Bern: Vasundhara Oswal, the elder daughter of billionaire Pankaj Oswal, has shared an instance of racism she faced in Switzerland, where she now stays.
She has shared a video on Instagram, capturing her encounter with a Swiss neighbour who demanded that her family switch off their lawn mower and telling them, “You are not in India.”
The Oswal family has lived in Switzerland for nearly a decade. A few years ago, they purchased Villa Vari – one of the country’s largest and most expensive private residences – for a reported ₹1,649 crore, according to Hindustan Times.
Vasundhara, in her post, recounted how the man came to the gate of her family’s home and demanded that they stop using a lawn mower on a Thursday afternoon.
“When you receive a random man at your house gate demanding that you turn your lawn mower off on a Thursday afternoon as ‘you are not in India’ you would think this incident is happening in the USA or the UK but actually this is happening in Switzerland,” she wrote.
In the Instagram video, the man can be seen arguing with Vasundhara, who politely pointed out that there is no law against using a lawn mower on a Thursday afternoon.
The billionaire heiress has questioned the classification of Switzerland as a developed country, arguing that economic development does not necessarily reflect people’s attitude.
“You would expect a ‘developed’ country to have more ‘developed’ people but actually it’s the opposite,” she wrote. “Does development of a nation depend on infrastructure of a country or thought process of their people? What makes western civilisation so much “greater” than Asian in terms of development when their own citizens act like people who have never been exposed to different cultures,” she further questioned.
Her family had lived in Switzerland for the past eight years and built “one of the largest houses in the country”, Vasundhara said, claiming that they had experienced repeated discrimination.
Her Indian family had been targeted for doing better than the Swiss population, she further claimed.
“As Indians who have lived in Switzerland for the past 8 years and built one of the largest houses in the country we are sad to say that racism and xenophobia in Switzerland is at large and is unspoken of. Targeted specifically towards different skin tones that are doing better than the average local population,” she wrote.
Switzerland might just be worse off than the US or the UK in terms of racism, Vasundhara write.
While 17% of people living in Switzerland had reported facing racial discrimination, compared with 21% in the UK, she claimed that the UK’s more centralised system for recording hate crimes results in higher official figures. Human rights experts believe official Swiss data represents only a fraction of actual incidents, she said.
“We always hear news about the UK or the USA but Switzerland is actually far worse. 17% of those living in Switzerland have reported facing racial discrimination that is only 4% less than the UK and no it does not make Switzerland any better,” she claimed.
