This was a letter that I sent to a very well-known news channel. This was a reponse to some rather unwanted and ill-advised articles by the channel's reporters.
Dear Sir
It is quite painful for me to notice that a so-called "neutral" and "national" channel is allowing its reporters to indulge in writing provocative articles and ganging up to mock at a particular community in our country. I am proud to call myself as a "Dravidian", and nobody, especially those calling themselves as "Aryans", have any right to mock me because of my preference of movies or movie stars that I follow.
It is a known fact that we - Dravidians - revere our movie stars. Let me remind you that most of our Chief ministers have come from the cine field. I do not think there is anything wrong because Politics is not a profession and a democratic country like ours allows anybody to become a politician. We try to have somebody with whom we relate to, and we are even proud that we have chosen those heroes whom we think will repeat their on-screen kindness to real life. Now, the question of whether we have lost out because of having leaders coming from the cine field. We have come up fairly well, inspite of our so-called obsession of having filmstars as leaders of the state.
Our "Dravidian" state has done pretty well on all accounts. According to many reports, Tamilnadu is one of the top states in the field of IT, ITES, Manufacturing, Textile, Electronics, Agriculture etc., You might have noticed that the education level of people in our state is also comparable to the top states. Our state happens to be the one of the top tax-paying states contributing to the national kitty and also top destinations for FDI. I can go on but the point I am trying to make is that we haven't really done so badly inspite of our obsession with filmstars.
We are an obsessive, emotional and passionate group of people who are proud of our achievements, culture, language and ofcourse our filmstars. If you do not understand this, your claim of being a truly "national" channel may be a mis-nomer. Maybe, you can change it to an "Aryan" channel which lets its reporters spew racist comments at the "Dravidian" people.
Maybe, the reporters could be forgiven for writing the articles that they thought were funny. We "Dravidians" would like to forgive them for their insensitive, amateurish albeit racist articles. At the same time, your channel shouldn't shirk the responsibility of letting this blog be published on its site frequented by "Dravidians" also. Let us not forget that we all live in the same country and we have to do our best to build the unity rather than ridiculing diverse identities.
We have a saying in "Thirukkural" which goes like this - To those who have done harm, retort back by doing something so good that they feel ashamed of their action". Let me take this opportunity to welcome your reporters to our state, and maybe they will get a better understanding of their fellow country men, after experiencing the hospitality for which we are very well-known for.
Look forward to your affirmative action.
Best regards
Prasad Ramachandran
