NEW DELHI, Jan 18: While condemning “racist jibes” thrown at a Bollywood star on a British reality TV show, several major Indian newspapers on Thursday said the country should examine its own prejudices before expressing national outrage.

India asked Britain on Wednesday to check whether race laws had been broken in the reported bullying of Indian actor Shilpa Shetty on “Celebrity Big Brother” as her admirers burned effigies of the alleged abusers.

But the Hindustan Times daily said in an editorial headlined the “Colour of prejudice” that while racism appeared to be “alive and well” in Britain, it also thrived in India.

“Discrimination on the basis of colour is ingrained in the psyche of most Indians,” the newspaper said.

“What else explains the quest for the holy grail of fair brides across the country?”

Many of India’s one billion people still live within a hierarchy imposed by the Hindu caste system that, for example, stops low castes entering some important temples decades after such discrimination was outlawed.

Muslims face widespread prejudice and have often been seen as the enemy within since Pakistan was carved out of British-ruled India at independence.

“Indian responses should also factor in our own record of prejudice ... If racism is a fact in many interactions in British society, prejudice is a quotidian reality of Indian social life,” the Indian Express said in its editorial.

While in Britian there were institutions in place to deal with discrimination and Western nations were alert to racist attitudes, the Express concluded, in India the victims of such abuse often have nowhere to turn.

Almost 20,000 British viewers of “Celebrity Big Brother” have complained Shetty, 31, has been subjected to racist abuse on the show, prompting an investigation into the charges by British media watchdog Ofcom.

“This fresh incident shows centuries-old hatred based on colour and creed may not be visible on the surface but it still resides in the peoples minds,” the Hindi daily Navbharat Times said in an editorial titled “Dirty Brother”.

“The show is revealing a face of western society which it wanted to hide,” the newspaper said.

The Bollywood actress was reduced to tears after what her Bollywood colleagues have called racist bullying in the “Big Brother” house, a complex of rooms and a garden participants are locked in for the duration of the show.

Shetty, known for her sensuous dancing, is famous in India but her career over the last year has been overshadowed by an up-and-coming generation of Bollywood stars.—Reuters