Subtle brainwashing.

My first reaction to Rang De Basanti was that the movie gives out a dangerous message. Just because our freedom fighters avenged a wrong by employing extreme means of retaliation, it does not make it okay to do the same thing now. Yes, the protagonists in the movie did not get anywhere by doing what they did. But it did portray them as heroes. Martyred heroes.

But I think this movie might not really encourage such extreme behaviour, as some fear, because I think that the average viewer is rather discerning, and knows that what they did in the movie was quite idiotic. But that is because it is a direct, in-your-face message. Compared to this, far more alarming are the subtle messages that movies and television serials send across every day. Nothing as dramatic and controversial as Rang De Basanti. But far more dangerous. Slow poison. You will not even realize that your brain is receiving those signals. It seeps into your sub-conscious when you are not looking, and corrodes the collective psyches of the entire nation.

Everybody can see what Rang De Basanti seems to be telling us. But nobody realizes what serials are doing to us.

Take the saas-bahu serials. Repeatedly, they send across the message that the place of the woman is at home, looking after the affairs of the house. All the protagonists are paragons of virtue. They look after their husbands and in-laws, cook and feed them, and act as the wall of the family. They are traditional, have a lot of respect for "sanskaar"(culture) - how I have started hating that word! On the other hand, there is the scheming woman who is invariably highly professional, or ambitious. She is bold, confident and always wants to have her own way. Her husband is either her partner in crime, or a weakling. Watch this serial for a year, and you will develop an inherent bias towards the bold, ambitious woman.

Consider any ordinary soap. There are no grey characters. Everything is either black or white. All emotions are extreme. Rivalry, jealousy, quarrels, infidelity, backstabbing, and what have you. Relationships are never straightforward. No word spoken can be taken at face value. Every word, every look, every action has to be analyzed to ensure that there is no scheme behind it. A harmless sentence spoken by a mother-in-law is contrived by the daughter-in-law to mean something entirely different. I wonder how many perfectly fine MIL-DIL are going down the drain due to "maybe this is her actual intention" thoughts.

There are hundreds of situations which give the same message again and again in every serial, every language.

A guy molested a girl? How will she get married now that her "good name" has gone? So get her married to that very molester.
Did you get married? Give up your dreams and goals, cross over from jeans to a aaree, wear your hair in a bun, and make the kitchen your home.
No matter how much of an ugly spoilt brat the guy is, the girl should be "beautiful, virtuous and from a good family".
Observe fasts for the long life of your husband. No matter if he is a first class crook. After all, being a "Suhagan"(woman whose husband is alive, to put it crudely) is the supreme state.
Send your harrassed daughter back to her wife-beating, womanizing husband, because a "woman's place is in her husband's home".
Got a child? Make sure that he always comes first in the class in studies. Any other talent can go to the dustbin.
Your mother-in-law, sister-in-law, or daughter-in-law, or any damn female in-law can never have your good at heart. All she says is just a farce, and her real "face" will come out sometime very soon.
Any problem or bad phase can be overcome by appeasing the Gods by having an expensive pooja, homa or havan.
If a character is afflicted with a life-threatening disease, he/she is most likely to die. All medical breakthroughs are coolly ignored.
Utter rubbish.

Such conservative beliefs, superstitions and myths, are being continuously drilled into our somnambulent brains each time we watch a crappy movie or a serial.

You and I are "educated, broad-minded", and we know that these serials are "rubbish", and we are "superior" and do not get affected by any such "stupid" serials. But you and I do not make up India. You and I are not the sole bearers of Indian culture. We are just two among a billion and more. There are millions of people who watch these serials everyday. Millions who are still steeped in ignorance and backwardness. These people need a positive example, they need to be brought out of the darkness.

Instead, these serials are just reiterating and reaffirming the blind beliefs of yore and pushing the masses backwards into the eighteenth century.

Subtle brainwashing, working beautifully.