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Cultural aggression creating demand for Indian goods!
Al Helal Shuvo, thereport24.com, Dhaka:
The unhindered cultural aggression through open-ended satellite channels of India in Bangladesh is not just posing a serious threat to the indigenous local culture and its tradition, but it has also been creating a huge market for Indian goods and fashion wares.
With India almost sweeping Bangladesh in terms of a wide range of goods, products and culture, the general people are now in fear that the country’s rich cultural heritage like Jari, Sari and Bhatiali songs and also Jatrapala could gradually become entirely extinct in the future as an impact of the overwhelming spread of the alien Indian culture and ultimate market aggression, warned cultural activists and market analysts.
The country’s cultural activists and figures concerned have for the past few years been saying that no Bangladeshi TV channel is aired in India whereas Bangladeshi audience literally die for watching Indian programmes. In doing so, they are also being compelled to watch Indian commercials.
Speaking about the impact of Indian culture on Bangladeshi audience, noted cultural figure Ramendu Mazumder said: “Indian culture will surely dominate us if we ourselves are eager to watch their programmes. My question is why we ourselves take interest in their programmes? I would say this is one of our shortcomings due to love for alien culture.”
Indian soap operas dominate Bangladeshi households
Indian channels mostly air soap operas, popularly known as mega serials or drama serials in Bangladesh. Such programmes are not commonplace in the Bangladeshi entertainment industry that is why our audience takes an avid interest in those despite their unrealistic storyline.
Indian soap operas are in great demand among Bangladeshi girls and housewives as they mostly watch those as they have nothing to do at home other than watching TV. Commercials promoting Indian products are aired during breaks and it is believed that those adverts are helping to create a large market for Indian goods and products in Bangladesh too along with the cultural aggression.
Soap opera plots usually revolve around stories relating to the people’s daily activities and the cast generally, portray attractive and rich individuals. Family conflict, extramarital affairs, romance and tension are the principal emotions portrayed in the soap operas which hold the audience spellbound. This is the reason why the audience so easily remembers Indian commercials, other than that of ours.
“Watching soap operas is a kind of addiction. Those also play key role in bringing about changes in our society. In general, the people are more inclined to watch Indian programmes because of lack of healthy entertainment programmes in the country,” says Dr Ashok Kumar Saha, Associate Professor of Psychology at Jagannath University.
“Adverts are aired during breaks. This means the soap operas involve commercial plans,” he adds.
Soap operas creating apparel markets surreptitiously
A look at the religious festivities over the past few years reveals potential buyers are more interested in buying Indian clothing instead of native fashions like Jamdani or Tangail sarees, Silk of Rajshahi and other handloom sarees. Indian clothing lines are generally named after popular soap operas or members of the cast. Some of the popular names include Tapurtupur, Manabi, Love you love you, Anamika, Baha and Devdas.
“These dresses usually don’t come cheap. Besides, they are in great demand here in Bangladesh,” says clothing retailer Rubel Hossain.
“The general trend is that the more the name of a product sounds Indian, the more it will take off in terms of sales,” a retailer in Old Dhaka tells thereport24.com.
Apart from clothing, ubiquity of Indian products in Bangladesh is also noticeable when it comes to beauty care products and others frequently used in the people’s daily lives.
“The widespread popularity of Indian products is hurting Bangladeshi entrepreneurs badly. We have nothing to say in this regard as there is an association which will adopt required measures. However, if they want, we will extend our assistance,” says FBCCI vice-president Helal Uddin, adding that organizations representing the country’s TV channels should also come forward in this regard.
Indian cinemas and music dominate Bangladeshi landscape
In addition to Indian TV channels, Bollywood films have almost monopolistic influence upon the Bangladeshi audience as most of the youngsters prefer those cinemas to Bangladeshi ones. Instead of being entertained by programmes made in their mother tongue, Bangladeshis are quite used to watch programmes in Hindi too.
On Facebook, Bangladeshi youths are seen using images of Indian cinemas or TV programmes as their profile pictures. This has helped grow the market for Indian artistes as they performed in a number of concerts in Bangladesh in the recent past, resulting in cultural aggression public with mute outrage.
Mentioning the growing influence of Indian films in Bangladesh’s entertainment arena, popular artiste Raisul Islam Asad says this cannot be checked in this age of globalization if we fail to produce quality works then there would be demand for others’ quality production here.
“We should inspect why the people are more eager to watch Indian cinemas because we cannot force someone to stop watching those,” he tells thereport24.com.
Claiming that there should be initiatives to protect our own culture, the acclaimed actor opines the family could play a key role in resisting the spread of alien culture and traditions.
“Besides, those who work in the field of entertainment and cinema, they must produce works that are able to attract the youngsters. Only by doing so we can ensure a change in the existing state of our cinema industry,” he explains.
http://english.thereport24.com/article/4336/index.html
