I was shocked a few days ago when the media presented the country with possible options of Cabinet Ministers and had a category for Dalits saying these would be the Dalit faces of the Cabinet. I was shocked because they trivialized the Cabinet and made it seem like those candidates were in the race only because they were Dalits. But I also realized this particular incident is just a symptom of a bigger problem. We tend to assign a secondary identity to just about everyone.
If there is a terrorist attack, it must be terrorists from a particular religion. It is not enough to just call them terrorists, we must drag the "religion" in as well as if that particular religion has a part-time job to groom terrorists. Dear God, we even put that religious tag on the victims, saying most of the victims of that terror incident were of that other "religion". Sometimes we put a caste based tag on them, and sometimes a community based tag.
Is it possible that the media is just as guilty of instigating communal disharmony as many suggest a rival political party does?
Here is an open challenge to the Indian Media - let me see you drop such classifications! Let me see you identify a terrorist as just that, a terrorist. Let that terrorist not be called a Muslim terrorist or Hindu terrorist. Let a politician be just that, a politician - not a Hindu, Muslim or Dalit politician.
Who in the media would be willing to take up such a challenge? This would probably be the first major step in uniting the country and ushering a whole new generation into a new kind of thinking.
Who is up for this challenge?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
but i think the leaders of this country have to first stop treating the people like vote banks. they should stop making moves or counter-moves that are meant to attract their loyal vote bank.
ReplyDeleteHow else should we identify a terrorist? The media has to give more information about the person...
ReplyDeleteA well-thought and well-written article :)
ReplyDelete