Indians and NRI's

What is it with Indians and the people of Indian origin who live in other parts of the world? When ever a NRI or a person who is 1/512th Indian does some thing remotely significant, the entire Indian media goes gaga about the person. Since the media goes gaga it’s just a matter of time before the Indian public goes gaga over them. You can see various shows on the person. How a person of Indian origin achieved this and that. When I see the entire nation going gaga over some person whose only relation to India is that his great great grandfather was born in India and stayed here till he was 8 months old, one question comes to my mind. Are all of us out of our minds?

I can think of two logical explanations for this phenomenon. One is that we want to inspire the Indians. We want to show them that Indians can do anything. As a developing country we need to inspire the nations so that we can become a developed country. But do we really have to inspire people with stories about people who are 1/512^th Indian. Countless examples come into my mind. Sunitha Williams, Kalpana Chawala, spelling bee winners in the US, sports men in other countries, etc. I think there are plenty of Indians who live in India, whose stories can motivate us. Why makes stars of people who has got nothing to do with India. I am by no means downplaying their achievement, but it has nothing to do with India and hence I believe a bit too much importance is given to them. If the media searches inside India they would find plenty of examples of inspirational stories.

The second reason that I can think of is that we what to shout to the world that we are no less than any one. We want to tell them we are good in every field and we are a force to be reckoned with. It’s high time that we stopped doing that. We have been telling the world about ourselves for quite some time now. We should ensure that instead of ourselves bragging about India, the world must talk about us.

I do agree that NRI’s at one point of time was directly or indirectly related to India. But to be quite honest I don’t believe that we had anything to do with their success. It’s like a person donating sperm, finds out who bought his sperm, and then finds out that the grandchild of the child that was born using that sperm has won the Noble and the sperm donor taking credit for the success of that person. In short it’s quite ridiculous. It gives one the impression that we don’t have any successful person in India and we are so desperate that we try and look at all the successful people in the world and if they are related to India in one way or other we would try and take credit for it. (I remember a story during the 1999 or 2003 football world cup about Michele Oven being an Indian). My humble request is that don’t make act like fools. Be proud of being an Indian and of the success of other Indians. Do not try and take credit for matters where we don’t deserve any credit.