Tag: media

Musings

The Hindi Belt

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All the newspapers today including the e-news I read highlighted BJP’s loss in the ‘hindi belt’ or the ‘hindi heartland’. The election results were from Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh.

These three states are not a cohesive, monolith as the nomenclature ‘hindi belt’ suggests. Chhattisgarh was created by separating 10 Chhattisgarhi speaking districts and 6 Gondi speaking districts from Madhya Pradesh. Rajasthan in itself is a culturally and liguistically diverse state. Definitely not a Hindi monolith.

When we visited Bharatpur, we realized the local language of the area is Braj shared with the Mathura, Agra region in Uttar Pradesh. On the west the Marwar region’s main language is Marwari. Marwari including other languages such as Harauti, Dhundhari, Mewari, Shekhawati, Bagri etc. spoken in the state are mostly referred to as Rajasthani dialects. To add to insult, all these languages are lumped under the Hindi umbrella in the census. In Madhya Pradesh, even after the separation of Chhattisgarh, there are still Malvi, Nimadi, Bundeli. These again are considered by some as dialects of Hindi.

The interesting part about defining languages and dialect is that it is not a science. It mostly comes down to power and geopolitical history. Due to quirks of the census more and more people are pushed under the Hindi umbrella. It doesn’t help that the language of the state government in these states is Hindi. That makes Hindi the coveted language and other native tongues in some people’s mind a sign of backward unsofistication. It is high time we acknowledge and celebrate the diversity in the northern region instead of painting it in broad strokes.

India Outside India

Obama’s visit to India: Images perceived and portrayed

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Some points that came up in the media coverage about perceived and redefined image of India

– Obama rejects view of India as “land of call centers”

– The United States sees Asia, especially India, as the market of the future

– India the land of cold-start (the Loch Ness monster that most of the Indians don’t know they have)

– India the victim of 2008 Mumbai attacks. (Just so that US can proclaim ‘India and US were united against terrorism’)

– On the other hand it is a giant ogling Pakistan on which US needs to put pressure so as to placate Pakistan and get its support in the ‘war against terrorism’

Uncategorized

Selctive media hype of terrorism

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I was pretty surprised to see the news of the Pune blast on the homepage of NY times yesterday. The article claimed that these are the first major attacks after Mumbai attacks in 2008. I wonder what makes attacks major or warrants attention in western media. Nobody seems to be bothered by attacks in the north east. Is it because they did not involve foreigners or there was no proximity of any shabad house? Are the lives of Indians and attacks on their religious places inconsequential?

Today the article has added this sentence “Any sign of Pakistani attack would worsen relations between the two nuclear rivals and further destabilize a region overshadowed by war in Afganistan.” Now-a-days, the ‘nuclear rivals’ has become a necessary phrase whenever the US media talks about India or Pakistan. It is amazing how none of the other nations with nuclear warheads are ever mentioned in this manner when a conflict arises on their land or of their making. Why this obsession of again and again mentioning the n word? Is this the age old strategy of a media hype followed by a US intervention I am seeing in making?

I also wonder how people/media conveniently forget to mention that US which at present is responsible and actively involved in military conflict in at least two contries itself has nuclear warheads.

PS: Sakal, a local newspaper in the state of Maharashtra reported that Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Mike Mullen said that countries of the world should intervene to smooth relations between India and Pakistan. I know there must be something lost in translation from English to Marathi and then to English. But you can’t deny that it fuels my fear about US intervention. I am trying to find the original quote in English but haven’t found it yet.

India Outside India

Indian in US TV series

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CSI – NY’s latest episode showed the festival of colors – holi being celebrated somewhere in Queens. I captured a couple of stills. As you can see the girls dancing are wearing a belly dancing costume. Is that a CSI version of Indian? CSI now-a-days is overly dramatizing scenes towards phony anyways.

Here is another one from the same scene. My first reaction was that this is another example of the ‘exotic east’ syndrome. But then again this might be the expression of Indian by the community in queens that I am discarding as not authentic enough. Me being the ‘real’ Indian and all. 😉