A few days ago, former British Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, decided to leave the Royal family and all the titles, duties, responsibilities, and perks that come with it.
The Indian media went frenzy over the Prince and Princess leaving the Royal perks and it is astonishing and shameful! Since last few days, minute to minute detail is being provided by Indian media on the British Royal Family.
Just Google Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, or the British Royal Family, and you will find plenty of articles on the family and its members by the Indian media outlets. Not just the English media, who are Anglophile anyway, but the Hindi media and regional language outlets are also covering the latest episode at the British Royal Family in detail.
The English media has traditionally given a wide coverage to the British Royal Family, whenever they come to India on official or unofficial tours. With the people like Karan Thapar, who are self-declared Anglophiles, the frenzy over the members of the Royal family is obvious.
Given the fact that most of the English media outlets were started by or controlled by the British before independence, a bit of nostalgia over British Royal Family is obvious. But since the last few years, even the Hindi and regional media channels are widely covering the every move of the Royal family.
When Prince William and Kate Middleton visited India in 2016, the print and broadcast media left all other events happening in the country and focused on the British Prince and Princess. Every short detail, from the dress of the Princess to the shoes and tie of the Prince, was reported in the media. The lazy reporters and editors, who refrain from making any value edition to the trending stories, dig every ‘personal detail’ about the British Royal Family.
The British Prince visited the slums of Mumbai, and the media reported that, Kate and Wills meet Mumbai’s slum dwellers, who are some of the poorest people on earth. The movie, Slumdog Millionaire, which shows the poverty in India in very patronizing way, has received enough criticism from the anti-imperialists, but, that did not stop the British prince from visiting the slums in the patronizing attitude, just like the movie. The British Prince also played cricket in India, perhaps only to remind us that the game was a gift of the British imperialists, whose guiding force was the British Royal Family.
The frenzy in Indian media over the British Royal Family shows that the minds of the majority of Indians are still colonized, and they do care about their former colonizers, albeit in a positive way while it should be the other way around. Instead they should be asking tough questions on the deeds of the British Empire and the lakhs of killings carried out by British armed forces in India, in the name of British Queen.
A few years ago, when a member of British Royal Family visited India, and the then British High Commissioner to India, James Bevan, asked why they are so popular in India despite the black past associated with them, he replied, “Indians understand royalty.”
“You have your own traditional royal families, many of them… I think every Indian understands the importance of family. And at heart and at bottom the British royal family is a family,” added James Bevan.
This explains the sad state of Indian media, and to a large extend, a good number of Indian people, whose minds are still colonized.