Every one seems thrilled by the admission of racism by National Geographic in its coverage of cultures, communities and peoples other than the Western culture. Many Indians have hailed this as a great testimony to the self-evaluating, path-correcting Western tradition. But what we do not understand is that the West never goes for course correction unless and otherwise it can afford the course correction in terms of economics and politics.

Consider the case of slavery abolition in Britain.

In the abolition of British African slave system, the abolitionist propaganda was supported by clear economic reasoning. While charismatic evangelists like William Wilberforce were leading their charge against slave trade in British House of Commons, indentured labour from India on a mass scale was making sure that produce, products and infrastructure could be built much cheaper than through slavery. It was not an accident that James Cropper with East India Company had written a letter to William Wilberforce before the latter started his 'crusade' on slavery - though Wilberforce never spoke much of that economic advantage when he championed the abolition.

Or consider the conservation of bisons in the United States.

Between 1820 and 1889, for almost 70 years, millions of bisons were killed. The reason was not only about food and economic profit but also the policy of subjugating the native Americans. General Sheridan of the United States army was ecstatic about the bison hunters: "These men have done in the last two years, and will do in the next year, more to settle the vexed. Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the last 30 years." Then in 1894 a bill was passed making the hunting of buffalo within Yellowstone Park an offence hailed as “the very fist action taken by Washington to protect the American bison”.

Even the famous American Civil War, Alvin Toffler points out, “was not fought exclusively, as it seemed to many, over the moral issue of slavery or such narrow economic issues as tariffs”. The real clash behind the Civil War was between the old Western feudal-farming system, which could be run only with more and more slave labour and the industrialisation that worked better and more efficiently with free labour.

In other words, when the West acknowledges its crimes against the rest of humanity, the pleasures and profits of those crimes have already become integrated with the structural and functional dimensions of its civilisation that is now dominating the world.

It can seek apology because it can afford to ask now. But where the work is left unfinished as in the case of Hindus, no apology will come forth. So Steven Spielberg would never apologise for the crass depiction of Hindus in his Temple of Doom. The Catholic church will not apologise to Hindus for running the world’s longest inquisition on Indian soil. And the New York Times will continue its subtle nuanced and at times overt cultural-racist attack on Hindus with co-opted academic and media mercenaries acting as the sepoys of General Dyer in Amritsar.

In October 2015, Newslaundry website published an analysis of stories done by NYT on India and pointed out: