To indulge in behaviour that we outwardly condemn is very common in this day and age. In many cases, people do this without even realising the contradiction and hypocrisy.

No doubt, all of us who witnessed the callous bullying of Shilpa Shetty at the hand of the motley trio of 'chavettes' in the Big Brother house in the past weeks were outraged by the unprovoked cruelty and clear xenophobia.

What is particularly surprising is that the worst bullying and bigotry was in fact displayed by a young lady who was at the time a figurehead for an anti-bullying campaign, and herself a victim of bullying in the past.

Upon her eviction from the house, Jade Goody only very slowly realised the stark contradiction in her behaviour pattern - an anti-bullying campaigner caught live in front of the entire nation indulging in bullying of the lowest kind. She seemed quite surprised when she was shown clips of the way she had been acting, and tried unconvincingly to rationalise her behaviour as being something other than bullying.

"Very bad," I hear you say. And you are absolutely correct. But speaking as a second generation British Indian born and brought up in the UK, I think that many of us who have been in the UK all our lives display very much 'Jade-like' behaviour towards Indians who have come from India more recently (better known as 'freshies').

If we examine our own behaviour towards Freshies, there is often a degree of contempt and mocking, particularly of their accent. This is despite the fact that we were all outraged by the way that Jade Goody and her fellow chavettes were mocking Shilpa Shetty in the Big Brother house.

I have witnessed many incidents at schools, colleges or even festivals and weddings where the "freshies" present are made into the butt of many jokes. Alas, on several occasions I too have been sucked into the 'fun' and taken a pop or two. I always thought it to be just a bit of fun, until I spoke to some of the individuals on the receiving end of such treatment - who found it very insulting and demeaning, and were shocked that fellow Indians would treat them in this way.

Its high time we second or third generation Indians stopped our often-bigoted behaviour towards more recent immigrants to Britain - and not to try and rationalise it as 'just a bit of fun'. Otherwise we are little better than the white racists who we all detest and condemn.