By virtue of being born as this strange little species called human beings, we are blessed with certain attributes. A pair of eyes and ears, a heart, some organs (and then some organs), hypocrisy, our penchant for stereotyping, and generalizing. I sincerely believe all human beings are hypocrites. Its just that their level of awareness about it differs from person to person. The less-aware people are so righteous and indignant about other hypocrites and while doing so provide the more-aware much mirth. But why do we do it? I have always been curious about the stimulus that makes each and every one of us stereotype, criticize the stereotype - within few minutes - recursively stereotype people who stereotype (like this blog post) and then criticize the person who stereotypes others (and therefore instantly become one of them). If I haven't lost my layman reader by now let me try a little bit more by proceeding further with my theorizing.
It is my theory that people stereotype and do all of the above to increase their sense of selfworth. Human beings are afflicted with the self-esteem problem. They want to feel good about themselves and they would like to, more often than not, reassure themselves that they are doing much better than their peers. It could be any peer. Someone in Antartica is as good a comparison as the guy next door. This is why Indians who migrate to western countries look down upon Indians who stayed back, Indians who stayback suddenly use patriotism to look down upon Indians who migrate, Kamal fans think Rajini fans have no class, Rajini fans think Kamal fans are pseudo intellects, both these fans put-together think Bollywood is trash, north Indians think all south Indians are dark people who eat curd rice while it flows down their left elbow, south Indians completely believe all north Indians are uneducated, etc etc. And then comes stereotypes like this
Vulturo declaring that all Madrasis are dark and ugly. To be frank, I am not mad at him and am disinclined to argue with him. The Maanga doesn't seem to argue with him either, but instead realizes the recursive nature of stereotyping
and just plays his own game back to him. I suspect the word
'Madrasi' here encompasses AP, Karnataka, Kerala and ofcourse Tamil Nadu. After all
gora-aadmi/vellaikaaran encompasses Greeks, French, Americans, Canadians, Brazilians, Russians and Australians. Our
indhi-karan covers every Indian above the Vindhyas. So no! I don't think Vulturo is in anyway wrong. Neither do I think this is going to be the desi-blogsphere's biggest flame war. But I am tempted enough to comment that he is after all human and is not much different from my
'Madrasi' friends. Should I talk about my Tamil friends who called me retarded because I happened to watch a Hindi movie (I watched one movie) or about this
'madrasi' friend who completely believes that all love marriages are much better than arranged marriages? Let me choose the latter.
So she had loved and married and so she wanted to reassure herself that she had done better than everybody else.
"I would never do an arranged marriage" - she would declare emphatically every once in a while, just to make sure her accomplishment reverberated to every corner of the room. She can feel her sense of self-worth increase as the Doppler effect on her statement decreases. She actually wants to say
"the arranged marriage folks suck, they are lower life-forms" but chooses to put a plastic cover on it and present it the way she actually did. Every time, I complimented some woman for her independence, career success or progressive behavior - she would be quick to link it to a possibility that the woman might be part of the elite love-marriage-society and every ounce of her success would be sourced to the single act of her marriage. After-all what was her self-worth when a woman who does not belong to her clan was more successful.
I know of another person who left his native village and migrated to Bombay. To him - the native place, his relatives, and the people who lived there - all represented a bad time in his life. He wanted to believe he had progressed in life. So over the years he developed a sense of superiority over every single person from that place. It was inconceivable for him to accept anybody from that place was good because that would mean he hadn't progressed in his life. While he made sure his children learned to hate the place as much as he did, he was quick to point out the emigrated-to-America people were traitors who taught those ABCD kids to hate his beloved country. He spent hours extolling patriotism to those traitors and their ABCD kids minutes after criticizing his old-relatives for being close-minded and cocooned.
This is just a sample of some of the popular stereotypes that we know. Ofcourse there are certain outliers who would knock the B'jesus out of you. It is self-worth ladies and gentlemen. The inalienable weakness of human beings to crave for self-worth. A primitive
want - to feel that they are better than somebody else. The
somebody-else could be anybody. You needn't have met them. It could be black people, white people, people who don't dress very well, telegu heroes who wear yellow shirts, H1B parties, people who do arranged-marriages, Bengalis, north Indians who do not speak English very well, south Indians who don't speak Hindi very well, cigarette smokers, people who are religious, atheists, suspect atheists, people who live in joint families - anybody. You are so desperate to find that one stereotype who will make you feel better than what you actually are.
