Western Media's Promiscuous Hindu Women Upset Many

[Guest guest]

May 30, 2005: The portrayal of Hindus, and Hindu women in

particular, in the British and Western media recently offended

thousands of adherents of the religion, a rights group claimed today.

 

Hindu Human Rights claimed that it has recently been flooded with

verbal, written and electronic complaints regarding the matter.

 

"While complaints are quite common, what makes the current sense of

outrage peculiar is that the vast majority of complaints we have

received are from Hindu women born and brought up in the West," they

stated in a media release.

 

The group identify the BBC as the chief culprit with its new

programme Meera Syal's "Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee" which,

according to them, once again showed BBC's inability to provide a

positive portrayal of Hindus in Britain.

 

"Containing a series of cheap and insulting digs at Hindus, this

program continues the tradition of the Western media's denigration

of Hinduism and Hindu culture," the press release read. "In addition

to the ridiculing of the Hindu religion, there is the worrying

aspect of how this program reinforces deeply ingrained stereotypes

about Hindus."

 

Starting off with a stereotypically scene of "progressive Hindu

woman" being sexually fondled and who's character later insults a

much esteemed Hindu deity, they complained.

 

"We also wonder why was goddess Kali Mata, revered by millions, is

represented as being equivalent to evil in this program?" HHR

asked. "What was the point of the remark about Sita if you cannot be

bothered to actually give an accurate account of its Dharmic

significance?"

 

The message in these types of drama is that if a Hindu woman wants

to get on and be accepted in this society then she has to jettison

any overt or covert Hindu characteristics or traits, the group

lamented.

 

According to their statement, the woman shown as abiding by Hindu

customs is depicted as idiotic, naïve, suppressed, stupid and easily

fooled by her blonde-chasing husband and of course is given an

Indian accent (even though her character is also born and brought up

in the West).

 

"We do not deny that there are problems in British Hindu society but

then every society has their fair share of problems and yet how is

it that the only "Asian" community portrayed in the Western media

with such problems is the Hindu community?" the group questioned.

 

"It doesn't take a huge leap to work out the implications of the

message to Hindus: That your Hindu culture and heritage is not good

enough for this society and the rest of the world. Strangely enough

this resonates with the message given to the Hindus in Bangladesh

and Pakistan where they face extreme persecution."

 

Channel 4's "No Angels" featuring the nurse "Anji" played by Sunetra

Sarker portraying the usual character of the sexually loose Hindu

woman comes in at number two on their list.

 

They quoted an email sent to them: "are they are trying to say

she's 'progressive'? The only thing progressive about her is the way

she progresses into every man's bed in the hospital"

 

"Not only does this belittle the achievements of the many successful

Hindu women in the UK, who have excelled in every field (and who are

not only in touch with their culture but have found it to be a

source of inspiration), but adds fuel to current wave of hate crimes

against women across society that we are seeing in this country."

they claim.

 

"Is it any coincidence that we receive reports of Hindu girls

getting taunted and harassed in the street by men and told that they

are expected to behave like and be as easy as 'Anji'? We ask, why

are only Hindu women characters picked to portray 'Asian' females as

promiscuous?"

 

Perhaps the underlying problem is with the Western entertainment

industry's current attempts at political correctness, the group

speculated.

 

"In a desperate bid to win over minority communities, the BBC and

others have whole departments dealing with entertainment output for

minority groups including, for example, their own radio stations,"

HHR stated. "However, promoting the first Indian person with a Hindu-

sounding name as somehow representative of the Hindu community as a

whole shows how far out of touch the media has become."

 

"A healthy pluralistic society is based on an exchange of ideas

between its constituent communities," they asserted. "This cannot

take the form of degrading one community by abusing its sacred

symbols, caricaturing its beliefs and rituals, degrading its men and

portraying its women as sexual objects. Obviously this is not going

to bring communities together - if it could then perhaps the UN

should be employing the services of the porn industry in order to

achieve World Peace!"

 

"Hindu women who try and keep their culture in Britain are mocked

and humiliated as backward and regressive, with broadcasts taken

from the pens of Indians with Hindu-sounding names such as Meera

Syal," the statement concluded. "The time has come for this to stop

and the media to reassess whether it wants to continue down this

path of alienating yet another ethno-religious community."

 

Hindu Human Rights announced that the group is also planning to

arrange a day conference to discuss and address the negative

portrayal of Hindu women and Hinduism in the media.

 

SOURCE: Press Esc

URL: http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/156/