North-south jaw-jaw

National fraternity is only skin-deep

Madrasi. The term people from the north routinely employed to describe their southern counterparts, figured in the film, Chak de, India. Remember how spiritedly the girl from Andhra responded to being addressed as a 8216;Madrasi8217;? This was something that I, for one, was very familiar with, being of north Indian descent but having lived in the south for a large part of my life. That, incidentally, is not the only stereotype that does the rounds. There8217;s a persistent one which maintains that north Indian women are 8216;smart8217; and 8216;modern8217;, while south Indian women are 8216;homely8217;, with neatly plaited hair adorned with jasmine flowers.

A few days ago I noticed an observation made by the young Malayali cricketer of the Indian team, Srisanth. He had stated that being a south Indian in the national team was tough. He too, apparently, was often asked whether he was a 8216;Madrasi8217;, just because he happened to come from the south.

On innumerable occasions during vacations to Delhi from college in Bangalore, I could never escape the inevitable tsk-tsking of some aunt or other, 8220;How dark you have become after being there! You look more and more like those south Indians!8221; The comment never failed to remind me of a joke I have often heard which goes, 8220;Why are south Indians so dark? Because they watch Sun TV!8221; The presumption of course is that everybody in the south is dark and everyone in the north is fair-skinned.

If the northerners have their obsession with skin colour, in the south most people are convinced that all north Indians are aggressive and impatient people, who are always looking to pick a fight. I remember the mother of a Tamilian friend of mine who was petrified at the prospect of letting her daughter travel to the north. She was firmly convinced that 8220;all the men up there are beasts8221;. And if 8216;Madrasi8217; is the common word to describe south Indians in the north, 8216;Punjabi8217; is the clicheacute; used in south India to denote people north of the Vindhyas.

And so the clicheacute; war rages. These broad generalisations go to show how unwilling people are to make the effort to understand their own country in all its diversity. They are certainly the poorer for it.