Earlier this month, the NYT ran a wedding announcement for the marriage of Nicolette Bird and Ravi Mehta. At first this seemed like the usual thing: one person with family in Calcutta, went to college in Calcutta, marrying another person with family in New York who went to Harvard.
Except …
In this case it was Nicolette Bird who is from Calcutta and works in Bollywood, and it’s Ravi Mehta who was born in Colorado, with his parents and job in New York City.
The bride, 25, is an actress and model and has had roles in the Bollywood films “Rock On,” released in 2008, and “Striker,” released earlier this month. As a model, she has appeared in television commercials and magazine advertisements in India. She graduated from Bhowanipur Education Society College in Calcutta. She is a daughter of Edwina Bird and Nicholas Bird of Calcutta.The bridegroom, 28, is the founder and managing director of Steadview Capital Management of New York, a hedge fund that focuses on companies in India. He graduated from Harvard. The bridegroom is a son of Geeta Mehta and Krishen Mehta of New York. [NYT]
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p>And why not? We hate it when people ask us “Really, where are you from” do we think this only happens to brown folks in America? Heck, this week people sent me two links to Indian TV ads which had anxiety about hybridity as their main theme:
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No word yet on what the Mehta-Bird’s will be eating at home, but given that he grew up in Japan I imagine their dinner table negotiations are quite intense. Or maybe they just get takeout.
Agreed.
But acceptance of Indian husband/non-Indian wife in the Indian community is not a pattern that just appears in India. Most cultures have the idea that a woman “marries into” the husband’s family. While I lived in DC, my classmates from Arab countries seemed to enjoy dating non-Arab women, but I doubt they would approve of their female relatives dating non-Arab men. All groups are a bit more selective in who their women date/marry. But, the SM news-ticker had an article from Time magazine that discussed how online dating patterns show that women are far more selective about the ethnicity of their partner than men.
nice to know one thing is for certain though – rich guys will always be able to purchase hot trophy wives.
Nicolette Bird is brown, desi, Indian.
what are the actual mechanics of getting a trophy wife? Not sure how that works…
@katayoun Interesting, I wasn’t sure so I left that part ambiguous. Do you know if her family is Anglo-Indian? I’ve never met a desi with the last name of Bird, and the first names in her family aren’t that common either. If her family is as desi as his, then it makes it more like the second ad than the first.
Nicolette Bird is brown, desi, Indian.
I thought she was desi b/c she looked it to me (but then lots of other ethnicities can look indian, particularly to nonIndians), but the name thru me off as it doesn’t seem common for desis.
I sort of thought the same thing; here are a couple of other pics of her if it helps at all…
http://im.rediff.com/movies/2008/dec/11sld2.jpg
http://s.chakpak.com/se_images/640823_-1_564_none/nicolette-bird-wallpaper.jpg
Echoing 3 and 6,
Since she has made it into modeling and bollywood (though not big) none of the Indian media I’ve come across even questioned her ethnicity. She is most likely anglo-Indian, which is not a new thing to the Indian media.
Compare it to Kalki Koechlin, whose background of French parents, but born and brought up in Tamil Naduwas mentioned in almost every article.
It’s like Freida Pinto. None of the Indian media question her name, while the Western media do.
I’m not saying this in a attacking mode, but this post itself is guilty of what you describe here:
Because just from a name the assumption becomes that she isn’t of Indian background–and Anglo-Indians ARE of Indian background they are an Indian community just as other communities.
reminds me of the time a colleague of mine excitedly dragged me down the hall to introduce me to some chick with whom i’d a have a lot in common. next thing i know i’m standing in front of some blonde girl wondering what the angle is. then she opens her mouth and out came an accent worthy of narendra modi or someone. couldn’t believe it.
she’s probably passing. for all we know, him too. India shining
Expanding on my previous post, without the marriage angle,
A better example would be Kalki Koechlin or Tom Alter Whose background is mentioned in many Indian articles. Another one from Rock On–Luke Kenny, his background is also mentioned in articles. Most presumably because they are/look white. Also probably since the first two are the second generation and first generation to be born in India, if that makes any sense. Alter’s son who now writes for CricketInfo is more likely to be described as Tom Alter’s son in the media. (Though as SM also posted before, Alter has to go through the whole questions and looks as well.
Other Anglo-Indians such as former Miss India and Miss world Diana Hayden, their background is often never even mentioned, and if it is it’s just as “Anglo-Indian” family/community.
I am touchy about people using names to determine one’s desi-ness or brownness, because there are all kinds of names Anglo names, among not only Anglo-Indians, but also many South Indian Christians that would throw people off. But they are fully Indian..
Osbourne Sebastian, etc etc
A ha. i’ve long suspected you to be engelbert humperdinck
Remember, Nicollette Sheridan is Panjabi.
I find this post amusing because no one in India has ever questioned whether Nicolette Bird is actually desi or not. I appreciate the spirit of accepting people as they want to be identified, but no one has questioned her identity. I think desi kids who were raised in America don’t realized how common place Anglo-Indians and Mangalorean Catholics and their names are for Indians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_-s7nL4xvM That’s Nicolette playing a typical Muslim girl in her latest film.
Manju, I do have an Anglo last name. My brother even more so, since his first name is also Angresi.
Speaking of first names,
Were it not for their first names, the (Bal, Raj, Udhav) Thackerays and the (Sachin, his father) Pilots would also end up causing people to scratch their heads.
Anglo names–or Anglocized spellings, variations of the original name in the case of Thackeray– are much more common place in India and Indian media than one would think.
ML, thank you for putting it more succinctly.
Yes, I agree.
Somewhat related to this subject. Jamie Alter keeps a blog and in between posts about cricket and Bollywood, he has some funny stories about being a white Indian. http://spinbounceandturn.blogspot.com/
But, the SM news-ticker had an article from Time magazine that discussed how online dating patterns show that women are far more selective about the ethnicity of their partner than men.
yeah, the social science is robust on this. i blogged an analysis of a columbia university dating pool a few years ago: http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/07/why_does_race_matter_for_women.php
but i just saw a less elite yahoo personals sample via that time article you linked (haven’t blogged it). for whites:
72% of females selected a racial preference 56% of males selected a racial preference
but, of the women who selected a racial preference, 68% checked that they would date “white men only” of the men who selected a racial preference, 28% checked that they would date “white women only.” rather, their commonality was that they were keen on not dating black women in particular
this sort of pattern seems to hold cross-culturally in american dating samples in terms of preference (with east asian women being notable for being relatively unracist, not necessarily white preferential). when the social scientists control for physical attractiveness, men tend not to be very racially conscious (there are suggestions within the above data set that white men discriminate against black women because they don’t find them attractive, not because they’re black, as such. by contrast, it does look like white women simply don’t want to date non-white males even if they think they are physically attractive).
so why all the chatter about women dating out? i think this exhibits the straightforward nature of patriarchy in a lot of societies. we’ve seen this on this weblog many times. the empirical data is pretty clear there’s no sex-imbalance on american-born brown people dating out, but there seems way more outrage from a small set of angry brown guys about this than the inverse.
btw,contrary to muslim expectations american social scientists tend to look at the mother’s religion as more predictive of the children’s religion. this isn’t too surprising, women are more into that sort of stuff cross-culturally than men. once you remove the man as the dictator of the house as is common in barbaric societies then you have to move to real preferences.
btw, i love pasta. but my dad has always had an issue eating the stuff. he hates it. is that a brown thing?
I find this post amusing because no one in India has ever questioned whether Nicolette Bird is actually desi or not. I appreciate the spirit of accepting people as they want to be identified, but no one has questioned her identity. I think desi kids who were raised in America don’t realized how common place Anglo-Indians and Mangalorean Catholics and their names are for Indians.
Yes, I freely admit that; and when I wrote that I didn’t want to come across as negating the desiness or the desi experiences of someone with that name or homogenizing a very diverse culture. From my own particular experience I just hadn’t heard of her last name, but I’m aware that Indian names vary. I didn’t think twice about Friedo Pinto – I’m used to some Christian names coming from the South. But India is so diverse (and other South Asian countries but particularly India) that there’s so much i may find “foreign”, when it is part and parcel of the Indian/South Asian culture. Don’t look down on the ABDs – we can’t help our experiences 🙂
Delurker is probably spot on. Bird can definitely be a anglo-indian name, there is a community in Calcutta and since she (or Pinto) looks brown no one cares about her ethnicity. Kalki, Tom Alter and Luke Kenny don’t look obviously Indian but once the initial surprise is gone, I would take a guess that being accepted is not difficult for them. Now, if they looked more African (or even Indo-Chinese or North East Indian), our desi sensibilities wont be as accepting unfortunately.
This is such a basic question but I don’t know the answer so anyone that can inform please do:
What does Anglo-Indian mean? Russel Peters in an npr interview was talking about being anglo-indian. I don’t think in regards to Nicolette or Russel Peters it means it is mixed ethnicities (from the West and South Asian); But I think it can sometimes mean this like with respect to Merle Oberon, and her mother, who although dark was I believe referred to as Anglo-Indian b/c she was mixed parentage. And Merle definitely was.
So what is the accepted definition of Anglo-Indian?
PS, what i’ve read is that there are two big classes here:
1) people of english birth who became resident in india
2) the descendants of relationships between british & irish men in the service of the east india company and local women, who ended up forming an endogamous community when the east india company began to stop accepting mixed-race individuals as british
since the second class is about half brown and half european genetically, in theory one could look totally brown or totally european, though the average should be in the middle.
i think like the “creole” category in mauritius other “wild cards” can get thrown into #2.
@delurker: I was the one who wrote about Jamie Alter Indians before. I didn’t know if Nicolette was anglo-Indian or simply a first generation Indian, so I simply described her name and background, and included videos that would cover both non-desi immigrants (the first video) and desis whose name might cause others to mistakenly believe that they were non-Indian (the second video).
Thanks Razib; I didn’t know about the group #2, which i suppose is where Russel Peters, Merle Oberon, etc. fit in. But then you have non-Anglo-Indians with “Anglo” names like Friedo Pinto or the last name Fernandes is very common also but only have South Asian backgrounds so name doesn’t I suppose designate whether anyone is Anglo-Indian or not.
Pinto and Fernandes aren’t “Anglo” so much as of Portuguese origin, which is common in Goa and the surrounding areas. On top of that, Indian Christians who aren’t of any other descent will sometimes give their kids Western names.
What a brave new world we live in where we actually have to talk to people and ask questions before we can actually learn anything about them.
Or Google. I guess that works too.
On top of that, Indian Christians who aren’t of any other descent will sometimes give their kids Western names.
That’s what I just said. My example is Friedo Pinto.
I did Google her and found no reference to her ethnicity. Hence the ambiguity.
Ennis, thank you for the explanation. It makes good sense.
However, I should point out that in the second ad, her name isn’t really “Amy” but “Amrita Khanna.” Which is why your original intent was lost on me.
@Ardy Delurker is probably spot on. Bird can definitely be a anglo-indian name, there is a community in Calcutta and since she (or Pinto) looks brown no one cares about her ethnicity. Kalki, Tom Alter and Luke Kenny don’t look obviously Indian but once the initial surprise is gone, I would take a guess that being accepted is not difficult for them. Now, if they looked more African (or even Indo-Chinese or North East Indian), our desi sensibilities wont be as accepting unfortunately. Sadly I agree with this.
Though I do think it is slowly changing. Even if it is at a snail’s pace and still has a long way to go. The Indian mainstream media, i.e. Hindi and English programs targeted nationally, have slowly begun having more and more NE Indians the last four, five years. Reality TV kind of sped this up, I think. African-Indians, I’m not so sure about.
Again, snail’s pace.
Sorry, forgot to block quote: @Ardy
Sadly I agree with this.
Though I do think it is slowly changing. Even if it is at a snail’s pace and still has a long way to go. The Indian mainstream media, i.e. Hindi and English programs targeted nationally, have slowly begun having more and more NE Indians the last four, five years. Reality TV kind of sped this up, I think. African-Indians, I’m not so sure about.
Again, snail’s pace.
anglo-indian denotes someone of English/Scottish/Irish patrilineal descent. If your mom is english and father Indian then you probably still belong to whatever caste/community your father is a part of.
“nice to know one thing is for certain though – rich guys will always be able to purchase hot trophy wives.”
go to places where high profile women congregate.
pretend that you don’t think money means anything.
keep buying her nice sh*t. but talk about how life is more than just money.
Nothing less than giving her an existence where she thinks money doesn’t exist.
when it comes time to get married – have an expensive wedding. that’ll seal the deal.
Which probably shows the difference between Indian media and Indians versus Indians-Americans, American Media.
The Urban Indian will probably just assume her to be an Anglo-Indian. Especially since there is no reference to her ethnicity with a google search.
Like I said before, the question would come up if the person looks/is unequivocally white. But by the name alone, there probably wouldn’t be much dwelling in it.
[quote]Though I do think it is slowly changing. Even if it is at a snail’s pace and still has a long way to go. The Indian mainstream media, i.e. Hindi and English programs targeted nationally, have slowly begun having more and more NE Indians the last four, five years. Reality TV kind of sped this up, I think. African-Indians, I’m not so sure about.[/quote]
It really is amazing how reality tv has helped change how Northeasterners and Chinese Indians are accepted. The audience of Indian Idol loves and accepts Sourabhee Debbarma and Meiyang Chang as Indians and no one really brings it up other than to say something like “this Tripuran girl blah blah blah”, which is the same way they talk about Bengalis and Punjabis. Online, I’ve seen more surprise expressed at Kalki’s Tamil than Chang’s Hindi.
[quote]Pinto and Fernandes aren’t “Anglo” so much as of Portuguese origin, which is common in Goa and the surrounding areas. On top of that, Indian Christians who aren’t of any other descent will sometimes give their kids Western names.[/quote]
Most Pintos, Fernandeses, and D’Souzas in India are Mangalorean Catholics and highly unlikely to have any European ancestry, but I also know Anglo-Indians with Portuguese names (usually from the South) because in India anyone with any colonial European ancestry is designated as “Anglo-Indian”.
unlike the british i don’t think the portuguese ever brought many women to india (this was common for portuguese possessions), so of course the luso-indian communities are very mixed. also, i think they’ve mixed with the indian population more over the centuries. the mixed-race anglo-indians, from what i have read, emerged during a very specific period when
1) there were many white european males in india and very few white females
2) the ideology of white racial supremacy was not entrenched enough that mixed-race offspring of british men were excluded from assimilating to a british identity. lord liverpool, the british prime minister from 1812-1827 had a mother who was from one of these mixed-race families (his mother’s maternal grandmother was likely an indian native, so he was probably 1/8 brown)
but once the east india company started cracking down on this sort of thing, and the indian population would obviously have excluded the assimilation of mixed individuals, the mixed population had to create its own identity. i don’t think the portuguese descended eurasian communities had to suffer the same experience because in asia the portuguese gave more opportunities to these individuals (which also would give an incentive for indians in goa to assimilate to this identity, since race was less of a bar). by contrast, the mixed anglo-indians were relatively marginalized by both their parent communities.
Portuguese names and Portuguese ancestry.
Is important to note, as has been mentioned in #36, many Goans, Manglorean Catholics and others with Portuguese names do not actually have Portuguese ancestry. I don’t think many know for sure, other than the specific “Anglo-Indians” who have Portuguese last names (because again, In India anyone with European ancestry from colonial times =A.I and there are some South Indian A.I communities with such names).
I still have no idea what this post is about.
Is it about mixed marriage?
Indian people with white names?
Indian-Americans banging light skinned Indians?
Frozen Indian food?
@delurker: The flip side of this is that I have a broader range of what “looks white” so I don’t assume much about descent based on skin color and appearance. I’ve met Europeans who looked very desi, and desis who looked very European.
[I still have no idea what this post is about.]
it’s about buying a hot wife. the only thing that’ll never change in this protean environment of cultural exchange and mixology
In my humble and limited experience Desi-American’s parents are much more likely to be accepting of an non-Desi son-in-law than a non-Desi daughter in-law. (Strangely, all my limited data comes from families that only have children of one gender, so I have not detected a true double standard. My friends with dual-gender siblings tend to have parents who are completely accepting of non-desi inlaws.) My stupid hypothesis is this: they see the mother as being the one who sets the tone for how the household is run and the children are raised, and so if they have a son, they are worried that a non-desi wife will not raise her children with desi values and aesthetics; if they have a daughter then they are confident in her ability to raise desi-oriented children. Moreover the parents of daughters are all fully confident that their daughters will not let husbands pressure them into taking less care of her parents; the parents of sons I know are all worried that their potential daughters-in-law will cause their sons to withdraw from the family.
Completely, totally anecdotal & stereotypical.
Yeah. Which is why I wrote “unequivocally white” Though this itself is not exactly scientific, either.
For instance. Tom Alter, Jamie Alter, are more paler and have lighter hair then Ms. Bird. Indians will have no problem believing straight away that she is Indian. Ads and films are saturated with it.
But then you have Rohit Bal and Neil Nitin Mukesh, who aren’t that far off from Kalki Koechlin and the Alters. But, they have Indian names. So…the Indian mind takes that and thinks no further of it.
It is when you have the name and very pale skin tone and hair color that the question comes comes. Does that make any sense?
I did not mean it to say that neither couldn’t pass as the other. Simply what I think are the workings of an Indian mind.
There are plenty of half-browns born and raised in India that are in the entertainment Industry. Some with Indian names, others with other names. For the most part their parentage is mentioned in some articles but not made a big deal of. But in a way, everyone’s parentage/background is described in India.
It took some Googling, but she is Anglo-Indian:
Also I should’ve put quotes around ‘looks white’ in comments. Because I know that can mean a whole range. I usually do it, the same goes for “looks Indian.” I somehow didn’t today.
Are you not brown?
what are white names?
I haven’t heard about Indian men being killed for dating non Indians by their families to preserve “honor”.
What about Indian people who look completely white? Has anyone on here never seen those?
My husband is Bengali and has brown hair and green eyes, he’s no different from any white guy-except his name is Rohit.
“what are white names?”
john smith katie flanagan martin johnson dave wade paul shelby wilson wilson tom jones susan corman lauren wharton anthony paddington
….. there’s about a billion others…
forgot one..
Lindsey Weeder
there are many black people with those names too..