Certified by the West

What’s common about Arundhati Ray, VS Naipaul and MF Husain? Apart from the obvious “Creative people, Indian by origin” answer? They’re all admired by a section of India that feels an obligation to like and/or respect anyone who’s won recognition from the West. Don’t get it? Let me explain. Do you think most of the English speaking, liberal/secular gang would support a “murder is justified” stand? Or a male chauvinist? Or a guy who mocks others’ religion? Almost always they’d not, except when the person expressing those views was recognized by the West.

Take Arundhati Roy: she’s always ready to rationalize murders by the “poor” and “persecuted”. And yet, does she write in Bengali or Oriya, the languages of Maoists? Oh no, she’ll spew her venom in English. Really, Arundhati, you think the people you claim to speak for understand English? But I guess if you wrote in Bengali or Oriya, you’d never get a Booker or whatever prize you won. A prize given by the evil West! The people you love to rail against. You call yourself a writer and don’t see the irony in that?

Then there’s Naipaul. Always critical of India. But would still like to be granted an Indian visa without having to go through the process that he’ll claim India doesn’t follow. Ah yes, I get it: he wants to criticize us and be given special treatment. Talk about having your cake and eating it too! And now this guy deprecates all female authors. Me, I’d read JK Rowling any day over the India hating garbage this moron writes. But hey, that’s just me.

And lastly, there’s Hussain. The same Indians who support his artistic freedom to paint a Hindu goddess nude would advocate restraint from provoking others via their art when they, I don’t know, say draw cartoons of prophets?

So sad that so many Indians still feel that recognition by the West is what certifies greatness. I guess you can take the British out of India, but you can’t take the craving for Western approval out of many Indians.

Comments

  1. KumarJune 12, 2011 at 7:28 PM

    Craving for foreign recognition is no doubt a weakness. There are historical reasons for our being like that.

    Over time it will diminish, I am sure. Confidence and trust in one's own strength and values will build. It might take time to leave behind the residue of the past which is showing up as lack of self-trust and inability of belief in one's own worthiness. Let's have patience. It doesn't help in being harsh to ourselves for not responding instantly.

    We will certainly move on. And be strong in our mind. Let's have faith. I certainly feel that confidence.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more