Inappropriate appropriation…
I am a little guilty too of cultural appropriation at times. In India, a stingy person would be labelled a Marwari, loud and opinionated a Keralite, all bling and glam would be a Delhiite /Sindhi/Punjabi, talking nineteen to a dozen and minting money would be our Gujju neighbor and that Math genius would most likely be your Tamilian brethren. I guess it is alright as long as it is in good fun and doesn’t scale to bullying.
So does the caricaturizing span across continents. When some of our Western counterparts mock Indians for not speaking English, I would like to remind them that it is our first language in most schools. You should be surprised instead if someone doesn’t know the language and also taken aback when the ones fluently spewing the same cannot bring themselves to speak their own mother tongue. After 200 years of having overstayed their welcome, isn’t it obvious that we would have picked up something from the Anglosphere?
The North Indians caricaturize South Indian languages in their mind numbingly annoying movies or even in their day to day lives. ‘Andu Gundu thanda paani’ isn’t South Indian or anything remotely sensible. Nor does Apu from ‘The Simpsons’ fit the description. I hear and see people comparing Indians to this Apu character. A hyper caricaturized Indian kid who speaks broken English with a heavily loaded accent.
I agree Indians do have an accent different from Westerners. We mostly stress on every consonant, just like the Americans swallow half of the same and our dear Brits sing their way along. So do the French, German, Russians, Middle Easterners and Scottish have their own diction. Most city bred Indians have a global accent, the kind you find on television or news media. In certain parts of the country, people do speak with a heavy intonation and I wouldn’t mind if someone mimicked them aptly but as of now most mimics have just lost the plot. The closest anyone has got is Trevor Noah.
Well, who decided what accent is right? Please do not say ‘Americans’. They in fact came up with their own accent and spellings for the simplest of words, knocked out a letter here and there, rolled out their R’s and not just called it ‘American English’ but also sold the idea to the the rest of the world for them to follow. And people did follow too, blindly so. No questions asked.
How difficult is it to write ‘Colour’ instead of ‘Color’? Even Medium colours a red line below the correct spelling of colour only for me to correct it to the wrong ‘Color’. You see, Indians speak the British English with their own twang.
Since we are on the topic of Color, I wonder who sold the idea of white skin being beautiful. Careful not to indulge in counter racism, I always found the whole concept laughable. Not the features, not the symmetry, not the personality but the color somehow defining beauty standards. Obviously white skin too can be beautiful, it is just not the defining standard.
Also don’t get started on Curry, we all know you guys relish it. Indian cuisine includes a lot more than butter chicken. India should officially disown that dish. In the last 37 years I doubt I have relished butter chicken more than once or twice. Equating that to Indian cuisine is blasphemous.
So, let us stick to what we know and learn to appreciate each other. Also in the world of internet, I am sure a few clicks would help us all better research each other’s culture. There is a world outside your well and that is where true empathy and appreciation begins and cultural appropriation ends.
