Why Indians are disliked around the world?

This is an extremely complicated question! Indians in Australia believe that they are being targeted because of their race. Australian authorities believe that Indians have been attacked because of their possessions like expensive cell-phones and laptop computers. Both could be right to a limited extent. Others call Indians, “filthy foreigners“, they are also right. I was 34 years old when I came to America and I have spent more than 22 years in this country, 7 of these in a university environment and 10 on the American main-street. I have yet to find a single non-Indian who for any reason admired any Indian or India. Besides interacting with Americans, White and Black, we had to deal with students from every country in this world. Nobody had any kind words for India or Indians! Why such profound dislike for all things Indian?

Indians are very proud people and often arrogant. We all love to talk about us and India, just like Americans, Europeans and all others do. The difference is that we lecture everybody and try to make others feel that they are unfortunately, stupid! People resent that, as we have very little to show for. The world applauds non-violence but make fun of ‘Mahatma Gandhis’ of the world in their private confines. People may denounce a ‘Tiananmen Square‘, but they admire the Chinese for that. Pakistan may be the epicenter of terrorism but it is lionized as a nuclear power. Russia has been a brutal dictatorship since God knows when, but the President of United States feels obliged to pay a courtesy visit every four years. We live in a hypocritical world where might is right, India needs to learn this very important lesson.

It is a convention to have a “Convention”…

Party “Conventions” are mere formalities, or are they? It is a legal process in the public view, where all the delegates from all the 50 states and territories gather to nominate their candidates for the President and the Vice President of the United States of America. Last night, the Democratic Party formally nominated Barack Obama as their candidate for the President of the United States. Joe Biden was nominated as the candidate for Vice President a day earlier, which is kind of strange in terms of sequence. Obama said to the party faithful what he had to say and everyone looked unified and on-board. Or did they? The Clintons (Bill & Hillary) were not seen on the last day, maybe not to draw undue attention! The had done their part in the earlier days.

The strange part of this ‘Democratic Party Convention’ was that the media’s suspicion of the Clintons. The media showed such reverence to Ted Kennedy – one of the only two loosers in the ‘Democratic Party History’ – who destroyed his own party nominee President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 convention. The other was Vice President Hubert Humphrey who stole the party nomination in 1968 convention.