This is in response to a horrifyingly biased article written by Mr. Kumar Vikram in India Today http://mailtoday.in/epapermain.aspx?queryed=9&querypage=4&boxid=275671144&parentid=2129&eddate=01/28/08 . Thanks to Illusionaire for bringing it to our notice. Check this out http://mizohican.blogspot.com/2008/02/chp-163-sex-drugs-and-north-east-girls.html
If the standards of so-called journalism in India are so low that such biased reports reeking of racist sentiments are tolerated, encouraged and published, then there's very little hope that India will become a better place. It's positively laughable that many academicians and politicians so vehemntly deny the presence of a mainstream in India, insisting that every Indian community is marginalised one way or another by virtue of the fact that there is such a vast plethora of cultures, races, languages and religions, and so on, ad nauseum. Sure. so, how come some communities are more victimized than others? It's like that joke about being more equal and less equal under the umbrella of equality. Forgive me for sputtering on incoherently when I should be presenting an impassioned, eloquent argument to promote better understanding and acceptance for northeasterners. I'm too mad. And anyway, I'm fed up of apologising for my existence.
What is this so called "North-east"? Can we have our own identity? This is what first comes to my mind and the next is do the Indian journalist really care for Media ethics?
ReplyDeletePlus plus, can we have community identity rather than regional identity. I'm a proud Mizo not "North East guy" as they call it!
ReplyDelete@ sawmpuia: Like it or not, that is how people generalize others. It's not just North-eastern people. My tamil and mallu friends hate it out here in Delhi when they are all bunched as "Southie", when infact they all want to be identified as a tamilian or a mallyalee. Eventually we too end up grouping the rest of India as "Mainland Indians".
ReplyDeleteWhat hurts is not the grouping or the generalization, but the way the generalization is depicted in such cheap and tacky limelight.
@sawmpui: I agree with you. why this tendency to lump us all together? A few years back, when I was in JNU for an Orientation Course, I was apalled to find out that not many of them knew about Mizoram, and when they thought "north east", they couldn'trecall any other place part from Assam...and this is a bunch of Univ and college lecturers from all over India.
ReplyDelete@illusionaire: Good point...genaralizations are often misleading and unjust. However, i would argue that political and academic arguments notwithstanding, there is a mainstream in India, and we're often made to feel like tiny rivulets trying to keep pace with it!
Fight the good fight..lets not give up..I believe we ave to speak and write about this..at least to give ideas about the generalization.
ReplyDeleteI am perhaps a little late in responding to this post. Hope someone sees my response and comments on it :-).
ReplyDelete@daydreambeliever: I am sure you'll meet a lot of "educated" people who have no clue about where Mizoram is. You'll also make surprising discoveries, if you meet enough people that is, that there are many "mainlanders" who will know a lot more about Mizoram than many Mizos themselves know about Mizoram. India is too big a country, far too diverse, that most ordinary Indians (Mizos included of course) have a very hard time making sense of it all. But there are many people out there who have taken the trouble to read about their country, who have pored over maps of Mizoram, taken the trouble to make friends with the few Mizos who happened to study in their towns, and who have listened to Naga and Mizo folk songs at 3pm on All India Radio every single day :-). If nothing else, that ought to make you happy !
I would also argue that inspite of all the outward appearances, there really is no mainstream India. The moment you start going a little deeper, a diversity borne of Language, Religion, Looks, Skin Colour, Caste, and Culture, starts hitting you left, right, and center, making it nearly impossible to determine a mainstream.
Don't pay attention to a fringe that calls you names. Own India. It's a big, bad, and beautiful country and it is all yours to own.