Being from India and from a non-UC background I’m surprised you mention class matters more than caste. In the Indian context a Brahmin is supposed to be poor. His poverty makes him holy. And all Brahmins play that part- from Narayan murthy to Subdar Pichai.
Art of all kinds (all the troupes you mentioned) are lower caste in origin and were taken up by ucs only when the British questioned their lack of artistic intent of any kind.
Still I do think growing up in America makes you less susceptible to use anything Indian as anything except costume because there can be a punishment socially by the local majority culture for performing what is prized behavior in India (introversion, quietness, forced lack of feminine sexuality, miserliness, distrust and disrespect of people from other communities including other races, pride in a sort of performative poverty, mockery of people who are different to you, degrading and humiliation of people for meat eating etc). People fresh off the boat still do these things from what I can see and it seems to cause intense discomfort to locally brought up kids who are ashamed to be associated with those behaviors (that their own parents probably practice - at least as per Lilly Singhs videos).
An interesting article. I find it very difficult to trust upper castes given my own experiences with their performative modernity but it was nice to read you.
I just read this other comment made in a discussion about Muslim-Hindu syncretism. You’re right - that is simply not a feature of upper caste cultures which is constructured more in terms of religious wars. Most uc peoples great grandma had probably never met a Muslim in her entire lifetime. Jinnah(the founder of Pakistan) for example is from a family of baniyas in Gujarat who famously converted when they were outcasted by his community for doing business on the seas (verboten to the upper caste at the time). This is again a culture appropriated from the majority lower caste communities - where we have normally people in the same families who are from different religions. Most people from lower caste communities converted en masse during the Muslim rule often to escape caste humiliation - this is because conversion is a group activity in India due to caste. You can’t survive without your caste kin. Who would a butcher marry if not another butcher?
Once the British arrived and capitalism made people more individualistic that is when people started converting for the soul. So in my extended family (we are from a lower caste community) there are converts to Islam, Christianity and brahminical Hinduism.
Anyway all of this to say syncretic culture is not normal for upper castes. They are more tribalistic and prefer their own enclaves. Sadly they need to pretend to be more open and welcoming, more silly and fun, more interesting and creative than they are to get the advantages they’ve been given. And keep them.
I'm Indian and from Singapore so Singaporean Indian.
My dad was and is religious and we attended the chinmaya mission and ramakrishna mission center for youth when we were teenagers and learnt about the placement of Chakras when I was 10.
I speak fluent Tamil and basic Mandarin and learnt bharatnatyam since the age of 8. (I sucked)
I codeswitch pretty well from an American accent to an Indian one to a Singaporean one with ease. I used to be ashamed of this but have started regarding this as some sort of superpower.
My question to you is
Do you feel any sense of shame in being perceived as indian. You may wonder where this question is coming from and its really coming from a place of not wanting to be perceived as this but as that. I never felt at home in Singapore and every country I've lived in I've felt a desperate need to belong there except the one to which my roots traditionally lie and where I've never lived.
So...has there been any sense of frustration when someone has perhaps regarded you as more Indian and less American?
Hi! Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I haven't ever been ashamed of being Indian, unless you count when I was mocked as a child for being hairy and other things like my lunch. I know that out in the world, I am seen as Indian by white people, but American by Indian people, but I also know that white people see that I'm raised here so they still treat me differently as an insider than Indians do; in fact, Indians are less inclusive where I live overall (Austin). What I do feel ashamed about is that white people's conception of race has led Indians (the ones from India) to perform Indian-ness as though it's happening for a white gaze while also flattening things to make them easier to accesss, like removing the goddess from Navratri and removing religion from Diwali and making it about film dance performances. At a previous job, I made an employee resource group for "Asians", and it was just performative for white people's conception of diversity.
You considered yourself Vaishnav before you considered yourself Gujarati? I had thought that most people of Indian descent identified with their ethnicity (Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, etc.).
An intriguing question. Despite my Gujarati identity being strong, I’m still only half Gujarati and never lived in India for an extended period in the Gujarati context, so being Gujarati for me is more related to food, dress, and Navratri than it is anything else. However, Hindu Gujaratis tend to be Vaishnav while also worshipping various forms of Shakti, so I’m connected to Gujarat religiously, and linguistically through Vaishavism. Because I’ve never experienced life in an Indian Gujarati context, I don’t think I’m meaningfully Gujarati.
I wanted to gently push back on the idea that the Indian-American identity is largely artificial, performative, and career-based.
Personally, I view "Indian-American" culture as a complex network of intertwined identities. Thus, it is a culture that is nebulous but still meaningfully distinct from the American mainstream. While it certainly came into focus for me in college and beyond, it did originate in my childhood. In my hometown, a typical weekend for my family could entail visiting a South Indian temple, grabbing groceries at the Gujarati-owned Patel Brothers, attending a Bengali cultural program, and having late-night chai at a Pakistani-owned tea house. This reflects a lifestyle and community in which religious, linguistic, cultural, and culinary identities are all mixed together, creating a uniquely Indian-American experience.
In my opinion, the most meaningful aspect of our identity is how our religious/spiritual traditions influence our approach to life in America. This is obviously unique to each individual Indian-American, but I believe that being raised with ideas of dharma and karma result in a distinct worldview than that of our White and/or Christian (or Christian-background-but-now-atheist) peers. You could argue that this is just reflective of a narrower Hindu (or even specific Hindu sect) identity, but I think that there has been so much interreligious exchange in Indian history that even Indian-origin Hindus and Muslims could find points of spiritual commonality.
Since I am sure you know about all of these things - perhaps more than I do - I wonder why you think these aspects do not "count" towards a meaningful identity?
Hi there, thanks for your thoughtful comment and for reading! I agree that they are intertwined experiences between India and America that create a semblance of identity, if you need to claim it. I did many similar things. But what is the American mainstream? People like us exist in an immigrant first-generation world via our parents' generation, in another kind of immigrant world, professionally speaking, and in a third world among primarily white and other Asian people, particularly if we are in the professional class. I think you and I have converged on the point that the religious life is what gives one the strongest connection to the idea of India. I grew up primarily Hindu due to the ISKCON context in which I was raised. I would argue, though, we've taken concepts like dharma and karma and adapted them to fit the way white people see them very often, or at least killed bhakti in favor of advaita vedanta, which is impersonal and non-dual. This inclination is in no small part due to the legacy of colonialism on the Bengali elite in particular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Vivekananda, in particular, did much to spread Hinduism and Advaita Vedanta among the American elite, and the Indian elite have also adopted this. But, Advaita Vedanta is part of professional class Indian respectability in the eyes of white people.
Regarding being 'Indian', much of what people do these days to display being Indian is either going to the temple to primarily socialize over embodying bhakti and do dance performances to celebrate holidays while emptying those holidays of religious meaning (e.g., navratri is now "garba nights" with Bollywoodized garba songs not in Gujarati, and Diwali is about aesthetics and parties). I've lived in enough Indian contexts to find now this sort of thing shallow and meaningless. The only thing that connects me to India, the spiritual homeland of Hinduism, is its philosophy and the concept of bhakti. As I wrote in the post, I don't begrudge people calling themselves Indian who grew up here, but are you really Indian? Is your personality like that of immigrant Indians? If not, how is it that you're more Indian than American? I'd say you're describing being Hindu over being Indian.
As for Muslim and Hindu interaction, I understand that you're trying to paint a picture of religious syncretism. But Hinduism absorbs, and Islam conquers. I appreciate the mystical elements of Islam and the blending of aesthetics and art. But, Islam and Hinduism are fundamentally incompatible and even more so in the diaspora. I have taken a far more critical eye toward the Mughal empire in my middle age. It was an act of domination, no different than the British Empire. It is far more accepted among the PMC to be overtly Muslim than being overtly Hindu, which is presumed to be a fascistic, brahminical identity rather than a philosophical or lived religious identity, and that bugs me. It's why I reject the term south asian - we don't have some shared south asian identity in anyone's mind other than elites. This is something Americans who grew up here especially cling to because it makes us feel progressive and in line with American secularism. But I think this contributes to the erasure of Hindu as an identity. When people say they're Indian, I wonder how often they mean Hindu and don't want to say it.
I agree that ISKCON and Vivekananda played large roles in how both American elites and modern Indian-Americans see Hinduism. Growing up, my family was very involved with the Vedanta Society, and so the ideas of Advaita Vedanta are deeply ingrained in my worldview (even though I consider myself to be agnostic now). That movement views itself as a modern reformulation of ancient concepts of Vedanta to meet the challenges of our times - based on Vivekananda's 19th century idea that India needed to learn science from the West, but the West needed to learn spirituality from India. I actually think this is a very meaningful basis for a distinct Indian-American identity - to the extent that, for example, Chicago is almost considered a holy city because of Vivekananda's time spent there.
At the same time, I understand the frustration that other aspects of Hinduism, like bhakti, are less "palatable" in the West. Interestingly, there is a deep strain of bhaktism even in the Vedanta Society ethos, because Sri Ramakrishna (Vivekananda's guru) was very much a bhakta. In fact (and this is a point I brought up in a similar exchange with Vishal Ganesan), I think that the Vedanta Societies in the U.S. have responded in recent years to the changing demographics of their followers, who are increasingly Indian immigrants, rather than white American elites. While programming varies from center to center, major centers today host large-scale events for festivals like Durga Puja, which are well-attended by the local Indian community. It's also common to have weekly kirtans for Rama and Shiva. This reflects the role of bhakti in keeping the community engaged in the the organization.
To your point about Islam, I concede that Hindus and Muslims in America generally do not bond over syncretic mystical traditions from the subcontinent, and there is seemingly a quiet distrust between the two communities. I am not oblivious to the fact that most Muslims would see us as infidels, and I think it's weird how (especially in the last few years) it seems like Islam is left-coded and Hinduism is right-coded according to American progressives. My points was just that I have enough cultural literacy to appreciate music from places like Pakistan (ex. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) and Afghanistan (ex. Ahmad Zahir), and this makes me feel, in some sense, "Indian" or even "South Asian" in addition to "Hindu."
Lastly, it seems like an undertone of your cynicism towards the Indian-American identity (despite being so involved in it your entire life) has to do with how it is perceived by white Americans and the PMC. In this regard, I may simply be more naive than you. I'm a grad student (soon to be post doc), so I don't have "real" work experience, and thus don't really know what Indians face in jobs like tech/finance, etc. You've certainly given me a lot to think about as I get older, though.
You're correct about Ramakrishna, which is why I found Vivekananda's approach to be a departure from the original Ramakrishna Math's Shaktism. That form of devotion, however, would have been unacceptable among Americans, which is why I argued that the hegemonic perception of Hinduism in the U.S. is shaped by both the white elite and the Indian elite. That's why it feels so diluted. For example, I've attended satsangs hosted by people in the Art of Living, at the mainstream Hindu temple, and kirtans hosted by a local former ISKCON-affiliated couple, open to anyone, mostly non-believers. In no context other than kirtans with ISKCON devotees did I find actual surrender. I wrote a few posts ago about how ISKCON has become increasingly Indian, and I saw them lean into the emotion, like I never saw them do in the 90s. I'm glad to see that development.
It's good to know that these organizations have evolved from their pretty simplistic presentation of Hinduism. The impersonal Brahman and Advaita Vedanta were hegemonic, for example, in the Hindu Student Council at college; there were no emotional displays because it had to fit the social context. It's not an accident, I think, that converts who leave society to an extent when they join ISKCON have an easier time being emotionally attached to divinity without shame because there's no one to impress.
And your point is well-made about the identities 'Indian' and 'South Asian' being partly related to interactions here with Islam. But crucially, Indian isn't an identity that most Muslims claim, not least because there are few Indian Muslims in America. Even so, they tend to call themselves Muslim more than Indian, which I think is telling.
Knowing where you are in life helps me understand your perspective better. I'd be curious to hear how you see things after working among Indian immigrants in a professional context. That was the change for me. Indians in tech are furthermore a specific type, and they're becoming more south indian over time. That doesn't help, either, and I realized that there's a stark north/south divide in the experience of being 'Indian' in the diaspora. Thanks for the thought-provoking comments!
"By the way, I’m Brahmin but feel zero guilt or pride; guilt is a useless, self-serving emotion."
Well, it sure didn't give you much of a leg up in life, did it...because it was just a silly colour label in your case, your parents' lack of wealth certainly didn't fit it. I like the example you set that you reject it. Coming from a Brahmin-in-name-only family demonstrates how class is actually the ultimate privilege, not skin colour. (The fact that Kanye West's kids have way more privilege than most white kids in America seems always to escape the race-obsessed SJWs.
What I got from this: Man, being of Indian origin is complicated :)
What I extrapolated from this: But it doesn't have to be. These various identities and labels are useful up to a point--we need ways to describe each other and embrace the differences without judgement--but shouldn't become implanted in our brains as anything more important than they are. Because, in the end, we're all trying to eke out a living and the real privilege is economic, with, as you point out, race simply functioning as a shield to protect ourselves from the *real* privilege: Wealth/economic, (consolation prize, SJWs: You still get to feel bad about the circumstances you were born into!), with which one will almost certainly go farther in life unless you really work to fuck it up, and also, belies the unpleasant, uncomfortable truth to others that maybe it's not 'racism', or 'slavery legacy', or other race-based considerations that keep one in one's place but either having been born into an economically humble family, or into a richer one--and either way, the power is within you to rise higher and do better, although it will be more challenging for the former.
Honestly, all this granular Indian-ness makes my head spin! Maybe us white folks do it too but I haven't seen that much of it; maybe because I don't hang out with SJWs; I'm too busy Zooming with my Albertan allies to become a 51st state and find the Canadian Trump who will bring Christianity, insane consumer price raises and the end of democracy, lol.
Love that you do Indian dance! I love watching cultural dancing because I was a belly dancer for so long (misappropriating Islamic/Middle Eastern culture despite not, to my knowledge, a single cell of ME blood in me :) ) and always marveled at the angular nature of it, requiring some advanced balance skills and probably a lot of Ben Gay at the end of the day :) It's somewhat similar to Thai dancing, which is also fairly angular; don't know how much Indian influence there is there (or whether y'all stole it from the Thais :) ) as I don't know too much about Thailand.
I would say belly dance itself is a transnational and transcultural dance form so I don’t think you’re appropriating fwiw. My core contention here that you picked up on is that class makes a bigger difference for a person than racial identity group in America, and people in those groups themselves don’t see that. Separately Indian American identity is really Hindu identity but we’ve been taught to ignore that and instead focus on a secularized identity even though everyone knows that “Indian” things are really Hindu things. When people say they want to go to an Indian wedding, they really want to go to a Hindu wedding, not an Indian Muslim or Christian wedding. That slippage bothers me. Perhaps worth a follow up.
With a few exceptions, I regard the whole concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ fairly offensive. The story of human history is cultural appropriation and it’s a lot of how we evolve socially. So when I joke about myself ‘culturally appropriating’ it’s always in jest or with sarcasm, making fun of woke cultural bigots. The history of belly dancing, like any other living art form, is that of cultural appropriation, or borrowing, or learning new things from others. In fact, it was us Western ‘appropriators’ that have helped to keep belly dancing alive when it’s been under attack for a long while in the Middle East…needless to say the fundamentalists aren’t keen on it, even when the dancers cover up entirely. Orthodox Jews in Israel have come down on it too. It got shut down in many places, at least publicly, and we Westerners kept it alive. So no, belly dancing today doesn’t look the same as it did 100 or 200 years ago in Egypt…or Jordan….Or Saudi Arabia…but then again, it changed there too over the years.
I’ve been thinking of class privilege a lot more and it’s something we could emphasize more, and point out how non-white, non-male, non-hetero, etc. folks can easily be privileged with the right amount of the greens (or the queens here, since I don’t think they’ve put Prince Charles on the money yet, lol). Another idea we should talk about! I think I want to write about Jay Z, Beyonce and Kanye West…who’s so rich he can afford to be a Nazi :) I think that makes him white!!! ;)
The dynamics you describe are applicable to any immigrant culture. Immigrants stop evolving with the mother culture. Their culture in terms of their native country in all its manifestations remains frozen at the time they left. Maybe for a few years, they will maintain some connection but it becomes harder and harder. This is true even for natives. Each generation transforms the culture in a way that older generations cannot follow. But it is especially true for immigrants. Their kids, despite visiting the mother country often, see a reflection of their parent’s culture through the eyes of their parents, unless they themselves have had a chance to immigrate back to the native country.
As a personal anecdote, I literally cannot stand a single song in the top 50 in my native country. My musical tastes are frozen roughly a decade after I came to the U.S. Maybe it would have happened anyways, maybe not. I think not, because I came to appreciate at least some modern American songs.
My kids grew up in the PMC bubble with many other second generation immigrants kids. My daughter’s best friends in college are mostly South Asian second generation kids despite us having no connection with South Asia. I have spoken to some of them and I can understand why she fits with them. She has even started to retrace her own roots and becoming a hyphenated-American. But I don’t think this will result in a lasting connection. Many kids in that cultural group are significantly more conservative than her, coming from families that immigrated to the U.S. decades earlier than me. This cultural evolution has happened to countless other groups over the last two centuries. At the end, what remains is a ghost of a culture long gone that is vaguely connected to the evolved society where I was once a member of.
“Not only do we maintain caste consciousness (not in a good way) in the West, but we categorize each other according to perceived distance from the culture.”
Thank you for the interesting read. This sentence struck me. I confess to being a black hole of ignorance when it comes to understanding hinduism and especially caste consciousness, but my liberality compels me to ask more about “a good way” to “maintain caste consciousness.”
If you’ve already written about this or have an external source that might help me to understand, a link would be appreciated. Honestly though I’d rather hear from you.
I lot of interesting points to think about here, it certainly made some thinks about “first gen born here” aka AIDs and the visa holders who come later and adapt aka IOAs more legible. There’s a lot of interesting dynamics and it’s interesting to see how it plays out. One thing that interest me and why I’ve started to use “South Asia” as a group identifier more (aka of South Asian Subcontinental origin) is the more I learn and interact with people the more distinct it feels from the rest of Asia, specifically the “Far East” and the more Buddhist Southeast Asia, less so but still among the first gens and especially among the immigrants and international students and H1Bs, who stay and adapt, etc. yeah, there’s all sorts of people and cultural norm followers and breakers, and different individualistic ways to adapt and personalities within these cultural attitudes. There also seems to be pretty distinct cultural things passed on, I am thinking more attitudes towards shame, humility, personal expression, and social class that are have quite different qualities in the Indian cultural traditions (and to degrees similar in Pakistan and Bangladesh too) that separate them from the rest of … “Asia”
This has a similarity to Native American Indian cultures, and it's Perfect: There is no way to be "Indian" enough. If you're 100% native and work in an office, you're not Indian. If you're some fraction, but live the performative Indian stereotype, you're not Indian. If you don't speak the language, obv not Indian, but if you do and use it, you're not allowed to share and dilute it with the (white?) public, the tribe fathers will censure you, and you're not Indian. If you're rich, you're obviously not Indian, but if you're poor, you're annoying Indian and need to be less Indian to be more Indian.
Then you can either participate in the Native American Indian Olympics, competing with the others for who's really Indian, Sioux? Fox? You? Me? OR you can opt-out of it, ignore it all, and be a betrayer who is ALSO not Indian. Yay!
So what do you see here? **Because none of the underlying logic works, then all you get for any of it is a lot of social hooks other people can bash you with.** If they're poorer, they can bash you, if they're richer, if they're more, if they're less, they can bash you for being Indian even if they're White! It's the ultimate no-win, by which the subgroup is tied down and internally destroyed forever, so must be encouraged as much as possible.
When you've built a back-biting perpetual motion machine to erase internal cohesion, then a group who is fighting this squiddy is never fighting the larger overculture. And are perpetually sapped, an underdog. But don't have to attribute it to race or culture -- whatever those even mean, as you point out -- Woke itself is one of those machines, sidelining all its members from addressing real abuses of power.
Moral of the story: you know a tree by its fruits. That situation is bulls--t. Don't fall for it. Be who you are.
I believe you are not an essentialist about ethnic traits, but what do you make of the high concentration of AIDs in politics and IOAs in corporate leadership? Surely a background culture of verbal skills or interest in debate and heady ideas has something to do with it?
Or is it selective immigration policy favoring the high skilled? If so, why those two fields in particular?
I don't really feel like I have the option of not caring about being Indian, because Indian isn't an identity I ever chose, it's one that people force on me. I didn't grew up there, I grew up in Canada, and I have as much British ancestry as Indian ancestry, but contemporary white and black Americans (people I've started to refer to as monochrome) agree with the segregationists that one drop of non-white blood is sufficient to purge all whiteness from your system – so when they look at me, they say and think "Indian".
Now it's true, I did study Sanskrit at length and come to teach Indian religions - because I wanted to get an in-depth understanding of Buddhism, a tradition that I encountered and first learned in Thailand. You need to know ancient India to know Buddhism's roots – but medieval and modern India gave up on Buddhism centuries ago.
Thanks for the added context that obviously goes deeper than the stereo-typcial norms of culture that is layered like an onion.
As a 'tech worker' in Enterprise tech companies, I have worked with many AIDs/IOAs that are employed amongst the ranks. Most have been kind people just making their way through a forest of tree types that's impossible to categorize. The biggest obstacle for me was the speed at which they speak English. It was often better than mine as a native U.S. english speaker, but I had to have them slow down. Probably just a 'me' thing and/or stronger accents with any languages that aren't ones native tongue.
Outside of work, and in social settings is where I started to see the family dynamic, with AIDs/IOAs, where I'd often see a family of two or three children and their mother, and the father usually walking several steps ahead of the rest of them, and often seeing the husband treat his wife like one of the children. Strange phenomenon when I first witnessed it. It wasn't the default, but did come accross it many times. Is that a common thing or more common amongst certain sects, or something else entirely?
I had an AIDs woman come into my place of business one day, and returned on a few other occasions just to chat as she lived nearby. I picture her more like you as she explained her family dynamics and how her parents were pretty agnostic towards her, her social life and marriage, etc. She seemed to be living a 'tweener' life where she felt like she didn't fit in to any circle or groups and was trying to make her way in the world. All I could say was I'm not of Indian decent and feel the same way many times.
We're all individuals no matter our heritage, genes, and upbringing. I feel it's up to us to make our own way in the best possible way we can given our circumstances, challenges and gifts/talents.
Interesting perspective. As an Indian in the PMC from the Jain background, I find the Hindu perspective very interesting. I think our perspective is more aligned with Jewish elite rather than the similarity between white elite and Brahmin elite
I can write an essay on the spiritual and cultural differences between Jainism and Hinduism, but from a western elite perspective - Jains tend to tribal and not buy into western elite dogma. Strong emphasis on tribalism and hierarchy/elitism.
The similarities with the Jewish elite end there. They take it a step further by cynically codifying and programming culture for their gain (ie. White guilt). They are not a monolith (for example here is an article from cis by a Jew worried about weakening whites too quickly in America can backfire: https://cis.org/Report/Jewish-Stake-Americas-Changing-Demography) but in essence they are far more tribal and realist.
I really wonder why Jains are less likely to buy it. Perhaps it’s partly because they’re already a minority in India and among the Indian diaspora, where they are frequently invisible.
True. The community is also a business/trading community historically. Culturally, this rewards skepticism, realism, tribalism - less likely to buy into capitalistic neoliberal social justice.
Curious, did you encounter situations where you were signaled out and praised by teachers in the middle of class, just for being ethnic?
Especially my history teacher freshman year, would constantly point out to other students, “Christina has a culture, isn’t it beautiful”, or something to that effect. Wondering if that’s more widespread
Not at the time because Indians were less common in the 90s and 00s, but today there are so many I bet there’s a view of Indian students as embodying a set of characteristics that make us better at school. Truthfully, Indians probably are better at school because we’re raised to defer to authority and the whole respecting your elders is still part of it, where it isn’t with white kids.
I am watching Game of Thrones again. The backstory is good to visit relative to human history for everything about human social status being connected to blood lines, with few able to circumvent it with their lack of blueblood or lack of advantageous cultural/ethnic origins.
Conversely, utopian progress as depicted in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek stories where different alien races lived in merit-based harmony, would seem to be the actual goal. However, today the same cohort of powerful people that claim a progressive movement toward a more perfect utopian existence seem to want to go backwards to the system demonstrated by Game of Thrones.
It would be good in my mind that filtering of group belonging goes to the current home country and honors THAT culture while dropping any conflicting cultural practices of the previous home country.
It was back during Teddy Roosevelt where he outlined the dangers of having "hyphenated Americans". I think this is correct. You are either Indian or American, not Indian-American. Or at least I believe that is the way it should be.
I only recently watched GoT and I think you’re onto something. I actually once thought whichever republican was against hyphenated identities a while back was pandering to white people, but now it seems like it’s actually elite hyphenated Indians who are performing for white people because it is also elite whites who need us to maintain that differential - Indian Americans justify the current credentialism infected meritocracy by being examples elite whites can point to that then legitimate the system. This is how it also works with affirmative action and the few URMs who make it into elite colleges.
You’re right in that we seem to want to regress to GoT. But I also think the Star Trek universe assumes an end to greed which will never happen.
Finally, I think cultural relativism has made impossible pointing out where certain dominant cultural tendencies aren’t always a good fit for the host society. I frequently find that the most obvious difference between me and Indians is deference to authority. And I’d argue that the American ethos is to be skeptical of authority.
Being from India and from a non-UC background I’m surprised you mention class matters more than caste. In the Indian context a Brahmin is supposed to be poor. His poverty makes him holy. And all Brahmins play that part- from Narayan murthy to Subdar Pichai.
Art of all kinds (all the troupes you mentioned) are lower caste in origin and were taken up by ucs only when the British questioned their lack of artistic intent of any kind.
Still I do think growing up in America makes you less susceptible to use anything Indian as anything except costume because there can be a punishment socially by the local majority culture for performing what is prized behavior in India (introversion, quietness, forced lack of feminine sexuality, miserliness, distrust and disrespect of people from other communities including other races, pride in a sort of performative poverty, mockery of people who are different to you, degrading and humiliation of people for meat eating etc). People fresh off the boat still do these things from what I can see and it seems to cause intense discomfort to locally brought up kids who are ashamed to be associated with those behaviors (that their own parents probably practice - at least as per Lilly Singhs videos).
An interesting article. I find it very difficult to trust upper castes given my own experiences with their performative modernity but it was nice to read you.
I just read this other comment made in a discussion about Muslim-Hindu syncretism. You’re right - that is simply not a feature of upper caste cultures which is constructured more in terms of religious wars. Most uc peoples great grandma had probably never met a Muslim in her entire lifetime. Jinnah(the founder of Pakistan) for example is from a family of baniyas in Gujarat who famously converted when they were outcasted by his community for doing business on the seas (verboten to the upper caste at the time). This is again a culture appropriated from the majority lower caste communities - where we have normally people in the same families who are from different religions. Most people from lower caste communities converted en masse during the Muslim rule often to escape caste humiliation - this is because conversion is a group activity in India due to caste. You can’t survive without your caste kin. Who would a butcher marry if not another butcher?
Once the British arrived and capitalism made people more individualistic that is when people started converting for the soul. So in my extended family (we are from a lower caste community) there are converts to Islam, Christianity and brahminical Hinduism.
Anyway all of this to say syncretic culture is not normal for upper castes. They are more tribalistic and prefer their own enclaves. Sadly they need to pretend to be more open and welcoming, more silly and fun, more interesting and creative than they are to get the advantages they’ve been given. And keep them.
I'm Indian and from Singapore so Singaporean Indian.
My dad was and is religious and we attended the chinmaya mission and ramakrishna mission center for youth when we were teenagers and learnt about the placement of Chakras when I was 10.
I speak fluent Tamil and basic Mandarin and learnt bharatnatyam since the age of 8. (I sucked)
I codeswitch pretty well from an American accent to an Indian one to a Singaporean one with ease. I used to be ashamed of this but have started regarding this as some sort of superpower.
My question to you is
Do you feel any sense of shame in being perceived as indian. You may wonder where this question is coming from and its really coming from a place of not wanting to be perceived as this but as that. I never felt at home in Singapore and every country I've lived in I've felt a desperate need to belong there except the one to which my roots traditionally lie and where I've never lived.
So...has there been any sense of frustration when someone has perhaps regarded you as more Indian and less American?
Hi! Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I haven't ever been ashamed of being Indian, unless you count when I was mocked as a child for being hairy and other things like my lunch. I know that out in the world, I am seen as Indian by white people, but American by Indian people, but I also know that white people see that I'm raised here so they still treat me differently as an insider than Indians do; in fact, Indians are less inclusive where I live overall (Austin). What I do feel ashamed about is that white people's conception of race has led Indians (the ones from India) to perform Indian-ness as though it's happening for a white gaze while also flattening things to make them easier to accesss, like removing the goddess from Navratri and removing religion from Diwali and making it about film dance performances. At a previous job, I made an employee resource group for "Asians", and it was just performative for white people's conception of diversity.
You considered yourself Vaishnav before you considered yourself Gujarati? I had thought that most people of Indian descent identified with their ethnicity (Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, etc.).
An intriguing question. Despite my Gujarati identity being strong, I’m still only half Gujarati and never lived in India for an extended period in the Gujarati context, so being Gujarati for me is more related to food, dress, and Navratri than it is anything else. However, Hindu Gujaratis tend to be Vaishnav while also worshipping various forms of Shakti, so I’m connected to Gujarat religiously, and linguistically through Vaishavism. Because I’ve never experienced life in an Indian Gujarati context, I don’t think I’m meaningfully Gujarati.
This was an interesting article!
I wanted to gently push back on the idea that the Indian-American identity is largely artificial, performative, and career-based.
Personally, I view "Indian-American" culture as a complex network of intertwined identities. Thus, it is a culture that is nebulous but still meaningfully distinct from the American mainstream. While it certainly came into focus for me in college and beyond, it did originate in my childhood. In my hometown, a typical weekend for my family could entail visiting a South Indian temple, grabbing groceries at the Gujarati-owned Patel Brothers, attending a Bengali cultural program, and having late-night chai at a Pakistani-owned tea house. This reflects a lifestyle and community in which religious, linguistic, cultural, and culinary identities are all mixed together, creating a uniquely Indian-American experience.
In my opinion, the most meaningful aspect of our identity is how our religious/spiritual traditions influence our approach to life in America. This is obviously unique to each individual Indian-American, but I believe that being raised with ideas of dharma and karma result in a distinct worldview than that of our White and/or Christian (or Christian-background-but-now-atheist) peers. You could argue that this is just reflective of a narrower Hindu (or even specific Hindu sect) identity, but I think that there has been so much interreligious exchange in Indian history that even Indian-origin Hindus and Muslims could find points of spiritual commonality.
Since I am sure you know about all of these things - perhaps more than I do - I wonder why you think these aspects do not "count" towards a meaningful identity?
Hi there, thanks for your thoughtful comment and for reading! I agree that they are intertwined experiences between India and America that create a semblance of identity, if you need to claim it. I did many similar things. But what is the American mainstream? People like us exist in an immigrant first-generation world via our parents' generation, in another kind of immigrant world, professionally speaking, and in a third world among primarily white and other Asian people, particularly if we are in the professional class. I think you and I have converged on the point that the religious life is what gives one the strongest connection to the idea of India. I grew up primarily Hindu due to the ISKCON context in which I was raised. I would argue, though, we've taken concepts like dharma and karma and adapted them to fit the way white people see them very often, or at least killed bhakti in favor of advaita vedanta, which is impersonal and non-dual. This inclination is in no small part due to the legacy of colonialism on the Bengali elite in particular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Vivekananda, in particular, did much to spread Hinduism and Advaita Vedanta among the American elite, and the Indian elite have also adopted this. But, Advaita Vedanta is part of professional class Indian respectability in the eyes of white people.
Regarding being 'Indian', much of what people do these days to display being Indian is either going to the temple to primarily socialize over embodying bhakti and do dance performances to celebrate holidays while emptying those holidays of religious meaning (e.g., navratri is now "garba nights" with Bollywoodized garba songs not in Gujarati, and Diwali is about aesthetics and parties). I've lived in enough Indian contexts to find now this sort of thing shallow and meaningless. The only thing that connects me to India, the spiritual homeland of Hinduism, is its philosophy and the concept of bhakti. As I wrote in the post, I don't begrudge people calling themselves Indian who grew up here, but are you really Indian? Is your personality like that of immigrant Indians? If not, how is it that you're more Indian than American? I'd say you're describing being Hindu over being Indian.
As for Muslim and Hindu interaction, I understand that you're trying to paint a picture of religious syncretism. But Hinduism absorbs, and Islam conquers. I appreciate the mystical elements of Islam and the blending of aesthetics and art. But, Islam and Hinduism are fundamentally incompatible and even more so in the diaspora. I have taken a far more critical eye toward the Mughal empire in my middle age. It was an act of domination, no different than the British Empire. It is far more accepted among the PMC to be overtly Muslim than being overtly Hindu, which is presumed to be a fascistic, brahminical identity rather than a philosophical or lived religious identity, and that bugs me. It's why I reject the term south asian - we don't have some shared south asian identity in anyone's mind other than elites. This is something Americans who grew up here especially cling to because it makes us feel progressive and in line with American secularism. But I think this contributes to the erasure of Hindu as an identity. When people say they're Indian, I wonder how often they mean Hindu and don't want to say it.
I agree that ISKCON and Vivekananda played large roles in how both American elites and modern Indian-Americans see Hinduism. Growing up, my family was very involved with the Vedanta Society, and so the ideas of Advaita Vedanta are deeply ingrained in my worldview (even though I consider myself to be agnostic now). That movement views itself as a modern reformulation of ancient concepts of Vedanta to meet the challenges of our times - based on Vivekananda's 19th century idea that India needed to learn science from the West, but the West needed to learn spirituality from India. I actually think this is a very meaningful basis for a distinct Indian-American identity - to the extent that, for example, Chicago is almost considered a holy city because of Vivekananda's time spent there.
At the same time, I understand the frustration that other aspects of Hinduism, like bhakti, are less "palatable" in the West. Interestingly, there is a deep strain of bhaktism even in the Vedanta Society ethos, because Sri Ramakrishna (Vivekananda's guru) was very much a bhakta. In fact (and this is a point I brought up in a similar exchange with Vishal Ganesan), I think that the Vedanta Societies in the U.S. have responded in recent years to the changing demographics of their followers, who are increasingly Indian immigrants, rather than white American elites. While programming varies from center to center, major centers today host large-scale events for festivals like Durga Puja, which are well-attended by the local Indian community. It's also common to have weekly kirtans for Rama and Shiva. This reflects the role of bhakti in keeping the community engaged in the the organization.
To your point about Islam, I concede that Hindus and Muslims in America generally do not bond over syncretic mystical traditions from the subcontinent, and there is seemingly a quiet distrust between the two communities. I am not oblivious to the fact that most Muslims would see us as infidels, and I think it's weird how (especially in the last few years) it seems like Islam is left-coded and Hinduism is right-coded according to American progressives. My points was just that I have enough cultural literacy to appreciate music from places like Pakistan (ex. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) and Afghanistan (ex. Ahmad Zahir), and this makes me feel, in some sense, "Indian" or even "South Asian" in addition to "Hindu."
Lastly, it seems like an undertone of your cynicism towards the Indian-American identity (despite being so involved in it your entire life) has to do with how it is perceived by white Americans and the PMC. In this regard, I may simply be more naive than you. I'm a grad student (soon to be post doc), so I don't have "real" work experience, and thus don't really know what Indians face in jobs like tech/finance, etc. You've certainly given me a lot to think about as I get older, though.
You're correct about Ramakrishna, which is why I found Vivekananda's approach to be a departure from the original Ramakrishna Math's Shaktism. That form of devotion, however, would have been unacceptable among Americans, which is why I argued that the hegemonic perception of Hinduism in the U.S. is shaped by both the white elite and the Indian elite. That's why it feels so diluted. For example, I've attended satsangs hosted by people in the Art of Living, at the mainstream Hindu temple, and kirtans hosted by a local former ISKCON-affiliated couple, open to anyone, mostly non-believers. In no context other than kirtans with ISKCON devotees did I find actual surrender. I wrote a few posts ago about how ISKCON has become increasingly Indian, and I saw them lean into the emotion, like I never saw them do in the 90s. I'm glad to see that development.
It's good to know that these organizations have evolved from their pretty simplistic presentation of Hinduism. The impersonal Brahman and Advaita Vedanta were hegemonic, for example, in the Hindu Student Council at college; there were no emotional displays because it had to fit the social context. It's not an accident, I think, that converts who leave society to an extent when they join ISKCON have an easier time being emotionally attached to divinity without shame because there's no one to impress.
And your point is well-made about the identities 'Indian' and 'South Asian' being partly related to interactions here with Islam. But crucially, Indian isn't an identity that most Muslims claim, not least because there are few Indian Muslims in America. Even so, they tend to call themselves Muslim more than Indian, which I think is telling.
Knowing where you are in life helps me understand your perspective better. I'd be curious to hear how you see things after working among Indian immigrants in a professional context. That was the change for me. Indians in tech are furthermore a specific type, and they're becoming more south indian over time. That doesn't help, either, and I realized that there's a stark north/south divide in the experience of being 'Indian' in the diaspora. Thanks for the thought-provoking comments!
"By the way, I’m Brahmin but feel zero guilt or pride; guilt is a useless, self-serving emotion."
Well, it sure didn't give you much of a leg up in life, did it...because it was just a silly colour label in your case, your parents' lack of wealth certainly didn't fit it. I like the example you set that you reject it. Coming from a Brahmin-in-name-only family demonstrates how class is actually the ultimate privilege, not skin colour. (The fact that Kanye West's kids have way more privilege than most white kids in America seems always to escape the race-obsessed SJWs.
What I got from this: Man, being of Indian origin is complicated :)
What I extrapolated from this: But it doesn't have to be. These various identities and labels are useful up to a point--we need ways to describe each other and embrace the differences without judgement--but shouldn't become implanted in our brains as anything more important than they are. Because, in the end, we're all trying to eke out a living and the real privilege is economic, with, as you point out, race simply functioning as a shield to protect ourselves from the *real* privilege: Wealth/economic, (consolation prize, SJWs: You still get to feel bad about the circumstances you were born into!), with which one will almost certainly go farther in life unless you really work to fuck it up, and also, belies the unpleasant, uncomfortable truth to others that maybe it's not 'racism', or 'slavery legacy', or other race-based considerations that keep one in one's place but either having been born into an economically humble family, or into a richer one--and either way, the power is within you to rise higher and do better, although it will be more challenging for the former.
Honestly, all this granular Indian-ness makes my head spin! Maybe us white folks do it too but I haven't seen that much of it; maybe because I don't hang out with SJWs; I'm too busy Zooming with my Albertan allies to become a 51st state and find the Canadian Trump who will bring Christianity, insane consumer price raises and the end of democracy, lol.
Love that you do Indian dance! I love watching cultural dancing because I was a belly dancer for so long (misappropriating Islamic/Middle Eastern culture despite not, to my knowledge, a single cell of ME blood in me :) ) and always marveled at the angular nature of it, requiring some advanced balance skills and probably a lot of Ben Gay at the end of the day :) It's somewhat similar to Thai dancing, which is also fairly angular; don't know how much Indian influence there is there (or whether y'all stole it from the Thais :) ) as I don't know too much about Thailand.
I would say belly dance itself is a transnational and transcultural dance form so I don’t think you’re appropriating fwiw. My core contention here that you picked up on is that class makes a bigger difference for a person than racial identity group in America, and people in those groups themselves don’t see that. Separately Indian American identity is really Hindu identity but we’ve been taught to ignore that and instead focus on a secularized identity even though everyone knows that “Indian” things are really Hindu things. When people say they want to go to an Indian wedding, they really want to go to a Hindu wedding, not an Indian Muslim or Christian wedding. That slippage bothers me. Perhaps worth a follow up.
With a few exceptions, I regard the whole concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ fairly offensive. The story of human history is cultural appropriation and it’s a lot of how we evolve socially. So when I joke about myself ‘culturally appropriating’ it’s always in jest or with sarcasm, making fun of woke cultural bigots. The history of belly dancing, like any other living art form, is that of cultural appropriation, or borrowing, or learning new things from others. In fact, it was us Western ‘appropriators’ that have helped to keep belly dancing alive when it’s been under attack for a long while in the Middle East…needless to say the fundamentalists aren’t keen on it, even when the dancers cover up entirely. Orthodox Jews in Israel have come down on it too. It got shut down in many places, at least publicly, and we Westerners kept it alive. So no, belly dancing today doesn’t look the same as it did 100 or 200 years ago in Egypt…or Jordan….Or Saudi Arabia…but then again, it changed there too over the years.
I’ve been thinking of class privilege a lot more and it’s something we could emphasize more, and point out how non-white, non-male, non-hetero, etc. folks can easily be privileged with the right amount of the greens (or the queens here, since I don’t think they’ve put Prince Charles on the money yet, lol). Another idea we should talk about! I think I want to write about Jay Z, Beyonce and Kanye West…who’s so rich he can afford to be a Nazi :) I think that makes him white!!! ;)
The dynamics you describe are applicable to any immigrant culture. Immigrants stop evolving with the mother culture. Their culture in terms of their native country in all its manifestations remains frozen at the time they left. Maybe for a few years, they will maintain some connection but it becomes harder and harder. This is true even for natives. Each generation transforms the culture in a way that older generations cannot follow. But it is especially true for immigrants. Their kids, despite visiting the mother country often, see a reflection of their parent’s culture through the eyes of their parents, unless they themselves have had a chance to immigrate back to the native country.
As a personal anecdote, I literally cannot stand a single song in the top 50 in my native country. My musical tastes are frozen roughly a decade after I came to the U.S. Maybe it would have happened anyways, maybe not. I think not, because I came to appreciate at least some modern American songs.
My kids grew up in the PMC bubble with many other second generation immigrants kids. My daughter’s best friends in college are mostly South Asian second generation kids despite us having no connection with South Asia. I have spoken to some of them and I can understand why she fits with them. She has even started to retrace her own roots and becoming a hyphenated-American. But I don’t think this will result in a lasting connection. Many kids in that cultural group are significantly more conservative than her, coming from families that immigrated to the U.S. decades earlier than me. This cultural evolution has happened to countless other groups over the last two centuries. At the end, what remains is a ghost of a culture long gone that is vaguely connected to the evolved society where I was once a member of.
“Not only do we maintain caste consciousness (not in a good way) in the West, but we categorize each other according to perceived distance from the culture.”
Thank you for the interesting read. This sentence struck me. I confess to being a black hole of ignorance when it comes to understanding hinduism and especially caste consciousness, but my liberality compels me to ask more about “a good way” to “maintain caste consciousness.”
If you’ve already written about this or have an external source that might help me to understand, a link would be appreciated. Honestly though I’d rather hear from you.
I lot of interesting points to think about here, it certainly made some thinks about “first gen born here” aka AIDs and the visa holders who come later and adapt aka IOAs more legible. There’s a lot of interesting dynamics and it’s interesting to see how it plays out. One thing that interest me and why I’ve started to use “South Asia” as a group identifier more (aka of South Asian Subcontinental origin) is the more I learn and interact with people the more distinct it feels from the rest of Asia, specifically the “Far East” and the more Buddhist Southeast Asia, less so but still among the first gens and especially among the immigrants and international students and H1Bs, who stay and adapt, etc. yeah, there’s all sorts of people and cultural norm followers and breakers, and different individualistic ways to adapt and personalities within these cultural attitudes. There also seems to be pretty distinct cultural things passed on, I am thinking more attitudes towards shame, humility, personal expression, and social class that are have quite different qualities in the Indian cultural traditions (and to degrees similar in Pakistan and Bangladesh too) that separate them from the rest of … “Asia”
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16kjKMU7Zr/
What you say makes sense.
This has a similarity to Native American Indian cultures, and it's Perfect: There is no way to be "Indian" enough. If you're 100% native and work in an office, you're not Indian. If you're some fraction, but live the performative Indian stereotype, you're not Indian. If you don't speak the language, obv not Indian, but if you do and use it, you're not allowed to share and dilute it with the (white?) public, the tribe fathers will censure you, and you're not Indian. If you're rich, you're obviously not Indian, but if you're poor, you're annoying Indian and need to be less Indian to be more Indian.
Then you can either participate in the Native American Indian Olympics, competing with the others for who's really Indian, Sioux? Fox? You? Me? OR you can opt-out of it, ignore it all, and be a betrayer who is ALSO not Indian. Yay!
So what do you see here? **Because none of the underlying logic works, then all you get for any of it is a lot of social hooks other people can bash you with.** If they're poorer, they can bash you, if they're richer, if they're more, if they're less, they can bash you for being Indian even if they're White! It's the ultimate no-win, by which the subgroup is tied down and internally destroyed forever, so must be encouraged as much as possible.
When you've built a back-biting perpetual motion machine to erase internal cohesion, then a group who is fighting this squiddy is never fighting the larger overculture. And are perpetually sapped, an underdog. But don't have to attribute it to race or culture -- whatever those even mean, as you point out -- Woke itself is one of those machines, sidelining all its members from addressing real abuses of power.
Moral of the story: you know a tree by its fruits. That situation is bulls--t. Don't fall for it. Be who you are.
Enjoyed the read, thank you.
I believe you are not an essentialist about ethnic traits, but what do you make of the high concentration of AIDs in politics and IOAs in corporate leadership? Surely a background culture of verbal skills or interest in debate and heady ideas has something to do with it?
Or is it selective immigration policy favoring the high skilled? If so, why those two fields in particular?
I don't really feel like I have the option of not caring about being Indian, because Indian isn't an identity I ever chose, it's one that people force on me. I didn't grew up there, I grew up in Canada, and I have as much British ancestry as Indian ancestry, but contemporary white and black Americans (people I've started to refer to as monochrome) agree with the segregationists that one drop of non-white blood is sufficient to purge all whiteness from your system – so when they look at me, they say and think "Indian".
Now it's true, I did study Sanskrit at length and come to teach Indian religions - because I wanted to get an in-depth understanding of Buddhism, a tradition that I encountered and first learned in Thailand. You need to know ancient India to know Buddhism's roots – but medieval and modern India gave up on Buddhism centuries ago.
Thanks for the added context that obviously goes deeper than the stereo-typcial norms of culture that is layered like an onion.
As a 'tech worker' in Enterprise tech companies, I have worked with many AIDs/IOAs that are employed amongst the ranks. Most have been kind people just making their way through a forest of tree types that's impossible to categorize. The biggest obstacle for me was the speed at which they speak English. It was often better than mine as a native U.S. english speaker, but I had to have them slow down. Probably just a 'me' thing and/or stronger accents with any languages that aren't ones native tongue.
Outside of work, and in social settings is where I started to see the family dynamic, with AIDs/IOAs, where I'd often see a family of two or three children and their mother, and the father usually walking several steps ahead of the rest of them, and often seeing the husband treat his wife like one of the children. Strange phenomenon when I first witnessed it. It wasn't the default, but did come accross it many times. Is that a common thing or more common amongst certain sects, or something else entirely?
I had an AIDs woman come into my place of business one day, and returned on a few other occasions just to chat as she lived nearby. I picture her more like you as she explained her family dynamics and how her parents were pretty agnostic towards her, her social life and marriage, etc. She seemed to be living a 'tweener' life where she felt like she didn't fit in to any circle or groups and was trying to make her way in the world. All I could say was I'm not of Indian decent and feel the same way many times.
We're all individuals no matter our heritage, genes, and upbringing. I feel it's up to us to make our own way in the best possible way we can given our circumstances, challenges and gifts/talents.
Thanks again and keep going!
Interesting perspective. As an Indian in the PMC from the Jain background, I find the Hindu perspective very interesting. I think our perspective is more aligned with Jewish elite rather than the similarity between white elite and Brahmin elite
I’m curious what the difference is there that you see
I can write an essay on the spiritual and cultural differences between Jainism and Hinduism, but from a western elite perspective - Jains tend to tribal and not buy into western elite dogma. Strong emphasis on tribalism and hierarchy/elitism.
The similarities with the Jewish elite end there. They take it a step further by cynically codifying and programming culture for their gain (ie. White guilt). They are not a monolith (for example here is an article from cis by a Jew worried about weakening whites too quickly in America can backfire: https://cis.org/Report/Jewish-Stake-Americas-Changing-Demography) but in essence they are far more tribal and realist.
I really wonder why Jains are less likely to buy it. Perhaps it’s partly because they’re already a minority in India and among the Indian diaspora, where they are frequently invisible.
True. The community is also a business/trading community historically. Culturally, this rewards skepticism, realism, tribalism - less likely to buy into capitalistic neoliberal social justice.
Curious, did you encounter situations where you were signaled out and praised by teachers in the middle of class, just for being ethnic?
Especially my history teacher freshman year, would constantly point out to other students, “Christina has a culture, isn’t it beautiful”, or something to that effect. Wondering if that’s more widespread
Not at the time because Indians were less common in the 90s and 00s, but today there are so many I bet there’s a view of Indian students as embodying a set of characteristics that make us better at school. Truthfully, Indians probably are better at school because we’re raised to defer to authority and the whole respecting your elders is still part of it, where it isn’t with white kids.
I am watching Game of Thrones again. The backstory is good to visit relative to human history for everything about human social status being connected to blood lines, with few able to circumvent it with their lack of blueblood or lack of advantageous cultural/ethnic origins.
Conversely, utopian progress as depicted in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek stories where different alien races lived in merit-based harmony, would seem to be the actual goal. However, today the same cohort of powerful people that claim a progressive movement toward a more perfect utopian existence seem to want to go backwards to the system demonstrated by Game of Thrones.
It would be good in my mind that filtering of group belonging goes to the current home country and honors THAT culture while dropping any conflicting cultural practices of the previous home country.
It was back during Teddy Roosevelt where he outlined the dangers of having "hyphenated Americans". I think this is correct. You are either Indian or American, not Indian-American. Or at least I believe that is the way it should be.
I only recently watched GoT and I think you’re onto something. I actually once thought whichever republican was against hyphenated identities a while back was pandering to white people, but now it seems like it’s actually elite hyphenated Indians who are performing for white people because it is also elite whites who need us to maintain that differential - Indian Americans justify the current credentialism infected meritocracy by being examples elite whites can point to that then legitimate the system. This is how it also works with affirmative action and the few URMs who make it into elite colleges.
You’re right in that we seem to want to regress to GoT. But I also think the Star Trek universe assumes an end to greed which will never happen.
Finally, I think cultural relativism has made impossible pointing out where certain dominant cultural tendencies aren’t always a good fit for the host society. I frequently find that the most obvious difference between me and Indians is deference to authority. And I’d argue that the American ethos is to be skeptical of authority.