Why is it cool to bash India?

In October 2006 Dr. Vidyasagar asked me to read his article “Why are India’s Achievements So Little Known?“. Unfortunately I read it only today. A very well written article (as usual) from Dr. Vidyasagar. If you love India you got to read it..

This brings me to the point of the article. I believe the correct question to ask is not why it is so cool to hate India. Rather, we should ask: Why is it so easy to slander India and get away with it? My suggested answer is: Because one does not pay any price for doing so.

My well-meaning NRI and American friends are merely reacting to the material published in American media about India. Web searches of the leading American newspapers and magazines, even “liberal” newspapers such as the New York Times, turn up only negative portrayals of everything Indian. One rarely sees anything about success stories such as the building of the golden quadrilateral, or adult literacy movement, etc. Even our success in the IT industry is now used as a weapon against us. Our IT industry is portrayed as being somewhat evil, and putting millions of innocent American IT professionals out of work by the nefarious tactic of (horror of horrors) producing better quality work at lower cost. Sob stories about individual Americans displaced by Indians have adorned supposedly responsible magazines such as Business Week and Fortune. “Outsourcing” has been turned into a dirty phrase simply by endless repetition with vaguely sinister (but never explicitly stated) connotations.