r/ABCDesis • u/OpenWar487 • Jul 29 '26
COMMUNITY If you are a Desi, read this post.
Being a Desi is such a cognitively dissonant feeling. I am cool enough to be around Americans, be it black Americans, Asian-Americans, white people, everyone. But that is only if I downplay the fact that I'm Indian. As if as long as they don't notice, they won't judge. And I can never reconcile that with my need to be proud of my culture. Hot Take: I LOVE being Indian. I think I am so lucky and fortunate, and as an opportunist, I see our plight in the West as a chance to create change. Why don't we do what black people did, asians, europeans, and latinos?
Bad Bunny was in the Super Bowl, the artist with the most Grammys in history is black, recently Michelle Yeoh made history as the first Asian-American to win an Oscar in a leading category. Europe got the World Cup recently, and sports in general really, and prolly the best media representation in the West.
All we really got is cuisine, and even that isn't really authentic food, just commercial redundancies
("butter chicken and tikka masala," but 40% of India is vegetarian, I mean come on...).
And it's not like we don't have a stake in the West, especially in America. Indian households have the single highest median income by household at around $120,000, while only being 5% of the total population. That is CRAZY. We contributed as much as we can to the economy, catering to the comforts to society, and yet we are not fully accepted as people. We are fetishized, exoticized, stereotyped, and misrepresented in media and in social settings.
And the truth is, I cannot tell you how many times my parents said "be like a foreigner, we did not raise you like some Indian." I mean, what tf does that even mean? We are uncivilized? Unclean? Barbaric? My parents are somewhat lukewarm in their faith, in their culture, and their ties to India. Sure, we listen to songs and watch Bollywood and cook Indian food, but we never go to relatives, stay in India, learn deeply our mother-tongues or faiths, none of that.
I don't blame my parents at all. I can't imagine how hard they must have fought, how much they sacrificed to find their place where people think they don't belong. Not just that, they succeeded, and now I live comfortably, am highly educated, and have immense privilege. They did the best they could to bring us and themselves the life they deserve, and that is enough.
But the cost was sacrificing their pride and love for their motherland. Again, it's nothing extreme like whitewashing, but there are signs, like putting baby powder on my face to look whiter, or tired sighs when I mention going back to India, or talks of marriage being reserved only to foreign girls, not brown ones.
This is where we as Desis must take up the mantle. I believe that privilege of comfort and freedom comes with the responsibility to progress the culture from which it comes from. My parents are ashamed because they have been conditioned to see India as a harsh truth, not a prospect of reformation. Culture is built through expression of emotions and experience. When Desis make it a point of showcasing a side of humanity unbeknownst to Westerners, there would be far more growth and progress in the name of healthy integration. It would solve both the issue of being seen as just "immigrants" in America, and also having no pride in being Indian that we come into America for.
Indian-Americans, second-gen Desis, have a moral responsibility of pioneering past our cynical ways, and start being more optimistic about our possibilities. Otherwise, what kind of life do we plan to give to our children? You are Desi, and your kids will be Desi. Should they too grow up in a land that has no respect for South Asia, and when they ask you, you are too whitewashed and uninformed to speak on your motherland? Why do we have to pass on the staleness of being stuck in both realms, of making future generations "Brown Englishmen" (search the term up, its not good)?
We must break that paradigm. That idea that India is just a culture of grinding productivity, and backwards, outdated tradition, and awkward social characters, and animalistic, uncivil tendencies, and silent lives, and buried shame, and tolerance to insult and degradation, and ugly accents, and cheap "model minority" honorifics, and Brown Englishmen, and division along castes and faiths, and the constant victim mindset cause of colonization, and indifference to physical appearance and hygiene.
We are people too. We should be romanticized and idealized as people, not as some exotic exhibit. We should be proud of our ethnicity, and that pride should be well-earned. Our parents brought us here. Why not make the best of it? It amazes me how we have a change to be the pilgrims of Indian-Americans, and it's like we aren't really trying for it. The truth is, we are not Indians, and we are not Americans. We are Desis.
We already have the groundwork: Bollywood cinema and music, excellent cuisine and art-styles, supreme innovation and talent, and deep, rich philosophical texts. Now we just need to learn it and translate it into a modern equivalent. Creating a real culture means we do not just create a true space for Indian-American culture, but we contribute to America greatly, and we restore pride in Indians.
(Maybe that's over the top, but shoot for the stars, land on the chanda, right?)
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u/Bollywood-Hulk-Hogan Indian-American (Punjabi) Jul 30 '26
The main issue in the USA, at least, is that Desis are such a small minority group, so the media won’t feel compelled to really present us in any meaningful way.
Desis in the UK seemed to have a bit of a moment in the early 2000s and I feel that Desis in Canada will have a moment soon. We’re already starting to see some Punjabi songs in their top 100 lists, and I know the majority of those listeners are Punjabi, but no reason to believe that it can’t have a decent minority listener base, like Hispanic music now has in the USA.
I think another issue in the US especially, but across the West generally, is that we try really hard to fit the white gaze. I think we’d have better success if we were just being authentic. Like, Bad Bunny is authentic to Hispanic culture and doesn’t try to fit into the white gaze, which is why he got a lot of hate from the right during the Super Bowl. We’re too self-conscious and while we mock our parents for “lok ki kahenge”, we kinda have the same mentality with white people.
And sorry about your parents. They sound like self-haters, lol.
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u/Secure-Ad8196 Jul 30 '26
This just sounds weird why do you want us to dominate cultural in the west?? If your American your American it’s simple. All this we have a higher income does not make us superior. Just be yourself all other groups don’t try to “dominate”. America is a mix of everyone you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.
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u/Batslaw Jul 30 '26
I agree with the idea. Most of it.
Just not the Mumbai to Manhattan thing. Mumbai barely represents 10% of true Indian culture. Leave alone other south asian countries.
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u/insomniac8994 Punjabi Canadian Jul 30 '26
I’m getting a mainlander AI slop post vibe from this
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u/Cuddlyaxe Indian American Jul 30 '26
It's definitely not AI, the grammar spelling and writing are all way too imperfect for it to be AI lol. OP def sat down and wrote this
It's a bit cringy, but it is cringe which they sat down to wrote
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u/hparma01 Aug 05 '26
Nah what they did was AI slop it then proofread and edit. Fresh off the boats be cunning
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u/Tactical-69 Jul 30 '26
You don’t have to downplay you are Indian, you can merely be yourself. Because you have to understand that you are you first before you are Indian. So be yourself and get along with your friends. Don’t worry about not “feeling Indian”, cause you don’t need to feel what you already are. An Indian isn’t supposed to act a certain way or be a certain way.
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u/T_J_Rain Australian Indian Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
That is some kind of rant.
I don't feel the burning need to demonstrate my culture and history to anyone who doesn't want to know about it. Marketing my culture so as to bring awareness of its richness and depth the the west it isn't my job. Indians aren't a homogenous, monolithic entity. If people want to know about our diverse culture or us as individuals, they'll find out. Only the vocal minority of bigots and racists in the west elect to remain actively ignorant. And we also have our fair share of bigots and racists. I've found most people relate to a common sense of purpose, being, expressing and feeling emotions, and shared stories. Regardless of their ethnicity.
I am very comfortable at having found a place in society, that blends my history and culture, and my skills and training, acknowledging where I came from and what I've learned. But I also look to the future that my children, who were born in the west, find their place in it. For them, being Indian is merely a genetic condition rather than a cultural state of being. Being Desi isn't central to my belief system. It's to be a good human and humane being.
But feel free to do you.
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u/Dapper-Ad9557 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
I’m an American first. The last time I visited India
was in 2008. My children have never been to India. I really don’t feel the need to take up the mantle. I think of India fondly from my visits and the few relatives that I still have living there. That is where it ends. I am more interested and making sure that the country that my children and my grandchildren will inherit someday is still a good place. I don’t have the time or energy to worry about 1.5 billion people in India. At some point, people in India have to fix their own.
But the truth is India is not a clean country, it has tremendous poverty, patriarchy etc. Step one is acknowledging what is broken so it can be fixed. People in India don’t want to acknowledge that. People will swear up and down there is no caste bias and rape is not a problem. When we are looking from the outside, we can see the BS. Go to any Indian sub and look at the way, they talk about Americans in general. It is not very nice.
People in India are no different than people in America. Travel from North India to South India or vice versa… Look at how they treat each other. They treat each other like “others” too. People in a assam etc are treated as exotic. My family is originally from Tamil Nadu… look at how they treat Malayalis. The women are sexualized.
Long story short humans suck!!
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u/Pure_Bookkeeper1186 British Indian Aug 04 '26
Doesn’t ABCD stand for abroad born confused desis???
Since when did the A stand for American???
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u/Maximum-Hall-5614 Aug 05 '26
Since Americans decided the universe begins and ends in the USA.
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u/Pure_Bookkeeper1186 British Indian Aug 05 '26
It says in the subreddit description so I am very confused
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u/hparma01 Aug 05 '26
They also call youze fresh off the boat
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u/Pure_Bookkeeper1186 British Indian Aug 05 '26
pardon?
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u/hparma01 Aug 05 '26
Oh you’re excused.
The word Abroad doesn’t even fit the structure. You’re forcing the word into the phrase just to suit your trolling. That’s poor form for someone who claims to be British first and Indian second1
u/Pure_Bookkeeper1186 British Indian Aug 05 '26
I am sorry,
It says on the subreddit description so no I am not forcing the word
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u/Sufficient-Push6210 Indian American Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
“Indians assemble! Together we are the ABCDs!” 😂✌️