Anti-Racist Politics

Priyamvada Gopal analyzes Shilpa Shetty's big brother win in terms of the politics of British Asian identity in the Guardian.

For British Asians, the public display of familiar battles poked at raw wounds, inspiring large numbers to protest. I would feel a lot more excited about this apparent resurgence of anti-racist awareness if recent years had shown more evidence of a genuine activist spirit among us. Where were these tens of thousands of protesting voices when young Zahid Mubarak died at the hands of a white racist cellmate with whom he should not have been made to share a cell? When a few hundred Sikh women protested alone at discriminatory treatment by British Airways meal supplier Gate Gourmet? When British Asian Muslims are confined illegally and tortured in Guantánamo Bay with the acquiescence of the Blair government? Why did only a small minority of British Asians speak up when "Hindu" criminals in the Indian state of Gujarat, to which many are linked by familial ties, raped and killed thousands of Muslims in February 2002 in an attempt at ethnic cleansing?

Too many of us have been busy unhooking ourselves from the collective term "British Asians" and dividing ourselves into Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The terms "Asian" and "black" were rallying points in the anti-racist organising of the 70s and 80s, whereas "British Asians" as a category has been largely absent from recent political discourse. Few displayed the outrage CBB has elicited when institutional racism in police forces was exposed. I can't help wondering where these angry voices were when a Sikh playwright, Gurpreet Bhatti, was bullied by loud voices within her own community and even subjected to death threats. Why is racial profiling seen as a Muslim issue? Where were the custodians of Asian dignity when crews filming Monica Ali's eponymous novel were hounded out of Brick Lane? When artist MF Hussain's exhibition was shut down because of vandalism by goons apparently representing hurt Hindu sentiments?

A large part of the problem is that, apart from the sterling work done by a few dedicated individuals and organisations, anti-racist politics has become a facile "representation" game that involves appeasing the fragile sensitivities of a vocal few claiming to represent the whole community. It is about harassing artists and writers, demanding that they conform to "right" ways of representing the community. Meanwhile, India's favourite cultural pastime is "representing the nation", the very task Shilpa announced for herself as she entered the BB compound. As India anxiously finds its place within the community of big global players and tries to reconcile its economic successes with the glaring (and often deepening) inequalities that still mar its social landscape and self-image, it is increasingly obsessed with disseminating the myth of the nation as fundamentally middle-class, professional and successful. The task has partly fallen on the feminine shoulders of India's flourishing glamour industry.

Talking of Racism

Interesting review of the Ugly Betty television show by Yeidy M. Rivero on Alternet, the author compares it to its original from Columbia.

I am an avid Ugly Betty viewer, but initially I was partial to the telenovela. Yo soy Betty la fea has a harsher, more direct approach to women's self-esteem issues, and I appreciated the inclusion of Betty's six "ugly" girlfriends-a support network, who loved her and admired her deeply. Through Betty and the cuartel de las feas (the cartel of ugly women), the narrative created a space for gender and working-class solidarity.

That said, Ugly Betty is an important and timely show. It brings forth a complex assortment of U.S. women's issues, interconnecting gender, ethnicity, race, class and, of course, dominant beauty norms. Significantly, the show also addresses the thorny migration question, indirectly confronting the anti-Mexican sentiment that prevails in the U.S.

Indian actress Shilpa Shetty’s experience in U.K.’s big brother is also generating lots of news both in India, U.K. and around the world.

Here is a perspective from Outlook by Sanjay Suri.

She has been called a "dog" before, she has been accused of touching others' food with her hands ("you don't know where those hands have been"), taunted and provoked— "Shilpa wants to be white", she is "the Indian", and did she live in a house or a shack?

That question has also opened up the divide between the way Indians in India and Indians in Britain view the whole Shilpa episode. India is looking at the racist face of Britain that Big Brother has shown; British Indians are angry that Channel 4 is showing it.... Shilpa is wily, but she is no guttermouth. This show is not India's problem, or any Indian's. It is Britain's. Feel sorry not for Shilpa but for those poor white Brits, because Jade and her like are legion in the country.