Big Racism In A Small World
Amrit Hallan
January 17, 2007
When you read Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat you really feel we are all connected now and know about different cultures and lifestyles. You really feel that we live in a global village and now we are all happy, loving neighbors ever ready to help each other do business and prosper socially as well as intellectually. The recent UK controversy surrounding the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty tells that us some among us still lurk in the middle-age mentality. We still live within the walls of racial prejudices and we still gauge the superiority of human beings by their color and race. It is also a manifestation of an underlying stupidity (I'll just talk about this in a while).
There is a famous show in the UK called The Big Brother and Shilpa too was invited to participate. All the participants of the show have to spend (I think) time together in a house or some place and all their activities are broadcast 24x7. I know, it's boring, but some find voyeuristic pleasure in such shows. Anyway, some Brits misbehaved with her and said such things that she was left sobbing. People were not ready to even call her by her name, and she is a celebrity in India (just think what a common person on the street must endure everyday).
Now, I'd be the last person to put the finger of blame on a particular culture or society because I think people in India are the raciest people I've ever seen. There are so many castes and sub-castes and people from different castes are always humiliating and even killing each other (being a Sikh – a Sardar – I know). Different religions don't see each other eye to eye and every year there are tens of Hindu-Muslim riots big and small. So it seems hypocritical when the Indian government as well as the Indian expatriate community demands an apology for Shilpa Shetty's tears. But then, it was bound to snowball into a political controversy, and herein lies the underlying stupidity I just referred to, above.
It is one thing to call someone a "dog" (with all due respect to my canine friends) on the street and another when you do that on live TV. I know the participants are not expected to have high IQ in such programs (in fact such programs thrive on the stupidities of the participants), but this was really dumb. I mean, who do you think you are? It's no longer 1930 when you could get away with things like "Indians and dogs are not allowed" and that too on the Indian soil (I wonder why the poor dogs are dragged into such things). You say something bad, publicly, and you pay for it, it's as simple as that.
I understand such outbursts come from deep-rooted complexes and frustrations. Immigrants are an ineluctable reality now, whether you like it or not, and if I address to my European friends, then it all started when their forefathers started colonizing the other countries. It's now reverse colonization and nothing much can be done about it. But this colonization is not exploitative (like the previous one) as it nurtures mutual well-being. The immigrants are bringing with them this vast pool of intellectual wealth that had begun to dwindle in the native communities due to a spurt of over-indulgence in devastating materialism. Anyway, this is not the main point of this article.
The main point is, sadly, people still live in the tenebrous wells of ignorance and don't comprehend the fact how small the world has become. The news of almost everything spreads all over the globe in mere seconds. Just go to http://blogsearch.google.com and search for "Shilpa Shetty" and you'll see how many bloggers have already written about this thing in detail, and not everybody is supporting Shilpa Shetty. Go to Google News and see how many newspapers are covering the event.
It's not important what a participant of a program said to another participant, but this is a good excuse for the Indians from all over the world to come together and protest against such incidents. In fact all those communities that bear the brunt of racialism everyday should join hands and create an international forum to deal with such incidents and then take to task countries that don't make amends. As a side note, I wrote a somewhat humorous piece on the same topic on my literary blog.
There is a famous show in the UK called The Big Brother and Shilpa too was invited to participate. All the participants of the show have to spend (I think) time together in a house or some place and all their activities are broadcast 24x7. I know, it's boring, but some find voyeuristic pleasure in such shows. Anyway, some Brits misbehaved with her and said such things that she was left sobbing. People were not ready to even call her by her name, and she is a celebrity in India (just think what a common person on the street must endure everyday).
Now, I'd be the last person to put the finger of blame on a particular culture or society because I think people in India are the raciest people I've ever seen. There are so many castes and sub-castes and people from different castes are always humiliating and even killing each other (being a Sikh – a Sardar – I know). Different religions don't see each other eye to eye and every year there are tens of Hindu-Muslim riots big and small. So it seems hypocritical when the Indian government as well as the Indian expatriate community demands an apology for Shilpa Shetty's tears. But then, it was bound to snowball into a political controversy, and herein lies the underlying stupidity I just referred to, above.
It is one thing to call someone a "dog" (with all due respect to my canine friends) on the street and another when you do that on live TV. I know the participants are not expected to have high IQ in such programs (in fact such programs thrive on the stupidities of the participants), but this was really dumb. I mean, who do you think you are? It's no longer 1930 when you could get away with things like "Indians and dogs are not allowed" and that too on the Indian soil (I wonder why the poor dogs are dragged into such things). You say something bad, publicly, and you pay for it, it's as simple as that.
I understand such outbursts come from deep-rooted complexes and frustrations. Immigrants are an ineluctable reality now, whether you like it or not, and if I address to my European friends, then it all started when their forefathers started colonizing the other countries. It's now reverse colonization and nothing much can be done about it. But this colonization is not exploitative (like the previous one) as it nurtures mutual well-being. The immigrants are bringing with them this vast pool of intellectual wealth that had begun to dwindle in the native communities due to a spurt of over-indulgence in devastating materialism. Anyway, this is not the main point of this article.
The main point is, sadly, people still live in the tenebrous wells of ignorance and don't comprehend the fact how small the world has become. The news of almost everything spreads all over the globe in mere seconds. Just go to http://blogsearch.google.com and search for "Shilpa Shetty" and you'll see how many bloggers have already written about this thing in detail, and not everybody is supporting Shilpa Shetty. Go to Google News and see how many newspapers are covering the event.
It's not important what a participant of a program said to another participant, but this is a good excuse for the Indians from all over the world to come together and protest against such incidents. In fact all those communities that bear the brunt of racialism everyday should join hands and create an international forum to deal with such incidents and then take to task countries that don't make amends. As a side note, I wrote a somewhat humorous piece on the same topic on my literary blog.
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