Indians claim ne person remotely connected to India as "Indians". Please stop. Its infuriating. Laxmi Mittal is a Brit. Period.It turns out that Laxmi Mittal is in fact an Indian Citizen and a lot of people wrote back. Some people agreed, some didn't. I agree that I didn't verify it (how I could have is a separate thread) and I apologize for that. Now, I wish to go beyond that particular instance and try and convey my feelings on this matter. I am sure some would agree and some won't but that's fine.
I feel that every community and nations needs role models. These role models become more important, because our society, unlike many developed ones, tend to create many hurdles for its citizenry and hence trying to achieve anything becomes a matter of "despite of" rather than "because of". And in times when the hurdles tend to magnify, you want to have role models to indicate that if they could, so could you. Isn't this why we were all fed on the greatness of various achievers?
Nothing wrong in this approach, but we need to analyze who we want to keep as Indian role models. There are various kinds of achievers who come to mind (please don't get down to judging the examples I take, but look into the spirit of the categorization):
- Somebody who is an Indian Citizen, Indian resident and pretty much practiced their wares in India. e.g. Ratan Tata, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam.
- Somebody who is an Indian Citizen and a resident abroad, but their success can be attributed back to having studied or worked in India, at least partially. e.g. Indra Nooyi.
- Somebody who gave away their Indian passport, but still has gained significantly from having been an Indian previously. e.g. M F Hussain.
- Somebody who is an Indian Citizen, but much of their success can be attributed to their living and practicing their profession abroad. e.g. Laxmi Mittal
- Somebody who is not an Indian, and their success cannot be associated with Indian Society or Indian past. e.g. Aravind Adiga
- Somebody who was never an Indian, but their parents or grandparents were. e.g. Bobby Jindal.
My personal feeling is that we should be creating our role models based on the first 2-3 categories. Fourth is a doubtful category, but fifth and sixth are definitely out of reach. Yet our media routinely includes role models from any category and portrays them all in one light.
For our nation to move forward, we need more victories of the first kind, not the fifth or the sixth kind. There will always be Aravind Adigas and Bobby Jindals who will succeed and lets wish them the best, but what we should aspire for, and inspire, should be Dr. APJs, SRTs and Ratan Tatas.
I hope I have managed to convey the spirit of my earlier tweet and I apologize once again for hurting people's feelings over Laxmi Mittal's citizenship.
