The new Star Voice of India 2 started airing on Star Plus this Friday (18th July) onwards. For the past month or so, the promos had been boasting of featuring participants from all 24 Indian states. It was unnerving for me to realize that the number of states in India had shrunk to 24 without so much as giving me a perfunctory warning. I had been trying to work it out mentally which states had been deemed unimportant enough to be left out of the competition - would it be based on economic considerations, geographical placement, political considerations, size, population or some other factors - none of which seemed to be valid enough for me.
The clouds of mystery cleared when the first episode was aired and the bright sun burned the very vestiges of respect I might have had left for TV producers. The 7 northeastern states were being referred to under one name - the seven sister states. While the other participants were from Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, those participants were from the 'seven sister states'.
Why the alienation, why the blanket nomenclature, why deny them their individual identity and a spot each for themselves? Why must they be clubbed together under one banner of location, culture and heritage while every other state gets full leverage? Isn't it this cavalier attitude and insensitive treatment of the north-east that has led us to this day when they demand their basic rights, and are treated as foreigners in their own land.
My sister's just started going to college in the Delhi University. For years, I have read reports of female students from these states being treated as 'easy meat' and being molested on buses, on the roads and being a general target of ridicule. During the ragging days, most attempts are directed towards them and my sister has confirmed these facts first-hand. They are forced to speak in Hindi, made fun of and generally not accepted as one of our own.
It hurts. The low level of understanding and innate prejudices in young students still in their teens, the blatant publicity and corporate undermining of sections of the population for... for what? I would still understand, not agree but still understand if they were to make financial gains from such a gesture - but how would acknowledging seven states with their real names have affected their capitalistic aims is utterly beyond me.
The clouds of mystery cleared when the first episode was aired and the bright sun burned the very vestiges of respect I might have had left for TV producers. The 7 northeastern states were being referred to under one name - the seven sister states. While the other participants were from Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, those participants were from the 'seven sister states'.
Why the alienation, why the blanket nomenclature, why deny them their individual identity and a spot each for themselves? Why must they be clubbed together under one banner of location, culture and heritage while every other state gets full leverage? Isn't it this cavalier attitude and insensitive treatment of the north-east that has led us to this day when they demand their basic rights, and are treated as foreigners in their own land.
My sister's just started going to college in the Delhi University. For years, I have read reports of female students from these states being treated as 'easy meat' and being molested on buses, on the roads and being a general target of ridicule. During the ragging days, most attempts are directed towards them and my sister has confirmed these facts first-hand. They are forced to speak in Hindi, made fun of and generally not accepted as one of our own.
It hurts. The low level of understanding and innate prejudices in young students still in their teens, the blatant publicity and corporate undermining of sections of the population for... for what? I would still understand, not agree but still understand if they were to make financial gains from such a gesture - but how would acknowledging seven states with their real names have affected their capitalistic aims is utterly beyond me.
2 comments:
They did that? The 'seven sister states'? That's the depths of the pathetic regionalism that these shows started a long time back, and have been feeding off really pathetically. What also completely pisses me off is how almost every contestant, after their vote appeal, adds a quick line in their mother tongue to the tune of "all the people of [state] please help your son/daughter win"... uhh, I'll vote for the one whose singing I like best, thank you very much. And these shows thrive on it, because even the host makes it a point to add after every performance that people of that contestant's state should pick up their cell phones and "vote now!"
Really, why appeal to people's regional chauvinism in a country already so divided by religious, linguistic and regional boundaries?
And about the treatment of students from the north-east in Delhi, I've also read many reports about it and it's really, really sad and disgusting. If education is supposed to make you less prejudiced and more open-minded, then it seems like many people get only degrees and not an education in college.
Agree with every word of yours. It's just pathetic.
I've been following the show on and off, and it just puts you off to see how they call the contestants on stage. If it's the Voice of Haryana, it'll be "Here comes so and so from the land of Haryana hurricane, Kapil Dev. The land of those who never give up" or something to that effect. When it was Tamil Nadu's turn, the description was to the tune of "Woh pradesh jahan ke log bhi anokhe hain aur jahan ka rehen-sehen, pehnawa bhi anokha hai". Wtf!
If you are actually into describing states, do some research and talk about something meaningful. Sad to say, it's worse for southern and north-eastern states, even though the show is being screened from Kolkata right now. What do they mean by anokha pehnawa and rehen-sehen. Ours would be as strange or novel for them, isn't it?
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