Wake Up Sid

In yet another race attack, an Indian student was hit and robbed in North - West Melbourne in Australia on the 29th of September, reports of which are still coming in. We have been commenting on and actively mobilising opinion on the safety of the Indian students in Australia.Clearly more needs to be done both in India and Australia. However, equally shocking are the reports coming from Mumbai where a leading film maker was made to apologise for his characters using the name Bombay instead of Mumbai for the city in the film 'Wake Up Sid'. Incidents of this kind hardly project the right impression of India and the Indians in an interconnected world.Needless to say such incidents would not help campaigns for the welfare and security of students and other sections of society studying, travelling and living in various destinations across the globe.Within India this kind of identity politics immensely sets back our social, educational and democratic processes.

This kind of identity politics has arisen within the context of the advanced industrial world with which we are supposed to be integrating. We must remember that even within that world this identity politics is a problem area creating enormous difficulties for everyday life of the common people.It has led to riots and frictions in France, U.S. , U.K. and other countries. In Australia it had led to movements such as 'Australian Universities for Australians'. The dynamics of these politics differ from country to country. However in the context of the post- industrial society they seem to be marked by what a leading American author called the union of 'total commercialisation and politics'.This leads to 'one of the many ways' in which discourse and communication becomes immune to artistic and creative expression. The notions of Maharashtrians, Indians or Australians etc. are fixed as some kind of constructs in this discourse and are sought to be imposed. All development of meanings or history is cut off in this way. Human beings in this situation are reduced to these constructs and are vulnerable to the stereotypes generated by them. The 'north Indian outsider' or the 'pesky Indian student' are some of the stereotypes. The defining feature of the post industrial society is the dominance of technology. It is this dominance which identity politics uses to create a closed universe in which fixed meanings and constructs have to be accepted and internalised by individuals in order to survive. In other words multiculturalism is out and the individual is expected to associate with a fixated structure of institutions, attitudes, aspirations and he/she is expected to react in fixated,specific manner.Thus, one of the Bollywood filmstars actually said that her respect for Karan Johar went up because he apologised to Raj Thackeray.It is this internalisation of repressive and fixed constructs which marks the identity politics of the post industrial society.This could be even reflected in undemocratic state systems of the post industrial world which thrive on identity politics. The language of interaction which comes up here, is that of what the famous French linguist and semiotician Roland Barthes called 'intimidation and glorification' It is thus through the intimidatory tactics of Raj Thackeray the glorification of the Marathi 'manoos'(man) is achieved. Likewise glorification of such fixed identity constructs are achieved elsewhere in the world. This creates a hypnotic reality (as Barthes points out) and it is to this reality that we along with Sid actually need to wake up to.(SFC and PG of IGNOU with the help of Mr. Ajay Mahurkar and Dr. Dolly Mathew).