Last month, a British tourist travelling from Goa to Mumbai inexplicably disembarked at an obscure station and took a long walk to a remote village where, presumably, they had never seen a white man before. According to reports, he arrived in the village at the crack of dawn, spotted a woman who was out in the fields and tried to ask her about something.

The woman, frightened by the sight of a white man speaking a strange language, panicked, rushed home and alerted the neighbourhood. The villagers rushed out and, going by the police version, beat the hapless Briton to death. Then, frightened by what they had done, the locals carted the body to a big tree outside the village and strung up the corpse to make it look like suicide.

This is roughly what we know happened though there are many unanswered questions and the police investigations haven't exactly been rigorous. Now, imagine the editors of some British tabloids got hold of this story during an otherwise uneventful week and decided to play it up as a vivid example of "race hate" in India. They could also have chosen the shameful molestation of a British woman at the Gateway of India on the night of December 31 to pronounce Indians as animals.

Had our Prime Minister been coincidentally in Britain while the tabloids revelled their readers with all the gory details, his visit would have been successfully derailed and the more fertile brains would have invoked a 21st century repeat of either the Black Hole of Calcutta or the Bibighar massacre in Kanpur, 1857.

Curiously, this is precisely what happened last week. The contrived boorishness of a low-life reality TV programme became the occasion for an astonishing show of Indian prickliness. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister-designate, had his media interaction in Delhi ruined by a show of media indignation over racism in Britain. Speaking for the External Affairs Ministry, Minister of State Anand Sharma promised "appropriate action" and censorship Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi made his own threatening noises - as if Celebrity Big Brother is aired in India.

The whole thing was absolutely silly and the only beneficiaries were Shilpa Shetty and the ratings of a pathetic, voyeuristic programme. After four days of fuss, the bigmouth from Bermondsey was unceremoniously "evicted", Shilpa denied that the verbal abuse showered on her - an indispensable part of the programme - was racist, and some of us were left wondering why describing someone, even sneeringly, as "the Indian" or adding "poppadum" as a suffix constitutes racism. As for equating Shilpa with the pet canine, our old Hindi films were never complete without someone barking kutte, kamine, et al.

This is not to suggest that racism doesn't exist in British society. Like most societies, India included, Britain has its share of prejudice. The pugnacious Jade Goody conducted herself like a true lout, mocking everything unfamiliar. She directed her flak at Shilpa's poise, her "Received Pronunciation"- dubbed "posh" in today's Britain - and her amateurish cooking. Ironically, she would probably have done the same if, instead of being an Indian star, her fellow contestant was some tweedy, Sloane Ranger blessed with the snootiness of Lady Diana Cooper. In that case, her bad behaviour would have been roundly applauded as yet another well-directed blow against privilege.

Poor Jade Goody didn't have the sensitivity to realise that political correctness rules out white people being offensive to "people of colour".

LM Mittal took full advantage of this in his takeover battle and so did Shilpa. Ironically, it pays to be over-prickly. In the early-70s, it hurt when an outgoing US ambassador described India as an exporter of communicable diseases. Today, when the local Alf Garnett charges a Bollywood star of living in slums, we smile indulgently. But if we get indignant, it is Gordon Brown who has to worry about a vitiated atmosphere jeopardising Vodafone's Hutch bid.

It is pointless having a permanent chip on our shoulder. Indignation is now a diplomatic weapon. Let us use it selectively but effectively.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, January 21, 2007