My wife and I watched an Indian movie recently “Yeh Mera India!” – this is my India. After the movie we got into this conversation about socio-economic problems that India has. This was one of the best movies we had watched in a long time. Then we started thinking of “Crash” – an American movie which won several Oscars a few years ago. Now I am not writing this to discuss how Indian producers take ideas from Hollywood movies.
You watch Crash and see the socio-economic problems in US while Yeh Mera India portrays India’s. These problems are really not very different from each other – they just have a different face in a different country. They are all very complex, have developed over many years and leave a very weird taste in your mouth. Really – we have been doing this in our daily lives? Inadvertently yes, we all have been! Crash portrays a rich lady who is prejudiced against her Hispanic house worker and in Yeh Mera India another rich lady is prejudiced against a lower class house worker. Same thing, both issues are common to respective countries or let’s say societies. Crash depicts racist element in a white cop who has bitter feelings for African Americans. He goes out of his way to satisfy his alter ego and suspects every African American has a dark background or history. What do we see in India, religious hate – Hindu-Muslim conflict which has been going on for ages and people keep hurting each other in riots or protests. A feeling so deeply embedded in these cultures that it will take many years for it to flush out of the society – or is it never? You can keep drawing a parallel with other cultures – suppressed women in Japan, peasantry in China, race/color clashes in Europe, economic warfare in Africa, religion in Mid-east and list goes on! You watch such movies and then turn your head towards world news, its all just messed up – we as humans are messed up. We have developed these complexities which we sometimes tag as culture, sometimes as social issues and sometimes as ethical meltdown. As much as we worry about terrorism and want the world to be united, these issues are far worse. They are in us, in our day today lives, in our daily interaction and are becoming a part of human nature. These are the things we are passing on to our future generations. So how do we fix us? An international summit of world leaders cannot fix this or a small group of activists cannot change it – only we can – you, me and billions of other people! This blog is not to start an internet email chain where you forward to 100 other people and get blessed. This blog is to think, feel the change in your self and pass it on. This is my start!
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