Desi-shun

A friend of mine was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area from Massachusetts.Both of us are recent entrants to the United States, but regional loyalties hadtaken root already. The perennial East Coast v. West Coast debate was justwaiting to make its entry. Sure enough he remarked, "I don’t like SiliconValley. So many desis". Now it would be easy to burst out in indignation atthis remark, but for the fact that the same sentiment is expressed, or at leastfelt, by most other Indians. Or desis, shall we say. Including myself. And thencontinuing in the same vein, of total identification with the New Englander’scontempt for the "newly moneyed", he expressed total pride in being fromthe "old country". Where it all began, so to speak.

No, he wasn’t thinking of India when he said that.

‘So many desis’. A remark that would certainly have categorized thespeaker as a racist had he been anything other than Indian. It is not myintention here to condemn any attitude or behaviour. But this phenomenon is tooprevalent to ignore. I own that I myself had moved from my heart-of-the-valleyapartment to an obscure ocean side town that is 50 miles away, within months ofarriving in the US. And there is no denying that one of my prime motivations wasto get away from the desi crowd that hung out at discount supermarkets. What isthe reason for this? Whatever it is, there is no point in pontificating here. IfI there is some deep-rooted aversion to my own countrymen, I might as wellaccept it and live with it. But it sure deserves some in-depth probing. Which iswhat this is all about.

It is remarkable though, that the same "fellow" feeling towardscompatriots is not exhibited by the members of another widely spread race, theChinese. The Chinese never look at other Chinese the way Indians do. For all theindignities the Chinese suffered at the hands of Western powers, they have neveraccepted that the white man is superior. It would be unthinkable to any Chinesethat they are anything but citizens of Zhong-Guo - The Middle Kingdom (read:Center of the World) and all other races and cultures are totally inferior.

I can recollect an observation made by one of my Beijing acquaintances, whenI was there a few years ago : "I don't like Hong Kong. The people there areashamed of us even though they too are Chinese." They say that you canalways make out the Mainland Chinese in HK by their ill-fitting clothes and badhaircuts.

The English did this to the Hong Kong Chinese, just as they did it to usIndians. And we in turn extend the same treatment downwards. Once we go up theladder by acquiring a college education and lose our parochial selves and widenour horizons, we cannot help feeling contempt for those who seem to typify thatvery identity we left behind. This manifests itself in many different forms.

The people who make the most fun of South Indian accents are those secondgeneration South Indians who grew up in Northern cities. It is almost as if theyhave to prove their altered identity to their northern friends. Similarly, Ihave heard Bengalis who grew up outside the state of West Bengal tell me, "Ihate Cal (cutta) Bongs!"

No hate is quite so strong as the insider’s who, now, perceives himself tobe an outsider.

I have been in California for a few years now and no American has ever pokedfun at my accent or mannerisms. But I still have to put up with Indians whoheckle me if they happen to hear me conversing in my Dravidian native tongue onthe phone. One Bombay bred South Indian I know, proudly proclaims that he hasnever eaten Sambar in his life. Why? So he can appear cool to his mates,perhaps. ("Hey, I am no hard-core Southie. I am a dude"). If you feed himthe same stuff calling it ‘Lentil soup seasoned with exotic tropical spices’he will in, all probability, lap it up.

I see very young Indian children who grow up in America forbidding theirparents to speak in their native Indian tongue at home when their Americanfriends visit.

I understand and empathize with the feelings of these uprooted individuals asthey struggle to forge their identities and have to come to terms with theconflict of where they come from and what they want to be and what they thinkothers see them as.

It is clear that we compartmentalize ourselves into distinct identities.There are those who belong and those who don’t.. The criteria that is used todecide this is usually the level of education that manifests itself insophistication in speech and manners.And we invariably associate fluency in theEnglish language with sophistication and use that as an acceptance criterion.Even those of us who make a conscious effort not to do this, do not see too muchevidence of excellence in Indian languages among those who don’t impress uswith their proficiency in English.

There is another side to this phenomenon too. There are those Indians whoseek comfort in the company of their countrymen and avoid going out of thecircle. You come across many of them at work who need the services of otherIndians who serve as a conduit to communicate with the outside world. It isalmost as if Java is their second language, not English. Coming back to theoriginal theory, the existence of these 'desis' intensifies the aversion thatthe others feel and their desire to be seen differently becomes more acute.

Given the polyglot nature of large American cities on the coasts, theattitude of the American populace to these new entrants can best be described asa polite shrug of the shoulders. ("Hey, I am no racist. I don’t care").While debating on the touchy issue of immigration, the pro-immigrants argue thatthe second generation of immigrants invariably speak English like Americans andassume the cultural profile of Americans. This argument is to counter theanti-immigrant view that immigration threatens America’s social fabric byintroducing non-English speaking people and their customs.

Even more interesting is the feeling of superiority that many Indians expressamongst themselves when comparing themselves to Americans. I am always hearingfrom my Indian friends about how Americans don’t have any interests outsidesports-recreation-food-movies and are not as interesting to get to know, even ifthe opportunities arise. Contrast this with the desi-shunning phenomenon and youget a truly bizarre, confusing picture.

So, we Indians like to be thought of as sophisticated in language andculture. We do not like to be associated with any racial group because we aretoo individualistic. We have a deep-rooted shame about our colonial past thatco-exists with our fondness for the English language and, by extension, popularWestern culture. And we are introspective enough to realize this without beingable to tear ourselves away from it. So when we come across others who remind usof what we really are, we run. 'The rage of Caliban seeing his own face in aglass’, wrote Wilde (albeit in a totally different context).

An American colleague at work, said, "I like Indians. They are alldifferent and don’t think alike. They are not homogenous like other groups.They are more like Americans, in that respect". Which provides the impetus forme to provide a positive spin to this ‘desi-shunning’ phenomenon.

Is it our individualistic nature that makes us look with contempt upon otherdesis -- the penny-pinching, Toyota-driving, Dravidian-tongued, greencard-seeking,discount-loving, safe-neighbourhood-residing multitude -- even though we mayshare some of those qualities ourselves?

I don’t know if this can be verified, but I would like to think that thatis the case.

(Mesial Stephes is a transplanted Indian living in exile in California)