I was reading through a blog on a popular news channels website, a review of sivaji by an ARYAN, the article was full of digs at the DRAVIDIAN accent. And not surprisingly, the post had close to 200 comments (Note: The comments are moderated) , most of them very "uncomplimentary".
I am not sure what the author's intentions were when he typed in those "saar"s and "kanstant"s . The DRAVIDIAN readers however, took it as an insult on their kind and came up with well written abuses in fine English. I found the reaction rather funny because this is not new, every other hindi movie has a caricature of a south indian, with an exaggerated accent and for that matter, tamil movies are not far behind either. How many times have we seen the Malayalee being ridiculed, or even the mami with her accent. What is LOLA kutty based on?
Educated people stop with comments on the blog, others take it up from where they leave.
So much for the north-south divide, are the dravidians united? Hell , no. The tamil-kannada war is at its peak, with activists trying to prevent movies being screened (how silly). All this makes me look at INDIA as the US of I, rather than as one country. It is still hard to believe that we have made it together for 60 years now. You want to kick-start a riot in INDIA, not very dificult, look at the options u have:religion,caste,language,race,rivers,...my GOD. I am not sure how logical it was to make one country out of all those differences. But I have no complaints, my short life has already spanned three states whose people dont like each other. I was born in one state , educated in one, making a living in another. I have no one language as my own, I speak one which i dont know to write, I can write one which I cant speak , and use a foriegn language when I have to do both :). I use one at work,another at home, and yet another with friends.
A conservative estimate states that atlease 3/4 of INDIAs population is atleast bilingual, yet we are intolerant. Why cant we take it easy? Somebody found our accent funny, when we speak a foreign language. So.
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4 comments:
good one...:)..deserves pat on the back...atleast for the writing skill involved..not sure wat can be done to change india...things like mera bharat mahan...long live india...are all only during a cricket match...how sad...but one can atleast vent emotions on the cyberspace...this is the low--risk...less proactive..middle -class style of protest...about which no one concerned will give a hoot for.
and to make a real impact u have to be a hero in the next shankar movie...ala shivaji...or MGR..MG ravichandran... [:P] [:P]
Exchange, information and awareness is the answer: in short, education. Only when you conduct educational excursions to other states, teach children that the people from the neighbouring state are not the "others" but as similar to us as our neighbour --- only then we will have understanding. But I laud your point of view for pointing this out. Good post.
yes what's funny is that u have friends from every part of the country...and u'll poke fun at their culture and they'll poke fun at u....but it's never really a divider is it?
A good post! But its all this diversity that makes life in India more interesting. And if you happen to live in a metro, then all your neighbors would be from different states and you would get a really good idea about their state. And, you get to sample so many cuisines too :) Where else would you get this opportunity?
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