Turning insult into inspiration

I am not sure what's more troubling: US President Donald Trump's repeated disparaging of India on the world stage, or the likelihood that most Indians will quickly forget this humiliation and move on to the next viral distraction, like what elephant Madhuri ate at Vantara, or the court orders on stray dogs or the feeding of pigeons.

- DEEPAK MISHRA

Or better yet, forwarding a "boycott foreign brands" WhatsApp message and feeling good about contributing to a national cause.

While Trump's criticism may appear unfair and unwarranted, they are not unprecedented. History is filled with examples of Western leaders and opinion makers insulting India and our leaders, and we silently enduring them.

Among the most notorious was UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who once declared: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." In White House tapes from the 1971 India-Pakistan crisis, US President Richard Milhous Nixon called Prime Minister Indira Gandhi "a bitch" and "an old witch," while US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger chimed in, "Well, the Indians are bastards anyway." In the 1990s, the Western financial press routinely dubbed India "the sick man of Asia." Following the 1998 nuclear tests, some US Senators labelled India "a rogue nuclear state," and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dismissed our security concerns as the tantrum of "a spoiled child showing off dangerous toys."