Stereotypes clinging to the ‘Indian’ image

As someone from the Indian background, we must’ve all encountered the stereotypes associated with us Indians. They might have disappointed us or even made us angry on how the rest of the world perceives us.

But as we know, stereotypes have just always been there, not just with one culture but with every culture, community and industry. Here are some of the most common stereotypes associated with the Indian community:

 

1. Food: Its all spiced up and oily

Each and every country has its varied cuisine with various flavours to please your taste buds. But more often than not Indian cuisine is considered to be all about spice and oil. Butter nan, Chicken tikka are some of the dishes that most of the foreigners are exposed to and they assume they’re all highly flavoured, rich in calories and they’re all smelly curries.

 

2. It’s a poor underdeveloped country:

People just tend to assume that every place in India is covered with slums and that everybody is poor. This might be a result of the imprecise portrayal by the media, showing dirty streets and areas with low quality of life.

 

3.That all Indian women wear huge bindi with vermillion on their forehead and all people with turbans are Sikhs. 

 

4.All Indians have a high passion for computers and all of them are IT professionals.

 

5.  All Indians have a heavy accent when they speak English.

Indian is a country with hundreds of languages and the second language is obviously going to have some influence of our mother tongues, but that doesn’t mean that everybody has a strong accent, most of them have neutralised it with the process of learning a new language. They also think that all Indians are Hindu and speak the language ‘Hindu’, not Hindi, umm yeah…

 

6. Indians are always singing and dancing

Bollywood has a tremendous impact on the media and makes everyone fall in love with India, it often shows people dancing and singing in the videos and the movies, This wrong portrayal often leads people to reflect on India as a country where people go around dancing in the crowds and singing in the markets.

 

7. India is a lord of quirky fascinations:

The temples, the different gods we worship, the monuments all often attract tourists and make them believe that India is an ancient land of gods and some weird spiritual rituals that people should at least once see for themselves

 

8. Indians are narrow-minded:

People often tend to generalize and think of Indians as super conservative people who don’t party or drink. With the association of India with religion and high spirituality, it is often considered a land of orthodox people living in the 19th-century traditions.

 

9. That all Indians do yoga:

Sure, Yoga originated from India and has its roots in the motherland but that does not mean that every Indian does yoga or that every Indian is good at it.

 

10. It is a hot land:

Most of the Indians countries apart from north and northeast are definitely hot, but not like the picture of sand dunes and deserts that people think of it to be.

 

Can You Think Of Any More?