Indian media of Canada

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A practical example will illustrate my point. Some years ago I was travelling on a train. At one station, a Sikh companion got down from the train and bought about 20 Hindi magazines. I was surprised that being a Sikh, he bought Hindi magazines and secondly, I wondered why he had bought so many Hindi magazines. He told me he worked in Tamil Nadu where he could not buy Hindi magazines, therefore, he had bought so many magazines, which would last him for three or four months. To the question, why he had bought only Hindi magazines, he replied that Punjabi magazines are confined to Punjab only, what to say of world events. Punjabi magazines even do not cover national events. Moreover looking at the size of the Punjabi magazines, they do not provide the money'sworth. Similarly most of Punjabi programmes do not provide the time'sworth. To tune to such programmes is wastage of time.

There are some good programmes as well. Asian Connection is a good programme, which covers the national programmes, and is quite informative and does not show slavery to English. There are also other good programmes to some extent.

The best programme from Toronto is Bhajanawali. Although part of this programme is in English, to meet the demands of the young generation of this country, the programme is good from many aspects. When a Hindi sentence is spoken, there is no English or Urdu word used in it. While speaking, the flow of language is fluent and consistent without putting any filth in it; the material is well researched and well thought out. Some items I do not like of this programme. The programme is about Hindu religion; even then, non-Hindus are paid very high tributes in this programme sometimes. The worst programme is by Darshan Sahota. The whole family knows no language properly. His daughter does not speak a single word of Hindi/Punjabi. When she is on the air, Darshan Sahota'sprogramme truly becomes a programme of slave-mentality and meant for mentally slave people. The whole family is in the broadcasting business for more than 10 years. If they are presenting a programme in the name of Hindi, then at lest these people should learn some proper Hindi. She must be understanding Hindi/Punjabi to some extent. She should encourage the audience to speak in Hindi to her, while she may speak in English. People who do not know English would know what is going on. The Sahota daughter has so far never made any attempt to speak in Hindi. Whenever there is any special programme or activity, then the programme is such that either the Hindi news is completely deleted or it is cut short, but Urdu news is never deleted or cut short. On Sunday one can hear only Urdu news, and there is no Hindi news. A person who puts himself and his family on sale?anything can be expected from him.

Now the question from all types of media from Toronto is: ?Why are you all mental slaves and why are you spreading mental slavery to the coming generations of the Indian people??

More than a 100 language programmes are broadcast from Toronto. Just for the heck of listening, tune to some other language and listen to it, irrespective of whether you understand the language or not, and then count the English words spoken in these programmes. In Arabic language, listen for hours, you will not find even a single English word used. Same is the case with many other languages.

Macaulay made a speech in British Parliament in 1835: ?I do not think we would ever conquer this country (India), unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for, if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them to be?a truly dominated nation.? Mediapersons are doing a great job in destroying the self-esteem of the Indians.

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