My Culture is Not a Costume

Shivalika Madgulkar, co-chair of Race and Ethnicity

I wonder why so many White people depend on my culture to “find” themselves, while I keep getting lost in theirs.

I’m Indian. Born and raised. At 16, I went to an international high school. One day, my classmate from Albania wanted to borrow my Sari to wear on the annual opening day of my school. Each year, the first day of school would be a day to wear your national dress (or clothing from a culture that best represented you).

Although it was a bit confusing to me why someone who was born and raised in Albania would want to wear a Sari on this day, this was not my main concern; it was the words she used to ask me for it.

“Can I borrow your Indian costume?”

I remember slightly flinching at this phrasing, but ultimately brushing it off as a linguistic confusion and lending it to her anyway. At 16, I did not have the principles, theories and words in place to have corrected her or asked her for clarification.

It is now 4 years later, and a casual disregard of my culture as a “costume,” I have realised, is hardly a scarce occurrence. I understand that “costume” technically means a set of clothing just like “b*tch” technically means a female dog or otter. Let’s face it, if I was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, one would have hardly said I was wearing a ‘costume.’ At the risk of being obvious, it seems like it needs to be spelled out: my sari is no different than your casual T-shirt/jeans combination. My mum wears one to work every day (she is an engineer). A sari is not a costume. Nor is a kurta. Nor is a pagdi. Or a bindi/bindu. You get the point.

It is difficult to identify and deconstruct events like these for me and many other Indians, because it is not only White Europeans/ North Americans that are desensitized to such casual mockery.

From Apu Nahasapeemapetilon (moving on from his ridiculous last name) in the Simpsons to Baljeet Tjinder in Phineas and Ferb, the Indian or South Asian characters have never been portrayed as complex, multidimensional, “normal” people. Their personality revolves around their ‘funny’ accents, extra-ordinary mathematical expertise or any other extremely reductive personality trait. Such a classic Indian trope appeared so frequently on television shows I saw as a kid, that at some point, I think, I no longer saw the issue.

To be an Indian or South Asian in a world of viral videos of White frat boys dancing to Daler Mehendi’s Tunak Tunak Tun while exceptionally butchering its lyrics and White and other non-South-Asians selling culturally significant items (mandalas, T-shirts with pictures Hindu Gods, yoga lessons) on online market platforms, is to be constantly frustrated.

It troubling to see a commodification and capitalisation of my culture from the hands of those who at best are not part of it, and at worst have historically participated in its marginalisation, It is furthermore upsetting to consider the fact that in appropriating South Asian cultural clothing and artefacts for a White taste, the history and context of that thing is ignored and forgotten.

How frequently do White Yoga instructors, I wonder, think about how Yoga is appropriated for a violent casteist agenda in India, or how Om as a religiously sacred Hindu symbol has extremely hateful connotations in Modi’s Hindu extremist India. I wonder how a White “yogi” might react to the weaponization of yoga, meditation and other Hindu symbols by the new Hindu nationalist Indian government. I wonder why the idea of peace and tranquility has been assigned to a country that, you know if you have been lucky to live in, is far from peaceful and tranquil.

I wonder why so many White people depend on my culture to “find” themselves, while I keep getting lost in theirs.

Whether it is Apu or Baljeet, a sari as a costume, or a mandala to cover up your AvB skyline, the rampant ignorance behind the use of South Asian cultural or religious artifacts is .... well, embarrassing. We’ve had many appropriation vs. appreciation debates, but I think a worthy food for thought is how many times appropriation is passed off as appreciation. If White frat boys dancing and senselessly singing along to Tunak Tunak Tun is an appreciation of Indian culture, or a White student mispronouncing “namaste” in the Pantomime or videos of the Dies Fatalis, then a deeper reflection of how we appreciate things is necessary. This form of ‘appreciative appropriation’ is no better than outright appropriation.

Anyone at LUC has sufficient resources to educate themselves about the historical, cultural and religious significance of these items and probably some or the other form of contact information of an Indian peer. All that’s left to do, is the effort.

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