The NRI Wet Dream.
Get celebrated for coming from India…
While leading a cushy, comfy life in the West.
Just don’t ask questions about caste privilege. (NRIs are a model minority after all.)
Savarna Hindu culture has some of the oldest traditions of misogyny and sexism.
(and they probably don’t like talking about it when bringing up the thousands of years of great Hindu culture they like to celebrate…)
Your average upper caste Hindu male in all likelihood has had a pathetic, soft upbringing while being socially feted for achieving precious little other than being born with a penis.
Raja Beta, so the culture projects…
Raja, king. Beta, son.
Oh, have I mentioned that India is ranked 140 (and falling) in the gender gap index?
Yes indeed.
There are only 156 countries that are ranked, so there’s really not that far to go before the country hits rock fucking bottom.
Holy fucking regression, Batman!
*sigh*
You know, there are many reasons Sus and I choose to raise our family in America. It’s a helluva nicer life with more liberal social moors.
But above all, the single biggest reason is because America, while not perfect by any stretch of imagination, is far, far better for women and girls on average than India is. More freedom, greater opportunities, and lesser inequality.
The misogyny and sexism in India is off the charts.
Sorry raja betas… y’all a bunch of sociopathic little shits and you’re dragging the country down with your insecurities and ignominies.
Raja beta…pfft
Raja chutiye hai sab.
Arrey…
Sab savarna manuwadi chutiyapan se hua he.
Kaun hai ye andh bhakt log… desh barbaad kar rahe hai…haraam zaadey scumbag chutiye bastards.
Fuck ’em.
No surrender.
Ask your average American, indeed your average Westerner, and they will likely have a positive viewpoint of the Indian diaspora – hardworking, generally smart, and with good family values.
They probably don’t know that your average Indian American very likely comes from a soft, privileged, upbringing, having internalized the kinds of everyday racism that we last saw in the developed West decades, if not centuries, ago.
(Oh, just ask any NRI, especially those in high falutin’ jobs, about his or her caste and watch them fumble and flail around like a beached salmon.)
The lay American probably doesn’t know that your average immigrant from India almost certainly grew up with domestic help; Domestic help (still called “servants” by the family btw) who were from significantly more oppressed castes; Domestic help who were likely far more undernourished than their Savarna employers (whom they still often have to refer to as “master” in the local dialect.) Savarna caste members are, how to put this delicately, quite blatantly honest about their feelings of caste supremacy.
Indeed, watch your average period film showcasing slave-owner households in pre-Civil War America, and I can tell ya, it doesn’t look a whole lot different than your average Brahmin-Baniya household in India today.
In case y’all wondering how I know this shit…ah well, it is to my great shame that I must admit to coming from such a community of Savarna Hindus – i.e. so-called “upper” caste Hindus (the ones with the most vociferous victimhood complex.)
‘tis why English is my native tongue, and why I’m a dual American-Canadian citizen, leading the underachieving life of a soft, privileged NRI.
Takes one to know one you see…
Let me exemplify my point with some numbers and nuggets of information from folks who are much smarter and harder working than yours truly.
With the backdrop of a legal case that revealed despicable casteist practices by Savarna Hindus in America’s Silicon Valley no less, Yashica Dutt (herself a Silicon Valley engineer and author of the critical, best-selling memoir, ‘Coming Out as a Dalit’) asserts thus in a gut-wrenching opinion piece for the New York Times:
“The overwhelmingly higher-caste Indian-American community is seen as a “model minority” with more than an average $100,000 median income and rising cultural and political visibility. But it has engendered a narrative that is as diabolical as it is in India: insisting that they live in a “post-caste world” while simultaneously upholding its hierarchical framework that benefits the higher-caste people.
Ranging from seemingly harmless calls for “vegetarian-only roommates” (an easy way to assert caste purity), caste-based temple networks that automatically exclude “impure” Dalits, and the more overt and dangerous arm twisting of American norms — right-wing Hindu activist organizations tried to remove any mention of caste from California’s textbooks in 2018 — caste supremacy is fiercely defended, almost as a core tenet of Indian Hindu culture.”
This is hardly surprising when you consider that “over 90% of migrants” from India to America came from dominant castes, i.e. Savarna castes, as shown in a 2016 OUP study, ‘The Other One Percent: Indians in America’ undertaken by Chakravorty, Kapur, and Singh.
Hell, when you consider that barely 3% of the Indian population has been on a goddamn airplane, and all privileged castes put together are barely 15% of the population, you can do the math and come to realize that even among the wealthier castes in India, there’s still competition to get on them precious flights out of the country (only to then celebrate a fascist leader who has led India down the toilet but that’s a discussion for a different day.)
Of course, not only is there this myth of the model-minority Indian-American, there is also oodles of insecurity…manifested by rape and death threats to anyone (in India or abroad) who dares question the sanctity of Savarna Hinduism.
One can only imagine the kind of vile filth that Yashica Dutt’s inbox and messages must have been subject to after she wrote her memoir.
If the experiences of Thenmozhi Soundararajan are anything to go by, it’s a sobering thought. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, she narrates:
“In the United States, caste does not operate with the same virulence as in our countries of origin. But the diaspora has seen our share of structural and interpersonal caste violence. I have experienced caste discrimination here: casteist slurs, untouchability practiced on me and my family, and aggression from police while protesting for our rights. When I came out as a Dalit-American woman, I faced rape and death threats that were part of campaigns to intimidate me. This violence forces many caste-oppressed people into silence.” (emphasis mine)
Ask anyone who has dared to speak ill of the Hindu nationalists, and they will tell you similar stories of such vile, despicable threats. (For crying out loud, I’m a veritable nobody with 64 followers currently on my blog, one of them being an alias of mine, and even I have gotten threats. One can only imagine what genuinely influential voices are undergoing on a regular basis. I shudder to think about it…)
The model-minority spin that the majority of Indian Americans and other members of the Indian diaspora, especially those who come from privileged caste backgrounds, put forward needs to be revealed for what it truly is. Enough is enough. As Dr. Suraj Yengde writes:
“We need to know the numbers of the beneficiaries of the caste system as well. Without this, the SC, ST census is akin to counting the protected species in a jungle.”
The lid needs to be thrown open, else historical caste oppression will never be dismantled in India. Your average NRI likely comes from a privileged, ruling caste background, whilst carrying around a gargantuan victimhood complex. We need self-reflection, not self-praise. And we need to use our privileges to expose the vile garbage and sickness that is enmeshed in our history.
The greatest hypocrisy of it all is that we’ll gleefully accept the goodies of model minority status in America and the West, while forgetting that our lives were led like semi-feudal, semi-colonial lords back in India.
We’ll put out tweets and posts supporting Black Lives Matter but barely even acknowledge the significantly worse atrocities towards oppressed minorities in India.
It’s nothing if not downright shameful.
(But not to worry, I’m sure there’s a festival celebrating Holi or Diwali at your local mall, for NRIs to eat junk food and watch shoddy artistic performances…all while celebrating their great “culture”…sab changaazi indeed.)
References:
Opinion | The Specter of Caste in Silicon Valley – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Preface-The-Other-One-Percent-page-proofs.pdf (temple.edu)
All Come to Look for America | Lifestyle News,The Indian Express
SpiceJet CEO: Only 2 or 3 % of Indians fly – Rediff.com Business
In the Memoir of One Young Woman, the Story of Indian Racism (thewire.in)
Take a good look at that world map above.
It’s based on the gender disparity index by the UNDP, published in 2020, with data collected in 2019. It’s unlikely to have changed much since the pandemic. If anything, it’s probably gotten worse.
You don’t need to be a genius to see, as clear as day, that people in the greener-tinged countries (i.e. with greater gender equality) have it better than countries that are red-tinged. Not just women. Everyone.
For the most part this is also an indicator of godlessness and obscurantism, or rather lack thereof. The countries in green are trending towards rationalism, agnosticism, secularism, reason, and science. The countries in red…well, they’re seriously falling behind the curve if you think about it.
They need to catch up if our global civilization is to have a chance.
Before people accuse me of Eurocentric bias (my younger self included), I acknowledge colonialism, imperialism, and the very real fact that there is shit to be dealt with everywhere. We are all going down with this ship we call humanity.
But there’s no denying that some places have more shit to deal with than others. Precious few can argue against the fact that nationalism and religion are the breeding grounds for gender inequality. Fewer still can argue against the fact that gender inequality results in shittier, more violent societies, with stunted economies.
Not good for any of us.
I repeat. We don’t need genius solutions. We’ve known this a long time. You want a strong economy and a liberal society? You want resilient communities who can survive the coming storms? Stop waving your flags. Stop worshipping your gods. Just destroy the fucking patriarchy.
As a species it’s the only chance we’ve got…
I shall leave you with this clip from a great epic of my time, where a wise philosophizing baller provides the best solution for the world’s problems:
***
References:
“Human Development Report 2020 – Table 5: Gender Inequality Index” – United Nations Development Programme. (http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII)
Map was created by Asus2004 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 – Wikimedia Commons. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99155585)
“White Men Can’t Jump” (1992) – 20th Century Fox
Veera Vanakkam!
Akka Vazhgai!
Phoolan Devi Amar Rahe!
All of you who voted for the BJP;
Who voted for obscurantist nationalism and religious pride.
TWICE.
You are responsible.
Don’t look away, coward.
Look at the numbers. LOOK AT THEM.
2014 to 2021 under the BJP…
55 to 101 in hunger. (Your Hindutva ideals haven’t solved hunger. HUNGER!!! You egomaniacal fools.)
27 to 53 in democracy (World’s largest democracy? People in banana republics are laughing at India.)
140 to 142 in press freedom (Two words…godi media.)
114 to 140 in the gender gap (Misogyny is finding great support in India these days it seems.)
112 to 139 in the happiness index (Does happiness stand much of a chance when you consider the above?)
Thus, I repeat…
All of you who voted for the BJP;
Who voted for obscurantist nationalism and religious pride.
TWICE.
You are responsible.
Wallow in your shame.
Reflect on your mistake.
Then do better…
It probably happens to everyone.
There’s no denying the fact that the older I get, the more moderate I feel in my political thoughts.
To be clear, I really don’t know what any political label means anymore in this post-truth world where outrage seems to be the only selling point.
I do know I hate chauvinism of every kind. With a great passion. I think a bunch of autocrats across the world are flushing the planet down the toilet.
I’m also feeling like an illiberal old fart at times. Usually when I assess my reactions to the mindless virtue signaling by self-identified liberals and progressives. It makes me want to vomit. I’m starting to care for it even lesser than the religious nationalism and rightwing filth I’ve been fighting ever since I learnt to think. An honest fascist is easier to combat than a dishonest leftist.
I’m finding reason and rationality to be very useful guiding tools for life. This has meant good intentions increasingly count for jack shit in my eyes.
Maybe it’s because I wake up and another week seems to have flown by…but the only people I care about are those that show up for my family. Regardless of stated politics or virtuous intentions.
I just don’t care for any other bullshit. (Nor do I have the time apparently.)
So fuck the moralists, the hypocrites, the high horse riders.
Useless noisemakers all.
love liberation struggle 