When less asks for more

Remember Yugoslavia? That giant Balkan state, the result of the Pan Slavic movements in the second decade of the 20th century, a place which was meant to be the home of the ethnic slavs that were in minority elsewhere, which became one of the most significant components of the Red East. At one time, its armed forces were among the first five largest. After the fall of communism in the country in 1989, it took less than two years for Yugoslavia to break into scores of small independent states, because suddenly the ethnic minorities found their chance for their "right to self determination". It led to a bloody war for three years which in the end gave the most humiliating deal to the Serbs,the most numerous of the Balkan peoples (thanks to NATO) who saw themselves relegated to just one part of the former great state as their country.The ethnic minorities viz Croats, Macedonians, Bosnians,Slovenians got their own countries. Serbia( who were branded as villians after the war and their President put on war crimes trial) on the other hand lost Montenegro in 2006 through a thoroughly democratic process and today has almost half of itself partitioned into another autonomous zone.

Why have I remembered a country whose disintegration I was too young to remember? Just to state a fact.

Even the hated rule of communism could not cause this amalgamation of different races to rebel but then they were helped by the system which is loved universally.

Democracy

Strange at it may seem, but democracy today has in all the world, from America to Asia, from Israel to India, effectively told the minorities, ethnic, racial or religious that the country belongs to them before anyone in the majority and they have the preferential right over it and its institutions and resources.

It is not the generosity of the majority that they have given the minorities rights and reservation, but it is the duty of the majority that they nurture and feed the minorities even at the cost of their own remaining hungry.

It is not only the duty of the majority that they educate the minorities, but it is imperative that they do so even at the cost of their own remaining uneducated.

It is the very right of the minorities that that they have to be handed over the resources  at the cost of the majority being deprived of the things that they themselves built in the first place.

If this is done in any less measure, they are free to scream and cry to the now 100% progressive media about their being discriminated because they are a minority and how the society and the country and the majority is unjust to treat them as equal citizens and sacrifice more for them.

As if this was not enough, the minorities are told again and again, through the various liberal institutions and the media expressly or subtlety, that how they have been always wronged by the majority, how they must never shy away from using the establishment and the civil society to their own benefit (ironically, the very things created by the majority lawmakers to ensure equality) to demand their rights ,which thanks to ultra liberalism, can even mean the state ignores their share of crimes or even secession.

Minority organizations are created which over the years, months or even days grow into humongous proportions given the healthy democratic atmosphere around them and assume various forms whether as a trust, a lobby, a business enterprise, a media house or a political party.

The magnum opus starts through these entities. It is proclaimed how the concerned minority is being discriminated against by the state, how it is in a hopeless and a pathetic condition due to the government’s apathy and indifference, which incidentally is made up of all the majority, how the minority’s children and adults are hungrier , sadder and poorer than their majority counterparts, how they are abused by the law enforcement agencies and the security forces and how all this is the living proof that the given country should be ashamed to call itself a free and a democratic society.

All of these claims are instantly verified by the media and non government organizations as the truth handed out from god and that how it is imperative for the entire society to meet these demands and acknowledge these problems if they have to prove themselves as human beings. Under popular pressure, the government gives in upto a great extent. And who pays for all this You guessed it, the majority populace. It then becomes imperative for the government to have provisions made for the minorities, it doesn’t matter even if they are handouts and populist measures that will be disastrous in the long term as governments never look beyond the next election.

Soon the pandemonium is covered not just by the local media but the “fair and professional” international media as well which cover it like some kind of revolution and a fight of the people against their oppressors. With due course of time, even criminal and terrorist elements from the minorities are romanticized into freedom fighters. As a result, even self preservation measures of the majority are seen by the bleeding hearts as barbarism and things like nationalism are proclaimed to be fascist concoctions. Therefore we see all the news channels everywhere in the world downplaying or even negating the crimes and atrocities committed by the minority elements but making any crime committed by the member of the majority community the breaking news. We are hardly surprised to see examples of countries who do not take sufficient measures to reign in crimes like riots or terrorism because of the fear of backlash from the liberals and minority lobbies and from the global popular opinion.

So the secession of a region of a country into a separate nation is seen as the triumph of liberty and freedom by the now largely left wing money fed media and the same is hammered down the heads of us unsuspecting viewers.

A confused and disorganized majority is always helpless against a organized and a ruthless minority. There have been enough examples in history to underline this but now the problem is that the majority is being made confused, identityless and insignificant by the very democratic and free society that they sacrificed so much to build. Democracy has been mutilated by liberal and progressive thought to become suicidal by undermining the very people who build and cherish it and glorifying the elements which seek to destroy it.

Isn’t rule of law necessary for maintaining the liberal and democratic values that the progressives are always crying about? Shouldn’t the immigrants adapt to the law of their adopted countries instead of agitating that the laws be changed to their own needs?

Isn’t undermining the majority all the time in the name of equality unfair to the majority? Is destroying the majority’s very identity culturally and psychologically the mark of a free society or is it a conspiracy by the elements who are being funded by sources we don’t’ want to talk about in the name of political correctness?

It isn’t democracy which is being criticized here, it is what has been done to democracy which is the bane of the world today. What goes on today in the name of equality threatens to derail the very fabric of society and undoing all the achievements, scientific or cultural. It is making the majority in almost all the democratic countries into a disgruntled or an indifferent lot, spawning groups that hate anyone who does not belong to their race, ethnicity or religion. On the other hand it is turning the minority into a group which is creating groups who have asserted their rights as freeloading, disturbing the legal and social structure for their “demands”.

When one section of the society thinks that it is useless to work harder or better because all the benefits will be swallowed by the other group and the other group thinks that working is futile because there are others working to keep them happy, the end is near.

Truth is the newest form of hate speech, and hence the humble writer aims to state the truth at the cost of being branded a bigot because he believes that political correctness only makes sense if politics is done properly.

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http://www.thefrustratedindian.com/2016/05/majority-minority/ 

Makes perfect sense

Win a beauty pageant where there are titles like Miss Universe (although just earthlings are involved) by sashaying around in ornate costumes and flimsy swimwear and giving emotional answers about how violence, child labour, poverty etc etc break your sweet little heart and how you desire to be the next saint to give hope to the world. Among the prizes are a tiara that is made of the same diamonds that fuel civil wars and slavery and go around the world sponsored by the same corporations that are causing many of these ills that you claim to want to fight.

Makes perfect sense

Develop display mindset in children. Dress your prepubescent daughters like sluts and make them dance in "talent" shows where they will be judged by washed out former or unemployed "artistes". Do the same with little boys and make them sing and dance and make a freak show of themselves. Promote "fifteen minutes of fame" as the ultimate target of life, to be achieved at any cost. And then sit back and complain about the rise of decadence in the society. Or cry if your daughter elopes with some flashy burned out glam icon twice her age.

Makes perfect sense

Lie and cheat for the gain of a few rupees. Indulge in the worse kind of sycophancy for any kind of professional progress. Find loopholes in every law and new innovative ways of corruption and embezzlement in every field. Make sure that not a single institution should remain credible. Teach your children from a young age to get what they want by any means and have them see you as an example. Tell them that any kind of decent behaviour is cowardice by leading the way yourself. And then complain about how the society is going from bad to worse and how morals have fallen down. Put all the blame on the "young generation".

Makes perfect sense

Elect a leader because he is from your caste or promises to give your caste reservations. Or because he has paid you to vote for him with cash or booze. Or that he promises free sops for you at the expense of others, promises to get you or your kin a job in the government. Or that you find him too irresistible with his gold chains and his fleet of cars. Or just say that you are "not political" proudly and prefer to distance yourself from everything related to it, including voting. Then when you are hit by inflation and bloodied by terrorism or if you lose your source of employment, cry tears of blood by screaming how all politicians are thieves that deserve to be shot.

 Makes perfect sense

Keep the educational and social system prevalent which teaches what to think and not how to think. Never encourage any kind of reading or curiosity for your kids beyond textbooks. Have nothing in the house worth reading except film magazines or tabloids. Tune into only the TV channels showing music videos or film industry gossip or Bollywood. Keep discussions limited to pop culture or trivial matters.

And then lament the fact as how dumb your kids are and that why India cannot produce great minds in abundance.

 Makes perfect sense

Discourage sports or physical activity as it wastes time which should be better used in mugging up the syllabus for the quarterly or half yearly exam. Never encourage children to run, get dirty, rough it out (until its in some glitzy tennis court in a gymkhana club or in a summer cricket coaching camp). Or at best only encourage them to play cricket, squash or badminton cause they are the in thing. Learn to ignore the news of formal national level medal winning athletes living and dying in penury (Ah yes, some village waala background film Paan Singh came out some time ago, isnt it?) Dont get alarmed when the kids which once bundle of energy become land whales and struggle with health problems that only the very old should have. Consider it normal when in their twenties they prefer to use an elevator to go to the second floor and smoke two packs a day.

And then lament as to why a country of more than a billion and a quarter cant produce olympic material athletes or  footballers who could play in the best clubs in the world.

Makes perfect sense

Pay exorbitant rates to watch third rate films in multiplexes. Glorify the equally third rate "actors" in them by continuing to blow away your money in buying their film tickets or their endorsed products or giving them a few lakhs for half an hour of booty shaking just to show the world that you are filthy rich. Make them famous by causing a stampede in malls and likewise places where they are promoting their latest abominable venture. Make your chosen filmstar your god or goddess by devouring every word said by him or her in print or visual media. Make them feel that they are above everything.

Then get saddened by seeing them crush homeless people under their SUVs cause they love to drive drunk, be shocked when you get slapped by their hired goons because you got too close. See them do everything from drug running to arms running and other lesser crimes and then bitch about how arrogant these people are and how they treat the society and the common man with disdain.

 Makes perfect sense

Tolerate intolerance in the name of tolerance. Make the worst criminals and terrorists the  ideal candidates for bestowing human rights. Never mind their victims. Form unscrupulous organizations that claim to be working for the poor but end up helping the very elements responsible for the poverty and violence. By your civility and liberal lobbying, put tremendous pressure on the government so that it reigns in the armed forces and on the law enforcement agencies so that they wont bother to do anything as they know it will be futile.

Then scream before the world media how the country is a horrible place as no one is safe or happy.

Makes perfect sense

 Hurt and abuse people who care for you. Lose sleep thinking about people who barely know that you are there. Spend too much money buying things you don’t need to show the people you don’t really like to show that you have “arrived”. Spend half your existence and resources pursuing the girl who won’t even care if you vanish off the face of the earth the next moment at the cost of spending times with your parents and friends.

And then whine about how sad and broke you are.

Makes perfect sense

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Stereotypically yours

Art depicts life they say. When one looks at Bollywood, one wonders what kind of life this so called art is depicting, one is forced to ponder. One has to stretch one’s memory to the limit to remember the name of a Bollywood offering which has depicted India’s problems and its people in a realistic manner. This exercise is without exception, a futile one.

What one would expect from the premier film industry of one’s country is atleast a fair depiction of its communities and people. But maybe it is too big task to ask for. Learning about India’s people by watching Bollywood will be like learning about good wines by drinking toddy.

Because Bollywood never shows a community. It only caricatures it.

A Maharashrian is either shown as a domestic help, a gully drunk always waiting to pick up a fight, a pandu hawaldar or a trigger happy psychopath sub inspector who’s always to be kept in check by an IPS named Ahlawat or Ranawat or Singh or Malhotra. Or just a lowly clerk who gets to mouth a few dialogues and cry for the hero.Inspite of being in Mumbai, Bollywood has decided that the Marathi maanoos has to be shown as a cheap and a downmarket character who cannot be anything other than a laughing stock. All their valour filled history and sacrifices for India and their patriotism don’t matter at all. A joker is how he will be depicted, a pandu or a Gangaram. And yes, he can never live in a more magnificent place than a chawl. And this downmarket depiction spreads beyond the screen as well. They always seem to want Mumbai minus them. That same attitude was seen in Wankhede stadium spat involving a guard and you know who. Madhuri Dixit escaped these stereotypes but she is the only lucky one. Shivaji Rao Gaikwad was lucky to find his footing in Tamil film industry as Rajnikanth or he too would have been reduced to the sorry state of Laxmikant Berde or Ashok Saraf in Bollywood.

Next come the Gurkhas, another one of great martial communities whose bravery is the stuff of legends. But in Bollywood land they can never be anything other than a khakhi uniform wearing security guard named Bahadur who has an IQ in single digit and the only coherent thing he gets to say is “Jee Shaab” and “Jee Memshaab”. Its needless to say that all he gets to do is salaam and never once does he gets to touch the khukri hanging from his belt.Any Gurkha who isn’t a security guard is simply Kaancha. Thats it. Of course they wont dream of showing them in the army. Thats just reserved for Punjabis in Bollywoodland.

Sindhis. Always shown as pajama or safari wearing sorry figures who cannot speak a legible sentence without invoking Jhulelal or adding saaen or niii to it (Tum to badaa kutta hai niiiii, e.g.) Again they can be nothing more than henpecked husbands or jokers who the filmmakers are hell bent on depicting as the most cowardly people in the country.That they have one of the biggest businesses running in the country doesn’t seem to interest the Bollywoodwaalas. No wonder, Govinda had to remove Ahuja from his screenname.

Parsis are always shown as middle aged and above. Never in the last two or three decades, except the rarest cases has one seen a young parsi in a film. It will always be an old henpecked husband with his obese overbearing wife driving a 1950s model car. The surnames will never extend beyond Poonawaala, Batliwala or Sodawala. And there will be atleast one funny dance sequence. Did I forget to mention that they are never allowed to be anything better on the screen except comics?

No Bengali can ever speak perfect Hindi. It must be with a thick accent. He has to pan chewing , dhoti wearing , self depreciating character. No wonder Ashok Kumar or Kishore Kumar were never given a Bengali character to play.

Tamils are depicted as someone named Subbu who cannot do one decent action ever and cannot speak any sentence without adding aiyyo or amma to it. His English is reduced to yenna rascala and mind it. He is always shown as someone who is out of the place in the group and sticks out like a sore thumb. He is shown as someone who does menial job or is running some kind of rackets. Doesnt matter for Bollywood that Tamils have one of the best minds and have a culture which is as good as anything that comes under the word sanskriti.Even if Hindi films show them as someone in an influential position, the script will make sure that his comic depiction will degrade the character beyond any hope of decency.

The rest of southern states don’t matter because as it is everyone down south is simply a Madrasi.

Maarvadis cannot be shown as anything other than greedy moneylenders who are most eager to mortgage or pawn the helpless populace’s money. And they are shown to be most eager to lend large amounts of money to the poor as he is sure that they wont be able to repay and he can then fulfil his sexual fantasies with their wives/daughters/sisters etc.

Gujaratis cant eat anything except dhoklas. And no depiction of a family is complete without showing atleast a hundred people in the household.

Christians have to wear half a foot long crucifix and speak an atrocious mishmash of Hindi and English. God has to be invoked every now and then.

Sikhs are ofcourse funny guys who have no business other than partying 24/7 and balleballe

ying . Everyone from Veerji, Paaji, Bebe and Kaake must hold some kind of festivity in

the vast house all the times of the year and dance and sing tirelessly.

For a hero to look good, he has to be a Punjabi with names like Ranvir Malhotra. Anything

else is also ran.

Caste based stereotypes too are aplenty.

A Thakur comes in two types:-

1) A sadistic psychopath superrich landlord rapist and mass murderer whos got a

house bigger than the Rashtrapati bhawan.

2) A psychopath dacoit who lives in a cave with hundreds of his followers and

regularly watches semi clad women dancing.

Only Thakurs have a divine right to perform violent crimes and atrocities. There can never

be any decency in them.

A Bania is always a grocer selling cooking oil out of metal container to whom every poor

man in the village owes money. Or he shares the money lending profession with the on

screen marvadi and has all the huts of the poor mortgaged. In both these scenarios, he is

always lusting after the womenfolk of his debtors.

A Brahmin as a priest/pujari of the temple is always an unscrupulous and wile character

who practices untouchability even in his sleep. He always exploits people , makes fun of

their ignorance, embezzles money, molests the lower caste women. Shastra is some kind of

evil book he uses to subjugate the lesser people.He too has a strong libido and visits brothels

wearing a tilak on his forehead so that we as viewers know that panditji is going for a

joyride. And yes, a Brahmin can also satisfy his lust for poor women by becoming a munshi

of lalaji and sahukar saaheb.

These are just the very prominent depictions. Hundreds of clichés still continue to be

promoted in the name of popular culture. And the most regrettable part is that none of the

people maligned onscreen have ever raised objections.

If at all the Indian entertainment industry has to become anything serious it has to stop this or remain what it is, kitsch.

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