Beeb146;s blunder

The Former Colonial Power is almost everywhere a pest. Consider the French, still being blamed by many in Rwanda for that country8217;s genocide 8212; so much so that the Rwandans stopped teaching French in their schools and set up a cricket board, surely the unkindest cut of all. The British are schizophrenic about how they view their imperial past in a way difficult for outsiders to fathom; and every now and then it becomes visible in acts of staggering tastelessness.

The British media has always been a pretty rich mine of evidence that attitudes simultaneously arrogant, patronising and insulting continue to exist in parts of that country8217;s public opinion, particularly among the country8217;s intellectual elite. The BBC8217;s editorial judgment 8212; it, alone among electronic media outlets, tries to avoid the use of the word 8220;terrorist8221; to describe the Mumbai attacks and attackers 8212; is representative of this position. For the complex of interests which the BBC traditionally represents 8212; and continues to represent, however many non-Oxbridge accents they may put on air 8212; India8217;s turning away from their preferred, Old Labour, orthodoxy cut deep.

Hence the subtle anger that BBC Britain no longer matters like it does, concealed until it8217;s brought out into the open at times like this 8212; when the well-known flaws in India8217;s recent history of growth will be produced as universal explanation.

India, formerly the last bastion of the Times crossword, has become a country which cheers too loudly at cricket matches; Mumbai a city where young people have accents more Indo-American than Indo-British. Hence root causes will be hastily unearthed, and The Guardian will be unkind about the brashness of 8220;new India8221;. But this shouldn8217;t surprise us: after all, Tony Blair suffered the same fate. India, like Blair, doesn8217;t despise America quite enough.