Thursday, April 13, 2006

Ashamed to be Indian

I am usually proud about the culture, heritage, yada yada of India - being the largest democracy, more or less peaceful coexistence of numerous languages, religions, an advanced intellectual core, tons of entrepreneurship, etc. etc.

This I fail to understand: a popular movie actor, whose last movie was probably a decade or two ago, dies at age 77 of natural causes, and his fans and others indulge in looting and violence and general unrest. At least five people have been killed following this burst of violence. And they threw stones at a Microsoft office in Bangalore. The technology capital remains shut for two days. This is absolutely idiotic. I fail to see even a sliver of logic behind this.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

May be the riots were waiting to happen anyways. All it needed was an external factor for people group together. Some other event such as religious day or cricket match could have easily ignited the fire.

In contrast, recent bombing in Benaras didn't had that much retaliation. Which i wouldn't say is something to be proud of but i would take comfort in that.
So, don't be ashamed as overall it evens out.

Anonymous said...

hey

Anonymous said...

Not to minimize your frustration and the crowdism factor which should be denounced. First of all , there was no looting and secondly you would NOT understand since you are not a Banglorean who has not grown up with Rajkumar movies. But nothing to lessens indianess as ignorance.. amen

Anonymous said...

I dont think the rioting was because of his death. large scale violence the second day was apprently for not being allowed to see his remains and a hurried cremation. This, though is an explanation is not an excuse.
His last movie as a hero (which became a superhit) was 5 years back! you can imagine his aura. The hindu editorial was a well reasoned piece.

Arun Prabhakar said...

Well, well... what happened there, is not about a popular and god-like person's death ceremony reaction, but the poverty to luxurious livings' frustration. The anger is on the stones thrown at HP or Microsoft or many other MNC campuses.

This might happen in any Indian city, where IT is powerful making a segment of people richer and simultaneously a bunch of other industry folks poorer. Some 'natural' incident triggers the (IT) under-priveleged to explode!

Anonymous said...

These despicable comments have already shown your emotions to be not-so-misplaced. One is amazed at the total lack of a logical trail of thought in these responses and the vacuity of their assumptions and prejudices.
So theres a MNC campus...lets throw stones.
So an actor died ...lets throw stones.
So the West also had people who threw stones.
What do these things have to do with what happened?
Such utter nonsense. I think youd agree with me on the absolute necessity of Critical Thinking education in schools from very early on to avoid this mass stupidity.

Anonymous said...

I think the riots may have been triggered by the refusal by the authorities to let the large crowd waiting in line to pay their homage to their hero. However, the main reason is that there is large scale resentment against the outsourced wealthy by the poor counterpart.