I’m still pondering over what has happened in the ‘Big Brother’ reality show. The alleged racist slurs by Jade Goody to Shilpa Shetty have made the show very popular. And our very dear Ms. Shilpa Shetty, had expressed her shock and surprise at the state of the modern world, and called it shameful. Though I support Shilpa’s comment, I would also like to remind that she’s part of a reality show, which will have all sorts of insult and insinuation, either to judge the participants, or used by the fellow competitors to inflame the fellow contestants, and cause a roar in the show, to make it popular.
The entire nation made the incident a very big issue and I would like to quote our very own Mr. Chidambaram at this juncture ‘I am confident that the universal condemnation of the racist remarks will result in changes in behavior of persons associated with the programme,”. Little did he realize that the same quote is applicable for all of us, fellow Indians?
Most of India is still ravaged by racism in its various forms (casteism among them). It would be relevant enough to ask the Indian masses what they go through each day. Personally, I have also gone through the same things when I was being labeled as a ‘mallu’ (I hate that drab word used for calling a keralite/malayalee), and being distanced out in various occasions. So I always used to cancel me out for any job interviews where the posting was North India, as I had already faced several remarks on the hairstyle and hindi accent. The same with the hindi speaking fellow Indians in South India. They are always distanced out in a discussion, as the south crowd prefers to communicate in their local languages. At times, people tease the culture of Sikhs, for the beard as well as the turban. The next are the poor souls of the North East India, who have been given the nickname ‘chinkies’, who are also discriminated in a crowd.
Could this be the reason for groupism in colleges and workplaces, where all the ‘mallus’ become one group, and the ‘northies’ in the second group, and the ones who detest the groupism, belong nowhere!!
Not sure if the above mentioned are too small an incident to be brought under the big banner of ‘racism’, but I believe that there are four fingers pointing back at us when we raise our pointing finger at the world.
So on this auspicious day, when the republic India is moving to a ‘Poised India’, I jus wanna request my fellow Indians to hold on to the unique factors called ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘multilinguism’, respect the differences in our fellow brothers and sisters, and spread the word of love, peace and harmony to the rest of the world to become ‘Incredible india’
