Click to play video“Shilpa Shetty incident is the mindset that led to the US invasion of Iraq.” - Booker Kiran Desai on the Big Brother racism row.
Too drastic a statement or an apt reflection of the rising intolerance in the post-9/11 world?
British reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother - where Indian actor Shilpa Shetty was allegedly culturally abused by her housemates - has now become an international cause-celebre, a rallying point for the flag-bearers of the anti-West, anti-imperialist agenda.
From British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the India’s Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee to intellectuals like Kiran Desai and actors like Meera Syal – they have all made their voices heard by condemning racism and discrimination that was for all to see on Prime Time.
There has been a storm of protests on the Internet as well and petitioners have written about the show to the media regulator Ofcom, making it the most complained television series ever.
In fact, Channel-4 Chief Executive Andy Duncan went on to say the show is simply a reflection of social attitudes in the West today and Booker Prize winner author Kiran Desai has compared the event to same “racist mindset” that led to the US invasion of Iraq.
So is the Shilpa Shetty racism row really a case of the East and West heading for a clash of civilisation of sorts? Or is too much being read into what is perhaps a stage-managed show aimed at titillating the audience and keeping the TRPs soaring?
This was the big debate on CNN-IBN show Face the Nation with Sagarika Ghose.
On the panel were Emeritus Professor, London School of Economics Lord Meghnad Desai; Cofounder and COO of Mind Tree Consulting Subrata Bagchi and Editor of Asians in Media website Sunny Hundal.
The sponsors of the reality show Big Brother have withdrawn from the show and there have been massive protests from the Indian community across the globe on the Internet.
Clash of civilisations?
In the post 9/11 world, does it require a small trigger to set off a clash of civilisations?
Lord Meghnad Desai couldn’t agree less. Disagreeing that in post 9/11 world cultural identity has become increasingly inflammable, Desai said people have learnt the art of creating media hype.
“Danish cartoons were published in Jordon, in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt but nothing happened. Then some Imams organised in Denmark and went create big hullabaloo in Lebanon. And same thing happened in case of Shilpa Shetty. This is perfectly artificially created media hype,” he said.
He also said racism is a serious matter and we should not “trivialise racism because people who suffer from racism are not paid $600,000 to appear on a third grade programme.”
“They struggle on day-to-day lives and they really face serious problems. To equate Shilpa Shetty with any problem of racism is an insult to the hundreds and thousands,” he said.
Sunny Hundal refused to even acknowledge the issue being related to 9/11. “There were lots of ignorance on cultural differences, so it is difficult to relate it with 9/11. Moreover racism is not easily definable and there are several layers of racism,” he said.
Colour code
On the issue of day-to-day racism faced by average Asian in Britain, Hundal expressed said, “UK is one of the most tolerant countries in the world and London is a very cosmopolitan city”.
Completely disagreeing with the statement made by Kiran Desai that “creating Shilpa Shetty incident is the mindset that led to the US invasion of Iraq”, Subrata Bagchi said, “I think that is completely absurd statement to make, and I don’t know how a lady of such a high caliber can make a statement like that. I think connecting the Iraq invasion, 9/11 and this reality show and then churning up a complete hype around this and to say that the East and the West are on a collision path, is like burning the house to roast the pig.”
Citing the example of isolated cases of Western women being molested in India, Bagchi said this is also an isolated case and politicians have joined to criticize the incident so as not to fall foul in the electoral process.
Awarded for ethnicity?
Another interesting point of debate was whether awarding big prizes like the Booker to Indians is rewarding their ethnicity.
Disagreeing with the issue that giving Booker Prize to Indians are reward for ethnicity, Desai said people are given awards because they publish good books. “While giving the award to Kiran Dessai or Arundhati Roy, no one thought of filling the quota for Asian women and it is a merit-based system. English literature is a global phenomenon and there is no point to see straight forward merit decision as based on races,” he argued.
Declining to comment on the head-scarf issue, Bagchi said Western countries taken up for discussion are intellectually far more diversified and far more tolerant than many of us here. “The whole matter is getting over sensationalised and some sanity needs to be restored in this,” he said.
On the use of the word “Paki”, Hundal said, the word historically used as a very derogatory term, but Shilpa issue doesn’t relate to use of this word.
On the issue of racism faced by poor immigrants in Britain, Desai said there are problems of education, bad housing, attitudes towards Muslims wearing scarf, etc. “But those are to be faced because UK is much more diverse society than even India is. But the kind of attitude towards Sonia Gandhi will never allowed in UK politics and nobody question that as a form of racism,” he said.
Agreeing that the West is more cosmopolitan than India, Bagchi said, an average person anywhere in the world is far more global, far more multicultural than average Indian is. He also questioned the killing of Bihari workers by ULFA, saying, “Isn’t that racism?”
The show ended on a profoundly introspective note: “We need to look inwards, at the racism within our own country”.
Final results of the SMS poll:
Are Eastern and Western cultures on a collision course?
Yes: 85 per cent.
No: 15 per cent.
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