These are not good times to be an Indian in Britain. Not at least for many Indians in many parts of Britain every now and then. For the inescapable reason that the virus that is threatening the lifting of a lockdown has come to be called the Indian virus.
Or Delta, as the World Health Organisation named it earlier this week. But the British have not been in a hurry to replace ‘Indian” with Delta. Not people, not the media either. The Guardian, to be sure made the switch straightaway. But it was among the few to do so.
“Indian variant ‘now dominant’ in the UK” read a BBC headline late Thursday. The text speaks of the variant “now known as Delta.” It could have been possible to speak of the virus as the Delta variant known earlier as the Indian variant. And later to drop ‘Indian’ altogether. The Telegraph and most other papers also still speak of the Indian variant. Much of the media in Britain continues to use language that inevitably will fan the prevailing…