The Indian Crab Theory

We Indians can never stand the prosperity of another fellow Indian. Especially if it is attached with fame & glory abroad. This culture in India is called the “Indian Crab Theory”. You all may be wondering as to why it is called so. It is an observed fact that a cast of crabs in a basket can never come out. The crab that tries to climb the basket is pulled down by the rest of the crabs.

I have made many observations in the past years which prove its existence in our country. These are a few instances that I can remember:

Shekar Kapur is a well known film director. He is famous for making the movies “Masoom”, “Mr. India“, “Bandit Queen” & “Elizabeth“. We all know that his movie “Bandit Queen” secured him an Oscar nomination for the best foreign film. The only problem he faced was that the film was not being screened in India at that time. The Oscar’s have a rule that any film being nominated in the foreign film category must be screened in its home country. Shekar Kapur hence tried his very best to persuade the Indian government to remove the ban on the movie. The ban was not removed until the film lost its nomination. The film was then screened with absolutely no cuts.

Amir Khan’s movie “Lagaan” was fortunate enough to secure a nomination at the Oscars. Mahesh Bhatt started commenting that Amir should not go to the Oscars. According to Bhatt, this would degrade Indians. He felt that we were trying to get acceptance from the western world (Well he did not say it so diplomatically either). Most of the media scrutinized Amir for agreeing to attend this award ceremony. They wanted him to boycott it as he does at all the Indian award ceremonies.

Amitabh Bachchan brought the Miss World Contest to India. Being the host country has a lot of plus points. It helps other countries understand India & drastically improves tourism. This initiative should have got ABCL a lot of money. What happened was a total reverse reaction. All the women’s rights activists came to the streets & demanded that this show be stopped. Their reason was very simple. Women barely clad showing their bodies on stage was unacceptable. We as a country have had barely clad women in our films since the 60s (May be even earlier). We have been sending our girls to these contests since ages. We have continued to do so after all this hue & cry. The police at Bangalore refused to provide security unless he gave two crores for their housing plan. Amitabh was forced to do all this & ABCL booked losses.

Karnam Malleswari won the bronze medal at Olympics for weight lifting. She made us proud. That’s true, she definitely made us feel proud, but do you know why she got a bronze medal? Well the story goes like this: She could lift weights more than that lifted by the winner. Her Indian coach knew that. He hence told the Olympics organizing committee that she was taking drugs. They hence did several tests on her. This accusation was made repeatedly. She then asked the organizers as to why she was being asked to take these tests again & again. They told her that an Indian had reported this & so they were forced to take these tests. The organizers cannot ignore pleas from the home country. The tests were negative but this forced her to sit there for hours. She lost on her practice in the most crucial few days which made her get the bronze. (She personally expressed this on a TV show. This is not a rumour.)

We won the cricket world cup & those memories are etched in our minds. Yes that was a great moment in our history. The prestigious cup should be in some museum. On the contrary, the cup was broken by the Shiv Sena workers when they were agitating against the BCC.

IIM & IIT are the most prestigious universities in the world. There is a saying in US that an Indian studying at Harvard is a guy who could not secure a seat at IIM. We are respected all over the world but what are we doing to sustain this glory. We are introducing OBC quota & fee cuts to destroy its reputation.

BPOs in India are booming. The reason is simple. We have a large population that can speak good English when compared to our counter parts like China. China has hence taken the initiative of adding English in their school education. Children are being taught from an early age of seven or eight. We on the other hand are banning English medium schools if they do not add Kannada in their curriculum. The children have been forced to join some government school in the middle of their term. These children have become the scapegoats in this political drama. It is very much possible that a lot of children will fail this year.

Well… what can I say? We don’t need foreigners to beat us in games. We don’t need outsiders to meddle with our industries & our educational institutes. Leave us on our own & we will destroy ourselves better.

This is a very shameful state of affairs. We need to change our attitude. We should learn to encourage our fellow citizens so that they can truly make us proud by reaching new heights.

Posted in society.

By Chethna Shenoy – October 3, 2006

23 Responses

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Jiten says

Hi,
Each and every word of the post says the story…Appreciate it…There are many more examples…which are never ending….the irony is when indians meet in any foreign land they refuse to identify each other..might not be true with all…but with some yes…
We are a huge community and if come together we can be on top of the world…I dont want to degrade any one to go up as a country but I mean that if we help each other we can lead a respectful and lovely life…which is just 20-40 years…I dont understand why we have all those feelings in our hearts when we know very well that we have come on earth to share….
share space, share food, share love,share joy…..Anyways I am trying to seek the answer to this….I am sorry to make your topic little genral …I came to human instead of indian…

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sravan says

nice points you”ve got up here… very true and eye opening facts.

but the last issue which you have spoken about i don”t agree with that completely because, its not exactly a political drama to include regional languages in all schools. its in the best interest of protecting our dying languages.

i won”t say that there shouldn”t be any english medium, but the schools should also teach the regional languages, importance should be given for that also and

i think its needless to say how many languages we have and how great is each of them with in-depth literature and history and is our Origin, which everyone would forget if not practiced.

i feel its purely out of a helpless situation we unknowingly practice to communicate in so called ”global english language” as it is all over the damn place.

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L Kini says

This is ur best post I read today. I agree with u

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Kiran Salaunkey says

I agree Chetna, you have told the unfortunate story, its true to a large extent

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Lonely guy says

Good post… Everywhere there is politics in our country and we are used to it…your own surroundings won”t let you change.

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alpana says

i have heard this before and i do agree with the post…we simply are too jealous and cant face our own backfalls…

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gurupadaswamy belur says

Good introspective note. Not only Indian crabs, but Indian frogs also follow suit !!!!!!

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Jasir Alavi says

some crabby facts these ! but tru..

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Purnima Palkar says

I agree with u .. I have also noticed this many times.. experienced it too.. It is bad… Thats why more and more people are opting to leave the country when they get a chance.. This way I hope the Indian talent is not drained out ..People have to change if they want the country to become huge and developed like China for example..Nice Blog…

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gautam m says

Great Crab Pic - Great Title and great examples. But I beg to differ about South Indians especially Keralites. It is often said that whereever a southe goes, his villagers follows and in course of a decade the office and the locality away from home carry a southe stamp. Same is the saying about Marwaris.IN CONTRAST, the people of eastern zone are genuinely of the crab variety. And where situation demand, it is of DROP variety. Take an instance.Your relative settle down in USA or CANADA. On trips back home they sing swan song of foren land. Great Land. Great living. Great money. You begin your foreign dream. one morning, you call up your uncle to say that you want to settle down and need help. Next, 95 out of 100 Indian uncles” reply would be -” don”t come. the place is no more good.” Only that they don”t speak out that they cann”t be of help to another’’s career ambition. so, a parting crab who comes out of the busket make u dream and then act to kill your dream.

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ZEUS ZEUS says

“The Great Crab theory”…..an eye opening blog! I hope you do post some like this more frequently. The last few lines which was something between a reminder and rebuke was very much what I would have done in your place. Good post!

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Ankur Gupta says

I must Salute you ………This is really mindboglling …….

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Kanchan Bhattacharya says

Crab? Unless an effective merit system is in place, India has no hopes of making it really big! Ik, curried crab! KB

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Sridhar Byrappa says

Excellent post. We bring down our own. I have observed this behavior is in everyday life of common citizen. This is the only attitude that I can think of, that distinguishes us from westerners. They think of collective good, but we think of making it by dragging others around us down. Why? There is plenty for everyone � all we have to do is to work together to get the big prize. Instead we drag each other down, to hold on to our small consolation prizes. India can make it big if its citizens think big and think inclusive.

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sudheer kar says

Great Post Chethna!!

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shikha sengupta says

They say that a lion is killed by the worms in its bowels.We Indians are really responsible for all our drawbacks.nice post.

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Friendly Ghost says

Good post. We are our own worst enemies… But I wonder if people of other nationalities are any different. Regards, Ghost

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raj sharma says

nice crabs

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vishal rathod says

Absolutely…er..shameful? That was fabulous Chethna.But i love crabs!!! Lovely picture BTW:)

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Mridu Gupta says

amazing! you sure have given this a lot of thought. but this is typically INDIA! and if Indians won”t be Indians who will?! what we need is maybe-education/awareness? more than lip-service patriotism! or just good ol”Gandhigiri?!

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Annonymous says

I totally support ur intentions…….When it comes to our country and matters related to it, we should unite, setting apart whatever differences we have and work for it. The foremost thing to understand is that we are all inidans and only bcus of that are we relishing all the facilities that we have today and over which we fight with one another……wonderful thoughts

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Bhushan Agrawal says

Iam not sure, but i think the examples u gave, few can be considered as a deliberate pulling down (or the CRAB thing …:)..), but most of them have acted in genuinity. What i mean to say is they have acted for wht they have felt was right & thats the way it should be, one cannot encourage or endorse a thing just because its an INDIAN product, thats the way it works universally. Though i would still agree with u for the fact that one should not pull down the other out of jealousy, but should excel thru healthy competition …… cheers bhushan

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