Aug 09, 2018

Why do Indians disparage India?

Anil Vaidya

It was the day before yesterday that I was at Newark airport, waiting in line to board my flight to Mumbai. All passengers were waiting patiently in five queues. There was a ‘desi’, probably an Americanised Indian or may be an Indian, who says to his fellow travellers, “This is a Mumbai flight…has to be delayed. It’s Indian time”. And how wrong he was – the flight was of an American airline; it was run, operated, scheduled and managed completely by Americans. India and Indians had no contribution in the delay, which was on account of a missing pilot. This was formally announced many times while we were waiting for the flight.

We Indians are responsible for creating some wrong impressions by attributing bad things to ourselves. Secondly, we also demonstrate at times wrong behaviour, such as not joining conferences in time or not arriving for a meeting on time.

Shouldn’t we consciously change our behaviour as well as our utterances? When are we going to learn to hold our head high? I dislike, even resent, people who make such comments. In fact. I have seen some of the older generation American Indians who hold our flag high while there was this case of a younger generation disparaging India. It is up to this younger generation to demonstrate behaviour and the deeds that make can India proud, and also in turn benefit from this.  If you can’t help in that endeavour, at least don’t ridicule India.

You have no right to disparage India!

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