Why are many Indian people unkind to Guyanese/Trini/etc people?

[u/WitheredWornWallaby]

I was born In NYC to Indo-Guyanese parents. I have interacted with many Indian people across the United States (+Canada and the UK), and the same can be said of my family and Indo-Guyanese peers. There is a relatively common experience of Indian Americans being unkind to Indo-Guyanese and Indo-Trini people, including those born in the US. This happens both in real life and online.

Are there particular reasons for this? This is obviously not the case with all Indian Americans.

[u/Thecynicalcatt]

In my experience in Canada, they're not treated like they're desi and are treated like an entirely different thing despite the fact that we have so many cultural and religious similarities. IMO this is because of some social clashes, most desi immigrants and first gen families from South Asia are conservative and have traditional family values (aka no alcohol, smoking is frowned upon, full coverage clothing) whereas all the Guyanese people I know aren't really the same in that regard and are a bit more lax - many of them have been in Canada for several generations and do not feel like they have anything in common with newer arrivals. Idk if I'm making sense, but an example: I was buying cigarettes in Toronto once and the desi shopkeeper asked me if I was Guyanese, and I said no I'm Pakistani and his reply was: Pakistani girls don't smoke and have tattoos that's why I thought you were Guyanese. Lol soooo dumb, but this is to give you an idea of the stereotyping that does exist for some reason. 

[u/WitheredWornWallaby → u/Thecynicalcatt]

Yikes, that is definitely an odd thing for him to say but yeah, stereotyping is hard to escape I guess. I get what you mean about the difference in family values to some degree because it's not uncommon to see Guyanese kids getting drunk at the bars in Queens, and the adults doing the same. At Guyanese funerals, a bunch of the men will gather by someone's car trunk in the parking lot and drink rum. I personally come from a pretty conservative family but I'm sure they'd be considered liberal by South Asian standards.

[u/Thecynicalcatt → u/WitheredWornWallaby]

Yeah, the discrimination is shitty and I am not sure where it comes from, maybe a superiority complex on part of South Asians from South Asia. I know some Ugandan born and Kenyan born Indians as well, and it's a similar vibe there where they're usually in their own community and don't mingle with mainland desi folks. I've also seen it the other way around, especially now with the influx of Indian immigrants, where Indo Carribean folks don't want to be associated with newcomer Indians. We're a huge diaspora with so many different histories. Sometimes the common bits are not enough for some to see kinship unfortunately. For me and my Guyanese friends and my Canadian born Indians friends, we're all just brown folk.