By Dr. Sawraj Singh
I have written about the changing equations between the North and the South quite a few times. I feel that the South is moving ahead of the North. I have talked to many people from the North who have been to the South and they seem to agree with me. Two recent things clearly show this trend. Bahubali, a Telgu movie, has beaten Hindi movies in many fields. In a list of the cleanest and the dirtiest cities of India the south leads in the category of the clean whereas the North leads in the number of the dirtiest cities.
My first experience of living with the people from the South was in Chicago. I did my internship in the South Chicago Community Hospital in the year 1971. Almost all of my friends were from Andhra Pradesh. I found them to be very nice people. This was the first time I was exposed to the term “Northern Chauvinism”. This means that some people from the North consider themselves to be superior to the people of the South. However, my own experience has been different. I have met many people from the North, from the different walks of life such as students, journalists, tourists, scholars and business people. Almost all of them were very much impressed by the South and they felt that the South was better than the North in many respects. This feeling seems to be growing. Generally, people felt that the people in the South have preserved their culture, traditions and values better than the people in the North. They also feel that the people in the South have been able to absorb the modernity and technology while retaining their own life style better than the people from the North. Bangalore, Kochi, Chennai and Hyderabad have all become the hubs of Information and Technology while retaining their traditional flavor. I feel that both the success of the movie Bahubali and the South in general being cleaner to the North have something to do with this phenomenon. The phenomenal success of the movie was made possible by combining the culture and the traditions with the modern technology. This gave birth to an Epic of unparalleled proportions on the Indian screen. Most of the Hindi movies have miserably failed in this regard. Somehow they have been unable to get rid of the notion that for absorbing modernity and technology, the traditional culture and values have to be sacrificed. Their characters try to match the technology rather than retain their unique cultural identities. I feel that there is a big difference in the way the Hindu religion is perceived in the South and the North. The biggest difference seems to be that in the South the spiritual and traditional aspects of the Hindu religion are emphasized whereas in the North these take a back seat to the political maneuvering. The religious sentiments are exploited for political gains. The result is that in the South, the original spirit and traditions of Hinduism are better preserved. I think that the success of Bahubali and the South being cleaner are somehow related to this. Another difference between the North and the South seems to me is that there is less difference in the South between the elite and the masses in the practice of Hinduism compared to the North where the practice and approach of the elite is very different than the masses. The intellectual and the spiritual gap between the elite and the masses is much wider in the North as compared to the South. No matter what criterion we use the South comes out ahead. We can use the Human Development Index, Literacy Rate or the ratio of the female to male population. In all of these the South beats the North. The big success of Bahubali and the fact that the southern cities are cleaner than the northern cities are likely to further tilt the equations between the North and the South in the favor of the later.
Dr. Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S. is the Chairman of the Washington State Network for Human Rights and Chairman of the Central Washington Coalition for Social Justice. He can be reached at [email protected].
