The Truth about Namaste
What does it mean to Indians and Asians versus the rest of the world? Article and audio poem.
Namaste, East and West
Yoga aficionados utter it all the time with mantra-like solemnity. Namaste, namaste, namaste — teachers meeting students and students greeting students. These days, namaste also appears on tote bags, t-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers.
Saying “nahm-ahs-tay” with conscious over-emphasis has become the go-to greeting in Western spiritual and wellness groups, centres and ashrams while in India and Nepal it remains a straight-forward, dual-purpose hello and goodbye, “num-us-teh”.
Namaste may have entered the Western lexicon; at the same time it has moved from gracious greeting to spiritual marketing buzzword. How did the West get it so wrong?
In the same unsubtle way, the less aware trying to be culturally hip or cute meeting a brown person are likely to greet a Jain, Sikh, Tamil, Sri Lankan or Pakistani with namaste instead of saying Jai Jinendra, Sat Sri Akal, Vaṇakkam, Ayubowan or As-Salamu-Alaykum respectively.
Tamil-born Kumari Devarajan polled Indians on Twitter and got hundreds of Indian reactions to being ‘namaste’ed’ or hearing/seeing the word used on wellness industry…
