From: sunder@altair.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Olympics Opening Ceremony
Date: 29 Jul 92 21:30:39 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: altair.crhc.uiuc.edu

In article <1992Jul29.202206.25010@u.washington.edu>, ngrjn@milton.u.washington.edu (V Nagarajan) writes:
|> 
|> 	Yes, we are a poor country. I think quite a few people have reacted
|> 	out of a sense of pseudopatriotism in coming to the defence of the
|> 	old country. But I think your reaction is kneejerk on the other
|> 	extreme. Isn't there a question of appropriateness? How would you
|> 	like it if your advisor were to introduce you to someone at a 
|> 	conference with a `This is Mr. so'n'so and he comes from a very
|> 	poor country'? What does Tian-an-men have to do with the Olympics?

If I wasn't wearing any shoes, or wore tattered clothes as a
result of my "poverty", it might not be so bad an idea to explain the reason
rather than have them believe that I am simply an uncultured jerk [which I
could be even if I was well-dressed, I admit].

I am not sure how my reaction is knee-jerk, given that I spent some time
thinking about the opening ceremony before I put my thoughts to paper...
er, computer, but we'll let that pass. Tiananmen Square is a big event that
many people instinctively associate with China, even as the abortive 
coup in Russia might be used to jog a person's memory in re the republics of
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. If this had been 1948, the Anschluss might have
been mentioned to ID Austria, or the Soviet takeover of the Baltics used to ID an
athlete with origins in one of those republics. The fact that it has negative
connotations is irrelevant. There is no obligation on the part of a commentator
to necessarily paint a rosy picture of every single country [I don't think many
Americans would have objected had he pointed to an athlete from South-Central
LA and made a reference to the riots]. 

I don't believe that Costas' comment is necessarily inappropriate, since it 
was not made gratuitously, but merely as an explanation for India's not
being able to afford too many astro-turf surfaces and our subsequent eclipse 
on the world hockey scene. If someone introduced Subramaniam 
Chandrasekhar as being from India the Poor Country, it would be  
inappropriate. On the other hand, if somebody referred to Srinivasa Ramanujam
and mentioned that he died due to inadequate health-care which he could not
afford, it wouldn't be [assuming that that was the reason that he died young --
I can't remember if it was]. As yetannudder analogy, I recall hearing something
about an athlete from Africa (Somalia or Ethiopia) who lost a lot of family
members while fleeing from the recent convulsions there. Might annoy an
Ethiopian/Somalian who doesn't want the world to know that his country is
getting torn apart, but certainly won't annoy a viewer who might be interested in
some of these human-interest stories behind the Olympics.

		  [some stuff irrelevant to my original point deleted]


|> 	(I am curious to know: did he introduce the east african contingents
|> 	as nations who cannot afford to buy decent running shoes for their
|> 	marathon runners?)

I recall some comments about Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African
Republic, and his having been sentenced to death after being responsible
for the murder of 50 schoolchildren who refused to wear school uniforms.
Funnily enough, that's the first thing I think of whenever I think of the
CAR or see it on the map (I knew of the Bokassa incidents before I heard it
on NBC), so it was a useful jog to MY memory at least.

|> 							- Nagarajan

-- 
Srinivas Sunder                                         sunder@crhc.uiuc.edu

If my employer shares these opinions, he deserves them.
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