Targeted or just too touchy?

Job cuts, foreclosures, stockmarket losses, violent attacks...the aam Indian abroad may be harried but is he a marked man as well? Yes, say many Indians at home, citing celebrity designer Anand Jon's conviction for sexual assault as a case of professional rivalry hitting - and hurting - the successful Indian.
The episode is reminiscent of the 2007 controversy involving Team India in Australia when the Andrew Symonds-Harbhajan on-field spat saw Indians at home declaring "We will fight the insult", even when it was pretty clear that Bhajji had bad-mouthed the Aussie.The racist insults Shilpa Shetty faced in the Big Brother house in the UK had the same effect. Indians bridled, so much so the government was drawn in with minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma declaring, "This kind of racial discrimination cannot be tolerated in any civilized country."
Sharma was right. A country has a duty to protect its citizens from victimization abroad, but are we overdoing it? Are we too quick to believe that our compatriots abroad - even when they fall foul of the law - are being victimized? Yes, says social commentator Santosh Desai. "In many ways, it is a carry forward from a feeling that we have not been given our due. Whether it be cricket or anything else, we become extremely touchy about being treated unfairly and are quick to label it racial discrimination."
But Indians are not alone in bristling at insults - real or imagined. England, France and Germany are hyper-sensitive when they lose in the sporting arena. And Australian opener Matthew Hayden recently attributed his team's 2-0 defeat at Indian hands to "Third World conditions". Desai says knee-jerk prickliness is symptomatic of a "country in transition, either gaining or losing power... it tends to become extremely sensitive about how the world is treating its citizens. Our transition from taking insults lying down to becoming extremely intolerant is an assertion of this."
But sociologist Mala Kapur Shankardas says the feeling of victimization has nothing to do with India's newfound
confidence but the natural insecurity of any "minority in a foreign land".