The thing that I don’t seem to understand is why do we generalize people? This is a thing that I have noticed over the years. For instance why does a person wearing a dhoti have to be a Madarasi or a Bihari? Just stop reading for a second and think about what comes to your head when I say the word security guard…ah ha…I knew it. It would have been a chinky with a uniform, with his Gurkha topi(Dhaka topi) and a baton. A person stereotyping a certain race is uncalled for and the thing that surprises me is that people from rural villages or setting are unaware of these things or are not exposed to it as people from the cities are and we call ourselves the “educated”. The media is also responsible for affecting the way we think, talk, judge, perceive. For example the media will never show you a normal Muslim person doing his daily chore like going to the office, spending time with his family; you know why because this person according to the media is boring. They will always show you the “crazies”.
I had seen this particular Coke ad where Aamir Khan is show as a Nepalese tour guide. Guess what, I felt good when I saw the ad. You know why? Because in this ad the “Gurkha” is show as a smart individual who fools the tourists. I felt good not because he fools the tourists but, because for a change Coke has shown the Gurkha not as a security guard but as an intelligent individual. The ad shows other aspects of a particular community. But, viewers thought this ad was racist not because they were told to but, were conditioned to. In India we are always sensitive about topics such as cast, colour and creed. It is not like we do not discuss about these matters and laugh about other communities and make joke about them the fact is when we become the joke we don’t like it. We as an audience do not analyze what is wrong and what is right we just go with the flow. For me this particular ad was good commutation but for the latter it was an insult.
We read the papers, listen to music, read books but don’t you think we are still illiterate. We say we that the mother earth is holy to us but we micturate the streets. We are agitated if our homes are dirty or the kid in the house spills milk on the furnished floor but our city streets lay uncared. We look up to great men in the county highly educated and like by people in his circle but, we find them doing the gravest of mistakes.
What is the use of education if one cannot seed good beliefs and traditions in the coming generation? When people from other regions of India start taking Kuppuswamy or Rakesh daruwalla as a name and not associating it with a man with a dhoti or a topi will we be educated.
