Has the Second-Generation South Asian Diaspora Formed a Reductive View of Their Heritage?
Let’s quit Orientalizing our cultures and performing them in some way divorced from their political contexts. We’ve got a whole lot more than Bollywood and chai and henna going for us. I get it — that’s the aesthetics-only version of our subcontinent that’s more palatable to the White gaze. It’s also the version many of us were taught to perform so that we would also be more palatable to the White gaze. The West doesn’t want the South Asia rife with colonialism, sectarian violence, poverty, and resistance movements. Or if they do, I guess they want the Slumdog Millionaire version. — Janani, South Asian activist and artist, “Black Girl Dangerous”
It’s a story that captured the attention of The New York Times — the phenomenon of the “mock shaadi”, an imitation wedding commemorated by South Asian cultural associations in universities all across North America to celebrate cultural traditions, drive cross-cultural understanding, and foster a much-needed sense of belonging and community. Drawing both criticism and acclaim, this trend of simulated weddings is here to stay, per the article “South Asian College Students Are Fake Marrying for the Vibes” written by NYT journalist Sakeina Syed. While this fascinating event may now be drawing the attention of Western press, it is but one example of the South Asian diaspora’s long history of creating safe spaces for themselves to feel a collective sense of community and connection to their heritage. In the UK, for example, the 80s and 90s were dominated by the presence of “daytimers”, secret raves held by the British Asian community to dance to bhangra and enjoy themselves without the prying eyes of conservative parents.
Diasporic identity is a complex system of many moving parts and it’s clear that as this population and their broad socioeconomic circumstances have evolved, so have the ways in which heritage is celebrated and recognized. Arguably, this has led to an important turning point that mandates the necessity for re-examining the ways in which the South Asian diasporic community exercises cultural ownership and how they mitigate the affiliated risks of potential cultural appropriation. As the diaspora continues to proliferate and celebrate long-held South Asian traditions in Western settings, at what point does their performance of these conventions become reductive, stereotyped, or perhaps even casually racist? Where do the lines blur between a genuine observance of customs and creating an antiquated and diluted rendition of a diverse and complex culture?
As a member of the South Asian diaspora in the United States myself, it’s something that I struggle with personally on an everyday basis. Do my concerns about unintentional cultural appropriation actually stem from an internalized self-hatred regarding my ethnicity? It’s difficult to discount this type of thought given that aspirations of assimilation continue to be an implicit part of daily life for ethnic minorities in this country. While it is sometimes admittedly challenging for me to gauge the sticky intricacies of these sociological and psychological quandaries, I still believe there is at least some merit to the idea that the South Asian diaspora claims certain traditions, values, and ideas without the full knowledge of their context and connotations.
Much of the discourse regarding heritage within the diasporic community often tends to be colored by lenses that are indicative of social, political, and economic understandings best linked to the experiences that first-generation parents encountered during their formative years in the subcontinent. Given the diaspora’s often limited contact with their familial home, parents’ traditions are often the main point of cultural exposure for second-generation children. As such, there exists a possible pitfall for the diaspora to take these practices and customs as the sole representation of all cultural conventions in the subcontinent. It can lead to a homogenized, diminished, and frankly dated view of South Asian culture that only latches onto derivative and simplified iconography, instead of a nuanced and lived-in perspective into the contextualization of these artifacts.
It is highly likely that most members of the South Asian diaspora are largely ignorant of any unintentional cultural appropriations they perform, mostly due to a lack of understanding of their significance, history, and sociopolitical insinuations. In many cases, the observance or celebration of certain traditions does not require such a deep and nuanced understanding, or perhaps these contexts can be safely ignored while still retaining their core meaning. However, the diaspora’s ownership and reclamation of certain practices, traditions, and customs may still fail to accurately capture the full extent of their comprehensive meanings.
Furthermore, the diaspora’s often antiquated understanding of South Asian culture fails to recognize the subcontinent’s modernity, thereby creating a reductive illusion that hyperfixates on stereotyped conventions. This threatens to both erode and mock the identities and experiences of individuals currently living in South Asian subcontinent, especially when we knowingly or unknowingly thrust our hackneyed stereotypes onto these individuals. Therefore, it is necessary for the South Asian diaspora to check their biases and levels of ignorance before inferring or implying that South Asians today hold the same values as first-generation diasporic parents did during their time in their home countries.
For pundits, influencers, and people of repute in the South Asian diaspora, this comes with the responsibility and challenge of learning to be more thorough with context when discussing, debating, or claiming ownership of South Asian traditions and topics. It also means learning to acknowledge that the subcontinent’s values and behaviors have shifted over time and do not necessarily reflect the same ideas that the diaspora may have of them. Additionally, discussion of these topics may require a more detailed understanding and reflection of how certain privileges and subconscious biases of diasporic identity may misrepresent or skew discourse on South Asian cultural topics.
The purpose of my thesis here has not been to insinuate that the practice or ownership of South Asian identity and any related artifacts by the diaspora should be looked down upon. On the contrary, I strongly believe that events like daytimers and mock shaadis have a special and important relevance as a means for demonstrating pride and belonging in heritage and culture. It is these very activities allow us to express and explore our identities, and practicing those aspects of our South Asian heritage with which we identify can be a central act of empathy, expression, education, and even activism. However, we must be especially mindful in our judgement and discussion on topics, ideas, and artifacts about which we might have a misrepresented, obsolete, or incomplete view of. We also must be careful about the ways in which we represent the extent of our ownership of South Asian identity — that isn’t to say that we should unlabel ourselves as members of the global South Asian community, but that we should challenge ourselves to think about our identities wtih more nuance.
This also does not mean being silent in the face of pertinent South Asian political, economic, or cultural concerns, especially in cases where the diaspora can actively participate as activists and campaigners. Instead, it simply requires taking a step back and examining how our perspectives may be clouded due to our own unintentional misunderstandings. Additionally, we must be conscious of our gaps in knowledge, especially when it comes to the understanding of values and ideas that govern the daily lives of individuals in the South Asian subcontinent today. Although we may be well-intentioned, our dated ideas of these concepts could be offensive or reductive of the intricate, ever-evolving nature of South Asian identity. Striking these balances will be imperative to a richer and more engaged population of South Asian diaspora members.
Further Reading and References (including links in the article):
