I Bourgeois

Untouchable women enjoy a night of fashion
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/untouchable-women-enjoy-a-night-of-fashion/#comment-336791

Why the hell wasn't this reported in Indian media? Because the indian media is more concerned with suppressing the acknowledgement of the existence and treatment of dalits than in bringing it to light. Why? Because its audience, the "great" Indian Middle Class is more embarrassed than shameful of its treatment of the Dalits. They'd rather not acknowledge their existence than do anything to better the "untouchable"'s lot. A dramatic example of this of course is the middle class student's protests over Mandal 1 & 2. Obvioulsy all of the students were upper caste and it was such a blatant upper caste movement that they didn't even try to prove otherwise that it was a pan-class movement. In their disgusting diplay, the upper caste students and their parents brandished brooms and rakes to tell the media what they thought their under-privileged brethren should rather be doing.

Our NRI brethren are of course, as is their wont, even more vocal about their objections to reservation and they don't care enough to make a distinction between SC/STs and OBCs. NRIs are almost exclusively upper caste excluding at the most a few OBCs from TN/Andhra, Punjab and Gujarat. A quick run-through of the common surnames will tell you the truth.

A run through of the NRI demonstrations on the 2006 reservations issue.
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/caste/reservations/PressRelease_060906.html
The author writes about the hypocrisy of the demostrators far more effectively and in fewer words than I can

An IIT defending its reticence to reservations
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/badge-of-iit-is-talent-not-privilege-or-caste-iit-kanpur-staff/5246/

Sure, you can be agnostic to caste and privileges if you're an Amity University or an IIPM but you're an IIT. If the Govt. forces Air India to fly to Aizwal for all of two passengers and we look at that as a public service, how is an IIT/IIM/DU any different? An IIT is our government's construct. Our government is Our societal construct. A society that has over 160 million Dalits, over 80 million Tribals constituting a good quarter of our poulation and a wide variety of lower castes estimated at 52% of pop. by the Govt. and quoted at 35% by the National Statistical Organisation, which figure obviously the anti-reservationists use (they selectively don't use the 28% of SC/STs)

If an IIT's job is to take children of traditionally privileged parents who can afford an education in a DPS or a DAV, the extra tuitions, the Kota classes and Brilliant's tutorials and turn them into exemplars of talent, why don't we simply outsource the job to SRM university? For if it were not for these consequences of privilege, many of the IITians and DU students would find that their "merit" is the same as the the son or daughter of their sweeper. Their SC/ST brethren also labour under the stigma that their surnames produce automatically and the fact that their parents are usually blue collar or menial workers who can neither afford nor understand what their children need to succeed academically. IIT Kanpur is mistaking the symptom of its existence to its cause.

The atrocities against Dalits, Tribals and minorities aren't just systemic and institutional but also violent.
http://www.sikhtimes.com/news_012806a.html
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2323/stories/20061201004713000.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/779892.cms
http://www.aiccindia.org/news/gohana_incident_probe_panel_seeks_action_against_district_officials.htm
http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/lsdeb/ls10/ses1/0409089101.htm

As one would notice, the violence isn't random but is brought to bear brutally when the oppressed stand up for their rights or show cognisance of their rights or show improvement in their lot beyond what is judged by the upper castes as agreeable.

The Indian Middle class is rife with hypocrisy. So are its constructs like the Indian media. Unlike Engels idea of the bourgeois, I refuse to give the Indian Bourgeois the credit for breaking down barriers and dismantling feudalism. The Indian bourgeois is more interested in keeping those barriers and constructing a modern version of feudalism.

Holding a mirror to yourself - Slumdog

The NYT tries to understand why we Indians hate Slumdog

To be honest, I didn’t think it was a great movie as far as Oscar nominated ones go. Considering the stilted english (as opposed to accented), the bad acting by the lead etc. But I did think it was an honest and plausible portrayal of the situation surrounding the characters.

I was surprised by some of my friends’ reaction to the movie. While they borrowed phrases like “poverty porn” and used the argument of western condescension which used tired old cliches like the taj, bachchan etc… they WERE honestly disturbed by the picture of India that the movie painted.
… which is endemic to the middle class and higher in India. Most of us have absolutely no idea how our drivers and housemaids and electricians live. Seeing them on the screen disturbs our “middle-class sentiments”. There is no acknowledgement that we, the middle class are a privileged 40-50 million in a country of a billion. We’re interested only in stories of Vinod Dham and Sabeer Bhatia and gossip about our business houses’ latest acquisitions abroad… and forwarding fake spam on how 30% of NASA is Indian and the value of the Hyderabad nawab’s fortune.

Helplessness? Apathy? Romanticisation of poverty to hide guilt? I don’t know but “Slumdog Millionaire” as an international phenomenon is discomfiting.

Again, most of the Indian middle class would like very much to subscribe to the right winger's idea of India. A great country where there aren't any cultural dissonants like Muslims and embarrassing truths like our Dalits. Where all of us live like the NRIs in the Karan Jonar-Yash Chopra movies. Which is why you'll find wide support for the "nationalist" right wing loonies of the sangh from the middle class. This is even more drastic in our NRI brethren who hypocritically would support all kinds of minority protection, anti-racism measures etc. in their adopted homes but would generously contribute moral and monetary support to the Sangh which does the exact opposite of supressing minoroties and glossing over our societies damnable truths like untouchability, casteism, indentured servitude and feudalism.

As for the organised protests and forced shutting of theaters, I tend to agree with Mr. Sinha’s analysis of our dear Hindutwadis attempting to deflect attention from their actions which for probably the first time are being seen on mainstream internation screens. Its an embarrassment to them. Movies like Bombay, Parzania and Black Friday might exist but that an open truth to be shared among us Indians and we'll then proceed to give it a cursory acknowledgement. But to be seen on the silver screen all around the world? And just when Advani is launching his web2.0 initiative? The right wingers are giving people around the world more credit than they deserve. They're assuming the people of the world or the NRIs will put two and two together and actually see that Advani is the same leader that helped inititate the embarassing scene of riots in Slumdog. Don't worry my dear saffronites, we resident Indians and much less our NRI brethren are all too caught up in fighting off the 100 Re. increase of our housemaid's salary to notice you a******s tearing our country apart.