Former Rajya Sabha MP and BJP leader Tarun Vijay tried to tell the world that India is not racist, but ended up exposing how deeply racist we are. Vijay, the head of an India-African Parliamentary Friendship Group, speaking on Al Jazeera's 'The Stream' on the recent attacks on Africans in India claimed that the incidents in Noida weren't racially motivated.

BCCL/ File

Vijay in fact started by saying that Indians worship Krishna, who is black. He added that many people of African origin lives in many parts of India. Citing the examples of attacks on Biharis in Maharashtra, Vijay tried to argue that it was clashes between two communities.

He went on to claim that Indians are not racist. In trying to prove his point Vijay said:

“If we were racist, why would we have all the entire south…Tamil, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra…why do we live with them? We have black people around us.”

Surprisingly neither the anchor nor the other Indian panelists in the discussion pointed out Vijay's racist statement.

But after being on the receiving end of some criticism, Vijay expressed regret over his comment.

I said we worship Krishna, which literally em,ans black, we were the first to oppose any racism and were in fact victims of racist British https://t.co/kjSBSNl9w8 — Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017

Mywords perhaps were not enough to convey this.Feel bad,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel i said different than what I meant https://t.co/I7MddEJk5W — Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017