India, Feb. 9 -- Let us be real, slurs are nothing uncommon. They have existed since time immemorial, but to justify, propagate and normalise them shamelessly is nothing short of Hitlerian levels of villainy, and we are proud to say that it has become our nation's culture. We have a history of taking regular words and making them ugly to an extent that revulsion accompanies them thereafter.

Historically, there have been an umpteen number of slurs like niggers, denigratingly used by whites for black people, coolie, used by whites to connote servitude and inferiority of South and East Asians. The use of Bhangi, Chamar, etc., to insult Dalits. A recent one is Pajeet, used online extensively to racially abuse Indians. The list is endless.

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