Overly Sensitive?

Many Indians were upset with an article in Time magazine criticizing Indians. Apparently, so many Indians voiced their unhappiness with the article that both Time and the author, Joel Stein, posted apologies (You can see them at the end of the article).

For a change, it wasn’t about the IT folks who “steal” American jobs. Rather, it was a criticism of Indians who live in the US. Or more specifically, the ones who live in one city: Edison, New Jersey. Most Indians familiar with the US know of Edison for that very reason. But hey, let a white guy say the same thing and we are up in arms!

As long as we are spoken (and thought) highly of as the smart doctors and software engineers from India, we are very lapping up the complements. We love it when the Americans “assumed all Indians were geniuses”. Then, says Stein, some of those “geniuses” in Edison started bringing in their “merchant cousins”. Who in turn brought in their “even-less-bright cousins”. And then he says, “we started to understand why India is so damn poor”. Now we are offended. So calling us geniuses is fine but calling us poor isn’t?

We are offended when he refers to us as “a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose”. But we have no problem when Bollywood makes a movie with an Osama bin Laden theme, “Tere bin Laden”.

People, get some perspective. Like it or hate it, both Stein and the Bollywood folks have the right to Freedom of Speech. Thank God for that! Speaking of God, it’s good that even those who were angry about Stein’s article didn’t go around issuing fatwa’s and banning Time.