Shilpa racist row will not strain Indo-British ties: India

New Delhi, Jan 18 : British authorities have condemned racist slurs against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in the international celebrity show “Big Brother”.

As a row flares up over racist slurs against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in a popular British TV show, Britain Thursday assured that this was “unacceptable in a fair and tolerant society” and India saying it “will not put a strain” on growing Indo-British ties.

“This is unacceptable. We can’t accept anything that detracts from our reputation for fairness and tolerance,” British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, the Labour’s prime minister-in-waiting, told reporters here.

“Thousands of British people have already condemned it,” said Brown, who could become Britain’s prime minister if the Labour wins the next elections.

Brown will call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later in the day and discuss with ways to give fresh impetus to strategic partnership between the two democracies.

“India and Britain are bound by shared values that support fairness and tolerance. We are against any form of racism or intolerance,” Brown stressed at a joint press conference at the Taj Mahal Hotel here with Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.

Over 20,000 viewers have complained that Shetty was made to suffer racist slurs in ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, a popular reality TV show in which has a group of celebrities are cooped up together with no access to the outside world.

Brown’s three-day visit to India that began Wednesday has been overshadowed by the racist controversy over the Shilpa Shetty show.

Brown is in India to intensify cooperation across a spectrum of areas ranging from combating terrorism to energy, environment and accelerating trade and investment between the two countries.

“There is no strain on ties between the governments of Britain and India. Nor is there any strain between the people of India and Britain,” Chidambaram said after launching the India-UK economic and financial dialogue - an initiative to promote the two-way trade and investment taken by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his British counterpart Tony Blair last year.

“We hope that the universal condemnation will bring out a change in behaviour. I am pleased to say British Prime Minister Tony Blair has condemned it,” said Chidambaram, trying to downplay the in potential of the incident to dent India-Britain ties.

“The only thing is that this show allows bad behaviour to be advertised. It will pass,” Chidambaram said in a lighter vein.

“We are hopeful we will get back to genuine business and this too shall find place in the media,” he said.

Brown also clarified that the tightening of immigration laws should not alarm any one as it is an extension of Britain’s “policy of managed migration” based on a newly devised point system.

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