United Nations, 22 October
Special Envoy for Cultural Rights Karima Bennoune praised a viral dance video of two medical students from Kerala, but said its criticism reflects the dangers of “cultural mixing”.
At an informal meeting of the General Assembly’s third committee dealing with social and humanitarian issues, he said on Thursday that it pointed to a constructive way to advance the cultural rights of all.
“We cannot take cultural mix lightly in a world where attacks are frequent,” he said, citing the negative reaction to the video.
Bennoune said, “For daring to dance across cultures, the two youths received support as well as scathing and hate speech on social media, which may have been inspired by Hindu fundamentalism, even calling them ‘dance jihad’. ‘ also alleged.
After Naveen Razak and Janaki #rasputin The dance went viral, some shameless people tried to find the communal angle. His teammates from Thrissur Medical College decided to stand up for the two by posting another dance clip using the hashtag #hate against kadam pic.twitter.com/zPrZLtz9jB
— Andrew Amson (@AndrewAmsan) April 10, 2021
“The response to criticism from the students was: ‘We’ll still dance together’. This should be our collective answer.
“The only way to guarantee the cultural rights of all without discrimination in the 21st century is to constructively and vigorously defend cultural mixing and syncretism with an open and multiple understanding of culture and identity and respect for rights,” he said.
Thrissur Government Medical College students Naveen Razak and Janaki Omkumar dancing in a medical scrub on Euro-Caribbean pop group Boney M’s “Rasputin” went viral on YouTube.
The video that was pulled was highly praised and the criticism was drowned out by the support of the dancing future doctors.
IANS