Source: By Raju Patel, Shakti Marg (a Hindu youth organization)
UNITED KINGDOM, November 5, 2002: In the UK, the term “Asian” is used by the media to lump together all the people from the Indian subcontinent. Ideally, Asian should also refer to Chinese, Malaysians, Arabs, Japanese, Vietnamese and related groups. But that is not so in Britain. “Asian” newspapers, such as Asian Age, Eastern Eye, and Asian Express deal almost exclusively with matters relating to people of the subcontinent. While the author feels it would be difficult to call a newspaper “People of the Indian Subcontinent Express,” he states that in Britain it has become accepted that “Asian” mainly means precisely this. This “Asian” formula leaves Hindus short changed, the author believes. An example is the race riots in North England in the summer of 2001. The media proclaimed these as “Asian riots.” However those rioting were Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims, not Hindus. Newspaper coverage of the conflicts in India often refer to the “Asian community” and don’t accurately represent the Hindu viewpoint. Other areas of note are the differences in culture and ethos among Asians and differences in employment, crime and educational statistics of ethnic minorities in the UK. HPI adds: In the US and Canadian press, “Asian” is a rarely used term, and the term “Asiatic” is regarded as “offensive,” according to the Associated Press Stylebook. When “Asian” is used in the US, it would mean Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and related peoples, and not Indians. The people of Asia the Indian subcontinent living in the West are identified in articles by their country of origin — Chinese-Americans (or Canadians), Indian-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalese, etc.