Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday took to Twitter ‘condemning’ a ‘racist’ comment made by a Dance show host in a national television against a participant from Guwahati Assam.
In a viral video clip of Colors TV’s “Dance Deewane 3” , the show’s host-dancer Raghav Juyal is seen introducing a contestant from the North East while speaking gibberish, seemingly to mock Mandarin, the language spoken by the Chinese people.
When the judges, including actor Madhuri Dixit-Nene and filmmaker Remo D’Souza, ask him what he is trying to do, the host replies as he casually makes a racist remark on the young contestant from Guwahati Gunjan Sinha.
“People might not be able to understand her Chinese but they surely understand her dance,” the anchor is heard saying in the 40-second viral clip.
The third season of the show, which went on air earlier this year, concluded last month. The viral video has attracted sharp criticism across the North East. People in social media criticized the Bollywood and Mumbai based television personalities for hurting the sentiment of the people of North East. Srimant Barua, a young entrepreneur from Jorhat Assam, said that we have faced these problems while we studied out of the states. These should come to an end. We are as Indian as you people, he added.
The chief minister took to Twitter and said the “racist rhetoric” against the contestant was unacceptable.
"It has come to my notice that a popular reality show host has used racist rhetoric against a young participant from Guwahati. This is shameful and totally unacceptable. Racism has no place in our country and we should all condemn it unequivocally,” Sarma tweeted.
“Dance Deewane” was judged by Dixit-Nene and choreographers Tushar Kalia and Dharmesh Yelande. D’Souza featured on the said episode as a special guest.
While there has been no official statement from the channel as yet, anchor Raghav Juyal shared a video on Instagram in an attempt to “clarify the misunderstanding”.
“When the children come on the show, we ask them what their hobbies are. Gunjan said ‘I can talk in Chinese, I have this talent’. And we used to laugh at the things children say. When we asked her to speak Chinese, she started talking in gibberish. From there onwards, we would ask her to speak in ‘Chinese’ on every episode or ask her to speak in the language of another planet!” he said in the video.
