I’ve never seen a movie starring Shilpa Shetty. I’ve never watched Big Brother. I had no idea until this post on SepiaMutiny that Shilpa Shetty would be on Big Brother. Frankly, I didn’t read it because I didn’t care.
So why, in in the name of all that is sacred, have so many of my conversations in the past few days involved the unholy combination of a mediocre Bollywood actress and a revolting reality show?
Sajit recently tackled the growing controversy surrounding the show, so please refer to his post if you need to catch up. That’s were it began for me.
Then Mr. Cicatrix and I randomly channel-surfed our way to a ABC Nightline News segment on the how Shilpa’s quiet dignity was “Uniting India’s Warring Muslims and Hindus.” So sixty years after Partition, THIS is what finally unites?!
The House of Commons has weighed in. Tony Blair. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Indian Parliament has lodged a formal complaint with the British government. All this over remarks variously described as “girly rivalry,” “bullying,” and “racist abuse.” (link) Remarks made by people so stupid, one thought “Winston Churchill was the first black president of America.” (link)
The talking heads pontificated and culture critics scibbled op-eds. Is it jealousy? Class conflict? Bigotry? Ignorance? (link). Insecurity? Stupidity? (link). A set-up by the show’s creators? (link). Shilpa’s own fault? (Yep. Germaine Greer said it).
The semiotics of racism, of “poppadoms,” “can’t even speak English,” “Shilpa Fuckawallah” and “live in a house or a shack,” have been tossed about selectively and dissected to the point that it’s all just meaningless chatter.
So it was a relief and a surprise to read Martin Jacques’ article in the Guardian (thanks ultrabrown). Jacques, a Fellow at the Asia Research Center at the London School of Economics, roots around the muck to find a very solid reason for why this show is more than a tempest in a teapot, why it resonates so violently in Britain and abroad:
The test of our behaviour, of how racist we are, is no longer what the white British think. That started to change with the self-awareness and growing confidence of our own ethnic minorities. But the matter does not end there. The test now, in this instance, is what Indians in India think, how they perceive us.
As Goody raged and railed against Shetty on Wednesday night’s TV broadcast, she was like a cornered animal, lashing out in every direction against something she clearly detested but also feared and felt threatened by. She was confronted not only with the Other, but a hugely self-confident Other. What could be worse? It was a metaphor for the world that is now rapidly taking shape before our very eyes. (link )
I think he nails it. To go back to that “poppadom” business:
Racism always exists cheek by jowl with, inside and alongside culture and class. As a rule it is inseparable from them. That is why, for example, food, language and names assume such importance in racial prejudice. And that has certainly been the case in Big Brother. Food is a signifier of difference: so are names, so is language. So Jade and her sidekicks homed in on Shilpa’s cooking and choice of food, made fun of her name and refused to learn it. And with food came the suggestion that Shilpa’s hygiene left something to be desired, that she was unclean (she had touched the food, it was claimed, and “you don’t know where her hands have been”). In other words, not only was she different, but she came from an inferior civilisation.
Th world is changing:
Almost from the outset, Big Brother’s racism has had a new and novel dimension. Because Gordon Brown was in India at the time, and was asked about it during his trip, the issue immediately acquired an international dimension. In an earlier era, of course, this would have been dismissed as of no consequence: the natives could safely be ignored. But no longer. We saw this just a year ago in relation to the Danish cartoons and their ridicule of Islam. Europe used to ignore what the former colonial world felt. There was no feedback loop.
I’ve been waiting for this for a long time – the dawning awareness that the “third world” is no longer silent or passive. The realization that “the Other” can speak for itself, quite well, thank you. The acknowledgement that we are here, we are watching you, and we will not be ignored.
Please read the full article here. You might disagree, but it’ll be worth it.
UPDATE: The BBC (thanks Ennis!) reports that the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone said he was “delighted” that Jade Goody was voted off the show with 82% of the vote.
“You can imagine the uproar there would have been in this country if, say, Keira Knightley had been being abused in a Big Brother house in India.”
He added that India is the second biggest investor to London after the US and that without last night’s protest vote, there “would have been a lot of harm to people’s jobs”.
This further underscores the point made in the Guardian article:
India is a rising giant; we can no longer afford to ignore, as we once did with impunity, the views and feelings of a country that represents one-fifth of humanity.
This is HUGE. The economic factor appears to be the decisive one, but Indian investment wouldn’t be a concern if there hadn’t been an outcry in India about the ethnic slurs. Get on board, people! This isn’t really about parsing the racism of “the Indian” or whether Shilpa irritated you personally. It’s about how casually people in the third world, “foreigners,” were dismissed and ignored. It’s about how that is finally, maybe, changing.
Clueless, CdnMedStudent, Cisco, et al,
Please, tell me, what sort of mental contortions to you have to perform to find “white bashing” in a post about an incident that the majority (even if all browns voted, still wouldn’t be 82%) of white Britons found racist? An incident that outraged the Mayor of London, and is leading to a criminal investigation?
All this “aww, it’s so hypocritical!! Take the beam outtta yr own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s “(to poorly paraphrase Matthew) stuff might sound great and reasonable, but really? It doesn’t apply here.
So to counter “white bashing” you restore to bashing people back home (India)?
All I’m saying is that racism exists in every single country in the world yet when its on white on non-white its a big deal, yet if its other races or groups its no big deal.
I’m of a punjabi sikh background and my family comes from the india state of punjab. Punjab unless I’m mistaken is the only state in India that does not have hindu or muslim majority.
Sikh’s make up the highest % of the people in Punjab. Yet in the last 10 years[ I saw this on sikhnet.com] the population of sikh’s in Punjab has gone down to from 65% to 59%. I have heard from alot of sikh’s who worried about one day the Sikh population being under 50%. Many sikhs are upset that dalit’s and immigrants from south asia are taking jobs and bringing there own culture and are not intergrated into punjabi culture. I wonder where I have heard that before.
Many people here would disagree very strongly with that statement. It’s a big deal wherever it exists, whoever is targeted.
But this Shilpa/Big Brother incident is the one at hand, right? So why are you trying to dimiss this as no big deal because injustices and racism also occur elsewhere.
Instead of denigrating/mocking those who are upset about this case, why not do something about the injustices that get your knickers in a bunch? Then let us know about it so we can write it up on sepiamutiny.
ABC Nightline on youtube, that cicatrix talked about.
Sidebars on youtube can take to other related links.
Clueless, I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I think the fact that people have pointed out racism can come from WHITES AND INDIANS AS WELL in this very thread goes to prove that people clearly think racism a big deal, no matter where it is.
cicatrix,
Please, tell me, what sort of mental contortions do you have to perform to find allegations of “white-bashing” in a post about the vastly disproportionate response to verbal abuse suffered by some actress on a TV show from a community with bigger systemic problems of its own.
So it doesn’t bother you that while “the majority” of white people are willing to acknowledge racism in their midst, many Indians still don’t think caste is a very big problem? Again why are we holding white people to a higher standard? This doesn’t embarrass you? As a brown person it embarrasses me.
Have you ever been to India? The first thing that hit me like a load of bricks was the shockingly low value placed on actual human beings. You actually have no means of beginning to get a handle on this living in North America until you actually see it for yourself. My god some people are actually treated like absolute dirt! I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You must forgive me but some doe-eyed 2nd rate Bollywood actress enduring the indignity of listening to some stupid loud-mouthed Cockney woman creating such an international uproar sounds a little disproportionate to me.
And it exists everywhere. Some shrug there shoulders and quietly hope it doesn’t happen to them. I just try to avoid appearing on reality television. That’s how I troll 🙂
I meant “their shoulders”…I swear law school made me illiterate.
CdnMedStudent:
The Shilpa episode has not had the impact it has because the central figure is a pampered movie star. She’s a symbol – a concrete symbol for Indians abroad, especially in Britain, of the various forms of abuse they have all endured (probably much worse in many cases). For Indians, she brings back the colonial nightmare. This has little to do with her as an individual (except insofar as, luckily, she’s conducted herself very well and therefore won even more sympathy votes than she would have otherwise).
Sometimes a highly visible, dramatic symbol of a wider problem is what is required in order for the spotlight to be shone on that problem. So the arrest of MLK Jr in the States, though it was not violent, shocked Americans in a way an academic study on the number of lynchings in the South would never have.
Here in western canada a sikh man killed his punjabi daughter in 2003 cause she was in dating a white boy and another sikh family had there daughter killed cause she married a lower caste boy in 2000. Yet there never been anywhere near the outrage among western desi as there is for some bollywood actress.
Who’s saying caste isn’t a still a very big problem? Who’s saying the lower castes shouldn’t have their own macaca moment in India? But here, under THIS post, we’re talking about RACISM – and in particular, racism in BRITAIN. Racism and casteism(?) are both bad, but if you were to compare them, especially out of cultural, geographical and historical context, you’d be playing a very messed up game of Oppression Olympics.
CdnMedStudent,
don’t you think that in a way the incident HAS shed light on the racism within India as well (at least to some Amreekans here)? So, in a way, it has “exposed” (although it’s been there for a while) racism among Indians as well. The Times of India has got an article on it.
Also, I just don’t see how grumbling and complaining about how “other more important issues don’t get enough respect” gets anything accomplished.
As cicatrix said:
Have you ever been to India? The first thing that hit me like a load of bricks was the shockingly low value placed on actual human beings.
Yes, I was born, lived quite a bit in India, part of education in India, worked. Lived in campus towns, extensively visited villages in India. Even did field work in villages (3-4 weeks at a time) in Rajasthan. I visit India almost every year. If you add my visits from 1999, it would add up close to 6 months. What do you want to know? It seems very juandiced, simplistic view of it or deeply ingrained on “India bashing” and can’t hold it at any occasion.
The question is: What do you want to ask? Please email me rather than threadjack . You are diverting the whole issue. Sure, yes, yes, yes, there is caste, and its deeply harmful effects. The low value on human life has nothing to do with caste only. It has with one only and only one thing: poverty That is another story that lower caste tend to be……….again, again, this is not the thread.
Speak up when we talk about caste. This is not thread about it. Why thread jacking?
This thread about bullying/ low level racism minority has to face. Shilpa was just a high profile face.
Where on earth do you get this? The fact that India has many social ills is not disputed by anyone on this thread. We are holding this incident to the same standard that we’ve applied to problems in India as well. If you had cared to do so, less than a minute’s searching on sepiamutiny alone would have turned up:
post on Indo-Canadian bride killed by in-laws in Punjab here.
post on woman violated by her father-in-law here.
post on dalits turning on higher-caste man who robbed and raped here.
post on 15 yr old dalit rape victim burned alive here.
post on witchhunts in Jharkand here.
at least 3 posts on Mukhtar Mai here.
And please don’t bother arguing that Mukhtar Mai did not receive enough international outrage. As Kush Tandon just said, continuing in this vein is thread jacking.
CdnMedStudent wrote:
Where is the Tu quoque watcher when you need him/her?
While I agree that thread oughtn’t be jacked, I see a general absence of empathy here: for the working-class white Brits who abused Shilpa. Just as many of you feel defensive–understandably so– about your minority status, many working-class British whites feel defensive–understandably so–about their class status. The political system has failed them, they have been demonized as vulgar, racist troglodytes, their social pathologies are rising even as some Johnnies-come-lately climb up the social ladder–can’t you see that this is the perfect context for the creation of a victim narrative, no more or less legitimate than the black or Asian narratives of victimhood? Now here comes a Bollywood actress who talks about how she has servants back home. While this is said perfectly innocently, can you see why this may strike the wrong chord among people who, through generations, have been “servants” to be abused by toffs? Can you see that the only privilege these people have left–as opposed to Shilpa Shetty’s far more tangible privileges–is their appeal to their Englishness?
I am not siding with Jane Goody by any means. This is, however, a case where class privilege and race privilege conflict, and while the racial component ought to be studied, the class aspect is, to me, more vital. The Economist captures this well:
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8575506
Too many people to respond to with too little time. I don’t understand why comments were interpreted by some as criticism of sepiamutiny in particular and not the Indian community who I was really referring to. I understand and respect the fact that this particular issue resonates strongly with Indians in the West who have had to endure racism. To be honest, I might have had somewhat of a sheltered existence here in Toronto where this isn’t exactly a daily occurrence.
But this isn’t simply about Indians in the UK responding to perceived racial abuse on British TV anymore. Or for that matter Indians in the West. This has clearly gotten a lot bigger than that. It has gathered worldwide attention and sparked protests in Indians along with a number of diplomatic incidences. That to me necessarily raises problems within our community. How can our community get so wound up by this incident on such a scale crossing international borders but not show outrage of any comparable scale at problems within our community that are much bigger? The staggering lack of proportion simply makes it impossible for me to look at this case in isolation. Perhaps those who have experienced far greater racism than I have are able to do this. I simply can’t. Call it “threadjacking” if you will.
Cicatrix,
what does any of this have to do with this particular website? Are you arguing that this site is an accurate and representative reflection of our community? Thanks for bringing it up in any case. So did the Mukhtar Mai case mobilize our community the same way Shilpa did or anywhere near that on any tangible, measureable scale? Exactly. Of the people I know, those who actually seemed to know who Mukhtar were all white women. That’s pretty embarassing.
To be honest, I am not bothered by this because I think that these double standards (I think they are anyway) are inherently “unfair” to white people. I could care less. I just find it personally insulting to have less expected of us by ourselves and by others. Maybe I haven’t experienced enough racism to fully grasp the significance of all of this. Or maybe all of this is rather silly.
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blockquote>Where is the Tu quoque watcher when you need him/her?
Tu quoque works a lot better when the original claim is completely dismissed. Saying “criticism P” made by A is disproportionate isn’t dismissing it. You knew that right?
I wish there was an edit feature. I hope the last two posts made sense in spite of the fact that it’s really late at night for me.
In a naive attempt to find common ground….
Cicatrix —
Agreed, if we’re talking about this blog and the people in this particular discussion. That said, lying behind what “Clueless” says seems to be a fair point, which is that there are plenty of desi folks — perhaps many of the effigy burners in India and Shilpa Shetty’s Bollywood colleagues themselves? — who don’t in fact hold their own communities to the same standard, and wouldn’t react the same way if Shilpa weren’t a Bollywood megastar. As Sunny pointed out several days ago:
So where “Clueless” is coming from doesn’t seem completely out to lunch or completely a threadjack to me — even if we can agree that she’s off the mark in what she is suggesting about the folks participating in the discussion here or this blog in general. In fact, selective criticism of colonial or neocolonial practices by nationalist elites who ignore their own perpetuation of similar injustices is a notable pathology of the postcolonial condition in many countries, is it not? The phenomenon of the protests in India is distinct from the reaction among South Asians in the UK — the social context of what drives those kinds of protests is worth thinking critically about.
Clueless —
I think I understand where you’re coming from to some extent (I’ll let you correct me if you think I’m wrong about that), but I do think you’re rather off the mark about this blog and the folks here, to the extent that’s who you were talking about. You might want to look at some of the posts cited by Cicatrix — and if she had all night, she could have pointed you to plenty more. You seem to overgeneralize quite a bit, though I think that I do agree with what at least I think lies behind your comments in part: namely, that it is worth being self-conscious and to think critically about what it is that may be causing people to react to this incident the way that they do, and not to react to others the same way. (In fact, I posed a similar question earlier today.) I myself happen to think that there is actually much more driving the reaction (especially in the UK itself) than the fate of “some Bollywood actress,” as the comments of Andie, Jai, Camille, and others above make clear, but it certainly seems fair to raise the question (preferably as a question, rather than an accusation).
Oh come on, it applies everywhere all the time. Its blinkered, selfish hypocrisy to think that it does not.
Those of you who are revolting against the finger being pointed at India also, should know that it was exactly this that led to the change of heart of one famous NRI: Mahatma Gandhi. He was a lawyer in South Africa agitating for the rights of Indians there, complaining to the British about desis being treated as shabbily as the “raw kaffirs” (the native africans), when it was pointed out to him that his hindu caste treated the Untouchables of India far, far worse. That point struck home with the intellectually and morally honest Gandhi and he was transformed.
As Gandhi said, we must become the change we wish to see in others. The fact is that the british have changed far more than Indians when it comes to racism/casteism. They enforce their anti-racism laws far better than India enforces any of its laws. The damning fact is, as another poster pointed out, that a low caste indian is treated more humanely in a white racist society than he is in India by people of his own race, his own religion.
Maybe I have misunderstood your argument, but it appears to be “Indians should not be complaining about racism in the UK since racism exists in India” which is a tu quoque ad hominem argument. You knew that right?
As mentioned by cicatrix, there’s a plethora of threads about the plight of dalits/poor/lower classes in India. Perhaps you should voice concerns for them in those threads rather than a thread devoted to televised white-on-brown racism in the UK.
My parents came from the state of Punjab to Canada in the early 70’s. After being in the Vancouver area for a year they along with my dad brother and his wife moved to area 7 hours east in the province of British Columbia called “The Kootney’s. I was born a year after in 1976. My parents have lived there for 32 years now along with about 25 other desi familes[mostly punjabi] most of them who came a few years after.
The area I grew up in is about 95% white when my parents moved there in 1976 and still is to this day. Yet growing up there my parents and I never faced any racism and instead were made to feel apart of the community. My parents made many friends there and mixed alot with the rest of the community. In the 4 years that my sister was in high school,3 out of those 4 a punjabi was the school prime minster, not bad for a 95% white high school.
Yet in Jan of 96 I want on a 4 month trip to India. Other then a few days it was all in the Punjab. During the 4 months there I saw things like a bunch of drunk 20 years taking turns on pissing on 10 year old boy. I saw a dalit servant get beat for just droping a glass of tea. One a lower caste person who could speak English tried to talk to me, and a 2nd cousin of mine told me that we don’t talk to me. Also another time there was a Africa college student in a bazaar and all young male jatts were just going off in punjabi. This was most real racism I have ever seen in my life.
Thanks to Jai for the info from the UK and for letting us know that it’s no longer just an incident on a stupid TV show and is a big deal over there.
What a great clash of the racism and classism! The racism will get discussed in both India and England and neither will examine the classism. I agree with Torpedo’s #118 and CdnMedstudent #119. The three women ganging up on SS was pathetic and painful, but her own behavior before that was really painful too. She is the one, in my opinion, who precipitated the conflict (judging just from the few youtube clips I’ve had time to look at) I wouldn’t be able to share a house with her.
The Hindi TV clip on youtube complaining urgently about naslvaad and rang-bhed with no sense of irony is priceless. It’s interesting that until now she was known as Shilpa Shetty in India and is suddenly just Shilpa (following the British coverage). I predict that the new name will stick.
Those Indians, how dare they can protest for some symbols they admire? We sitting from Starbucks need to tell them what to do? Don’t they know they have caste system? Those damn hypocritical Indians in India, now we get the picture. Those Indians who are protesting must be high caste.
The truth be told: The person who were protesting were mostly poor people (I have seen the footage on TV. A lot of protest came from Bihar. How dare those Biharis get emotional?) who hold their symbols very dearly. For a woman in juggi-patti (slums), Shilpa Shetty is a dream which she will never achieve but maybe her daughter, or grand-daughter. Maybe, not even her granddaughter will be do that but the dream keeps her going in her daily struggles. The is something grand spin-doctor Sunny doesn’t know or comprehend. Sunny tell us of light-skin racism in Bollywood, and Germaine Greer tells us of Tamils facing racism in Mumbai. Sunny conveniently ignores same thing (African origin actresses) in Hollywood, and Germaine Greer does not know a damn thing about Mumbai. Indians are the second highest investor in UK, they (the Government) has every right to protest that seems objectionable to them where they (the Indian citizens) invest money.
Clueless, in my twenty odd years in India, I never saw behavior of that kind. I must say you were extremely unlucky in the company you picked up in India.
Though I am not very familiar with how things are in villages in India. Also I have heard not very good things about the jatts, a lot of it to do with clashes with the politically rising lower castes. Traditionally they have dominated the parts of North India politically and socially. Now they are losing that power, and they are not taking it lightly.
Yes you have “misunderstood” his/her argument which is : “why are we holding white people to a higher standard? This doesn’t embarrass you? As a brown person it embarrasses me”. You knew that didnt you? Its in his/her post and you must have read it since you are responding to it.
Thats not a tu quoque. Check your own wikipedia link and confirm that.
By all accounts it appears that desis encounter worse racism in the UK than in North America. Why is that? Jai Singh keeps insisting that UK desis, being mostly from Punjab, are closer to persians and latins in his eyes than to the stereotypical “brown” desi. So, can he explain why the british treat the desis there worse than they treat actual iranians and latins? Hmmmm….
The same way Bill Frist diagnosed Terri Schiavo by watching a videotape for an hour? Kush T., please. And the point here isn’t that anyone is telling people what they can can’t protest — at least I’m not. But what’s your objection to thinking critically about the social context in which all of this taking place? Whatever else might be true it certainly is the case that political protests in India are often manipulated by political elites for political purposes. Maybe not always, maybe even not now — but it’s far from uncommon. Like in many places. Sure, there’s likely some sincerity in there — your picture of Shilpa Shetty as the Great Indian Dream, fine, I don’t doubt that. But it’s also not crazy to probe to see if something else might also be going on in there, at the same time. Life is complicated like that. It doesn’t somehow justify Shilpa Shetty’s treatment to ask those kinds of questions.
And calling people you disagree with “grand spin doctors” and saying they “conveniently ignore[] same thing (African origin actresses) in Hollywood”? That’s no less ad hominem, tu quoque, etc etc than anything you might criticize among people who disagree with you in this discussion. (Of whom, at the end of the day, I’m probably not one.) Are there protests taking place about all of this in Hollywood? If so, then fine, let’s talk about Hollywood. If not, then what does that have to do with anything?
I was right — I was being naive.
Doordarshan: Thanks
Kush Tandon: Are you serious? You don’t understand why poor people reach out to anyone who gives them hope of a better life? Surely Shilpa’s item numbers aren’t part of some community service for bringing happiness and sunshine to slum dwellers? You really think slum dwellers are making informed choices?
When did the “Other” become this monolithic entity of homogenously oppressed people? What does Shilpa have in common with me, you or slum dwelling children? If I were born a slum dweller in Mumbai I’d hope to be an immigrant living in the West watching some loutish Cockney woman bark incoherently at some mediocre Bollywood actress with a princess complex on my own TV.
The same way Bill Frist diagnosed Terri Schiavo by watching a videotape for an hour? Kush T., please.
Do you want me to email a friend of mine in Patna to logically discuss the demographics and origin of the protest. Were they really high-caste, fair-skinned? Or something that you might have suspected? Who knows? Please do send me an email through my blog, and I’ll cc you to friend of mine in Patna, and see if he knows what happened. We’ll take this to a logical conclusion.
Because talking of critically, you do not know anything (or cared to find out) about the nature of protest but were first to “discount” it. I am pretty open it, are you? Let’s do it.
The grand Indian dream is not only Shilpa Shetty, it is also Ashwaryia Rai, Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, Priyanka Chopra……..all of them.
My friends and I are driving to the British consulate in LA on Tuesday morning to burn effigies of Jade Goody and the Queen. If you would like to join us, please send email to
Shetty-is-goody_Goody-is-shitty@importantissues.com
Ok guys, I am confused. I was under the impression that the issue is the reaction of the Indian diaspora in the UK to the issue. Now suddenly it is the reaction in India.
If it is about the reaction in India, I won’t read much into the protests. There are protests against everything in India, largely by political parties to show they are alive and kicking (mud). For example, the recent ones against Saddam’s execution in Bangalore. That of course does not mean that the average Indian is pro-Saddam.
If you look at the Indian blogosphere, which I think is a fair reflection of what an ordinary educated (upper-caste?) Indian thinks, there’s little besides mild amusement at the entire brouhaha.
Kush —
Hey, the more information, the merrier — and if you want to report back on what your friend says, I don’t need to be cc’d on your email to believe you are genuinely reporting back on what he said. I don’t know how much that will tell us though. Like I said, I don’t for a second doubt that what you say about some individual motivations has some truth to it — especially now that you’ve expanded the list of actresses. 😉 (It’d be nice if you could extend the same courtesy back, rather than just saying “you don’t know anything” etc etc simply because I happen to disagree with some of what you are saying.) One anecdotal account would be no more and no less than that, and I just think there’s a lot more to a story like this than anything we might see on the surface through particular anecdotes about who the protesters might seem to be in one city, etc etc. There are a lot more complicated social forces at work when it comes to political protests in India or anywhere else.
But unfortunately, I’ve now spent way too much time on “importantissues.com.” 🙂 Ciao.
To Indian-Americans:
Please listen to BBC Asian Network (the radio call-in shows are usually in the morning local time)on the internet at least to hear what Indo-Britons think about the whole situation before you make your presumptuous statements about Shilpa and the Indian and NRI response. One caller told the host how she was reminded how her parents were kicked out by the Ugandan government and fled to Birmingham, and still they were ostracised and verbally abused; when the other houseguests told Shilpa to go home.
Most NRIs don’t live in the confines of the U.S. If an Indo-Briton had said that Mr. Siddharth had taken advantage of the situation and milked it (on account of the number of articles on him and his number of interviews given to broadcast and local media), Indian-Americans on this blog would have flamed him/ her.
Thank you.
This just perpetuates the BS that fair skin = high caste.
LOL. And all this time I thought that the grand indian dream is to get out of India.
The whole point is the definition of racism itself. If you analyse what was said, rather than what the conventional wisdom tells you, you will see that they are based on cultural ignorance or indifference. They were making fun of Shilpa’s accent: well, guess what so do a lot of British Indians regarding FOBs. If Shilpa were french or german, then you wouldn’t see so much outcry. And why is that?
Britain (where I live) is a very liberal and tolerant country. There are occasional problems, but hate laws are taken very seriously in this country. Contrast that with the blantant disrespect that dalits continue to endure in rural India, and the negligence of the police and government despite the injustices. So, I believe that when India starts respecting its own people, then it should have moral to criticise others.
That is of course not to say that people should be bullyied, but unlike unjustices in the real world, Shilpa is getting a lot of money out of this, and she was put there precisely for the reason she came from a different cultural/class background. Bullying is ugly, specially when adults do it, and I believe that is the reason that Jade and co. will be booted, and Shilpa will win it. She is after all an intelligent actress and she is doing her part very well to get sympathy from the public. You got to love the way she announced, bollywood style, that she would use Gandhi’s method of non-violence to fight the three bullies. Despite trivialising the Indian struggle for independence, it is always a good thing for Indians when we show them we are able to blow things out of proportion.
I have just given up on this. It is amazing how we, Indians, have a wrong perception of our own country… and still continue to believe the almost disproven racist colonial theory of the aryan invasion, which only served to justify Britian’s presence in India, and to discredit the achievements of the brown folk. A lot of racists at Stormfront believe this idiocy that light-skin means higher-caste (aryans) and dark skin means low-caste (dravidas). The perception can come because low-caste people work long hours in the sun and become darker than a high-caste.
Not only studies have shown the very close links between peoples of North and South of India, but it is also a fact that there are low-caste northern Indians who are lighter than high-caste sourthern Indians.
I don’t know this incident very well, and my point really had nothing to do with it. Racism really implies a dehumanization of the entire being, this cannot be viewed outside of historical and social context. You cannot simply pull out a german or french comparison outside of this historical context.
Again, totally tangential. That’s like saying, “the police brutalize you in new york city? well when you start letting fruit vendors in botswana do two laps around the block instead of one, then you can talk about other people”
We agree that they deserved respect in the first place, so there was an injustice that needed to be mended.
I don’t feel this is the case with India. I don’t think that characterising India as a slum, or talking about sanitary conditons or lack of water is racist, nor should the Indian governement cry about racism when it neglects its own people, and is responsible for the deterioration of quality of life for the average Indian. As you may know, the Indian government is inviting Jade “the nasty racist” to India, and I’ve heard some Indians commenting that this might enforce her prejudices. ah.
India still treats people according to their social status and that has to change. So forgive me if I don’t really care about a rich spoilt bollywood actress who is going to earn a lot of money out of this. I rather focus on the injustices back home, and hope for a developed India in my life time.
I’ll second Aruna’s suggestion to listen to the call-in shows on the BBC Asian Network — the link is here. The reactions by some of the callers are quite emotional and have been enlightening for me to listen to.
Yup, you thought wrong. The grand Indian dream is not to get out of India. Maybe work abroad and earn enough money to buy a house in India 🙂
So the whole argument lies whether she was a victim of racism or not. If I believed that she was a victim of racism, or even brutalised than I would not bring the hypocrisy angle, as you pointed out. But I honestly don’t think she was a victim of racism, and find it hypocritical for the Indian government to accuse of racism for the reasons I mentioned above.
Perhaps I have a more strict definition of racism, and find that we are trivialising the word to our benefit, or to the benefit of our politicians to cover their own mediocrity. To me a racist is someone that believes that his own group is intellectually superior or more beautiful. A racist is someone who belives that other races/groups are more prone to violence and crime.
What I’ve seen in Big Brother is nothing of this. It is simply the case of 3 idiots being bullies, one intelligent bollywood actress using her skills to get her way (this is after all a game), and Indians making a huge fuss out of nothing. I don’t see how this meaningless event makes our life any better.
Because, like it or not, society only changes when the prevailing attitudes of the masses are affected by the media. That’s why dictators always seize the TV stations and newspaper presses when they stage a coup, and why advertising is such big business. “Propaganda” has become a dirty word, but marketing is just “propaganda” with a slightly nicer suit on. The British media is currently awash with pro-Indian sentiment, and it’s this sentiment which may make all our lives “better” in the long run. Shilpa may not be your first choice as an ambassador, but that’s what she’s become, and many prominent, eloquent and impassioned UK “Desis” have stepped up to defend her, and their own identity. Even if it doesn’t make things better, it certainly isn’t making things worse.
OK I have been following this for a long time and I think some misconceptions need to be cleared up. Some of you that live far away from India are slightly misinformed. For example there is the belief that no one gives a crap that a Dalit gets killed. I think anyone watching the news in the past few months will concur that a considerable amount of time is being spent on the caste issue. At least when the crime happens in a urban or semi-urban envirment. If it happens in the villages well, the fact is that often govt does not exist in the villages. And media doesnt really exist out there, education is in a very basic form out there. And here is the kicker, they dont give a rats ass about what is right or wrong. They only care about their own economic well being. Thus you see lower caste people coming to power in places like Bihar and creating a even bigger mess than imaginable. These low caste people (who are now call Other Backward Caste) are the BIGGEST oppressors of the dalits. The fault often comes on the Brahmin because its okay to abuse the Brahmins or higher caste.
Its not about caste, its about money, once someone has money caste seems to cease to matter. We are from decidely middle caste trader back ground, yet, now my family is classified as “high caste”. What the hell is going on here? I thought we were barely a step above the OBCs but now we are not. So thus any succesful middle or low caste is “promoted” to high caste by society or the govt. Bizzare!
Related point with the Banglore clash of yesterday. The media got their headlines. “Hindu-Nationalists cadres go on rampage”. But why wasnt the pro-Saddam rally that damaged the stores of Hindu traders yesterday by Muslims make the news beyond the back pages? This at a time when dozens of LeT people, not to mention Maoists and Naxals have been arrested in Karnataka with TNT and RDX. The media is selective in its reporting, or rather there are certain papers that take certain positions and thus everyone has a bias and the entire truth is not reported. Post-Modernism from hell.
You people are talking about Race Laws, high school elections, lovely utopian ideals about great western democracy built so nicely one the blood of centuries of colonialism. Kill the natives, allow a few well educated ones to enter from aroudn the globe and then proclaim to the world about how civilized you are. High school elections? Univ elections in India had to be delayed because canditates were walking around with 9MM Berettas and sub machine guns.
Im sorry about the long rant, but some of you dont realize the battles being fought in India are not in isolation, the line between the govt and criminals are so thin that each seperate battle on be it guns, on racism, on crime, on terror on whatever are twisted so that the solution of one will inflam the other even more because its impossible to make all the people happy at all times.
The only way to succeed is to make people rich. Money solves most problems, be it in a marriage, in a job or life it self. If you are raking in enough dough you will tolerate anything. Why did anti-semitism reach epedemic proportions after Germany’s defeat in WW1? The poverty brings the worst out in people, similarily it is unfair to compare the UK or US to India beacuse though they are democracies, the economic condiitons makes its a silly comparision!! Money solves most problems!
Let me just say, I hate journalese. Maybe that makes me a racist.
Here is the conceited math: self evident truth (Shilpa is victim of racism) + self evident truth (Indians in the UK and in the homeland are an economic force) = self evident truth (the backlash is because Indians are finally finding power in there economic status, and Shilpa is a grat status symbol)
Thanks for doing your part. I would hate to be an aboriginal from New Guinea on a reality tv show.
Cisco, dude(tte), the next time you get racially insulted by some white person, or hear about it, please feel free to fold up and lick their boots and assorted body parts. Obviously the insults are deserved because India has poverty and casteism.
The rest of us, inspite of the vast problems in India, will still fight back against racists here. We know it’s hypocritical and morally wrong not to accept the vastly superior Vestern civilization, but Ve are like this only, vhaat to do?
Like I said, I haven’t really been following this incident closely, but the irony is, by having a “more strict” definition, I’d say you triviliaze racism by narrowing it to a “belief that their own group is intellectually superior” with the obvious implication being a biological condition. Not only is that a limiting definition, it relegates racism to merely the past which has little or no relevance to events today, in a general sense. Maybe it’s your narrow, triviliazing definition that prevents you from seeing racist implications in this particular incident. Maybe you can shed some light onto what you’d consider a genuine racist” incident?