Time magazine apologises to Indian-Americans

The prestigious Time magazine has apologised to IndianAmericans following the publication of a column by journalist Joel Stein which offended and outraged the large community especially those in New Jersey We sincerely regret that any of our readers were upset by Joel Steins recent humour column My Own Private India It was in no way intended to cause offence the Time magazine said after large number of IndianAmericans demanded an apology from the magazine and the columnist I truly feel stomachsick that I hurt so many people responded Stein who in his column My Own Private India gave his own impression of how his home town of Edison in New Jersey has changed over the years with the desi influx Nearly one in every five resident of this New Jersey city are Indian Americans thus making it one of the few such cities in the United States For a while we assumed all Indians were geniuses Then in the 1980s the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing In the 1990s the notasbrilliant merchants brought their evenlessbright cousins and we started to understand why India is so damn poor Stein wrote in the issue dated July 5 Eventually there were enough Indians in Edison to change the culture At which point my townsfolk started calling the new Edisonians dot heads One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indiandense street yelling for its residents to go home to India Stein wrote Sometime after I left the town became a maze of charmless Indian strip malls and housing developments Whenever I go back I feel what people in Arizona talk about a sense of loss and anomie and disbelief that anyone can eat food that spicy he wrote The article outraged many IndianAmericans I always thought it was hilarious when Id get the crap kicked out of me by kids like Stein who would yell go back to India dot head I was always ROTFLMAO when people would assume that I wasnt American He really captured the brilliant humour in that one too wrote Kal Penn the popular IndianAmerican actor IndianAmericans also launched an online petition demanding Time and CNN to remove the article from their online edition Such prestigious magazine like Time should not have allowed such an article to be published in the first place We respectfully request Time magazine to remove the article from the web and have Mr Joel Stein write an apology letter that shows some remorse the petition said Regretting that his article hurt the feelings of so many IndianAmericans Stein wrote I was trying to explain how as someone who believes that immigration has enriched American life and my hometown in particular I was shocked that I could feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with my changing town when I went to visit it If we could understand that reaction wed be better equipped to debate people on the other side of the immigration issue