Apu’s World

As a communications consultant who works mainly with small and medium enterprises, I do a fair amount of web content. Also, a lot of my work involves online secondary research, so that again means I spend some of my time looking at assorted websites. Which brings me to one question : what’s with this fascination that Indian websites have for white people?

Open up any website regardless of the product/service it is dealing with - IT services, education, craft - what have you, and chances are you’ll see a white person in a suit and tie or skirt and blouse, looking all thrilled and happy to be using the company’s services. Now, I understand if the company is catering to the global market, though even there, why we assume that only white people live in the US or Europe is a little beyond me. Ok, let’s just say its talking to the majority. But, like I said - I am often looking at websites by SMEs which are talking not even to a pan-Indian but a highly specific audience, say Bangalore or Western or Southern India. What’s with the white people then?

I am reluctant to attribute it to a lingering worshipfulness of white skin. Ah, if the white man likes it, it must be good! Can it really be that? I hope not. Maybe its a subconscious feeling that international = white and companies with international ambitions at some stage want to project that (the same reason why a novel set in New York is international but one set in India is Indian). Another explanation is that pictures of white people are simply easier and cheaper to acquire. India-specific images are few and sites like Imagebazaar which offer them charge a bomb. So perhaps that’s what explains the absence of brown faces.

What do you folks think?

p.s. The title was inspired by an old post of Amrita’s, Where’s the Indian baby?

apu In General

Designer Anand Jon has been sentenced by a Los Angeles court to 59 years in prison on a total of 59 counts of sexual harassment. Amrita gives a detailed account of the crazy manner in which his family have attempted to get him off at I’m a Celebrity, get me out of prison. While fully understanding that every family would try to get their child off, the kind of outlandish claims they’ve made don’t seem to have helped his case at all.

Last night, Anand Jon’s sister Sanjana appeared on CNN-IBN for what I thought was way too much airtime being devoted to this one case. Among the accusations she made were:

• The sentencing is racist because the police officer who arrested Jon called him a sand nigger (duh! do the cops do the sentencing in America?)
• Jon’s erstwhile business partner is behind this ‘conspiracy’ because Jon refused to allow him to launder money through the company
• People hate fashion designers, you know! (She did’t quite say that, but her conspiracy theories were so vague that they almost went in that direction)

What got my goat was the way she tried to discredit the victims. Now, this is not one person you can accuse of lying. This is 13 different women who’ve brought in charges of varying seriousness, but all related to sexual harassment. And some of them minors when the incidents happened. Why every one of them would choose to lie and point a finger at Anand Jon is beyond me. But of course, victim blaming is the easiest thing to do.

Among the things Sanjana Jon chose to come up with, Look, she was 17 years and 6 months old, how can you call her a child? But, here’s the thing: if the legal age of consent is 18, any age at all below that is still ‘a child’ for legal purposes. You may feel that 17 yrs 6 mo should be acceptable and I may feel that 17 years 8 mo is acceptable while a third person may even insist that 16 yrs should be ok too. This is precisely why there is a system-established age of consent. So that each person’s definition of what constitutes a reasonable age of consent has absolutely no bearing on the case.

At one point, Sanjana asked the CNN IBN reporters, look at them, do they look like naive, innocent women? Presumably, she was pointing to some pictures. To their credit, Rajdeep Sardesai and Anubha Bhonsle did not encourage her in that line of thought. They did not show the pictures and they did not spend time on what the standard is for being accepted as a naive and innocent victim. Totally irrelevant of course. If the women were sexually abused (and the court believes they were, which is what matters), whether they were naive or not is hardly the question. In any case, naive and innocent in legal terms is treated not as a question of morality, but in terms of age. Which is why the harsher condemnation and penalties for abusing a minor.

She also claimed that things had been ‘blown out of proportion’ and ‘it was just a kiss’. Well, a little sexual harassment is all right, I’m sure. Duh. Yuck. No, it’s not, and perhaps Anand Jon didn’t get this, which is why he is where he is today.

Update: Via Blogbharti, came across this excellent piece by Nivedita Menon on the overall poor handling of rape cases in India and why Anand Jon would love to have the case tried here.

apu Women & Feminism