to a lesser extent, in China and Kyrgyzstan. There were similar trends in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
• South Korea, not very tolerant, is an outlier. Although the country is rich, well-educated, peaceful and ethnically homogenous – all trends that appear to coincide with racial tolerance – more than one in three South Koreans said they do not want a neighbor of a different race. This may have to do with Korea’s particular view of its own racial-national identity as unique – studied by scholars such as B.R. Myers – and with the influx of Southeast Asian neighbors and the nation’s long-held tensions with Japan.
• Pakistan, remarkably tolerant, also an outlier. Although the country has a number of factors that coincide with racial intolerance – sectarian violence, its location in the least-tolerant region of the world, low economic and human development indices – only 6.5 percent of Pakistanis objected to a neighbor of a different race. This would appear to suggest Pakistanis are more racially tolerant than even the Germans or the Dutch.
[Courtesy: The Washington Post. Edited for sikhchic.com]
May 17, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: AJ Singh (San Francisco, California, USA), May 17, 2013, 1:51 PM.
How can a country that discriminates amongst its own people be tolerant of any other race or even ideas? I am not sure where to start - India discriminates on the basis of: 1) Religion - No uniform Civil code which is a fundamental concept of secularism. 2) Sex - women are heavily oppressed. 3) Caste - Schedule Castes and Scheduled Tribes originally given some constitutional protection are now the rage with so called "upper castes" themselves wanting to be labelled "SC/ST" in order to win 'privileges'. The caste system has been the bane of Indian society for thousands of years. 4) Region - witness the plight of migrants from the north east or Bihar wanting to move to bigger cities. 5) Income - for rich Indians, the poor are a section of society that "should be exploited" - witness the exploitation of more than 100 million drivers, maids, servants, etc., etc. Not to mention that Indians do not enjoy freedom of speech. A society that cannot speak its mind will harbor intolerance in its actions. This is a short list, but if one travels through India, one will be surprised and amused by the ever new forms of intolerance invented by that country.
2: AJ Singh (San Francisco, California, USA), May 17, 2013, 3:46 PM.
The Indian constitution is inherently discriminatory and two of the most glaring examples are cited below. Over the years anyone with a slight understanding of the constitution has been able to exploit these to the fullest harmful extent possible. 1) The Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes are a "creation" of the Indian Constitution. These terms did not exist pre-1947. 2) The word "secular" was added to the preamble of the constitution in the 42nd Amendment - during the Emergency (the name she gave to her dictatorship) invoked by Indra Gandhi. This amendment, however, did not change any other article in the constitution that guarantees a "secular" country. No wonder, the laws have a bias towards the Hindu majority, as detailed in this paper by Pritam Singh: "Hindu Bias in India's "Secular" Constitution - Probing Flaws in the Instruments of Governance". http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4017817?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102297159867
3: Arvinder (USA), May 17, 2013, 9:23 PM.
Absolutely correct ... and I fully agree with the surveys. India is most intolerant in every sense, be it religion, women, social structure or the economic world. Minorities are treated shabbily and often ridiculed by Hindus day and night. Women are raped, killed and shamed all over, be it as mother, daughter, sister or wife. There is so much difference in society structure when it comes to the caste system ... and the cancer has permeated all religions. As far as economic disparity is concerned, well, It is beyond anybody's imagination. People like the Ambanis and the Tatas and politicians along with bureaucrats have hordes of money to waste whereas slums all over the country can put any decent man to shame. But then, that's the way India is and it happens only in India. And then, Indians call their country "mera bharat mahaan". What a joke!
4: Ari Singh (Burgas, Bulgaria), May 18, 2013, 6:47 AM.
As 60% of Sikhs were from West Punjab which is now in Pakistan, we are racially from a group quite different from the majority of the riff-raff that make up India today. What a relief to know we are not, need not, should not be, included in the caste-ridden, corrupt, idol-worshiping society that is Hindustan today!
5: Blighty Singh (London, England), May 18, 2013, 11:01 AM.
Any report that lists the endemically racist Australia as one of the least racist countries has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
6: Raj (Canada), May 20, 2013, 8:16 PM.
I work at a mutinational company based in western Canada and I was going through a 'payables' approval process when I ran into a new vendor with the name 'Sharma'. As my jobs is mostly forensic in nature, I inquired about this new vendor. Our warehouse told me that it was a janitorial service. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with any type of work. For those who don't know, the background of this surname is that it is one of the most popular Brahmin last names. However, I wondered if this person had changed his opinion about "Shudras" - the so-called 'lower' labour caste of the Hindus, now that he was plying a Shudra trade. Does he still have the same perspective on caste? One thing for sure, his situation is much better in Canada compared to the unfortunate "Shudras" in his native Hindustan.