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B.C.’s Bollywood award show allegedly trying to avoid ‘brown’ guards, limo drivers

Those racially-charged award show controversies just keep piling up in British Columbia, but at least this time it is not the provincial government being accused of racial profiling.

The latest accusations is that organizers for the Times of India Film Awards — an event to be held in Vancouver next month, conveniently ahead of the provincial election — was seeking out the services of body guards and limousine venders who could promise no one of South Asian origin would be hired to handle the Bollywood movie stars.

The Vancouver Desi newspaper reported on Monday that several businesses have claimed that staff working for the award show demanded Caucasian drivers and guards because they are less likely to be “star-struck” by the celebrities.

“In several meetings in December they said they don’t want any ‘brown people,’” one company representative told the Vancouver Desi.

[ Related: B.C. Premier pushed for Bollywood awards before election: report ]

Times of India Film Award spokesperson Laura Ballance says the allegations of racism stem from a simple misunderstanding involving one employee.

She told the newspaper:

He was trying to impart … that they did not want people that are star-struck.

The group they’re bringing in had an incident a while back — not here in Canada — where they hired a driver who drove the celebrity to [the driver’s] home and asked them to do photos with their family before they took them to the venue. So they are very cognizant of that.

This seems like an entirely bizarre type of counter-prejudice, but it pales in comparison to the allegations surrounding the award show’s Vancouver origins.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark has been accused of playing politics with the Bollywood award show scene, seeking some sort of glitzy South Asian gala to be held shortly before the May provincial election.

Clark was reportedly in negotiations to bring the International Film Academy Awards to Vancouver in April, but organizers refused to change the date of the show and the province lost interest.

Clark’s government instead secured the lower-profile Times of India Film Awards, which seems to be the equivalent of trying for the Oscars and getting the Independent Spirit Awards. Or trying for the Olympics and getting the Pan Am Games.

The Times of India Film Awards is meantime denying that it changed the timing of its award show to suit the B.C. government.

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But why would any of this be happening? It all ties back to a “multicultural outreach strategy” leaked last month, which seems to cynically suggest the Liberals were planning to go after “quick wins” in the election by making apologies for historical wrongs against ethnic communities.

A glitzy, star-studded award show appealing to a specific ethnic community might also fall under the category of a “quick win.”

So in short, B.C.’s provincial government has been accused of trying to lure ethnic supporters and the Bollywood award show it is hosting has been accused of trying to avoid ethnic workers.

It would seem to be a very complicated time in British Columbia and Bollywood alike.