Worth reading for the reading types, also for those ( India Bashers )
Regards
Tunnu
Folks, this is worth reading... An article was written by Madhu Trehan. She
writes regularly for 'Outlook' and in this she is replying to a letter by a
reader. Both the letters are shown below.
Hi Madhu,
I have read your articles ever since I was a kid and you were at India Today.
You have often come across as a balanced person not prone to Gandhi nonsense,
until now.
I live in a White Nation (the US) and have never felt like a second class
citizen. Only a blind and a deaf person can compare the pride of a US citizen
with the indignity of being an India. A US citizen trusts his government, knows
his/her death will never go unpunished, while an Indian solider is there to
die. Elite is a bad word in India because 95% of our country lives in abject
poverty. Next time ask the waiter in Taj who served you the Rs. 400 drink, how
much he makes in a month. The Durban who opens the door for you, ask him how
much he makes? I bet his monthly salary will be around your dinner bill.
Shame on you and journalists like you who have failed India in the past with
coloured reporting and are doing so now. They should feel ashamed. Rather than
calling Bush names, maybe we should hang our heads in shame on PM's like
Vajpayee who is too old to walk, too much of a coward to protect his people.
Maybe, just maybe, the
day people like us (the English educated hence smarter) start feeling ashamed
enough we will start making changes in India rather than just exploiting our
servants and labour class. It anguishes me to read this national character
articles. A nation that cannot feed its people (a la Orissa) has no
character, a nation whose children move around naked (Mumbai) has no reason to
feel proud, a nation whose elected reps call religious riots 'opposite
reaction' has no future. Once again, shame on you and all of India. I am
ashamed to be an Indian and shame on you for suggesting anything else.
Chet (Chaitanya)
Madhu Trehan's response was:
Hello Chet,
I will answer your letter point by point. Your name. You can be Chet or Jet,
stay away from the sun, fake an American accent, but you will never be able to
run away from Chaitanya. He will always be there even though you hate him
today.
Gandhi, whom you hold in such contempt, despite all his controversial
behaviour, is largely responsible for the fact that there is no white boot on
a part of your anatomy today. You live in a white nation but you are not
white and never will be. You can fool yourself to believe that you are not
treated as a second class citizen. You choose to forget the Dot Busters, the
Sikh who was killed because he looked foreign, and rampant racism. How many
times a week do you have to explain where you are from and spend your time
EXPLAINING India to Americans? I cringe to think what you say to them about
India. We do not need spokesman such as you. You will never be able to share
a good desi joke with any of your new friends. If you can't laugh together;
you cannot understand each other. You will always be an alien.
Yes, we are economically poor compared to US but we do not have to suffer the
highest rate of teenage pregnancies, kids coming into schools and killing
students and teachers, the highest rate of suicide among college students,
alienated parents and children, lonely old people dumped into old age homes,
drugs being offered to eight year olds (as my daughter was when she was in the
UN school in New York), serial marriages and divorces.
The US had a president who was senile and deaf (Reagan), one who turned out to
be a serial sex offender (Clinton), and now you have one who didn't know the
heads of state of major countries and ignored warnings of a terrorist attack
months before it took place.
The US is responsible for massacres in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Chile and the
list goes on. The rest of the world does not view America with the
rose-coloured glasses you have been brainwashed by the US media to see
through. And, how much does a waiter in Jean Georges restaurant in Trump
International Hotel in New York make compared to the price of the drink he is
serving? The labour class is exploited all over the world. You seem to be very
upset that I am pointing out we have a national character to be ashamed of and
we should do something about it. Your insistence that we stay ashamed and do
nothing about it, is perhaps to make it easier for you to live in a country
where the only religion is to hang out at malls and accumulate consumer items
you don't really need but have been dictated by advertising to buy to keep the
US economy going.
It is not by accident that Americans are flocking to yoga and meditation
classes to buy happiness. You have done well to leave a country you are
ashamed of. Call yourself an American but sooner or later your disguise and
American Halloween costume will frighten you enough to get rid of it. I love
America's energy and have good friends there. New York is a centre for an
enormous outpouring of creativity and imaginative thinking.
Every country has its own problems. It is for the people who belong there to
take responsibility for change. If you are so far removed from India, ask
yourself why you are so anguished with my article. Chaitanya is raising his
head, Chet is in trouble.
Regards,
Madhu Trehan
.
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