During a job interview with an LGBT magazine once, the hiring manager looked me dead in the eye and asked me if I was “desi” — this, after I had rattled off my qualifications. As if good grades, solid work experience, and an outstanding portfolio of clips didn’t matter and what did was how well he could objectify me on the basis of my skin color and foreign-sounding name.
I let him down the same way I let down the men at a club who clamor about me like I’m a unicorn from a far away land and not a guy from fly-over country: My parents are from India, but I was born and raised in Michigan.
The sparkle faded in his eyes. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a call-back.
***
I’ve always had an adversarial relationship with the word “desi.” The South Asian experience is complex, mired, and expansive. It includes the stories of men and women who can trace their heritages back to nations besides India, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Nepal. It also includes the stories of non-resident members of these communities who raise their families abroad. Despite being a term native to the Indian subcontinent, it’s reductive. “Desi” doesn’t even begin to sum up the richness of South Asian cultures — nor does it scratch at the surface for men and women who are forging new identities in lands and communities that don’t have a pre-existing concept of their identities. As a slang term for people from the Indian subcontinent, it’s conveniently reductive, at best.
A Clinical Look at “Desi” From The WSJ
Over at The Wall Street Journal, professional linguist Ben Zimmer reported on the origin and usage of the word “desi” — inspired by the surge of interest in South Asian culture, in the wake of our current Miss America.
“Desi” as a noun or adjective has become the typical way for people of South Asian ancestry to identify members of their diaspora. With South Asian-Americans like Ms. Davuluri achieving more prominence in popular culture, “desi” will no doubt become a more widely known buzzword as well. The word comes from Hindi, with roots in ancient Sanskrit. It originally referred to someone or something native to a certain country, or “desh.”
At best, this analysis is purely clinical — an idea that might work in a vacuum, but that may not be the most accurate representation of how the word has evolved, along with those communities it might be used to describe:
But as South Asians have built up diasporic communities around the world, “desi” has traveled with them, used not as a put-down but as an expression of ethnic pride. Make that pan-ethnic: Anyone with heritage from the subcontinent—India, Pakistan or Bangladesh—can identify as a “desi” and partake in “desi” culture.
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As “desi” pervades American consciousness, reductiveness is inevitable. One of the riskiest assumptions non-South Asians make about South Asians is that we’re indiscriminately homogenous, or worse, that we understand each other’s cultures completely. To summarize the vast Indian subcontinent as a single “motherland” is problematic. For the record, there’s one five mile square radius in Kolkata that I’d probably consider my “desh”, largely because I know nothing more of the city’s local geography than those roads whenever I go back to visit.[pullquote]To summarize the vast Indian subcontinent as a single “motherland” is problematic.[/pullquote]
To make things more complicated, another divide occurs between those who have stayed in their homelands and members of the diaspora community — those South Asians who have moved abroad to U.S., Canada, the U.K., or anywhere else in the world. By adopting new homelands, many adopt two sets of cultures and customs. These customs end up informing one another and getting remixed, so that nowadays, there are people of South Asian origin who may not even know how to write and speak the language of their parents, but they do know how to skillfully negotiate Western culture.
‘ABCD’ and the Realities of Identity
Zimmer talks about the phenomenon of the “ABCD” — a short-hand that refers to the American-Born-Confused-Desi. This refers to South Asians who are born in the U.S. and are so disconnected from the culture of their parents, their ancestors, that they are classified as “confused.” I’ve had cousins and relatives dismiss me as an “ABCD” because I can’t read or write Bengali — and when I speak the language, it’s frequently stilted and awkward; I don’t know any of the colloquialisms of the language. It’s a term that’s rooted in the idea that because you’re an Indian growing up in the U.S., you’re inherently isolated from the culture of your parents and your ancestors.
The concept of the “ABCD” assumes that “desi” is a very idealized kind of South Asian identity. It also assumes that anyone in breach of that ideal is confused. It doesn’t allow for the reality that identities are ever-changing and ever-morphing, and informed by shifts in culture.
***
This kind of reductiveness is already becoming programmed into our global cultural consciousness. Google “desi meaning” and you land on the following search result:
This kind of clinical meaning that doesn’t take into account how “desi” identity has morphed. It makes no mention of Sri Lanka or The Maldives. It even seems to think “desi” applies uniquely to non-resident members of the South Asian community.
The reductiveness of the “desi” identity becomes even more apparent when corporate brands try to market to it.
Another interesting article, and it probably deserves many more worthwhile comments than this, but here goes:
Desi Boyz was released in Nov 2011, Magic Mike came out in June, 2012 (and started filming in Sept 2011). So, I’m not sure if DB was really “inpired by” MM.
ack, you’re right! thank you for pointing that out.
This article sits wrong with me… and I think it’s important to discuss why.
At the end of the piece, Guha says in an ideal world, we would bend the word desi to OUR will and make it mean what WE want, but then goes on to lament that we haven’t the power to do so. And that, frankly my dears, is crap. He spends the entire article talking about, basically, other people taking our word, twisting it to their meanings, and how THEY hold all the power in what it’s become and in the end he’d rather just give up the word than stand tall and fight for it.
Guha complains that we don’t have a single motherland so the word is being stretched to the limit as is. He sees it as being used as some horrible wall building moniker that shoves us all on one side, neat and tidy and easy to figure out, instead of a diving board into the depths this single word and the people it covers contain. He complains that an online dictionary definition leaves out certain people and rather than think, “Oh hey, we can get that changed if we raise our voices together!”, he passes it off as just an unchangeable fact of life. Rather than rejoice in the idea that this word has gone so far to UNIFY and enrich so many, our writer is quick to label it homogenized and unworthy.
In all ways, this article sounds like a declaration of defeat and as a point of surrender, we are being asked to give the great and mysterious “them” the word Desi, because it’s not worth having, saving, cherishing… It’s so sad this article fails to address this is just one more case of appropriation yet one we should just cave for. WE DO have the power to bend the word to OUR will! It is OURS, as much as the bindi, the sari, the salwar, the burqa, the hijab! These things belong to US! We fight for these things, will we not fight for our right to be the desis WE make as well? We should not be content to throw away the things which we believe out of convenience can’t be saved because someone else is taking them and telling us their new meaning. WE CAN STOP IT, but sitting on our hands and thinking that’s just not how the world works? You’ve done more there to defeat us than any thief in the night ever has…
Two weeks ago, I happened across this post http://andwekeepongoing.tumblr.com/post/53515017700/i-love-the-word-desi-it-is-so-beautiful-i-can and I stand fast by it. We shape our world, and we surely CAN bend OUR words to OUR will…
Hi Dulari,
I totally agree. Check out the response to Rohin’s article that I wrote on The Aerogram!
Dulari – thank you so much for such a thought-provoking and wonderful post. you’re completely right.
It’s odd that you say this piece comes off as a declaration of defeat because I’ve always viewed the assimilation into a term so broad like “desi” defeat – as I have never considered myself a “desi”, but have always considered myself “Indian.”
Although I haven’t used “desi” to homogenize a group of people–that’s the tradition and trajectory of the word itself through the years. I am really glad you’re voicing your response though. It shows that there are voices on both sides of this argument.
I also encourage you to read Radhika’s response piece to this piece that she wrote for us. It’s a great flip-side to the same coin.
It seems like the author is oversimplifying desi and doesn’t understand the complexity that I personally find behind being desi. I am not ‘directly’ Indian, but from the Caribbean and Indian through my ancestors who were labor migrants. Yet I relate very much to the concept of desi, because it is multifaceted and can mean many things. Desi is such a popular concept because a large group of people, who all have complex identities and histories, can relate to it.
But we don’t have complex identities and histories. You can not relate to your Caribbean identity because you chose to do so clinging to the only root you know.
LOL I relate very well to my Caribbean identity, AND I relate to my desi identity which makes it more complex (for me) than other identities.
What makes you think desi identities are not complex?
What does the word desi mean to you. Enlighten me.
Maybe you don’t have a complex identitiy and history – that’s fine, enjoy it. I do. Many with me. I consider myself desi as well as Caribbean. And I am happy I can identify with a concept such as desi and relate to others who identify themselves as desi.
I don’t know why you and your smug attitude are out to judge me, but I’m not interested in discussing something with someone who wants to belittle me.
Niya, I’m sorry if you felt that I was belittling you. It wasn’t my intention. I don’t understand why they can’t identify themselves as Indo – carribean or Indo- American instead of the term Desi. You see India has many different races ( caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid, mediterranean,Australoid, you name it we have it) languages ( Indo Aryan, Dravidian etc.) .So the term desi maybe a totally alien word for some Indians like me. See, when you broadly brush everyone with a word like desi, it may not jive well with others. For example , a Pakistani may not like to associate with that word because that word actually signifies ‘people from India’. Pakistan is not in India. Someday your children and their children will have major identity complex. So it is better to say. I am a —— of Indian origin.
“As desis, are non-Indian members of the South Asian demographic are expected to buy into Priyanka Chopra’s pop career? Does this mean we can never have a Pakistan pop idol? If so, will members of that community will be expected to buy Western-produced culture that features Indian talent to feel represented? ” THOUGHT PROVOKING !
In a north easter state of India, thousands of migrant workers come from other parts of India, mainly Bihar, U.P., Orissa etc. They have settled there since time immemorial. They stick to their own culture, language and religion so much so that they have almost alienated themselves from the locals. They call themselves, ” Deswalle’. They probably meant people from their own state. Now, the native people in this North eastern state start treating these laborers as outsiders and call them ‘ desuwalee’. ‘ Desuwalee is not a term of endearment, mind you. It is a term used for outsiders who are uneducated, dirty and ‘ foreigners’.
Little late getting to this one, but it’s a great article. I was never able to articulate why I dislike the word desi so much but this is pretty much it. Thanks.
Also, it totally figures that the same group would be pushing Priyanka Chopra’s awful songs and that awful Jai Ho cover.