BBC Interview with Amitabh Bachchan: Culture, Language and Popular Technology

The 62 year old Indian Cinema actor made comments today about what he felt about the Indian film industry - making the point that the word, 'Bollywood' was something he considered derogatory. I tend to agree, since it makes Indian film industry secondary to Hollywood - when the films themselves are mainly a comparison of apples and oranges. Indian culture is as alien to the West as much of Western culture is alien to the majority of people in India.

Like any cultural exchange, both sides take what they like. In the 1960s, Indian culture became popular in the United States - but only parts of Indian culture.

Mr. Bachchan was also asked about whether more English movies from India would help - and his response was reminiscent of the national pride that Mahatma Gandhi had when speaking about English being a non-Indian language. Indian movies, Mr. Bachchan said, are made for India - and a stress on English movies was something he did not see as productive. Of course, nobody spoke about subtitles.

So suddenly, we're talking about culture and language in the context of... technology. Not the technology of the internet as much as the more popular technologies involved with film-making.

Of course, if bloggers wrote in ????????, bloggers might have problems identifying even famous names such as ??????? ??????? ?????. And while I'm involved with learning Spanish, it's apparent to me that it's quite unlikely that I will be able to speak every language in the world.

So what will happen? Over generations, perhaps, we'll create a common language. But for now, it's up to the media stars to consistently protect and preserve culture and language within humanity's technological realm. The difference with the internet is that there are going to be more media stars that the Western World hasn't heard of.

It's the heroes of the masses that are stars. Perhaps that is the strongest message sent by the tribute to Amitabh Bachchan - the largest screen actor in the world that a vast majority of the Western world hadn't heard of before.