Sonia Gandhi, the Congress(I) President recently made a statement that “it is the right of the people of India to say who shall be prime minister”. TVR Shenoy gives a lesson in history and explains how Nehru became the “first Prime Minister of India”:http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/30flip.htm
bq. Let me take you back to the year 1946. Everyone knew that Independence was around the corner (though the precise date remained undecided). The choice of Congress president became crucial since it was certain that the Viceroy would invite him or her to head the interim government. Twelve of the 15 Pradesh Congress Committees proposed the name of Sardar Patel; not one of them sent up the name of Jawaharlal Nehru — not even his native United Provinces (as Uttar Pradesh was then titled). It was at this point that Mahatma Gandhi made his last decisive intervention in the affairs of the nation.
bq. He asked Acharya Kripalani — who, if I remember correctly was the choice of the United Provinces Pradesh Congress Committee — to circulate a note to the Congress Working Committee asking that body to nominate Nehru. From this distance in time, the Mahatma??s reasons seem less than convincing. ‘He, a Harrow boy, a Cambridge graduate and a barrister, is wanted to carry on the negotiations with Englishmen.’ Again, the Mahatma believed that Nehru could ‘make India play a role in international affairs.’ More realistically, ‘Jawahar will not take second place.’ Whatever the rationale — and the last suggests that our much-worshipped first prime minister was a spoiled brat in the Mahatma’s estimation — the fact remains that Bapu??s suggestion carried the day, and Sardar Patel, the choice of the people, failed to become prime minister through a palace coup.

Sify News has an series on the “NRIs who have made India proud”:http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13341259. The list includes Kalpana Chawla, Deepak Chopra, Sabeer Bhatia, Jhumpa Lahiri to name a few. What is missing in the list is the countless number of Indians who are working in countries all over the world.

John Laxmi, a member of the board of directors of South Asian Journalists Association ( a group of people who think that India should not retain its own identity, but be grouped along with terrorist nation Pakistan, under the “South Asia” label), has an article in Rediff in which he expresses the opinion that Indians should not fight against the negative image of India being portrayed. For example
bq. There are hundreds of reputed academic scholars in the West who study and expound India’s history, culture and economy. Some of these scholars are now being attacked unjustly for all the negative perceptions of India. A fanciful notion suggested by some is to deploy rival academic scholars to ‘market’ a positive image of India.
John thinks that scholars who portray negative images of India should not be corrected. He says it is their right, fair enough. But he in the same vein denies the right of Indians to correct it. If you would like to know what is being portrayed and what is being corrected, please read Rajiv’s article “RISA Lila – 1: Wendy’s Child Syndrome”:http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=239156
But then John goes onto attack NRIs in general with statement without any basis.
bq. Whether Indians like it or not, most NRIs are not interested in marketing India. This is not because they are ashamed of their origins (as some Indo-philes frequently claim, using some vague Vedic psychiatry) but because most NRIs are preoccupied with their personal lives and, as they assimilate into new societies, they develop a greater level of interest in advancing the interests of their host nation than the interests of the country of their origin. One can debate whether this is right or wrong, but that is a separate issue. Many NRIs in America are, at heart, more American than Indian, although most may not admit it or even realize it fully.
Perhaps John has never heard of an organization called “USINPAC”:http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031219-093705-9413r.htm (Please note that this is an Indian Political Action Committee, not South Asian Political Action Commmittee). This organization is made up of the same NRIs whom John accuses of not being intrested in India. More than a year old, this organization has 27,000 members
bq. Next on USINPAC’s domestic list of issues is immigration and the controversial H-1B visas that allow foreign professionals with special skills to come to the United States to work. Indians currently are major beneficiaries of the program, obtaining 40 percent of the 65,000 visas issued annually. It is lobbying hard for the United Nations to admit India as a permanent member of the Security Council.
John does not know that many NRIs here do not go for the South Asian brand and like to promote the Indian identity, as a democratic secular nation.