Self-respect starts at home, Mr Kohli..

I don’t want to detract from the intensely sad news emerging out of Sri Lanka however I came across this ad on instagram and I found it rather amusing. Anyone who has read my views over the years, will know my thoughts on this so there is no need to repeat them.

Virat Kohli is known to have an “arrogant” streak (I can’t confirm either way) but him doing this ad demonstrates the same judgement SRK had when doing Zero, When Harry met Sejal or RAone.

Perhaps I’m being overly critical but a little tact and a lot of taste will go a very long way in building an International Reputation for both himself and Brownitude (if such a thing exists) abroad..

As an aside King Khan speaks on India’s diversity:

I was a bit curious by the 100s of religions bit. MJ was telling us the night of our Jallianwala Bagh podcast that pre the 1880/90 census that Hinduism was cohered from several different schools of thoughts.

The complexity that is Hinduism is of course difficult to define as is Hindu and Hindi. The ancient Persians dubbed the land Hindustan, which then got applied to the indigenous religion and language. But Hindu means many things to many people and so does Hindi. I do notice that there is deliberate misappropriation of the label when Hinditvas conflate “Hindi language family” to Shuddh Hindi.

I’ll be doing a linguistics podcast on Friday with the gentleman below but this was a painful status. The takedown and attack of the Urdu language is probably one of the most heinous sins of the 19th century; probably was a Coloniser attempt to divide India after the Mutiny. It was a spectacularly successful policy and it’s interesting to note the one “Hindi newspaper” pre-Mutiny survived for only a year.

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Numinous
Numinous
4 years ago

Anyone who has read my views will sort of know my thoughts on such pieces and there is no need to repeat them.

Sorry Zack, but do you mind elaborating on what’s wrong with the ad (or Kohli’s judgment) for the unenlightened (like me)?

He does have a(deserved) reputation of being a brat on the cricket field, but I don’t follow his antics otherwise.

Razib Khan
Admin
4 years ago

why is the dude in a canada/pac NW like setting, but he has an australian accent that also turns indian? the whole thing is super confusing to me

SP
SP
4 years ago

Brownitude is a cool neologism — I hope it catches on. Senghor would definitely approve… now we just have to make it exist.

Prats
Prats
4 years ago

You are now tempting me to watch Zero ?

Btw VK did an American Tourister ad ‘with’ Cristiano Ronaldo as well. You might cringe at it more.

Saurav
Saurav
4 years ago

Ironic part is Kohli himself was embroiled (and trolled) last year in whole “Self-respect starts at home” thing when he did his own version of “If you dont like our cricket , why don’t you leave India?” when a fan honestly made a point that he liked Australian cricket more than Indian cricket

DM
DM
4 years ago

Well, why even listen to people speaking outside their expertise area? Why listen to Sharukh Khan on important topics if he is an actor? “100s of religions co exist.” – Ha ha…. Now I can sleep peacefully. I personally felt dumb to click on his video. For that matter why take even Kohli seriously outside his cricketing sphere. He’s a great batsman, nothing more.

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