It’s sad when NRIs are attacked abroad for giving the world an accurate glimpse of what we’re like
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It’s as if a new story about Indians behaving badly abroad is primed to appear every 24 hours or so, given the consistency with which they appear and go viral. When I say ‘behave badly’, I would like to point out that these aren’t my words; it’s what a whole lot of people sharing these videos tend to use as a preamble to the act of sharing. ‘Look at these brown immigrants,’ they say with barely disguised anger, ‘why can’t they do this in their home country instead of ruining things for us here?’
Among the many videos that have been attracting this sort of negativity lately are ones involving women who have been arrested for shoplifting in the West. The videos depict them trying their best to get out of these unfortunate situations, in ways every Indian has attempted when trying to circumvent authority. We see them weep copiously, claim ignorance of the law, offer to pay for everything stolen, struggle with basic questions about their identity, and eventually beg for forgiveness in the hope that the police will abandon the effort and move on to more serious crimes. It’s because those efforts don’t work that their acts attract a great deal of vitriol from Indians everywhere. The comments online are aways about wanting foreigners to stop painting us with the same brush.
To be fair, all I can think of when I stumble upon these videos is that those shoplifters aren’t defaming India or Indians. In fact, I believe they are simply doing exactly what most Indians would, under slightly different circumstances. If this sounds absurd, you haven’t been paying attention to the roads you walk on, buses you try and enter, or government employees you interact with on a regular basis. None of these things work the way they should because what every Indian is trained to do is cut corners wherever possible. For those women, shoplifting wasn’t the mistake; it was getting caught. They wanted something without paying for it, which could be the motto of almost everyone in the country, including the politicians who claim to work for us. Then there are videos of people celebrating weddings by blocking the street. They occur in multiple cities across Canada, Australia, and the UK, all depicting versions of the same thing — entitled brides and bridegrooms on horses or tractors, loud percussive music played after reasonable hours, and no concern for elderly neighbours, pets, or children.
In other words, what life in any Indian city is like, on any day of the week. Again, these patriots are routinely attacked for embarrassing India, which to me is a sign of hypocrisy because raising similar complaints within our borders makes us anti-national. If creating a nuisance is our birthright, all those NRIs are doing is holding up a mirror. What’s wrong about that?
I don’t want to mention fireworks, but they fit right into this narrative because of how often those complaints crop up too. It isn’t just during festivals either, thanks to the propensity of our countrymen abroad to ignore rules about noise pollution, air pollution, or water pollution, if any of these things get in the way of their setting off a firecracker in a residential area or empty park.
The noisier the fireworks, the happier they are, as if the ability to disturb the peace coincides with the belief that they have finally arrived in these foreign parts with their Indianness intact.
To attack these people as national embarrassments is also unfair, because I think we should be doing the opposite. If they announce to the world that they come from a country that celebrates being boorish, ignorant, belligerent, and lacking in civic sense, they are making it easier for outsiders to be more accepting of Indians in the years to come. After all, it’s how everyone now expects some cultures to be polite, and others to try and steal land that doesn’t belong to them. These NRIs are only propagating stereotypes that can benefit the rest of us. The world may cry foul for a while, and heap abuse upon them, but will ultimately be battered into submission the way all Indians are in the face of unrelenting apathy, corruption, and systemic failure.
Also, to be fair, if someone must be accused of embarrassing Indians, it should be leaders with no qualifications or signs of intelligence, who constantly waste crores of taxpayer funds on inane photo-ops abroad. Luckily, we have no politicians who fit that description.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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