Northie-southie divide and language issues in India - Part II

This post continues from the previous post....

Conservative
Another thing I keep hearing from North-Indians, is that south -indians are very conservative. Well, I don't see why being conservative should effect communication between two people. Being conservative is just a preference that might be culturally motivated. I am sure there are a lot of north-Indians who are pretty conservative in their own way. Would that entail them to be rejected by their more liberal counter-parts? And what do you mean by conservative? Do you mean religious views, attitude on marriage, pre-marital sex, etc. Again, all these are personal preferences and mostly based on the culture and history of the region and shouldn't be a hinderance to communication between people or atleast shouldn't be a reason for a lack of good-will. Learning to respect differences in culture and attitudes would do a world of good. I am proud of the rich carnatic classical heritage in South India. I haven't seen many North Indians who appreciate Hindustani classical music in a similar manner. Does it bother you that people take pride in their heritage and you don't? All along, "being hip" in India, has meant following the west. Yoga became popular in America and a rekindling of yoga in India followed suit. Carantic and hindustani music has a great following in USA, so by calling yourself hip, shouldn't you also be following classical music?

Non-Natives and accents
I see a parallel between Americans and North-Indians. Both these communities complain about non-natives not speaking English or Hindi with particular emphasis on their accent gone wrong.
Well, to that my answer is..you guys are lucky bastards who have somehow managed to convince the world/India that English/Hindi is the de-facto common ground for communication.
I challenge you Americans/North Indians to learn a language that's not English/Hindi and see how you cope up with the new language such as yokuts (native-american). Are you able to speak yokuts like the natives(er..the ex-natives), and in the same accent? I bet you would come up a big zero on the accent and the pronunciation. Huh, so much for your crib on non-natives and accents.

Movies
Actors in south-Indian movies don't look as good as actresses. What do you mean by that? It looks like the crib is not about actors not looking good so much as them not being fair. South Indians are in general a little darker than north-Indians. The movies to be realistic should reflect the same. We don't have the whites-blacks divide in India, but there is the inherent prejudice for people who are 'fair'. South Indian movies, particularly Telugu and Tamil have outsourced their actresses from North India and Mallu land due to the 'fairness' factor. And, RajniKanth is a celebrated hero because of his acting skills and command on the screen, nothing more, nothing less. People who crib about RajniKanth suck up to popular media prejudice but I bet they haven't watched one movie in which RajniKanth has starred. Ofcourse, how could they? They don't understand Tamil. The good news is we are in the sub-title era. We should take cue from the popular sub-titled Korean, Chinese movies and do the same for our regional movies.

Have you noticed one thing so far. Most of the cribs I have addressed so far are by the North Indians on South Indians and their doings. I haven't seen many cribs the other way round in my interaction with gults and tam junta.

Reconciliation
Now, the question is how do we reconcile the language issue. One way is through more cross-lingual exchange, better portrayal of the communities in movies. Movies and media influence on the general public is undeniable. This issue is kind of a vicious cycle. Unless one side steps down for a while, the divide is bound to deepen. But the bigger question is how deeper is the issue? Does it matter at all, now that most people in India are familiar with English and its variants such as Hinglish, Tanglish, etc. The issue may just surface once in a while, so is it enough that we just discuss the issue and leave it at that. The point is as long as people are not open-minded, this issue will be a pain in the ass every now and then and hence needs to be considered with some level of seriousness.

References
1) Reconciling Linguistic Diversity: The History and the Future of Language Policy in India