Vijay Deverakonda slams English hegemony, bats for Hindi and Telugu: We need to expand our kingdom
The Hindu
Vijay Deverakonda and Kareena Kapoor Khan sat down for a session on India’s cultural soft power at the WAVES summit in Mumbai
“This is too formal and serious,” said Vijay Deverakonda as he joined Bollywood star Kareena Kapoor Khan for a session at the World Audio Visual & Entertainment (WAVES) Summit, currently underway at the Jio Convention Centre in BKC, Mumbai. The pre-lunch session was hosted by filmmaker-producer Karan Johar.
The conversation ranged from India’s soft power assertion to Kareena’s famous affirmation of girl-power, ‘Main apni favourite hoon!’ Kareena’s films, such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham and 3 Idiots, have travelled widely, appealing not just to the Indian diaspora but the world at large.
“Many moons ago, I was eating at a restaurant and Steven Spielberg came up to me and asked, ‘Are you that girl in that famous Indian film about the three students?’ Kareena shared. Asked to pick one Indian film she would like to introduce to the world, she named Jab We Met. “It embodied the spirit of the young Indian girl. My character, Geet, had that spark and dream in her eyes that every Indian girl does. It will surely connect with everyone in the world.”
Vijay, suddenly turning formal and serious, slammed Western Imperialism for establishing a hegemony of the English language.
“I hope this does not get me into trouble,” began the Arjun Reddy star, “but I feel we need to expand our kingdom. That all of us are conversing in English is a big soft power win for the West because they came in hundreds of years ago and made sure all of us were speaking and writing in their language. Now it’s too late to backtrack.”
The Telugu star continued in an animated vein, “Because some buggers did this 200-300 years ago for whatever purpose, now Hollywood has the biggest budgets because all of us know and watch films in English. If I do a film and Brad Pitt does a film, he will get paid 100x more than me just because more people watch in his language. Which is not my fault but the fault of some guys who went and spread that language.”
Indian languages, he feels, have fallen behind in the global cultural race.
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