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Celebrity Big Brother, Inequality and Hindu Nationalism in India

Elizabeth Finnis
Guelph U

In January 2007, episodes of the UK’s reality-television series Celebrity Big Brother sparked uproar in India, leading some to call for a re-examination of Anglo-Indian international relations. Widely covered by Indian media, the controversy centred on Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty’s conflicts with contestants living in the Big Brother house. Among other comments, Shetty was referred to as “a dog,” and derogatory remarks were made about her personal hygiene. Shetty’s initial response was to argue that these were examples of British racism towards south Asians.

While staying in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, I watched the fallout from Celebrity Big Brother unfold on Tamil, English and Hindi news channels. There were televised roundtable discussions by Indian academics, personalities and politicians on the nature of British racism. In the streets there were demonstrations, in some cases including the burning of effigies of the show’s producers.

In a relatively rare showing of cooperation and agreement, communist party members, the ruling Congress party and Hindu nationalists all took up the cause of Shilpa Shetty, condemning Celebrity Big Brother and demanding that her dignity be preserved. UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, who was on an economic visit to India, was publicly asked to clarify whether the UK was an increasingly racist nation. In some cases, the situation was referred to as a “diplomatic incident,” a term that more typically evokes military mishaps. Shetty later retracted her allegations of racism, but this did not end the internal Indian media debate over the incident.

External Racism, Internal Inequality
As with any incendiary news story, discussion extended into a public dialogue. Letters to the editor in major newspapers and scrolling text messages sent into television news programs revealed two primary reactions to the event.

First, there was condemnation of British racism against south Asians; Britain (and in some cases all of “the West”) was constructed as allowing, and even encouraging, racism. Letters included references to colonialism; others related racism to recent UK immigration changes.

My focus, however, is on the second trend, the way the incident raised considerable dialogue about internal inequalities within India. Public responses highlighted entrenched caste hierarchies and inequalities; others pointed to the gap between rich and poor, discrimination based on skin tone and north Indian dismissal of south Indian cultures. Do Indians have the right, citizens asked, to condemn attitudes in Britain when similar attitudes are held at home?

The mainstream media gave only minimal attention to this public concern with internal inequalities. News reports tended to focus on demonstrations and protests; alternatively, they focussed on Shetty herself, frequently rerunning the offending clips of Celebrity Big Brother. Journalists decried international racism, but internal Indian inequalities were largely ignored.

The Legacy of Castes
In contrast to the mainstream media, the Celebrity Big Brother incident provided an opportunity for Indian citizens to express their frustration with, as one reader of The Hindu put it, a “two-tumbler” system that perpetuates notions of untouchability and inequality in many aspects of everyday life. Although the caste system is technically illegal in India, it is not difficult to find examples of the ways it still exists.

While members of the castes lower on the social hierarchy (the government-designated Scheduled Castes), for example, are not necessarily forced to use different wells or drinking water taps in villages anymore, they may find themselves forbidden from entering the houses of people from higher-level castes. There can be workplace discrimination, and a division of labor that finds Scheduled Castes doing lower-paid, unskilled labor.

What About Muslim Indians?
Such debate about internal inequalities, however, did not seem to extend to non-Hindu Indian citizens, at least in Tamil Nadu state. Public reactions remained entrenched along Hindu lines and Hindu caste distinctions, with some attention given to socioeconomic differences that may or may not be related to caste inequalities. Despite condemnations of the “two-tumbler” system, Muslims remained largely excluded by those public voices decrying Indian social inequalities. There was no recognition that perhaps a “three-tumbler” system is a more accurate description.

Perhaps the focus on Hindu caste issues is unsurprising in a country where Hindus are the majority. Yet, the Celebrity Big Brother incident had been framed by the Indian mainstream media as an insult to all Indians—presumably regardless of any religious, caste and socioeconomic distinctions.

The lack of attention to issues of Muslim inequality was even more surprising given initial media attention to the findings of the Sachar Report. Tabled in November 2006, this report from the Indian government concretely demonstrated the everyday discrimination experienced by India’s Muslim citizens, including the fact that slightly over 60% of the Muslim population is landless; between 54–60% of Muslims have never attended school (versus a national average of 19–40.8%). The findings came as a sharp contrast to right-wing, Hindu nationalist propaganda that claims Muslims are a protected and privileged minority.

The report led to calls, such as that by Ranjit Hoskote in a December issue of The Hindu, for the need to catalyze Muslim participation in public life, rather than allow “other-imposed marginalization” and “self-imposed ghettoization” to continue. The lack of attention to Hindu-Muslim relations in the wake of the Celebrity Big Brother fiasco, however, highlighted a central point of the Sachar Report—that there is a tendency to provide lip service and tokens of inclusion to India’s Muslim citizens without truly considering their experiences, aspirations and voices.

Courting Shetty’s Popularity
In the end, Shilpa Shetty (who, incidentally, is Hindu) won Celebrity Big Brother with 63% of the public vote; this prompted some to say that their faith in the open-mindedness of British citizens had been restored. While there were claims that the incident did Britain a favor by forcing the UK to confront pervasive racism, I found myself pondering a question raised by one letter to the editor in The Hindu: What might happen if the same politicians who contributed to the public outcry vis-à-vis Shetty’s treatment took up the cause of internal inequalities? What if the demands that Shetty’s dignity be preserved had been extended to demands that the dignity of marginalized Indian citizens also be preserved?

Kashmiri Muslim bakers bake bread in old Leh Town in Leh, July 22, 2007. According to the Sachar Report from the Indian government, over 60% of the Muslim population in India is landless, and between 54–60% of Muslims have never attended school. Such news was minimized in the Indian media in comparison to discussion of the treatment of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on the British TV show, Celebrity Big Brother. Photo courtesy MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images

One partial and potentially problematic response to such questions came in the subsequent announcement by a member of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that the political party was courting Shetty as a potential candidate. The BJP is widely regarded as a Hindu nationalism movement that largely excludes the interests of non-Hindu, and particularly Muslim, Indian citizens. In courting Shetty, they were hoping to cash in on her post-Celebrity Big Brother popularity, on her image as a woman who was marginalized but who forced Britain to question contemporary attitudes towards south Asians.

Whether Shetty decides to accept this offer remains to be seen. Nevertheless, rather than serve as a way to critique internal inequalities in India, Shetty’s experience, and the national uproar that followed, is in this way being constructed by members of the BJP as a way to increase the popularity of the Hindu nationalist movement and win seats in future state and national elections. This excludes Muslim citizens in a fundamental way, perhaps paving the way for greater marginalization and inequality in the future.

Elizabeth Finnis is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Guelph University. Her research focuses on agricultural transitions, dietary change and the environment in south India.