Page 74 - EW July 2021 final

Postscript

Daly’s rude rajah Leblanc who wrote 17 novels and 39 novellas detailing
the adventures of this insouciant hero who made wicked
establishment grandees pay for their sins, and won fair
ESPITE OFFICIAL CLAIMS TO THE CONTRARY, ladies while always remaining two steps ahead of the law.
for ease of doing business or conducting an hon- The social significance of the runaway success of Lupin
Dest enterprise, post-independence India is one is that unlike black heroes in Hollywood and Western cin-
of the world’s most difficult countries. Even running ema of yesteryear — a dark-skinned Indian, let alone an
an education institution which by definition is in the African hero, is beyond the imagination of the braindead
public interest, is a very difficult vocation. Under Indian badshahs of Bollywood and its regional clones — who
beggar-thy-neighbour socialism, private school and col- were black-skinned but endowed with aquiline Caucasian
lege promoters and managements are subject to dozens of features, Omar Sy is uncompromisingly African — large
rigorous laws, rules and regulations legislated to prevent size, pronounced nose and lips, the works. However his
them — horror of horrors — making a profit, anathema in social confidence and total lack of racial self-conscious-
the socialist lexicon. ness is extraordinary. And the fact that this television
One would have thought that with the country’s serial has become a global hit, is proof of shattering ste-
1.2 million government schools ruined by interfering reotypes, receding racism and acceptance of the diversity
politicians and bureaucrats, the great Indian middle of humankind.
class would be grateful for the initiatives of philanthro- But as usual this awareness that handsome is that
pists, religious missionaries and edupreneurs who have handsome does, is yet to dawn on subcontinentals still
established 450,000 pre-primary to class XII schools mired in atavistic caste, communal and colour prejudices.
and higher education institutions, some of them globally Truth is if one can’t appreciate a Picasso, the fault is not
respected. On the contrary, India’s middle class parents of the artist.
community has also emerged as a hostile community
given to routinely harassing private education provid-
ers for suspicion of “profiteering”. Despite schools being Divine justice
locked down for over 15 months and having suffered huge
financial loss for providing, or attempting to provide, on- UBLIC MEMORY IS SHORT. AND TELEVISION
line education while also paying teachers and staff, most memory even shorter, not more than a 24-hour
parents are far from grateful. Pnews cycle. On June 14, few of India’s 403 news
This hard reality was brought to light recently by an television channels remembered that it was the first death
audio recording of a parent of the highly ranked Daly anniversary of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
College, Indore, roundly abusing a housemaster for his This promising young movie star’s death, initially report-
temerity to call him and remind him that his son’s term ed as suicide, transformed into a CBI murder investiga-
fees were overdue, which went viral on social media. That tion following relentless media coverage. All of June-July
the parent, one Hemendra Singh Dhar, a self-proclaimed last year, daily prime time news coverage on the idiot box
royal who threatened the housemaster in the coarsest was dominated by his alleged murder, with hysterical
language for “interrupting his breakfast”, is an old boy of news anchors pinning the blame on the late actor’s girl-
the school is a bad advertisement for Daly College (estb. friend Rhea Chakraborty. A year later, Arnab Goswami,
1882), in which the board of governors is reportedly editor-in-chief of the Republic TV news channel who
divided on every issue. Especially on ways and means to conducted a detailed media trial against Chakraborty and
spend the school’s Rs.70 crore endowment. Indeed radix Bollywood, was conspicuously absent from his prosecuto-
malorum cupiditas est. rial chair on Rajput’s first death anniversary.
Now, all this hullabaloo has come to naught.
Shattering stereotypes Chakraborty is out on bail even as the CBI investigation
has reached a dead end with the bureau having failed to
find any evidence to establish Rajput’s death as a homi-
HE PHENOMENAL POPULARITY OF THE French cide. However, since last year’s media trial Chakraborty’s
television series Lupin produced by Netflix, which movie career and reputation are in tatters.
Tchalked up a viewership of 76 million in the first Nevertheless, there is some schadenfreude for
quarter of this year, is arguably an inflection point in race Chakraborty and Bollywood. Times Now, one of the TV
relations around the world. In most European countries, channels at the forefront of the Rajput trial by media, has
including France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and had to eat humble pie. After film industry associations
Denmark, Lupin topped the popularity charts for several and 34 producers sued the channel for “irresponsible
weeks and was the #1 show in Canada, Brazil, Argentina reporting”, this channel issued a statement on June 22
and South Africa. In the US too, Lupin became the first that it will not air any collectively defamatory material on
French serial to enter the Top 10 list, and rose to #1. Sig- Bollywood. And Goswami, recently chargesheeted by the
nificantly it also topped India Today’s chart of the most Mumbai Police for rigging television viewership surveys
popular English language TV series for several weeks. in favour of Republic TV, has returned to anchor its prime
The factor behind the global success of Lupin is time 9 o’ clock broadcast after a long absence. But drawn
certainly not its wafer thin plot, but the casting of Omar and almost polite, he is evidently a chastened individual.
Sy as Assane Diop. Diop is an avid admirer of gentleman And his claims that Republic TV is the country’s #1 Eng-
thief and master of disguise Arsenne Lupin, a fictional lish language news channel have a hollow ring. Perhaps
character created in 1905 by French writer Maurice there is divine justice, after all.

74 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2021