Mile Sur....
'Miley sur, mera tumhara', the song might be passé, but its relevance is more today than when it was first composed. Everything around us is set to divide, fragment and fracture that reclusive unity in diversity that we once so much took for grantedwas fi.
STILL remember the public service advertisement that Doordarshan once aired (miley sur mera tumhara…) kind. Such advertisements still air, of course, except that I, like many millions don’t want watch Doordarshan any more or listen to All India Radio (AIR) any more. Most of these advertisements were rather staid and dowdy and there was not much to commend them. Except the message itself. In those innocent days, we used to laugh at them and try to take a break when they came on.
But I miss them now and miss them horribly. Growing up sneering at those famous ’unity in diversity’ advertisements and social studies lessons, any time and every time I came across them, I realise what a purpose they served and perhaps, silently and unobtrusively, even in the midst of seeming derision, these messages served to knit the heart of the country together. Perhaps, those who listened and imbibed those messages inspite of every thing had managed to keep the country around and united all these years.
Those advertisements came to mind again after I heard of Harbhajan Singh being censured by first the Sikhs and then the Hindus for his act of ’glorifying’ Ravana through his actions on a television dance show recently. It made me stop and think as to how thin the walls of tolerance are in our country today. Of course, the morality brigade on Valentine’s Day has always been there but preoccupied these days by our following the increasing intolerance towards Muslims and Christians, we have forgotten the chilling fact that these days it is not enough any more to be a Hindu alone in this supposedly tolerant of other Hindu beliefs, Hindu majority secular country. No – indeed you have to be a particular kind of Hindu.
This is no defence for Harbhajan Singh and Mona Singh and their conduct. Personally, I would say that shows like Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina suck any way and ought to be condemned to death for their crassness, whether or not the duo purported to be Ravana and Sita jamming on stage. Besides, Ravana has been glorified before – by Periyar Ramaswamy of the Dravida Kazakham in anti-Brahminical protests and who saw Ram as a literary and religious symbol of bigoted racism and saw the tragedy of Ravana and Sita as symbolic of the plight of the millions of Dravidians in India who were stripped off their Dravidian (Tamil) language and victimised by the caste system as Shudras (lower castes) and Panchamas (outcast-untouchables).
Even concluding that Periyar was an unconventional man and an iconoclast, it speaks of the tolerance of the times that he was able to speak and talk and write thus. Besides Periyar, even in the main stream of Hindu thought Ravana was and is eulogised in places and even this year he was honoured and praised in Allahabad as a learned Brahmin following a tradition that reports say go back to thousands of years.Peering into the mind of the young ’jihadists’ caught in Delhi is a scary thing, for what you get there is not only a particular brand of religion that they practice but also a brand that refuses to acknowledge that there is any place in the sun for any thing that is not just like them and their way of life. Scary isn’t it?
Miley sur, mera tumhara, the advertisement or even the song might be passé, but I guess that the relevance of the song is probably more today than when it was first composed and sung. For even as I write and you read, almost everything around us is all set to divide, fragment and fracture that reclusive ’unity in diversity’ that we once so much took for granted.
But I miss them now and miss them horribly. Growing up sneering at those famous ’unity in diversity’ advertisements and social studies lessons, any time and every time I came across them, I realise what a purpose they served and perhaps, silently and unobtrusively, even in the midst of seeming derision, these messages served to knit the heart of the country together. Perhaps, those who listened and imbibed those messages inspite of every thing had managed to keep the country around and united all these years.
Those advertisements came to mind again after I heard of Harbhajan Singh being censured by first the Sikhs and then the Hindus for his act of ’glorifying’ Ravana through his actions on a television dance show recently. It made me stop and think as to how thin the walls of tolerance are in our country today. Of course, the morality brigade on Valentine’s Day has always been there but preoccupied these days by our following the increasing intolerance towards Muslims and Christians, we have forgotten the chilling fact that these days it is not enough any more to be a Hindu alone in this supposedly tolerant of other Hindu beliefs, Hindu majority secular country. No – indeed you have to be a particular kind of Hindu.
This is no defence for Harbhajan Singh and Mona Singh and their conduct. Personally, I would say that shows like Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina suck any way and ought to be condemned to death for their crassness, whether or not the duo purported to be Ravana and Sita jamming on stage. Besides, Ravana has been glorified before – by Periyar Ramaswamy of the Dravida Kazakham in anti-Brahminical protests and who saw Ram as a literary and religious symbol of bigoted racism and saw the tragedy of Ravana and Sita as symbolic of the plight of the millions of Dravidians in India who were stripped off their Dravidian (Tamil) language and victimised by the caste system as Shudras (lower castes) and Panchamas (outcast-untouchables).
Even concluding that Periyar was an unconventional man and an iconoclast, it speaks of the tolerance of the times that he was able to speak and talk and write thus. Besides Periyar, even in the main stream of Hindu thought Ravana was and is eulogised in places and even this year he was honoured and praised in Allahabad as a learned Brahmin following a tradition that reports say go back to thousands of years.Peering into the mind of the young ’jihadists’ caught in Delhi is a scary thing, for what you get there is not only a particular brand of religion that they practice but also a brand that refuses to acknowledge that there is any place in the sun for any thing that is not just like them and their way of life. Scary isn’t it?
Miley sur, mera tumhara, the advertisement or even the song might be passé, but I guess that the relevance of the song is probably more today than when it was first composed and sung. For even as I write and you read, almost everything around us is all set to divide, fragment and fracture that reclusive ’unity in diversity’ that we once so much took for granted.
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