Borne from thoughts that have long been bubbling in the swamps of my mind and which were persuaded into more consideration by a conversation today, this entry is about diversity and the importance of its representation as a notion, even an ideal. Outside of the objectivity I hope to maintain throughout this entry, I feel rather strongly about these matters - a fact some of my friends and colleagues will quite willingly attest to.
Ever noticed the emerging New Urban Indian stereotype in the advertisements on national TV? Ever given thought to the names, surnames, settings, vernacular forms of addressing elders, or where applicable, the good old traditions this urban Indian still proudly embraces? How many of them even attempt to acknowledge the existence of the cultures of South India, unless in distasteful caricature? If you press me, I remember one - a Bru filter coffee ad many many years ago, whose choice was obvious given who drank all the coffee in India before globalism made it cool. But what’re the odds anyone else does?
It’s pointless to speak of Hindi films because, even if they are the most widely watched Indian films in India and the world, they are as inadequate a national medium as can be. In fact, they do a particularly terrible job of representing even the Hindi-speaking population of India. So in the paragraph or two that it takes to dismiss it, let me throw the dog a bone. How many mainstream movies with contemporary settings can you think of that, when they are not set in a fictitious village called Ramgarh or Sundar Bhanpur, are set in any city other than Bombay? In recent times, of course, there have been countless films set abroad, but I’m not going there. And there have been, much to my relief, a fair number set in Delhi too. But other than that - Lucknow? Patna? Bhopal? Take your pick. Practically none, in the many decades of the industry.
A lot of North Indians wonder why people in the south are such mind-numbingly insane fans of their favourite actors. I have always only told them one thing: all Hindi movies are set in Bombay, making them distant and inaccessible at a very fundamental level to the larger part of their audience. The South Indians, though, all have their local heroes, and identify a great deal more with them. Most Hindi films, on the other hand, glorify extremely rich Punjabis who live in Bombay or London but whose hearts throb for that little state’s five rivers and its green fields and the elderly mothers nestled therein. Does that difference alone explain away the insanity of the Rajnikanth or Chiranjeevi or Rajkumar fan? Well, perhaps not, but what the heck, I tried!
But I digress. This discussion began not being about film, but about TV advertisements, since they pretend to cater to a national audience. The most ready justification of course, is that the north is where a good deal of the market is. And that, almost entirely by itself, closes the argument as soon as it had begun. But I question the need to just accept that as it is. What follows is a partial statement of the problem.
This is mostly unspoken but there is tremendous friction between North and South Indians everywhere. I’ve seen it in college and at work. It’s avoidable, however, as it stems largely from ignorance. This is in fact a two-way problem, for South Indians are nearly as ignorant about the north as North Indians are about the south - a lot of South Indians think all Punjabis are Sikh, for instance; a lot of South Indians have unnecessary prejudices about what transactions it is or is not advisable to conduct with people from which North Indian state. I cheerfully absolve myself of any such ignorance and prejudice, however, and move on back to the argument. Indeed, this is a two-way problem, but I shall focus today on one side as I have seen it a lot more, and find it a good deal more worrying. Everyone in the south receives more than their fair share of exposure to the north through the so called national media and the national language, so that is clearly not the side I’m focusing on.
One commonly repeated rant is that North Indians consider all South Indians to be Madrasis. When they do realise that Madrasi is not a language, they correct themselves, say Tamil, and go on to as cheerfully ignore the other three states and languages as they did before. This is manifest equally in the distasteful caricatures of Tamilians that movies and TV series are loaded with as in misguided attempts by television networks to introduce Tamil programming or channels in order to “cater to the South Indian market.” Do all these reluctant south-appeasers lack the basic resources that tell them Telugu is the second most widely spoken language in India, or that it is the language in which most movies are made in India every year? Incidentally, my picking Telugu here has nothing to do with the fact that it’s my language - it just happens to lend itself to the facts in this case.
Claims that “all South Indians are called Madrasi” are more correctly dated circa 1980, when the Southern capitals were all sleepy little towns too far from Delhi and Bombay to be accounted for. That may indeed be excusable, as historically, the south has been rather removed from the action in India - from foreign invasions, from the full ferocity of the independence struggle (it is known that many among the west-looking South Indian intelligentsia quite preferred British rule), and from giving a damn about Pakistan and Kashmir. However, its artifacts still remain today, even when the same capitals are the face of the new Indian economy, and even when everyone knows about Chandrababu Naidu. You would think that change would translate to more exposure, more awareness, and with it more acceptance. Yet, I look around and see a lot of the same us-versus-them attitudes today.
A depressingly large number of North Indians who have relocated to the south (well, obviously, that’s where the new brand of action is these days) cannot name the 4 southern states or languages (That practically nobody can name all 7 north-eastern states is a story for another day). Neither do they even know the name of the language spoken in their host state. They still come down here with obstinately held prejudices such as “South Indians/Madrasis are rude. They don’t speak Hindi. You only get sambar and rice to eat.” Not even the enormous body of evidence wildly to the contrary, as one may find in Hyderabad, for instance (especially of the Hindi-speaking bit), is sufficient to undo that. They are still consumed by inherited notions about the food, the people and the places. Even when they mean to speak about one city, they generalise to the entire South, and compare it with their own corners of the North, which, somehow, in the reverse process for everyone in a 200 kilometre radius of the capital, is very conveniently New Delhi.
But the important thing to note is that the same people who compare the heck out of the South Indian cities feel no such obligation to obsessively compare and complain about any other cities in the north, even where they must knowingly accept significantly lower standards of life than in Delhi or Bombay or even Bangalore, Madras or Hyderabad. Even more puzzlingly, most desist entirely from acknowledging the positive differences, or for that matter, even seeing differences as differences rather than as failures at replicating what they believe is the national standard. Instead, they cling to their original ideas as infallible truths, preferring to disregard or distort evidence where it disagrees with them. But then, that is how it works - it wouldn’t be prejudice if it was flexible about revision. So it’s not the notions I care about eliminating, it is the absence of exposure that could dispel the prejudices which, if I should descend into discussing the evolutionary benefits of xenophobia, it is only in human nature to foster.
Back to the bigger point, now. I must reiterate, though, before I continue, that I fully acknowledge that this problem works both ways, but choose to focus on one side as South Indians more quietly adjust in the north than the other way around. South Indian inflexibility, where it exists, is seldom grounded in the deluded notion that their way is the standard way. How could it be? Anyway, really, moving on!
This kind of friction is not new to other parts of the world. I believe, however, that in some places, diversity has been more tactfully handled. I can only speak for America, of course, but frankly, I believe that it is really the only place in the world that is uniformly across its length and breadth (and not, unlike other countries, just in its single largest city) comparably plural to India. While in India the plurality is mostly linguistic, in America, it is mostly ethnic (especially as the attendant linguistic differences vanish within one generation). There are all sorts of us-versus-thems over there, and in fact, because of the racial differences, more visibly obvious ones at that. I must acknowledge that the southern United States do in a sense feel equally neglected in America’s national media (again, unless in caricature) as perhaps South Indians do. But that is beside the point.
I do believe, vacuous as the attempt might be, there is at least the impression of diversity in American advertisements. Sure, the largest part of the market is white American, but that does not stop them from working in the “token black guy” or the “token asian girl”. Incidentally, I quite disapprove of clubbing the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Filipino all together as Asians. Having said the defining boundaries in America are racial and not linguistic, I can argue that the East Asians get their representation, and the distinction of South East Asians gets a tad neglected. But that too, as was a microcultural difference between the whites of the northern and southern United States, is beside the point, and subordinate to the larger racial distinction that does get through.
So does this token representation ease racial tensions? Perhaps not. But I believe it does, in its own little way, create awareness and acceptance, while at the same time, at least partially appeasing the Asians and the African-Americans. For the record, I have in my time only seen one national-TV advertisement in the US featuring an Indian, and yes, it was a distasteful caricature (it was an incredibly asinine ad, even by American standards, for Dairy Queen, if I remember correctly).
Even direct marketing and internal publicity campaigns go that extra mile just to appear diverse. Even at Microsoft, an extremely diverse company in every sense of the word, it is joked that the posters are a lot more diverse than the company itself.
Even more briefly than I brought up Hindi films, I must mention that though the vast majority of Hollywood movies are set in New York City and LA and a larger majority of TV series are set in New York City (again, a yet larger majority of which are shot in front of a live audience in a sound stage in LA!), the others: Chicago, San Franciso, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, all have their occasional representation.
My idea, of course, was not as much to dwell on the details of how America does it. So I’ll return to India and suggest that a little diversity in our ads, given that they are supposed to depict the New Urban Indian, would not make them much the worse for reflecting at least some of the cosmopolitan truth that our cities are today made of. Will the whole North Indian market really collectively reject a product that dares offer some of that modern urban imagery to the South Indian to share, when the reality is that they share practically all other spaces in their urban lifestyle with them?
The Fevikwik ad that had the snooty westernised North Indian recreational angler with all his equipment beaten to 4 fish (remember onnu, rennu, moonu, naalu?) by a primitive Tamilian fisherman (but, for some reason, unless in my overenthusiasm to make a point I remember this completely wrong, depicted as the stereotypical Tamil Brahmin-type whose reason to catch fish totally escapes me!) with his fevikwik was widely hailed as brilliant. Sure, it was meant to be funny, and I wouldn’t take the depictions too seriously, but would a reversal of roles and stereotypes offend just because it no longer complied with accepted stereotypical humour? Who decides which way it is or isn’t ok to depict a North or South Indian? Even if our market really possesses the ability and maturity to accept variations on those unwritten rules, would the content creators in our media ever believe it?
The fact that they don’t should seem particularly tragic given how many South Indians there are to reckon with in the media in creative or editorial roles - be it advertising, the press or TV production. One must credit the youth/music channels with being a little forward in this regard. Back when MTV and Channel V were new in India and catered primarily to westernised youth, a considerably large number of their production staff were from the creative profession and many had southern connections. Not just behind-the-scenes, but among VJs, when native Hindi fluency was not a requirement as it seems to be today, South Indian representation was rather high. Since it was known that a proportionately larger audience for western music lived down south (a fact confirmed beyond doubt by the unfailing choice of all bands performing in India, albeit at the end of their careers, of Bangalore as the sole venue), the southern sensibility was anything but neglected.
Even as the two major western music channels gradually went the Hindi route, they remain, till date, the only channels still concerned about the south. One must exclusively credit Channel V with the introduction of the Malayalee into the national consciousness via Lola Kutty. Some love her and some (mostly Mallus) hate her for precisely the same reason, but for certain, the only reason she is a success is because she takes the stereotype of the Mallu (as was known only in the rest of the South before) and, through the same exaggeration earlier reserved for Tamilian spoofs, squeezes the last drop out of it. Would audiences be as fond of a different portrayal of the South? Is it the privilege of only the stereotypical Bengali to be scholarly and intellectual and communist and art-filmy?
Moving away from stereotypes and back to just the issue of representation, an interesting article by Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN (formerly of NDTV) confirms my suspicions about the reason behind (what I personally applaud as) a welcome change in programming to accommodate the south:
Think about it… more than 60 per cent of the English-speaking audience for television news channels is south of the Vindhyas (at least that’s what the television audience meter ratings tell us). Yet, more than 75 per cent of the news reporting on television is confined to the metros of Mumbai and Delhi according to a survey conducted by a research group. It’s a dichotomy that is embarrassing.
Not just CNN-IBN and NDTV but also India Today, The Week and Outlook (magically all simultaneously awakening to an equivalent statistic in readership) have their unimaginatively alliterated Simply Souths and Southern Spices or some such. While I welcome the initiative, I have just one bone to pick with it - these supplements are telecast or distributed only in the south, while the northern editions continue to carry the same north-centric focus. Awareness and acceptance will only result if the north also sits up and watches and reads along. How else are prejudices and jaundiced opinions to be corrected? How else are they to know that not all South Indians speak Tamil (not Madrasi), not all butcher the Hindi language in a horrendous Mehmood-esque accent, and not all of them wear lungis and have moustaches? How are they to know that South Indian states are more progressive in governance, more literate, have less crime and have better social indicators, especially where women are concerned? How is the balance that informed opinions create going to be achieved?
By inserting South Indianisms into the national consciousness, along with North-Eastisms, Biharisms, Oriyaisms, Gujjuisms, Ghatiisms, Bongisms, and every other -ism that it takes to make this wonderful large country. And by compelling you and me to watch. Provided, of course, you’re not overempowered by the veto of the remote.