Are We Indians Over sensitive about frivolous issues?

The monsoon has arrived with a bang. I too felt the bang and was down with fever for the last two days.

I had to avoid using my laptop to avoid straining my eyes. With nothing much to do I turned to the Idiot box to kill time. Just as I was surfing, a debate caught my attention.

There was a debate going on about an article in TIME magazine about American Indians.
(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html). I was amazed to see the hyper and somewhat vitriolic comments. The panel was frothing at its mouth and branding it racism of the worst kind.

My thoughts went back to a couple of years back when they were showing a clip of a documentary made in India on the BPO business on CNN in the USA. In one of the call centers, the team leader was exhorting his trainees to be patient. He was giving them a formula suggesting that the mental age of a 35 year old American is less than that of a 10 year old Indian. ( not sure about the exact words but it was something to this effect). Imagine if the reverse had happened. We would have branded that nation anti Indian, racist an what not. But the newsreaders took it very sportingly and were smiling and making jokes about it and left it at that. I waited for someone to object. Nothing of that kind happened. The news deserved the respect it got. Now notice our response.

One agitated member of the panel ( I couldn’t get his name) suggested that half the amercians are poor and cant afford TIME and half of them are illiterates. The only people buying this magazine was Indians residing in New Jersey and the TIME magazine would do well to remember this. Perhaps he doesnt know about the demography of the indians working there.Most of them are software engineers who prefer reading it online rather than buying. Besides, lets stop being churlish. America is a big country and TIME is a big magazine.

If this wasn’t silly enough, the response of the moderator was sillier.

It left me wondering. We had problems concerning the spiraling price rise, there was a successful opposition sponsored bandh in which for the first time after a long time all the opposition came together, there were law and problems in J& K.

Here we were sitting and discussing a silly article. We can debate about it being in bad taste. But Racism! No way. It was just a spoof.

Are we really that frivolous and over sensitive of non issues?

Another instance that comes to mind is the shilpa shetty episode on Big Brother. It wasn’t as if Shilpa Shetty didn’t know what was in store for her. She did it for money. But journalists asking about this to the PM of UK was really silly. There were other serious issues like Immigration and its effect on Indians, about world economy, recession.

The third issue was stopping of Shahrukh Khan at the Newark airport by immigration officials. The response was incredible. It was as if it was a huge diplomatic row was commited. Racial profiling is nothing new. They have been attacked once. Besides, if they are careful about their country’s safety whats wrong? Again the actor had gone there not on the invitation of the country but to further his business. If he has a problem, he can stop visiting it in future which I doubt he will.

Surprisingly the response was much muted when a similar incident happened with the President of India, who in my opinion is truly an icon. We could have condemned it more vehemently but we didn’t care.

But President Kalaam being President Kalaam ,unlike the actor, downplayed it in his signature dignified way.

Even in the case of Greg Chappell, our response bordered on hysteria.

Instances are many. The question remains the same. Are Indians over sensitive about frivolous issues?