Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'How British views India' that was published in Newsband

How British views India

Does British press focus on negative reports on India? This is what India’s High Commissioner in London Y K Sinha says. He says that stories about India are focussed on negative angles by the British press. “Where is India’s success story?” he asks.

Despite India being set to grow at 7.1% this year and 7.8% next year, it was still being criticised for not growing fast enough. Baron O’ Neill, the economist, says, “Between 2015 and 2035 just the increase in India’s working age population will be bigger than the combined working population of the four largest EU countries… if that translates into people actually having jobs... in my judgment, India could easily repeat in the next 20 years at least what China has done in the past 30 years and grow by double digits... They need to do more stuff in order to achieve this.”

The Brits have not yet got over their imperial hangover. For them in the old colonial days India was a land of fakirs, snake-charmers. Today they fell that it is one of hunger and tragedy. Indian High Commissioner is right and many of us have noticed the same. British press became more anti India after losing the ICJ seat to India.

“India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them. Over the centuries, many powers have defeated Indian armies; but none has ever proved immune to this capacity of the subcontinent to somehow reverse the current of colonisation, and to mould those who attempt to subjugate her. So vast is India, and so uniquely resilient and deeply rooted are her intertwined social and religious institutions, that all foreign intruders are sooner or later either shaken off or absorbed,” according to William Dalrymple in his acclaimed book “White Mughals

There is another case - the Guardian newspaper columnist, Mr. Ian Jack. Much of the article revolved around his personal experience in an incident, reportedly on the attempt to do a password theft, allegedly by some Indian techies. Even it be assumed that what he had stated was true, he had no reason to paint a broader picture of general opinion on the whole India with the same brush relying on one incident.

The British press, by and large, has always been a India baiter. Has always inflated the shortcomings/failures/lacunaes of our nation and has maintained a studied silence on our successes/achievements. This has been the policy of the British press right since independence.

Another worrying factor is the intransigence of the press to de-hyphenate India and Pakistan. Every single article on India, even if it is on the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, has to bring in Pakistan some way or the other. Even after 70 years, in which the distance between India and Pakistan has steadily increased, they refuse to let go of the binary. A handful of fringe/extremist elements present in our country are magnified and projected as a global nuisance whereas rampant Islamisation of Pakistan along with its Hudood Ordinance and blasphemy laws are glossed over. A very deliberate attempt is made to portray Indian society/govt as being worse off than that of Pakistan for reasons unknown to anyone.

British press are hand in hand with English educated Congress leaders since Pre independence days, so they will only publish news reported or blessed by Congress. All others in India did not learn English the way the Congress people did. Then it will only be negative news, and India being in the news for all wrong reasons.

Today, India has the world's largest number of university degree holders as a single region and hordes of affluent people. During the period 1526-1857, India accounted for 24.4% of the world's GNP, a world leader in manufacturing producing 25% of the globe's industrial output, second largest economy and larger than Europe and Quin China.

It is time that Britain forgets its colonial legacy and also time to remember that she is neither that rich, powerful or commanding as she used to be during colonial days and at the same time India is no more that subservient colony and client. Britain also should remember that Britain will need India more in the coming years than the other way as India is soon to overtake many of these colonial powers both economically and militarily. Time to get over the hangover.