What does one say?!
Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 10:29PM Adengappa is on the receiving end right now. I completely understand what he is going through!
He is receiving condolences, sympathies for being Indian, amazement that every Indian in the USA made it out of the Indian slums, etc.
This is not a new problem and it goes both ways. Eastern perception of the west or the Western perception of the east (trust me, my Chinese grad school buddies have told me similar stories and this is not just and India USA thing) have the same issues.
In case you are not following this yet, let me give you some case studies.
Mottai or Mundan : We went to India to celebrate my daughters first birthday. As is the south Indian custom, we had our daughters hair shaved off just before her first birthday. We do not give haircuts till sometime before the kid is 9 months old and the first hair cut is a total shave and the hair is offered to gods (usually done in a temple). Grandpa says this actually helps hair take better roots and there is some hair health secret behind this. Nevertheless...
We come back to the USA after the celebration. The kid is a little tired after all the travelling. A woman at the local grocery store is all sympathetic to her. I didn't get it initially and finally figured out that she thought my daughter had cancer and was going through some kind of Radiation treatment! Why else would a kid get its hair shaved off ?!
Women who don't believe in pre-marital sex : This might get me in hot water and you might say this is generalizing, but based on the limited sample size that I have encountered, there are a lot many desi students who show up in the USA who belive that the average American woman accepts pre-marital sex as the norm and are genuinely surprised to find that to be not true!
There are Indians who don't know English : Yeah, seriously.. there were a lot of Americans I have interacted with who thought that all Indians were fluent in English, were we well "versed" in Madonna and Michael Jackson Lyrics as they were with Vedas and Upanishads. After all, why wouldn't they?! All the Indians they encountered in school spoke fluent english. One professor even thought all Indians wore a "poonal" or sacred thread. That really was something. That meant all his previous grad students were Brahmins and no one told him that it was a very small subset of the population.
All Americans are well educated : Even beggars in America beg in English and by extension, they should all be well educated! If you think this is a joke, go take a survey in the potti kadais and barber shops of Chennai and you will see that this image holds true. Truth is far from it. In India speaking English is a sign of education. Here everyone speaks english (or American) and there are people here who cannot read and write fluently but they only speak the language. The public education system here today is no different from the state of "corporation" schools in TamilNadu in the early eighties and people are just about to start chanllenging and changing this system.
Every Indian has visited the Taj Mahal : Just like the Eiffel tower shows up in the window in every hollywood movie that is supposedly shot in Paris, every desi is supposedly been to the Taj. This is almost something taken for granted by Americans. I am yet to visit the Taj Mahal and it is something to be "rectified". I also happen to have travelled the USA a lot more than the average American! Know a lot of Californians who have never visited New York or Washington DC! Seriously, I kid you not! Both India and the USA are large countries and not everyone in these countries has visited every national monument, tourist attaction, and yet.....
All Indians write software,
All Americans own guns and are trigger happy,
All desis are cheap and go to India everytime they need a root canal
etc. etc.
and the list goes on...
All Americans are war mongers : This one joined the list in 2003 after the Iraq invasion.
All of India is a slum : this has just recently joined the list, after Slumdog
There will be many more additions to the list over the coming years!
What does one do though, when faced with these situtations?!
Here is a tip. Do not laugh it off or try to be very witty. It usually does not go well in any situation in any country. Stereotyping is not something that was invented in this century. It has been happening for millenia!
Fifteen odd years ago, I made a remark that went something like "let me do the Indian rope trick or get on my elephant and go find out for you.." and it really rubbed the other person the wrong way! When I found out that the other person really believed that sterotype and the history books in China actually teach them stuff about India in a certain way, I was horrified.
Today's history and geography books in the east and west are probably teaching the kids a view of the other side that is not entirely true. Recently heard on the radio that there is less than 18 pages of total material in history and geography texts in the US about China. That is right, 18 pages for 3000+ years of history! Equally sure that the 200+ years of American modern history is seen as something that doesn't count as history in the true sense of the world. Yet an American very close to me taught me that it is not the number of years of civilization that matters, but what has been accomplished in those years. We would have arguments and he would come up things like "it took you guys almost 400 years to get Independence from the Brits and we did it in 200" and that would send me scurrying to the history books.
The best way to deal with it is to explain in a short sentence that their belief is not supported by real data and leave it at that. Remember, if you are visiting another country, you DO represent your country. Even if you have changed Citizenship, this still happens and you constantly end up reminding yourself and others of your nationality, and it doesn't get through!
As the world shrinks and communication is supposed to shrink it further as the years go by, we grow farther apart with myths and the blurred lines between real and real life which give us more organized sterotyping!
We can only hope for a better world, where more people are eager to learn about other cultures and do get to learn the truth, by traveling as opposed to a jaundiced and censored lesson provided by the press, governments and movie houses!
Happy monday folks!
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India, SSDP, USA, east and west, grass is greener, history, myths, stereotypes
Reader Comments (7)
Awww.. Sundar annah, I'm glad you got that out of your system before starting the week :)
Ammah says the more you shave your head as a kid the better your hair texture is, I'm going to agree with her. I think it makes the hair come out stronger, its just like men and their facial hair or even women with shaved legs.*shrugs*
This is one of my fave- when I tell people I'm Hindu, I've actually had people( I kid you not) say to me "oh so you speak Hindi or Hindu."
I simply see no point in trying to educate people like that. Its one thing if someone says to me actually, I've never heard of Hindu before can you explain but when people decide to be ignorant or just think they know everything, I just nod my head and say "yeah something like that!" :D
Our education systems have helped us put on glasses. And as human beings looking for shortcuts we tend to take it on.
Well, stereotypes reside at all places...Right here in India..
All of the South being labelled Madrasi with certain associations is legendary !
So is the stereotype of behaviour associations with Bhaiya, Bong, Mallu, Madu etc !
(Just yesterday i was catching up with a friend, who asked me if my wife can wear jeans in Bangalore ! For Ram's sake, i told him...all of Bangalore is not Sri Ram Sene !)
And by the way, its not going to go away in a hurry ! And it cant. I guess the more important thing for all of us, is to recognise its existence, and leave it at that !
Yes. Learning to respect other cultures and to be sensitive to somebody who doesnt belong to yours is the key !
That again is a long way off...
But then, let it not come in the way of having a great week !
Have a fantastic week ahead !
What triggered this outpouring, if I may ask? - I wish you write an article on these lines to the Merc or NYT. Seriously. No kidding.
Amen! Good for you for looking at both sides. People are more curious about India after slumdog. Surely that's a good thing! Look at it positively and use the opportunity to rebuff some of the stereotypes. As a Desi living in England - I get it at both ends, i.e. ppl in England asking questions about India and Indians asking questions about the English. It's all in the way you handle it!
Very true Sundar ! And funny too !!
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Nice article.