Do you think the pictures from India are racist?

[SerenadeOfTheSchoolRun]

The pictures published are so shocking and of course reflect reality but the press would never show bodies of British people in coffins, in the crematoriums, in ambulances or in their graves. There are pictures today of corpses with no wrapping being transported. They wouldn’t show a British person after death with no covering. Maybe all the pictures of funeral pyres reflect Indian culture and the fact that this is shown is in fact somehow the opposite of racism like an acceptance of a different culture without applying our taboos?

Although actually there was a bbc report from a hospital mortuary early this year with wrapped bodies so maybe it isn’t racism but it doesn’t sit right. It feels like maybe they think we can see this because the people are ‘other’.

Not racist but somewhat disrespectful.

I hate the photos of the funeral pyres used to scare the west as apocalyptic symbols of hell in Hindu culture the cremation of the body in this way is normal as they believe it helps to release the soul.

My friend went to India for a holiday, she saw 2 children die on the street from diarrhoea, no one hardly took any notice. The UK would be shocked too see dead bodies on the street, I don’t think India sees death on the same way.

@Baileysforchristmas

My friend went to India for a holiday, she saw 2 children die on the street from diarrhoea, no one hardly took any notice. The UK would be shocked too see dead bodies on the street, I don’t think India sees death on the same way.

This 100%

I spent some of my childhood in India in a 'nice' community, but outside the garden walls and gates your post was your description. Not about dignity, but a sad way of life that goes back forever.

It's sad to see the pictures of those people on British TV as if this is just happening now and related to COVID.

@Baileysforchristmas

My friend went to India for a holiday, she saw 2 children die on the street from diarrhoea, no one hardly took any notice. The UK would be shocked too see dead bodies on the street, I don’t think India sees death on the same way.

Oh my god, I couldn’t cope with that. That would haunt me for life. Those poor children. God this story has really affected me.

@Reearry

I do agree there is some aspect of it that does not sit comfortably with me when it comes to the lens with which the British media is covering the crises in India. It does reek of a colonial mindset of showing the suffering in developing countries especially a former colony without the dignity and respect that they had shown when they covered their own citizens

Completely agree with this. I presume the OP's original question was about British media's coverage.

So if we go with the cultural differences argument, why not edit the Indian terror and grief to comply with the media culture here? And the day-long coverage of the BBC on the Indian situation a couple of days ago? WTF was that? Brazil and the US had mass burials and morgues backing up. Don't recall this kind of grief porn.

I mentioned this on another thread but these images and videos are so dehumanising. This alarms people into believing the whole of India is burning down. That is not the case. Maharashtra and Delhi are bearing the brunt of this wave. A couple of South Indian states are showing signs of increased infections but there are still beds available down South and major hospitals have now upped their oxygen capacities.

DH's cousin died of Covid: she was in isolation for 4 days but was seen and admitted immediately when she took a turn for the worse. She was over 60 and had underlying conditions but I can tell you she did not die for want of a bed or medical facilities.

It isn't that we do not see death the same way. It is that the country has overwhelming infrastructura problems that a single person can't solve. If you are Indian, you have to develop a very thick skin because there is simply no other way to go on living. People may think we are callous. But we don't have the luxury of being haunted, tbh.

They’re using images and videos from local news agencies that’s why they’re so harrowing. The Indian media hides nothing. Even child rape injuries often get fully described to the point where many pedophiles say they were ‘turned’ due to the news. It’s disgusting.

The harsh reality is without the photographs or coverage there would be no support. Just numbers and percentages. The coverage was not about covid deaths but that the medical resources were woeful and people were dying that could be saved.

@Baileysforchristmas

My friend went to India for a holiday, she saw 2 children die on the street from diarrhoea, no one hardly took any notice. The UK would be shocked too see dead bodies on the street, I don’t think India sees death on the same way.

4m children die every month due to Malaria. But because those children happen to be darker skinned nobody gives a shit. I wonder, if Malaria struck the UK, whether people would make similarly stupid and racist comments about those deaths.

I have to say my friend will never go back to India, she’s not normally phased by much but that really effected her.

I struggle to see how this is racist - just because it’s unacceptable to show graphic detail in the UK doesn’t mean other countries don’t do it. Throughout Covid, British people have been shown in ITU’s and mortuaries, and earlier on in the pandemic the pictures from Europe were pretty harrowing, so I think the coverage has been in proportion with the scale of what’s happening in individual countries.

You only have to look at the content of some of the threads on MN regarding Covid to know that these pictures need to be shown. There is a lot of opposition to the lockdowns and other containment measures introduced by the UK government and some actually come right out and say that we should just open up the country and ‘let it run its’ course’. I’ve even read posts suggesting that Covid is nothing to concern ourselves with and should be treated like seasonal flu - nothing more.

The pictures from India are tragic and shocking, but let’s hope they serve to remind people of what we’re dealing with and to shut the conspiracy theorists and anti vaxers up once and for all.

@GrumpyHoonMain i’m sorry if I affended you, i’m just repeating what my friend saw. Yes malaria is a big killer, I find it quite hypocritical that suddenly we want everyone vaccinated but have done nothing about malaria.

I dont think its racist per se but media is forever driven by a need for new shocking images, we all get highly distressed for a while then its forgotten and we move on to the next catastrophe (unless its trumped by news of a new football super league) . Why do we not get up in arms about all the children who die every year from preventable diseases,cholera,other water bourne diseases,malaria,AIDS,measles? 2 million babies and young children died in 2019 from neonatal conditions.There was a cholera epidemic in Yemen in March that was predicted to kill 10,000 kids but we were rather more involved at the time about what was happening in our country. We are cutting our overseas aid budget that will reduce both clean water and immunisation programmes. India has a nuclear programme...yet 35% of its urban population live in slums. Children are still drowning as the migrant smuggling trade goes on. War kills many people every year and causes misery for many more. Life is pretty rubbish for many poor people across the globe but as a species we are very good at blocking at those horrors unless they are directly in front of our nose or on a screen.

As with China and Italy, the images are not coming form UK journalists, they are just reporting on what is being shown in those countries anyway and it's all available on SM to view and without the fogging out 9f pictures we see in our news

Here the NHS don't usually allow the media onto hospital wards, so we don't see bodies piled up. If it was in street we might. As someone mentioned, they have been shown in the past during strikes in the 1970s

@GrumpyHoonMain 4m a month? Is that correct? That’s obscene, utterly obscene. I feel very naive even to be reading some of this.
God we are so lucky.

@cls123

I dont think its racist per se but media is forever driven by a need for new shocking images, we all get highly distressed for a while then its forgotten and we move on to the next catastrophe (unless its trumped by news of a new football super league) . Why do we not get up in arms about all the children who die every year from preventable diseases,cholera,other water bourne diseases,malaria,AIDS,measles? 2 million babies and young children died in 2019 from neonatal conditions.There was a cholera epidemic in Yemen in March that was predicted to kill 10,000 kids but we were rather more involved at the time about what was happening in our country. We are cutting our overseas aid budget that will reduce both clean water and immunisation programmes. India has a nuclear programme...yet 35% of its urban population live in slums. Children are still drowning as the migrant smuggling trade goes on. War kills many people every year and causes misery for many more. Life is pretty rubbish for many poor people across the globe but as a species we are very good at blocking at those horrors unless they are directly in front of our nose or on a screen.

Agree with this, but I do believe that much of the current suffering was avoidable for the following reasons: India is the biggest vaccine producer in the world It has some of the best pharma cos in the world It does not have a good public health system, but it does have a pretty good vaccination programme for its size. Polio was a scourge in my parents time; it's almost completely unknown now. Anti vaxing sentiment is relatively rare. The govt got complacent and was actually exporting oxygen to half the world in Feb 2021 ( not to mention vaccines).

@GrumpyHoonMain the WHO reports 409,000 deaths per year from malaria. I wonder if you’re confusing deaths and cases.

What Flaxmeadow said -- we haven't seen these scenes from Brazil or Spain because as bad as situation got, it's not like that.

I don't agree it degrades humans to show them deceased & suffering. It's showing the real lived experience of anyone who might have walked by on the street & observed what was happening.

It may be those pictures of obvious suffering that led to so many offers of help from many countries. This is a Good Thing.

@cls123. I agree. We should be more outraged by these things, but I think that we’re more up in arms about Covid because it’s worldwide and right up in our faces with personal experience. I also think that the charity appeals showing these poor people in such distress can have an adverse effect - there are so many of them and for so many different aspects that I think the British public are getting fed up with what they perceive as being emotionally blackmailed into donating. There is also waning appetite for foreign aid because people see levels of poverty which need to be addressed in the UK, more so now that Covid has served to highlight the inequity - TBH I personally think it’s a national disgrace that in the 21st century the UK is seeing people reliant on foodbanks. There is a thread on MN about a poster on 31k a year who has to rely on Universal Credit to make ends meet because of sky high rents - partly aided and abetted by landlords profiting from the housing benefit system - the government is enabling this because there’s no cap on rent charging - no cap, no limits, so why not seems to be the attitude.

When you add into the mix that donations made in good faith to tackle worldwide poverty and health are being hijacked by corrupt governments and local warlords, it’s hardly surprising that people want to turn a blind eye to issues that are so difficult to address. Covid has given us something else to focus on. Sad but true.

I think as an Indian- and as someone who will have to return to India at some point bcos I am not a British citizen and have to take care of family in India- I am a bit angry at some of the scaremongering press about the variant. So far, there appears to be no data that that it is immune to the vaccine. Also, the variant India has is thought to be the one from Kent!There is a slight whiff of " Look at all these variants from dirty brown countries" when the fact is that new and more dangerous variants can arise anywhere. And no country is immune.

I think it's disrespectful because it suggests British broadcasters are treating images of Indian people differently to images of people here. They have different laws here and they could bring the footage in India in line with this, blurring images and so on. But they don't!

For me I think it would depend on where the images came from. I could see it just as easy to argue that it would disrespectful, even possibly racist, for us to doctor their images to meet current British cultural norms on this (though then there is the debate on compensating for such images).

Like the previous remarks about Sky news and Italy, I think that they acted there differently than they would here is disrespectful -- but many images that came from Italy were by Italians themselves who wanted those images out. Similar with India and other nations - I do think some British media goes in with a different mindset because of where they are and thinking that can get away with more, but I also think that while it's likely there is some debate about using those images, that I wouldn't feel comfortable if Indian news put out images that British media chose to use and then edited them - it would feel disrespectful and dishonest to me.

[quote Baileysforchristmas]@GrumpyHoonMain i’m sorry if I affended you, i’m just repeating what my friend saw. Yes malaria is a big killer, I find it quite hypocritical that suddenly we want everyone vaccinated but have done nothing about malaria.[/quote]
Yes. It doesn’t sit well with me that the Malaria vaccine could only be developed after Covid.

@Frequentflier I agree but we were made to feel like that here by Europe at Christmas because of the Kent variant, Macron wouldn’t even let lorries come into France it caused absolute chaos here. The Dirty little English and anyone who mixed with us. It’s only because our scientists are good at picking variants up.

Why on earth would you choose the term “racist”?

It’s disrespectful but not racist ffs, not everything a white person does is racist for Christ sake.

[quote Baileysforchristmas]@Frequentflier I agree but we were made to feel like that here by Europe at Christmas because of the Kent variant, Macron wouldn’t even let lorries come into France it caused absolute chaos here. The Dirty little English and anyone who mixed with us. It’s only because our scientists are good at picking variants up.[/quote]
You are right. I just hope S Asian people do not have to face the same attacks that Chinese people are facing in the US.

I said back in January that the only reason so many variants were found in the UK was because people were looking. They are probably everywhere.