I was looking at the photos from the recent Bhangra Blowout [thanks Amardeep] and was struck by the non-desi dancers in the photos. What confuses me is why I’m surprised at all.
Growing up, NYC was a giant thali of different cultural practices. Black kids did Kung Fu and Lion Dances, Chinese Americans breakdanced and rapped. Culture wasn’t “apna,” it was for anybody willing to put the time in to learn. I probably did as much Irish and Israeli folk dancing (yes, I’m a dork) as a kid as I did Punjabi folk dancing. I should be no more surprised to see a non-Punjabi, non-desi, dancing Bhangra than I am surprised to see a non-Latino doing Salsa, or a non-Korean doing Tae Kwan Do.
Still, I’m not used to it, and I think that other desis are even less used to it than I am. We tend to snark a lot about white people doing puja or yoga, criticizing their pronunciation, saying that they don’t somehow grok the soul of the practice. Well guess what – it’s not going to stop there and we ABCDs are hypocrites if we’re affronted. Let’s be honest, many of us sit here and learn the words to Hindi songs phonetically, just like the non-desi next to us. We’re cosmopolitan, not essentialist, in all other aspects of our lives.
We’re just scared that if somebody else can do these things, these things that we associate with our homes, cook our food, speak our languages, worship our God(s), dance our dances, sing our songs, as well as we can or better that we’ll lose our distinctiveness. That’s understandable but dumb.
Yes, I’m better at dancing Bhangra than most non-desis, but that doesn’t mean that I have the rhythms of Punjab in my veins, just a bit more practice than some. At the end of the day, it’s about talent and enthusiasm, not ancestry (and I cringe equally when I see most non-Punjabi desis dancing Bhangra). It just takes a little while to get used to the fact that these things are now … public, and open to all.
Related posts: White girls in Brooklyn appropriate Saraswati
Nah, more power to you.
About the word desi, its a new word that I’ve used to self-id. a solidarity word that means south asian. I’m brown, sinhalese-tamil, and its not a word that I’ve grown up with and is rather new to me.
We don’t use the word “Brown” to describe (South) Asians either…..
Jai – I thought that, at one point, Asians in the UK were considered Black. Did I misunderstand? Was that then but not now?
I’ve seen the opposite when it comes to non-desi wives marrying into families…I was sitting around with my mom and aunt, and she was commenting how when they went to her nephew’s house (he married a white girl, tauba tauba) she served them real indian masala chai. She seemed so impressed that this girl had made the effort to make indian tea, and hadn’t served them some wattered down version of the dreaded “tea-bag” or English tea 🙂
I commented that had the girl been Indian, and had she served them “just” chai, she would be complaining that there was no food/nasta served with the tea…
and my mom and aunt agreed that there were definitely lower standards for non-desi spouses (a white son in law who can’t take spicy food if more easily forgiven than a brown boy who won’t eat desi food for the same reason, brown boy is seen as fussy…and vice versa, a white boy/girl who enjoys and or cooks desi food is more valued than brown boys/girls who do etc…)
I remember that we used to have cultural programs at school during sports day, and it was a mixed bag, the desi students would be belting Kikuyu and Luo etc folk songs, and shuffling our brown feet to “black” music…and vice versa. It just depended on what your class had been assigned to do that year. It was fabulous.
there was also cross religious mixing among the Asians. You would see Punjabis/Sikhs and Ismailis at garbas at Navratri time, and Hindus and Sikhs at the Eid melas…
I spoke conversational Punjabi because we had Sikh family friends (or I would speak to the dadimas in swahili, definitely a shared language 🙂 But more often than not, most desis there spoke Gujrati (especially the older generation) because the majority of desis are Gujrati in Kenya…it was a shared language, and certainly the language in which a lot of business was conducted so people learned it. These days in Nairobi people especially young people speak sheng which is a mixture of many local languages, which is much like what is happening in many cosmopolitan areas in India…the idea that this makes one less authentic is ludicrous. No one owns a culture, no one owns an identity such that they have a right to say how it should be interpreted or how it can and cannot be changed. Culture is not a fixed object with set-in-stone boundries and a set of ideals that one MUST adhere to COMPLETELY in order to be “of” that culture.
And I see it as being no different to our brown asses going to clubs and parties weekend after weekend and grinding to hip hop….
ohhh I just heard a fantastic remix of one of my fave songs–Aicha (Proper Pak Remix)
now thats what you call fusion 🙂
Oh please please please! I have 2 whole versions of that song already (the original by Khaled and a salsa mix by Africando, I want to collect all possible versions). I know there’s a hindi version floating around somewhere, I need to find it.
Please tell me more so I can look for this remix!!!
I heard it on bbc Asia, it seems to be by “outlandish”???? any one out there who knows?
also I thought the orig was by cheb khaled
the song is my reason for learning (or trying to learn) french and the reason one of my daughters will be so named 🙂
Ennis,
No, I don’t think you misunderstood it. It may, however, have been a misunderstanding on the part of many of the local British population at the time (this is pretty ironic when you consider all those green-eyed, brown-haired, vanilla-skinned Punjabi & Pakistani girls around in the UK these days), although — from what I remember — I think it was also a factor of black people being more established in the UK (and the West in general, at least the US) and having greater political clout and, at the time, a much higher cultural profile and influence compared to Asians, so I guess Asians joined them in an unofficial “alliance”.
It may also have been a relic from colonial times, if Indians were homogeneously regarded as “a black race” by British/European people in those days.
However, this has changed in recent years, as the profile and influence of Asians has substantially increased in the UK, especially with the 2nd-Generation, and of course the numbers are significantly greater too as children born in the UK have reached adulthood and made their presence felt (as you probably know, Asians are the biggest ethnic group in the UK after white/Caucasian people).
Perhaps the growth and rise of an indigenous Western/British Asian “culture” has also contributed to the “de-coupling” from black people in this sense.
*green-eyed, brown-haired
I’m referring to those who are naturally like this, of course, and have not resorted to tinted contact lenses and hair dye 😉
damn those girls! 🙂
Go for it. Take the kids too 🙂
Btw, you are the mom of desis if they choose to identify themselves as South Asian.
“if your hair and eyes were real, i wouldn’t have dissed ya/ but since they was bought, i had to dismiss ya”
if you’ll allow me this moment of levity.
Ahaha, Siddhartha, so apt…”I asked who did your hair and you tell me ‘Diane made it'”.
ah but neha, you know you could make some $ selling your hair, right?
(i feel like this has been blogged here at some point, but too lazy to search)
that’s just a really funny line!
anyway, you’re never too old to learn a language, so teach them Punjabi. it can only help them to know a second language and that too in another script. it’ll boost brain power. For that matter, its a benefit and not a liability to be of multiple heritage….let the world be their oyster. I’m sure many people would relish the chance to be a part of two worlds so to speak
Siddhartha, not only does hair make money but weaves can also save lives.
Whoever started the debate on the word “Desi”…
I live in NZ. The Indian population consists mainly of Indo Fijians and Indians from India, and I must add to this – that the increase in the Indian population is very recent or as a friend of mine puts it: 1989…1 curry shop. 2006…100,000 curry shops.
To everyone else in the country: We’re just the “Indians”. Not Asians because to them Asians consist of people who are from China, Japan, Korea…well you get the point…You need to have the special eye feature in order to be called an Asian
Sorry about my ramblings… Now, turining my attention to the Fijian Indians, I think they’re more Indians than the Indians from India…much like what the kenyandesi described, their lingo is a mix of Bhojpuri, Gujurati and a lot of South Indian languages, but mainly Bhojpuri – which is a delight to the ears 😉
Anyway, I like to veer off the topic a lot, so back to the word Desi. A couple of years ago, when I had started uni, there used to be this group called UniIndian (I wonder if they still exist – a google search might seem helpful, but I am just lazy). Now these mundas from the UniIndian and I call them mundas because it was mainly run by “punjabi mundas” introduced the word “Desi” amongst the junta of the the university. Also it was the time when American Desi was a big hit down here. They also came out with their own brand of T-shirts, hoodies etc. with the words “100 % Desi” where the % was made of the map of NZ…So, back to the word…It just didn’t catch on…
We’re still just Indians for everyone…no matter what we like to call each other etc. Gujjus, of Fijians or whatever…
I spent a large part of my childhood in Africa…the country shall remain nameless…but funny enough, we were just “Indians” there too…
kiwihindustani:
Yeah, same here actually. In response to some previous posts where I was addressing the “model minority” issue, I had lumped us up within that umbrella term “Asian” because both East and South Asian Americans are the model minority. But really, “Asian” here means non-brown, slanted eyes, and the browns and yellows have different historical legacies and reputations in the United States. The brown skinned people are marginalized by the popular perception of Asians, so desis and Pacific Islanders will often distinguish themselves from “Asian American” by adding “South,” “Southeast” or “Pacific Islander” in front. It’s also why scholars and activists who want to be inclusive often use the term “pan-Asian” or “API” (Asian and Pacific Islander) to refer to the peoples of the Asian continent and Oceania collectively.
Jai:
The (non-brown) East Asians Americans began their third wave of activism in alliance with (or at least in emulating) the black power movement, particularly the Black Panthers. I wish I had a better understanding of South Asian American activism here, but I’m pretty sure South Asians weren’t involved in the ’60-’70s movements the way the East Asian Americans were.
Shruti,
Just to clarify my own background and comments in case there is any confusion, I live in the UK. When I used the term “Asian” on this thread, I was referring specifically to what Americans call “South Asians”. Normally I used the American terminology when participating on SM, but as someone had used the British terms and had addressed some questions to me, I replied in the same vein.
It’s interesting reading about the East Asian American involvement in the black power/civil rights movements in the US though, I didn’t know about any of that.
It’s cool Jai- I wasn’t confused by your use of the “Asian,” I was just chiming in on the ethnic label discussion 🙂
As per the East Asian involvement with the black power movement, it’s not something most people here are aware of, but there’s a book on Yuri Kochiyama’s involvement with the Black Panthers and Malcolm X– the first book ever written about an Asian American revolutionary. It was mostly in the first half of the establishment of the Black Panthers, as non-black activism became estranged once the “good” black power movement turned into a black nationalism that was not only exclusive towards other civil rights movements, it became oppressive to the marginalized members of it’s own movement (basically the women). But that’s a different story, and overall, I’m very proud of the Black Panthers.
Shruti, thank you for that link — fascinating reading, especially regarding who cradled Malcolm X as he was dying. We learn something new on SM every day 😉
Yes, all eight of them. Hmmmm…is the Punjabi population phenotypically different than the one in the US, cuz this is not my experience.
haha i cant believe they have pics of us on their site. i am one of the captains of psu bhangra and thanks for finding those photos. by the way, if anyone is intersted in seeing what we have this year, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua-YA2qgaew&search=penn%20state%20bhangra, is a performance at a cancer fundraiser at psu that raised 4.2 million dollars for kids with cancer, called THON.
apropos of nothing, RIP Surjeet Bindhrakia
(Horrified) F*ck no. Speak for yourself, Cyrano.
I disagree. I feel that non-Indians (they are not limited to white people, Ennis!), tend to “grok the soul of the practice” more than the external formalities like puncuation (of Sanksrit yogic terms) or cleanliness rules (of puja and stuff) that Indians may emphasize. Westerners tend to vibe more with the essence of spiritual practices, the heart of it all.
oh shit, that’s me-a friend of mine spotted this pic but seriously, glad to read this, coming from the other side of the coin, it resolves a lot of whats been nagging me