United? I don't think so.

"I think it's safe for me to say that the India Day Parade(s) in Edison/Iselin get worse every year. It's sad that instead of celebrating our unity and independence some people are fighting against each other for "power" and TV time. If they really cared about actually celebrating and bringing the community together, these people would put their differences aside for this one event and meet that goal. The South Asian community in Edison/Iselin was one of the strongest and things like this show everyone how "united" our community really is. "

This status that I posted on Facebook after the India Day Parades in central Jersey got a huge response from other locals. The truth is that although the supposed leaders in our community put up a facade of everyone being "united" we're really not. Or at least they're not. For those who don't know, Edison used to have one huge parade every year to celebrate India's independence. For the past couple of years some power hungry poor excuses for die hard Indians have taken over and made it a complete shit show, for lack of a better word. The parade has been separated into 2 separate ones by two different community groups. So now instead of having one combined parade and cultural show we now have two parades (which end up lasting like 20 min each), two cultural shows, hundreds of confused Indians, and a handful of really stupid power hungry people.  It's pretty sad that we're celebrating our unity and independence as a country yet everyone is so divided. The South Asian community has become a joke as more people do things for their own personal benefit rather than the entire Indian community, which is how it used to be. It's also sad that people, specially the youth are losing interest in our own events and celebrations because of all of these selfish egotistical people. Growing up this parade was all about being proud to be Indian and seeing everyone who you haven't seen in a while. Now most people would rather NOT be anywhere near the parade. Even the police officers in each town genuinely had fun at this event even though they were working and now you'll honestly very rarely see a smile on their faces during the parades. The cultural shows are pathetic. The one on the Edison side had all those uncles fighting for the mic and TV time and TWO dance performances. I'm sure the Iselin side was slightly better but that didn't last long either. 
In my opinion we, the youth need to stand up and take over. These uncles need to be retired and be shown how things are really done and we should be the ones to show them.  If things keep going the way they are, we're going to lose touch with our great culture and history just because of some uneducated guys that think they can speak English but fail miserably. I'm sure many other people who grew up going to this parade feel the same way. I want to go back to the feeling of seeing hundreds of proud Indians flooding Oak Tree Road again because when I was younger, rain or shine, it would always be absolutely packed. I want to see people on the floats again, not just 2 random uncles fighting to face the TV cameras. I want this to be a CELEBRATION again, not a popularity contest.
And one more thing I would like to add is that I want to see some healthy competition between the DJs again. This year as DJ's passed each others floats I would see them giving the most dirty looks to each other which was pretty pathetic.