For many of us this site is a place where we can explore the desi experience, not just as it plays out in news or culture, but also on a personal level. As a community we are coherent but not cohesive, united by a diasporic experience but keen to its many variations. What it means to be desi is still very much under negotiation, which is good: it means that we haven’t congealed, nor been taken over by ideological disputes or anointed leaders. This, combined with tools like the Internet which previous diasporas did not enjoy, has helped to keep the conversation open, generally productive, and most important of all, conducive to sharing personal experience.
For some of us, the idea of being desi comes with self-questioning built in, because we are of mixed race and ethnicity, products of unions where one partner was desi, the other not. I know there are a lot of people who read this site who belong to this group, and many more who are having, or are likely to have, mixed children. Among the regulars here who identify as both mixed and desi, the most outspoken in the past year have been DesiDancer and myself in the U.S. as well as Bong Breaker in the U.K.
Recently DesiDancer (portrayed here as a young macaca) and I began a conversation that aims to explore the experience of being a mixed desi in America today. It is also a blog experiment: A different format than usual, and a new way of engaging the many people here who have been so generous and thoughtful in sharing their stories. We are corresponding by IM and editing the transcripts for coherence and pace. And by making it a series, we can absorb your responses to each instalment as we prepare the next.
Today, in “Gettin’ Down with the Brown,” we talk about how we came to identify as desi when we had the choice of not doing so. Later we’ll discuss the ways we — and others — live, deploy, engage our “desi” and “mixed” identities in the world today. Whether you are mixed yourself, or the (potential) parent of mixed kids, or neither, your responses will help shape the discussion. (You may also share thoughts in confidence with either of us.)
So, here goes:DesiDancer: “Dude, you look so exotic… what are you?”
Siddhartha: Exotic, eh? Like you, I’m mixed. My dad is Bengali, and my mother is Jewish American. That’s why I am so “fair.” My aunties in Calcutta always liked my skin color, the fact that it was achieved through miscegenation didn’t appear to concern them.
DesiDancer: Do you know of any other mixed marriages in your family?
Siddhartha: My uncle married a westerner. He is my dadÂ’s only sibling, and older by a few years. He married an Italian woman. It was a little complicated for them, in terms of approval and how they handled it, and my grandmother wasnÂ’t too thrilled. But it ended up paving the way for my parentsÂ’ marriage. Beyond that, I think pretty much everyone else in my Indian family married Indian. I have a female cousin who married a guy who is half-Indian, half-German. They live in Delhi. What about you and your family?
DesiDancer: My dadÂ’s uncle came to the US, several years before Dad did. My uncle met an American woman — I believe at the university — and they got married a few years before my Dad came over. Again, it sort of paved the way for my Dad because when my parents got married it wasnÂ’t something totally new. I donÂ’t know how supportive or unsupportive my DadÂ’s family was… they were always fantastic to me, but IÂ’d be naive if I didnÂ’t suspect there was some talk behind my parentsÂ’ backs. IÂ’m sure it wasnÂ’t easy for them, but then again we lived here, and the family lived in India. As for my generation of the family, weÂ’ll see how it plays out — the cousins in India are all marrying Indian, but the cousins here seem to have a wider perspective when it comes to dating.
Siddhartha: ThatÂ’s an interesting similarity. How big an (Indian) family do you have here in the U.S.? I just have my sister — there are some more distant cousins but IÂ’m not really in touch with them. I guess I should ask how big your MomÂ’s family is in the U.S. as well, since I think you told me your mom was not originally American, but naturalized?
DesiDancer: Up until a few years ago, I thought the only family here from DadÂ’s side was us, and the aforementioned uncleÂ’s family. A few months after I went to India in 2002, I got an email from one of my uncles there. His English is a bit disjointed, so all I could understand was that someone in our family was coming to the US… or something like that. Turns out my dadÂ’s cousin was living in the US, with her family, and theyÂ’d been here for YEARS! So we reconnected, and they introduced me to the rest of the family. Technically all of my cousins here are from my DadÂ’s cousinÂ’s husbandÂ’s side (does that make sense?) but it doesnÂ’t really matter to any of us — weÂ’re more like siblings than anything else. So now I think I could count about 8 cousins, in the rediscovered family, and 3 sets of aunts and uncles. We lost our grandfather last year, but there were 4 generations living here — and unbeknownst to me. My momÂ’s family is in Canada and some are in the US, but thereÂ’s such a huge age gap between me and my cousins on that side… I think itÂ’s 14 years between me and the next oldest (not counting my brother and sister, of course). How about you — is there a lot of family from your momÂ’s side here?
Siddhartha: There is, but IÂ’m not close to that many of them. My cousins are a lot younger than me. A similar situation. Then you get to second cousins and whatnot. I guess what this makes me realize is that IÂ’ve always lived mixedness my own way, by improvisation; I was never part of a “mixed” self-identified community, let alone one with my particular mix. All this being underscored by the fact that I spent most of my childhood years in a third country that was neither my momÂ’s nor my dadÂ’s — France — and further, that I am a bit older than the big wave of desi Americans, since I was born in 1967. So itÂ’s always been a bit of a solo thing, shared only by my sister.
DesiDancer: I was actually just going to ask you that: how did you and your sister identify with your heritage? My brother and sister donÂ’t seem to identify as “mixed” or “Indian”… and itÂ’s never really something weÂ’ve had much dialogue about. I think part of it may be the age differences, and part of it I think might be because I went to India when I was 2, whereas they never went… I wonder if somehow it made such an impression on me that I felt somehow more impelled to get down with my brownÂ…
Siddhartha: Yes, you do seem to be more “down with your brown” than I think I am. But then again, we know each other from SM, which is a place where people are doing just that, so itÂ’s hard to judge. But… I think weÂ’ve always thought of ourselves as Indian, or at least semi-Indian. We too both got to go to India at a young age, I was 6 the first time I went, and she was 1 or 2 the first time she did. On the other hand, we didnÂ’t have any kind of Indian community around us outside of India. We just had what came through my parents, which was my dadÂ’s Hindustani classical music collection, my momÂ’s immersion in learning to cook Indian food, my dadÂ’s general politics and, dare I say, patriotism (he still has just his Indian passport to this day), and the trips back. So there are tons of things I had no exposure to whatsoever. To this day I donÂ’t know a damn thing about Bollywood, or bhangra for that matter.
DesiDancer: For me, all of the brownness was a relatively recent discovery, in my mid-20s or so. I mean, we were aware that we were brown, but growing up in the Midwest, in the 70s and 80s… there wasnÂ’t any Indian community for us to interact with. We had a few 78 records that my Dad had brought over (kidsÂ’ songs and stuff), but for the most part I think the climate when my dad came to the US was more to assimilate than to hold onto their native cultures. Once in a while heÂ’d hit up the Indian grocery and go on a cooking spree, so we knew what dosa and pakoras and stuff were, but we didnÂ’t learn Hindi or grow up watching desi movies, or even celebrating the holidays. I knew what Diwali and Holi were… but we didnÂ’t do anything about it. For years my buas sent rakhi to my dad, airmail. My sister and I would swipe them because they were such pretty bracelets, but we never bought rakhi for our brother.
Siddhartha: So, if you didn’t grow up self-consciously Indian, how would you describe the cultural atmosphere in your home growing up? And how did the notion of brownness—or non-whiteness—come into play?
DesiDancer: Ooh, good question. Because there was more of my momÂ’s family around than dadÂ’s, we celebrated all the usual—Xmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. We were around my maternal grandparents and aunts/uncles a lot more, so we just sort of did what they did. I think my dadÂ’s family was maybe out-of-sight-out-of-mind? We had picture books on India, some Indian art around the house, and my mom even tried to get us childrenÂ’s books with Indian protagonists… But generally speaking we were raised in an Americanized household, for the most part. While thereÂ’s no denying that the 3 of us are brown (one of these things is not like the other) it wasnÂ’t really a factor for us in shaping our childhood identities. Sure you get some idiot in school who wants to know your story, and then either asks if your dad wears a towel on his head, or your mom wears a dot… or they pat their hand over their mouth and do the idiotic rain dance (not that kind of Indian, yo!)… But we didnÂ’t really dwell on it much.
Siddhartha: How about the name thing. You and I both have Indian names. My sister does as well and I imagine your siblings too? Did that get you questions about your origins, and how did you relate to your name as a marker of your identity?
DesiDancer: We all have Indian first names and Angrezi middle names. Which seems to suggest that at the time, my parents were very much about the biculturalism. The name was both a badge and a curse. Obviously I look sort of Indian, so it seemed to “match” that I had an Indian name. But oh my god the teachers in school just could not seem to get the hang of my name! I got called everything, all sorts of mutations and mispronunciations. I think around 7th grade, when kids start to get really vicious, and we all just really want to fit in and conceal our awkwardness I started asking people to call me an Americanized nickname version of my name (Re)… it just seemed easier because at that age I really didnÂ’t want to get into a diction lesson every time they called roll in school. It seemed to stick well because I was a tomboy. But my family always called me by my given name. How about for you? Your name was probably much more of a challenge than mine.
Siddhartha: True dat. I actually don’t have a middle name. I guess my name was a challenge but growing up in France, it didn’t seem to bother my friends and my teachers. They used my full name, just pronounced it as if it were a French name with no effort to learn the “authentic” pronunciation. When I came back to the U.S. for college, that’s when two things happened: 1) Some people became interested in the “authentic” pronunciation, but also 2) Everyone else started calling me Sid.
DesiDancer: Blame “Dil Chahta Hai.” Do you not like “Sid”?
Siddhartha: IÂ’ve written on Sepia before about my struggles with “Sid” or “Sidd” — how I eventually gave into it, used it myself, and it took me years to realize that I could do something about it. I reclaimed it first in my professional life, and then eventually I got everyone in my world to revert to my full name. I sent an email to all my friends, and I got lots of support, as well as other people testifying about their own name issues. Interestingly, after I wrote my post, on that thread everyone called me by my full name, and since then all these people have been using Sid! But itÂ’s one of those things, once youÂ’ve made the effort to reclaim your name, it no longer matters that much what people call you. ItÂ’s no longer that big a deal.
DesiDancer: True. I reverted back to my full name, when I moved to NYC. I figured with a city as diverse as NYC, I wasnÂ’t going to have the freakiest name, so it wasnÂ’t unreasonable to expect people to pronounce it correctly. I still have some girlfriends who call me Re. But itÂ’s contextual — itÂ’s how we know each other — so it doesnÂ’t bother me, but even they try to switch it up. But when I meet new people, I use my full name. I have a friend who was nicknamed “Rick” for years upon years, and heÂ’s tried reclaiming “Rakesh” for at least the last 2 years. It wonÂ’t stick, because all his boyz always call him Rick and refuse to switch. ItÂ’s probably a bit frustrating…
Siddhartha: I bet. If he really wants to switch and his boys wonÂ’t let him, theyÂ’re jerks. So, letÂ’s talk a bit about the process of getting down with the brown. Can you identify the key moments/stages for you?
DesiDancer: Well, I always kind of had the “pull” from India. I donÂ’t know if itÂ’s because IÂ’m the oldest, because IÂ’m a girl, or because I went there when I was young enough to have retained impressions of the trip. And I can see photos of myself in India… I remember people or things… so I always asked about India as a kid, and wanted to go back. But after junior high school (and the great name change) I didnÂ’t really actively pursue the topic much. It was in the back of my mind, but I was probably more concerned with fitting in than pushing the issue…
Siddhartha: So, did things start to happen in college?
DesiDancer: After. My big a-ha moment, as Oprah likes to call them, was around 2001. I went to visit my DadÂ’s uncle & aunt and we were watching a home movie of uncleÂ’s last trip to India. He had gone to a wedding and had run into one of my DadÂ’s younger brothers. So we were watching this tape and my chacha came on screen… My DadÂ’s aunt asked me, “When was the last time you went to India?” and I told her, when I was 2… She immediately stomped her foot and directed her husband to take me to India that fall — he was planning on going back anyway. It was kind of the green light I needed to jump into the discovery of brownness. It wasnÂ’t that it was off-limits or a no-no topic in our house, but we were told 100 times over that we werenÂ’t going to visit India, ever. So I forgot about it as a possibility until that conversation with my dadÂ’s aunt & uncle. I spent the next 8 months trying to contact family in India.
We hadnÂ’t really kept in touch with people there, but my DadÂ’s uncle found the address for our family house in Dehradun, so we sent an aerogram over and waited to see if anybody wrote back. My Chacha still lives in my DadajiÂ’s house, and so he emailed us both back, and also sent me the email addresses for my cousins. When I went to India at 2, I only had one cousin who is 4 months younger than I am. Since then, I have 10 cousins, all slightly younger than me (20-29) and I had no idea! I started emailing with a few of them, and it was really the coolest, most welcoming experience. My cousins have a lot to do with why IÂ’m so fond of my family and of India. They were so enthusiastic and awesome — we emailed all the time, back and forth, and right around then IÂ’d started trying to watch Bollywood movies (I think Lagaan and Monsoon Wedding had just come out, and I was SO thrilled to see an entire movie with brown people in it) and learn some Hindi. So even before I went to India, IÂ’d started bonding with my cousins over email. WeÂ’d send pictures to each other, my one cousin is an artist so she scanned in some of her work and emailed it to me, weÂ’d argue over SRK and Hrithik, and because they were so open with me, it was really easy to ask my most ridiculous questions and not feel stupid for it.
And when I did go to India that fall, it was the most amazing thing — despite having never met my cousins, I truly felt like we werenÂ’t meeting as strangers because weÂ’d bonded so much before I got there. IÂ’d tried to learn some Hindi, and they were great about teaching me the slang or not making fun of my crappy grammar, and we just had the best month together! It was almost as if weÂ’d grown up together… and because of that weÂ’ve been able to keep in touch for the last four years, despite some of us getting married, and the fact that I havenÂ’t been back yet… The two girls, are really special to me, because theyÂ’re only a couple years younger than I am. For a girl to have an older sister is amazing, and so I take my role as such VERY seriously. I would do anything for those girls — I was a mess during the Mumbai explosions because I couldnÂ’t reach one of them, in Mumbai. Despite the distance and weird circumstances, IÂ’m closer to them than I am to my brother and sister. So I think a lot of my affection for the desh has to do with the wonderful openhearted love I got from my own cousins. Conversely, I had a chachaji call me a half-blooded witch, so I guess it runs the entire spectrumÂ…
So that was that major turning point in my life. Despite the fact that my dad lost touch with his family and didnÂ’t have any interest in rekindling it, he was very supportive of my trip to India. One of my buas came over for my shaadi, and to see her and my Dad face to face for the first time in over 25 years was just emotionally overpowering. It was the best wedding present ever. Ironically, the Bollywood movies that I studied in preparation for my trip got me hooked. Like crack. I canÂ’t stop watching them, even the really crappy ones… and the dances really got me! ItÂ’s been a really satisfying and strange journey that my life has come full circle in a way. I always danced, since I was 3 or so; I rediscovered my family, which sort of led me to Bollywood, and now it seems the puzzle has come together with all the pieces—as I teach and perform my Bollywood dance. I gained a career, besides a family!
Siddhartha: This is a great story youÂ’ve shared with me.
DesiDancer: I get long-winded sometimes because I think itÂ’s such a cool story. I debate writing a book, but I think my dad would strangle me
Siddhartha: It really is a cool story. IÂ’m interested in a couple things you alluded to — the way your dad burned bridges, or perhaps I should say allowed bridges to fritter away, with India, and along the same lines what you said about being told over and over, growing up, that you wouldnÂ’t go to India. But it makes for a great story. You really got inspired and acted on it and followed through.
For me it was different because we went to India every 2-3 years. And we would go for long stays — three weeks to three months. We usually went to Calcutta, but later my dad, who is a scientist, began to work with colleagues in Bombay and so there were several trips there. In fact, my freshman year of college, my parents and sister spent the year in India and thatÂ’s where I visited them that Christmas. So by the time I was in college IÂ’d been to Calcutta and various places in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, as well as Delhi and Bombay. At the same time, it was all in function of my family and my parentsÂ’ choices. In college, though, I took a number of classes that were directly about South Asia, or that were relevant (like development economics). I took a class about Hinduism, and one on Indo-Muslim culture.
DesiDancer: So did you grow up speaking Bengali? And, it seems that in your case the brownness was always in the background, but was it in college that you really began to explore that as part of your identity?
Siddhartha: ItÂ’s funny, I was just going to mention language. I grew up, I would say, knowing some Bengali, rather than actually speaking it. During time spent in Calcutta I would be able to say quite a lot, especially the phrases used to make requests of servants.
DesiDancer: Hahahahaha. Chai lao and all that?
Siddhartha: Yeah, all that. My command of kitchen words, foods and so forth, is OK. I probably have 200-300 words of Bangla… and maybe 50 of Hindi.
DesiDancer: We didnÂ’t learn Hindi at all. The only words I learned were the ones my dad peppered his speech with: junglee, bandar, memsahib, suar, courpi (with regard to our need to clip our fingernails)… strangely they were all sarcasticÂ…
Siddhartha: What is Mr. DDÂ’s ethnicity?
DesiDancer: Mr. DD is desi. He came over when he was 3, so he’s about as westernized as I am. A lot of that is why we are great together—he’s not stuck in the old-school mentality and he gets my unusual (bad Indian girl) personality, though he hates Bollywood movies and wants to reclaim control of our Netflix.
Siddhartha: You realize this is very interesting, right?
DesiDancer: He knows more about the culture and traditions, whereas IÂ’m more knowledgeable about the pop culture stuff and the current atmosphere in India.
Siddhartha: And you guys met after you began your re-encounter with India?
DesiDancer: Yeah 🙂
Siddhartha: IÂ’ve dated desi and non-desi of many types.
DesiDancer: It is an interesting twist that heÂ’s desi; I dated all non-desis prior to him.
Siddhartha: And my sisterÂ’s husband is non-desi but theyÂ’ve given their 1/4 desi daughter a desi name. Etc., etc. Lots of dimensions.
DesiDancer: Really? ThatÂ’s cool.
Siddhartha: Yeah. In a way this is where a lot of the SM readership may be interested because it raises issues so many of them are confronting, either as mixed people or as people likely to produce mixed kids. So I’d like to be able to tell people just enough about ourselves, but then really get into the psychological aspects, the tradeoffs, etc—so we can spark some conversation on it.
DesiDancer: Fer sure. So hereÂ’s a question: obviously for our parentsÂ’ generation, especially those in India and their elders, there seems to still be a lot of partition-era separatism with regards to Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Jain etc., even straight/gay, or the ostracism of those in non-traditional pursuits career-wise or dating-wise. Do you think our generation is freed up from some of those prejudices? Does being mixed ingrain a sense of tolerance in us that maybe some others donÂ’t have? Like, I have Muslim friends, Christian-desi friends, Sikh friends, Jain friends, gay-desi friends, desis with crazy unusual careers, desis who married non-desis… And I know some auntie back home is clutching her chest over it, probably. 🙂 Or we can hit that one later.
Siddhartha: That’s a great question. I think we should hit that one later. Maybe we should finish up the whole “re-encounter with India” bit and pause for today; then on the next convo talk about living desiness as mixed people today.
I can see that side of things, but I think the issue with Tiger, and others like him (read: Hines Ward) for black people is that we often feel that other groups of people look down on us… because others often do. Would the asian community be so gung-ho about accepting him if he wasn’t such a good athelete? Maybe, but likely not. So we tend to be protective of “our people” even if they may not fit into our clearly defined bubble.
The way I heard it, it goes:
American born confused Desi exported from Gujurat housed in Jersey.
ABCDEFGHIJ.
Can anyone do better?
Also, any product of mixed-marriages here where the non-desi parent is not white? Would your experience be different from the half-whites? (I found I’ve been treated very differently when I’ve been with non-white partners than white ones. People stare a lot more.)
Would the asian community be so gung-ho about accepting him if he wasn’t such a good athelete? Maybe, but likely not. So we tend to be protective of “our people” even if they may not fit into our clearly defined bubble.
no. this is a true point. i think the issue (from what i remember my friend being irritated about) was that some black leaders called tiger out on his own avowed multiracialism.
Definitely not something we’d initially anticipated, but I’m thoroughly pleased with the surprise twist in the thread. It raises an entirely new set of questions.
Neale– Agreed, about the checkbox. I know some states or institutions offer an “Indian Subcontinent” box on forms, but it’s by no means a national standard. I believe Swirl has some good information about the next Census including the option to check multiple ethnicities (thus accounting for mixed people.)
And yes, Where the hell is BongBreaker?
Osmosis.
I don’t know if you CAN teach mixedness. I mean, you can tell a kid all you want, but they are going to take most things from their environment. Aside from reading this blog, I am heavily involved in issues and discussions and activist groups that cater to black needs. I would hope that any son or daughter I had would see that in me and try to emulate it. Not simply because it is part of their culture, but because knowing yourself, the problems you might face, and working toward better solutions is for the greater good.
As for the Indian side. Well, that would really have to be the work of their father.
I think the more important part of raising multicultural children is being prepared for the unique issues life will throw at them. Making sure that when they realize they are neither X nor Z, but some ambiguous place near Y… making sure that you are there to instill them with the confidence they will need.
Yeah… I think people should be able to identify as whatever they want, but a lot of black people view those who acknowledge (and force others to acknowledge) their multiracial background as being ashamed of being black. Again, I think this is ridiculous. Some people are like that, but not EVERY multiracial person is like that, obviously.
Apologies for the ridiculously long, gassy post… especially since the thread changed topics in the time it took me to write it. Not like any of the last week’s posts have hit a nerve or anything…
Anyways… one last note for those still interested in things multiracial. They should check out a book called Motiba’s Tattoos, by Mira Kamdar. It’s a memoir by a half desi child of an old school (1950’s) Indian immigrant. The author is female, and her father’s family is Gujarati… but reading it felt like reliving a lot of my childhood…
This one is for Branch Dravidian, whose comment I hadn’t seen when I posted a few minutes ago.
I am a little fried right now so it probably won’t be til tomorrow but your testimonial deserves a really thoughtful reply. Thanks for sharing your story and your questions. In addition to mixedness, I feel some additional connection because we’re about the same age.
For now I’d say, you know, identity is a process not a fixed state. Much as people like to think of it as fixed, and establish on that basis loyalties or enmities that they don’t have to spend the energy re-evaluating and updating. But in fact, social anthropology teaches that ethnicity is instrumental as much as it is ascriptive. As individuals or as groups, people are constantly reworking their identities in response to social, economic, cultural fact and the ways they process it. As I mentioned in the introduction to the post, “desiness” is still very much under negotiation. It’s a flexible enough concept that even if you don’t “know” if you’re desi, you’ve felt safe participating on this site for quite some time, at least; and in our own little way, we are participating in the definition right here with these conversations. You are one of the ants building the anthill, bringing to it your speck of dirt, as we all are. It may be that at some point “desi” will become “owned” by a narrow economic or cultural or religious or ethnic or political group within the diaspora. That’ll be a sad moment, but the rest of us, those of us not included or interested in that in-group, will already be ahead of the game, redefining and reimagining ourselves as we have been doing all along.
The second point is that there is a difference between you and “Olaf Gunderson” claiming desiness. It isn’t a fixed difference for all time: who knows, maybe Olaf will marry Priyanka and go live in Kanpur for ten years and then come back to Minnesota and be one desi-ass mofo. But what you have is memory. The memory of your father, the memory of that trip when you were seven, and all the indirect or diffuse cultural memories that inhabit you as a result of your Indian/Tamil/desi antecedents.
Olaf may have a million motivations for wanting to “become desi” and some of them may be damn good, I don’t know. But he doesn’t have that memory, and you do. And so do I, and so does DesiDancer, etc.
You found yourself with that memory, and you felt moved to engage it, not suppress it. You could have suppressed it and no one would have been mad at you. But you engaged it, and you’ve shared with us some of that process, and of course that process is still going on, even as we type these words. And that is good. Unfinished but (or therefore?) good.
Lots of other important stuff going on in your comment, matters of class and region and so forth within the American context — yes, it all plays a part. Nothing is irrelevant, everything produces a trace.
OK, I’ve now written a lot more than I thought I would, and I hope it makes sense. Feel free to write directly if you want to chat privately. Much respect.
Siddhartha:
Post 109 was marvellous.
Branch Dravidian:
Although I’m no expert to decide who is desi and who isn’t, at a minimum you should have some roots there…which you do. You are not Olaf Gundersen. And the fairness of your skin has nothing to do with it…there are some (admittedly few) 100% Indians who could pass for white, but culturally they are as Indian as anyone. Now, if you marry a non-desi, then are your 3/16 desi offspring still ‘desi’? I think this problem solves itself, since people will automatically become less interested in exploring these issues the farther removed they become from their Indian/desi roots. So relax, continue your explorations, and enjoy your desi side. Also, dealing with racism/otherness is NOT central to ‘brown’ identity… to me, brown identity (I don’t normally use such terms but just to keep us on the same page) is about culture and roots. Culture can be cultivated, roots are inherited…you’re on the right track.
there are some (admittedly few) 100% Indians who could pass for white, but culturally they are as Indian as anyone
bingo. i’m a bengali and i have relatives who could pass as southeast asian, or, more precisely, you would assume they were thai or burmese if you didn’t know their name. they are no less bengali than someone who “looks” bengali. brown is (mostly) a state of mind, not a particular pallor.
Talking of skin color, desis come in different hues and shades. Kashmiris can be very fair and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from ‘whites’. Poeple from the Northeast are strikingly close to the so called ‘asian skin tone’/yellow. Most of North, Central and South India has shades of brown..wheatish, dark chocolate…you name it. That covers the whole spectrum I guess.
oh no, not regional skin tones again. didn’t we have that convo earlier this week in painful detail, and people ended up fighting? let’s go easy, it’s the weekend… peace
Siddhartha – My post was to highlight the fact that skin tone has nothing (or maybe very little) to do with someone being a “desi”. peace.
the ops should just add it to the “wild card” bannable stuff. like the world “ret*rd” >8=<)
now I’ve been wondering are northeastern indians(culturally desi)? well perhaps Assamese are. What about baluchis/pashtuns? well sometimes afghans r considered desis. I’m especially interesteed in the northeastern indians especially abd’s , bbd’s etc. I mean who would they identify with. The whole desi thing is more I guess northern india/eastern pakistan perhaps.
No, it’s not. I’m a Sri Lankan Tamil and I consider myself desi.
well yes you probably would be considered Desi and it’s fine if you consider yourself as such. what i’m perhaps trying to say is the cultural commonality is stronger amongst the aforementioned groups and a larger proportion of them identify themselves as desies than other groups all other things being equal. do the punjabis and lankan tamil ccd’s consider themselves as a singular group? well are there lotsa punjabis in toronto? Perhaps the north indians/east pakistanis created this identity originally. then again of course the desis in england are generally punj/kash, punj, guju, and bangladeshi if i’m not mistaken. in the us i think the groups for indians are gujus then punj. so maybe of course the north indians/eaast pakis were the first to make the groups in some places. hope some of what i say makes sense.
vivo,
i emailed a few people about the term “gora.” it seems in common usage around these parts but i had never heard it. well, it is a hindi/punjabi appellation which has become pan-brown, like bhangra music or whatever. this sort of coalescence is common.
but frankly isn’t a little strange that you ask whether northeast and southern indians consider themselves desi on this, of all threads? siddarth has a bengali father and he is heavily involved in this blog. anna’s family is from kerala. you have another contributor, taz, who is bangladeshi american. in fact, there were jokes around here last year about how few people seem to have family from UP & bihar and other parts of the “hindi heartland.”
The purpose of the post wasn’t to take issue with people calling themselves desis from those groups. also I don’t count bengalis/banglas amongst northeastern indians, although i do count assamese. i am most concerned about nagas, mizos, manipuris and anything else besides assamese. that is the thnic assamese as i think the banglas are infiltrating the state. i do realize there aren’t a lot of hindi belters. but lot of gujus and punjabis. i’m just asking if maybe the whole desi culture actually revolves more around northern indian/eastern pakistani culture.
UP Pehechaano!
Branch Dravidian– So many things I loved about your comment #92… but for now (time constraints), I just wanted to say I completely sympathize with being light-skinned enough that you almost have to defend a claim to desi-ness. Telling people I’m Indian has been met (in the past) with “like, from India? You look white, though.” um… I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a compliment, but I’ve got the birth certificate to prove I am, in fact, part-Indian. In the winter I’m pretty pale, and around this time of year I’m a lovely saavala shade 😉
although maybe i could ask the same thing about bengalis. even though they are northern indians they are eastern as well.
also i remember in some earlier thread some people posted about desi culture here (amaireeka)being dominated by bollywood and some other north indian stuff i think.
i am most concerned about nagas, mizos, manipuris and anything else besides assamese.
i have seen ethnological studies on northeast indians. the short of it is that those who were never part of hindu culture tend to be unattached to a south asian identity because their citizenship is to some extent a coincidence of geopolitics. assamese are clearly part of south asian culture, their language is very close to bengali, and the ahom kings (who were ethnically related to the burmans before their absorption into the assamese) fought mughal incursions in part as defenders of hindu religion.
the nagas & mizos are overwhelmingly christian, and of a european protestant provenance, whether via american baptists, methodists or presbyterians. i believe many of the people of manipur are divided between those who are hindu (and i mean here ‘indigenous’ manipuri tribals) and those are christian. in tripura i believe the non-bengalis who live in that state are overwhelmingly hindu. but in both cases among the hindu tribals there is a recent emphasis among some on their tribal gods. but in any case these groups probably do have some affinity with south asian identity due to their hinduism. i doubt the highlanders who are christian do.
Thomas I totally forgot to acknowledge the greatness of this point. It’s not just limited to desis either; I have a girlfriend who is “latino” though her parents are from DR and Peru, respectively. I referred to her as mixed, once, and she really appreciated it, because while most americans don’t see or acknowledge the difference between Andean culture and Caribbean-Latino culture, it’s definitely mixed-culture.
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ah thanks:) now what about northeastern indian abd’s bbd’s etc?
vivo,
in bangladesh most of the chakmas of the chittagong hill tracts are therevada buddhists and look basically burmese speak bengali as their mother tongue now. i am pretty sure (from physical inspection) that some of them switch to hinduism if they move into predominantly ethnically bengali areas and simply assimilate into that community. in burma the indian hindu community which remains has predominantly reidentified in the census as buddhists.
re: Siddhartha’s comment 96 — last I heard (via text last weekend), Bong Breaker was working 80 hrs/wk as Doctor Bong Breaker and wasn’t imagining being social anytime soon. Note his absence from PP as well.
As for everything else, I don’t have much to contribute except this — I met a girl recently who said she always marks “other” on forms where you have to mark race because she FEELS multicultural despite “presenting” as a white Brit. She’s 27 and has been with her Brit Asian partner since high school, so celebrates all the Hindu holidays, visits India with his family and feels she knows Asian culture quite well. Plus her dad is Greek and she spent a lot of time with his side of the family as a child, so she feels that’s a part of her despite not being visually obvious to other people. I thought that was sweet, and think probably more and more people are going to feel that way in this globalized age. My Brit Asian friends constantly tease me that I’m more brown than them because I know more about this or that than they do — while I don’t pretend to know in the least what it’s like growing up brown (and I lurve my American-ness and have no desire to have any of y’all’s identity issues, heehee) 😉 I think more and more people these days are able to feel some kind of relationship with a culture other than the one they were born into, either through moving around the planet and experiencing different ways of living, having partners of a different background, reading blogs like these, etc etc. If y’all know you’re American/British/Canadian despite your parents’ birthplace, then just you wait for your bhangra-dancing, dosa-making, Gita-reading non-brown friends to start calling themselves macacas. As Razib might say, give miscegenation another generation or two and we’ll all be mixed up together anyway. 😉
As Razib might say, give miscegenation another generation or two and we’ll all be mixed up together anyway. 😉
well, if the population was fixed that would be true. e.g., assume .75 in marriage rate, .75^2 is .56 and after that less than 50%. but high immigration rates will mean that this will not be so.
Yes yes Razib, I was mostly teasing. 🙂 It’s very obvious in the UK that there will seemingly be no end to people arriving who have no desire to find partners outside their community (and fair enough to them, I find I naturally get along better with Americans/Canadians in London and cosmopolitan Indians-from-India than I do regular ol’ British people) — I mean, these discussions about miscegenation seem to mostly apply to a narrow band of very educated, liberal-minded, well-travelled peeps. But obviously you’re right, borders would have to close for people to start hanging out with each other enough for everyone to have beige grandkids. 🙂
beige grandkids
just to be clear, the average would be beige. the range of color would be preserved because genetics is discrete, not blending. for example, see what happened here when two biracial (black/white) individuals produced twins.
y’all trying to elevate the level of conversation by getting all deep and respectful. awesome
Meena Said:
finding a desi with the minimum requirement of being at least foreign bred. Let alone atheist, respectful of women and of my weird hobbies.
Thats awful lot of stereotype being thrown at us desi men. I am an athiest but raised hindu. And I was not even exposed to anything western all my life. My parents are your typical indian middle class who would not know anything beyond their zipcode (pincode). My parents till date never challenged me on my choice of being secular. In addition, respecting elders and woman were part and parcel of our upbringing.
Interestingly this stereotype of “Indian men treat woman poorly” is so widespread in the U.S and on the blogosphere, it is sickening quite frankly. What exactly is the basis for this generalization? Is it our third world status that makes us a fair game for unsolicited lectures on social equality? Since the day we had our independence, people of all color and creed have seen overall increase in their well being. It is far from being perfect. Nevertheless, compare this with the U.S, it took more than 200yrs to legislate racial equality and gender equality. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, all third world countries have their share of woman prime ministers, but not in the U.S.A, yet!
I am not trying to flame Meena here, but I really get upset when someone throw such steretypes. Considering the limited number of Indians that an ABCD could have met in their life. I can only conclude that, Men in their families are treating their woman badly, therefore their children have very negative impression on Indian men. But I expect a denial along the lines that, their dads and uncles are gentlemen but its just other Indian men who are FOBish types who are sexist, LOL.
horribly FOBbish IT workers who didn’t wear deoderant and supported Narendra Modi.
Delurking to say how much I’m appreciating this post and commentary, and that I’m really looking forward to the next installment!
Gori wife to 1.5 gen desi Gori mom to IBD adoptee Mamiji to 4 mixed ABDs Tayiji to 2 mixed ABDs and 1 IBD Chachiji to 3 mixed ABDs (which makes me Dadima – gulp – I’m too young to be a grandma – to 7 .25 ABDs)
Thank you so much for this post! I can completely identify being “half-desi” myself. I too grew up speaking Bengali – mostly to staff and so I am not sure if it even would be considered proper????!!!
Again, thanks for the great post.
Oh I don’t know Vignesh, probably because of things like this, or this, or this, or this, or perhaps because of this. All these reports date from just this past week. Certainly I don’t mean to imply that this sort of abuse is common or even acceptable in India. But the fact that these events occur with some uncomfortable regularity shows that there is something fundamentally troublesome with the treatment of women in India. The status of women is directly correlated with their participation in the work force and the fact that the majority of India’s working age women do not work means that they are economically beholden to their menfolk. I recently watched an interesting show on FX called 30 days, in one episode, an American software engineer lived in Mumbai with an Indian family for 30 days to see what it was like on the other end of outsourcing. Even in a decidedly urbane and well to do Indian household, the wife was still treated in a manner that can only be described as coming out of an idealized 1950’s America.
Then why post the links? Seems to me like you’re trying to establish a case. Of course, it only took me less that a minute to find this, this and this.
Not that I defend the dowry system, or arranged marriage even. I think people who perpetrate either are mentally ill. I think a lot of people have tunnel vision when it comes to observing India’s treatment of women, and somehow automatically think it’s better in the west. It’s a case of “the grass is greener”, an ABD girl will witness all kinds of problems in their community, then read about/see on TV dating, prom, flowers, writing flowery poetry, carrying over the threshold, all that hollywood romance BS and think it’s the real deal.
The status of women is directly correlated with their participation in the work force and the fact that the majority of India’s working age women do not work means that they are economically beholden to their menfolk.
I am not going to be apologist for women’s mistreatment in India/ South Asia even for a minute.
However, your statement above is as wrong as it gets.
Majority of middle class women do not work (correct), and that is changing too. A great percentage of out-sourcing jobs (1-800-help lines) have women hired. A couple years ago, Science magazine showed that % number of science faulty in Poland, Hungary, and India is higher than US and UK.
However, majority of Indians and South Asians are not middle class still.
In lower economic class (that is the majority in South Asia and India as of today), almost every women works: maid servant, utensil cleaner, tea picker, rice farmer, dairy worker, construction worker, sweepress, cook, seamstress, child care worker, etc. She might not have economic clout and is doing bottom of foodchain jobs but saying she does not work is wrong. PS Jing: Have you ever been to India, and see who is going the grunt work @ airports, railway stations, or you favorite aunty’s house.
The problem is in poverty, and its by-products. I am not implying there are not huge, huge problems in India/ South Asia but the way it was put by some commentors was flawed, and so vignesh responded.
Here’s some shocking news for you HMF. It is better in the west for women than in India.
In your rush to be defensive, you missed something fundamentally different between the cases I pointed out and those you did. In each of your scenarios, the abuse/violence was the result of an individual man, sick as he may have been, with private and personal motivations (one cheating wife, the other an ex). In the situations I pointed out, the reasons were social and economic and the abuser’s family were perfectly willing to go along. Last time I checked, the American parents generally do not assist and abet their sons in committing spousal abuse or murder.
Re: Kush Tandon,
touche, you are correct. I should have added an addendum that I am referring to the organized employment sector. The women you mention must naturally work, lest they starve. Yet even then female workforce participation is low. Case in point, refer to this information here. Out of 200 nations, India ranks 197th according to the UNDP human development report in 2004 in the number women employed as a percentage of the service sector. Better than Pakistan, yet oddly enough losing to Bangladesh.
Thanks to Siddhartha and Desi Dancer for sharing this lovely conversation, and thanks also to the commenters, for many wonderful stories and interesting thoughts.
(And a special shout out to Anjali. What an unexpected pleasure.)
L’shalom, Siddhartha. We need to get you down to Congregation Beth Israel for Shabbas. Your education is incomplete, and next thing you know, little Kalyani will be more knowledgeable than you.
I say we hit the shul in the morning, get our torah on, and afterwards get some dosas (with lamb, please: keep in mind Devarim 12:20-22: “You shall eat meat”)…
Tropical Storm Ernesto be damned…
Wow, what a beautiful discussion to wake up to this morning! I echo Mr. Kobayashi’s thanks to DD and “Sid” for beginning this brilliant exchange and to everyone for sharing their personal accounts.
As I was reading DD’s comments, I was trying to think of my “aha” moment… I have to agree with many of you that it came about when I got to college and was surrounded by a large desi population as like others, I grew up in a totally white American community where I did face discrimination and was constanly reminded of my differences. Though my parents made a sincere effort to teach me all about Indian/Mallu culture in regards to literature, Hinduism, carnatic music, etc., I truly did not appreciate the depth and richness of all of this in my grade school years.
Interestingly, it was not being exposed to the desi crowd alone in college which made me fall in love with my brown-ness. I met my future husband on the first day of freshman orientation. Here was a young man of Zimbabwean decent who had moved to the US in adolescence. Though he had assimilated to some extent into American culture, he was so proud of his heritage and his roots. He was somehow able to blend these identities so beautifully into his being. I truly admired that. I think it was within the first week that we met I had mentioned being bumbed about having to go to India the following summer with my family. (This was the first trip we were making back as a family since I was a child.) And I remember him questioning my reluctance and my disinterest, telling me how beautiful the Indian culture is from his experiences with Indians in Zims and in the States. I was so taken aback, felt almost ashamed and at the same time inspired to get more involved with desi life on campus that year. Of course bonding with desi’s from all over the US with varying regional backgrounds and experiences freshman year, our trip to India that following summer, and reconnecting with a lot of my cousins back in Kerala all ensured my ensuing love affair with my heritage.
I agree with I think Siddhartha who mentioned that negotiating your identities is a live-long process. I identify with the different roles which comprise my identity in different ways in different situations, but at the core I am really trying hard to act from the place of my humanness. My husband and I speak all the time about how we will raise our future mixed children with respect to both of our cultures and religious backgrounds, but at the end of the day, I really think Oneup’s comment is right on:
I think the more important part of raising multicultural children is being prepared for the unique issues life will throw at them. Making sure that when they realize they are neither X nor Z, but some ambiguous place near Y… making sure that you are there to instill them with the confidence they will need.
Our challenges are going to be helping our children grow up with not just good values and morals but with the skills needed to face their own questions of identity as they walk along their own journeys – confidence and inner strength.
Well wherever these ‘liberal men’ are, they’re not here. If you’d read my previous posts you would’ve realised that I am not American. Considering ‘eve-teasing'(i.e. sexual harassement) is still considered ‘normal’ in India and it is up to women to ‘protect themselves'(really it doesn’t matter if they were wearing even a burqa), and the police will do little to nothing, and sometimes they are even the abusers themselves – it is not too far out assume at least those Indian men who hail from India are rather set in their views regarding the role of women. Never even mind topics like pre-marital sex and the whole lot – the chance that anyone from India would find it acceptable is close to nil. Consider the uproar in Tamil Nadu itself over actress Kushboo’s comments on virginity, and the fact that a lot of universities have now implemented a dress code(of course only applicable to girls) of traditional salwar kameez. Now you tell me if there isn’t some truth to my statement.
Considering ‘eve-teasing’(i.e. sexual harassement) is still considered ‘normal’ in India and it is up to women to ‘protect themselves'(really it doesn’t matter if they were wearing even a burqa)
Are you serious?
DesiDancer,
First of all, great photo 😉 Notice the fact that the ‘namaste’ is not combined with the obligatory bowed head, but is in the raised manner, with the upright bearing and the challenging gaze of the warrior, ready to jump over the fortress walls on her trusty steed like the Rani of Jhansi…..
Okay maybe that’s a little melodramatic, but you know what I mean 🙂
Secondly, may I be the 2378th person to commend you on your wonderful conversation with Siddhartha. You have a lot of guts to discuss all of this so openly in public, and it’s very nice to read your anecdotes and ongoing musings on the topic.
I think it’s interesting that the more converative (and generally “negative”) aspects of Indian culture didn’t dissuade you from exploring desi culture as a whole or identifying with being South Asian. Ditto for the fact that, certainly over there in the US, the mainstream societal and media attitude towards desis is often not flattering. If you don’t mind me asking, I was wondering why all this didn’t put you off. Is it because, due to your mixed ancestry, you feel you have a greater facility to “opt out” of these issues, and/or psychologically & emotionally dissociate yourself from them ?
I’m asking because, at least in Britain, it’s not uncommon for some 2nd-Gen desi women in particular to try to place as much distance as possible between themselves and Indian culture & society — because it’s comparatively more restricting towards them than it is towards men. They sometimes date/marry non-desi men specifically as a way to try to get away from all this. It’s quite striking that you made a conscious decision to actually go in the opposite direction.
As you may have guessed if you’ve been following some of the other recent threads on SM, this appears to be a cultural quirk of the desi community in North America. You wouldn’t encounter this problem in Britain (at least not from other Indians here), as any allegations of “not being Indian enough” would be more likely to be based on perceived behaviour and attitudes (from the perspective of the more conservative/insular/traditioally-minded 2nd-Gens) rather than your physical appearance. You actually don’t look dissimilar to many desi women in Britain and would not look out of place over here, although as previously discussed that’s because of the apparently-unique combination of genetics, original regional background and the local non-tropical climate.
Wry smile It’s probably a compliment if it’s from the older Indian generation (rightly or wrongly). From what I gather of the American desi younger crowd, whether it’s a positive or negative statement obviously depends on the mindset of the person making it 😉
PS: If the person saying this is not South Asian, I guess it’s because they have a preconceived and possibly stereotyped notion of what “looking Indian” involves.
Siddhartha,
Great stuff by you too — I will have to chew matters over and think of some questions to ask you as well, but as your conversation was slanted more towards DD’s experiences and thoughts I wanted to respond to her in the first instance. Don’t worry, I’ll grill you too once I’ve had the chance to fully process things 😉
Very interesting that you too did not dissociate yourself from your Indian ancestry or from identifying with other Indians in general, despite your somewhat unconventional background and life-experiences (where you lived etc). I guess living in India too had some impact on that, assuming your experiences in that regaard were generally positive.
Superb topic of discussion anyway — I remember you briefly mentioning the possibility of doing this as a future thread, so well done to you (and of course DD) for actually going through with it 🙂
Because women here get to go to the prom, right? You seem to be cherry picking once again. The US has pockets of systemic abuse also, we just know they are not representative of the entire set.
And you make no mention of the society that fosters and creates these “isolated cases” of private and personal grievances so dastardly, coupled with predispositions to violence, force him to murder and/or abuse? Do you think the preponderance of such events here in the US just arise from a vacuum? I think relates to a highly romanticized society that programs fairy tale like endings in every person’s mind – and when that doesn’t happen, causing a mental shutdown from both partners.
Incidentally, in your rush to be offensive, your last two “this’s” correspond to the same case.
Oh Meena, don’t fret. There’s plenty of pre-marital hide-the-dosa going on in Bharat. Plenty, I tell you. Things are on a whole much more open and sophisticated than you might think from the movies or from a limited personal experience of JOJs.
Meena, I feel that on this occasion, your comments are misinformed. If you are genuinely interested in Indian culture, which I think you are, you should take a trip to India and spend some time there. You should visit the cities and the villages alike. Indeed, many people you meet there will fit your stereotypical image; however, many will not. Essentially, India is much more diverse than you perceive. While you are there, if you are open minded, you will have a good time and make many new friends with whom you will have much more in common than you think. Hopefully, then you will look at India and Indians with more understanding. Peace
Branch Dravidian
perhaps I speak for few but those who know, know: bourbon has been known to lubricate genius.
I was deeply moved by your post as well as the original conversation between DesiDancer and Siddhartha. I am pleased to note that within this general exploration of identity, both internal and external gazes* are being considered.
The Gaze. Egyptian Sociologist, feminist, human rights advocate, intellectual powerhouse Nawal El Saadawi coined the phrase to describe the mechanism through which we identify, and are identified by, others. Through gazing, we conclude who/what someone is, before language and gesture initialize, or don’t.
Through gazes, and ensuant language and gesture, I have been codified variously: either typically Bengali or Mullu; Barbadan, Hawai’ian, Mauritanian, Gyanese or Peurto Rican; and something other than just Indian (usually this observation is made by other Indians).
Go figure.