Some Footage From Another
"Reality Show"By Sorit Gupto
21 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
In an episode of The great India Laughter challenge a contestant comes up with following joke:Yahan truckon ke pichey "Buri Nazar waley tera Munh kala" likha hota hai… main sochta hoon ki ye truck Madras bhi toh jatey hongey!!! ( You Evil Eyed people , your face is Black.. It's scrawled on the back of the every trucks and lorries ….I wonder whether these trucks goes to Madras or not???)
Need less to say after this joke with strong racial overtones, everybody burst burst laughing. From the viewers up to the Judges.
There are a number of advertisements, which says that a dark complexion is a bad quality and one of the biggest hurdles in the life so one should get rid of this as soon as possible. Till yesterday the target of these ads was the female population but now if there is any element of truth in the advertisements, now on the males should too rectify there shortcoming of their dark complexion before it is too late and that is why companies are come up with some fairness creams exclusively " for men".
"A …..(caste) boy/girl seeking a Very fair/fair Bride/Groom", a very known phrase in the matrimonial columns in our Newspapers .
In our adoption centers preference is given to a baby with a fair complexion.
Some very rare cases the Indian film industry and the Indian ad world, there is hardly a heroin or model with a dark skin. Sorry, to be precise, in advertisement industry there is a scope for a person with a dark skin where the skin color is portrayed as the problem.
Reacting to the Shilpa Shetty –Jade Goody row Germaine Greer wrote in the Guardian Newspaper ,' Shetty has certainly had to deal with discrimination at home….Her only motive for parading in front of the other women in the house with whitener on her face was to show what utter hicks they are, how little they understand of her complex reality or of a billion people in the subcontinent who all want to have wheat-coloured skin. I bet thousands of brown-skinned girls in Southall fell off the sofa laughing when she did that.'
A person with a dark skin can feel an undercurrent of apartheid in every arena of Indian life and dark persons are considered to be of lower race and irony is when some Jade Goody and other fellows used racial comments against one Shilpa Shetty a hue and cry is created by the very same Indian society.
Indian newspapers' splashed the story across their front pages for a second day Thursday and TV news channels ran clips of Shetty crying. A newspaper editorial said "attacks on her (Shetty) show that racism is never really far from the surface." Protesters burned effigies of the show's organizers on the streets of India.The number of complaints from viewers has soared to 20,000, and the Indian government also indicated that it plans to raise the issue with Britain.
Is it a hypocrisy of Indian ethos? Probably not. It can be compared with another typical feature of the Indian society , that is the sub-caste system in the so called lower caste which is as strong and cruel as the rest of the caste system is. For example in 'roti-beti' matters a preference would be given to the same caste with in the hierarchy of the sub castes in dalits as well. In other words the Dalits are also a staunch supporter of the caste system in themselves , for which they are victimized for centuries.
In the rest of the Indian society the racism also follows the same rule. That is why hardly a month after the Shilpa Shetty episode some IAS trainees allegedly comes under cheap racial comments form some media persons when they were visiting a media house as some of the media person were not comfortable with the dark skins of some of these would be IAS's.
As a true follower of racism, which believes that talent is the monopoly and birthright of the fair skin and superior race, those media person even raised their doubts over the talent of dark skinned trainees .
But after all India is not Britain.
No Blair will tell parliament that "we should oppose racism in all its forms." No opposition leader David Cameron will urge the viewers to switch off in protest and no Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain will say the comments as " grubby racist behavior." No Shilpa will shed tears over such incidents. No Channel 4 will say that "Unambiguous racist behavior and language is not tolerated under any circumstances and Channel 4 would intervene if a clear instance of this arose. No Jade Goody -- accused of bullying and racism toward a fellow India – will be voted off. No Danielle Lloyd will apologize in a belated attempt at reconciliation. No protester will burn effigies, no complain will be lodged for this and no newspaper will waste the space to run this story because a story is some thing about an unusual thing .
Racism is supposed to be a thing of the past for other countries but as far as India is concerned it is much more than a reality.
Just after the Shilpa row a leading Indian newspaper was come up with a story according to which British television star Jade Goody has applied for a visa for her pilgrimage. Indeed a wise decision taken by Jade Goody.
There could be no better pilgrimage before anyone better than India , specially for a person labeled of racist.
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