I am Indian. My skin is brown.
These facts are indisputable. However, within these facts lie years’ worth of shame that I am just beginning to uncover. I grew up in India. Hindi is my first language, and yet I was socialized to believe that everything Indian was inherently less-than. The “foreign” was glamorized. The world beyond India was a dream you had to attain for the “good life.” I was told to study well and go abroad.
Assimilate. Assimilate. Assimilate.
And as I sit here and write, these memories come to me, violently. I am taken aback by all that I never questioned, at the internalized racism that I adopted from those around me and made my own. The origin of my beliefs about myself and about my race present themselves to me and I take them in, with the language and the resources I have now, to ease my understanding of myself.
Double Consciousness: a term coined by W. E. B Du Bois in relation to the Black experience in America. In his book “The Souls of Black Folk,” the term refers to “an inward twoness putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and disvaluation in a white-dominated society.” Du Bois explained the phenomenon as “a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
As I read Du Bois, many aspects of my childhood come into perspective. I was socialized in high Delhi society and I attended a private school. A large part of our schooling experience was focused on appearances. How you looked, how you spoke. Where your family came from. The more Western and stylish your clothes were, the more acclaim you received. It was “uncool” to speak in Hindi. God forbid you said your favourite singer was Kailash Kher and not Maroon Five (a mistake I made once). If you wanted to be cool, to have friends, and to be accepted, there was a certain way you had to be—a specific script you had to follow.
I recall one day, in third grade, when my teacher called on me to read in Hindi class. I was good at reading; it was one of the few things that I could do well. And yet, as I began to read fluently, I felt a rush of anxiety rise in me. I wasn’t stumbling over my words, which meant that I was good at Hindi, which meant an obvious death for the already poor social life I had in school. I forcefully stumbled over the remaining words in the passage and sat down, my ears red with embarrassment.
I think of this incident now—one of many—and I’m overcome with pity. The British colonized India in 1858, telling us that our brown was “dirty,” that we were savages and that our sacred Indian culture was “less-than.” They told us that the Victorian prudishness would save us all, that our white saviours had finally come for us. Over time, we internalized these messages, so much so that 74 years after our independence was achieved, our minds still remain imprisoned by these colonial ideals. We are told to be more palatable. Tone down our Indianness. The West is the model, and we must become it or die trying.
Indians, in their constant attempt to separate themselves from each other and assimilate, don’t realize how borrowed and futile the idea of assimilation is. When white people ask me where I’m from, they don’t see me. They see the land of snake charmers and Slumdog Millionaire. They think of Eat, Pray, Love and dirt roads.
Sometimes, my brown friends and I talk about the most ridiculous things a white person has said to us. I tell them about how my white roommates asked me whether India had roads and cars. I tell them about how shocked my roommates were when I showed them pictures of my home. “It’s just like a normal city!” they said. I do not tell them about how insulted I was. We laugh about it and move on, hiding the fact that no matter how hard we strive, no matter where we go, no matter the prestigious universities we attend, we will always be reduced to the white vision of us.
The responsibility of education should never lie solely on the oppressor. While I’d love for Hollywood to include more accurate representations of my country, I know there’s little I can do to change what anyone else thinks of me. Instead, I take advantage of my double consciousness. I realise that my double consciousness is a privilege. I see the way whiteness perceives me, and the way that I perceive myself and my people. And I choose. I see clearly now that my internalized racism, and my parents’ internalized racism, is really just generational trauma. It is sad that we were told that we weren’t good enough. It is sad that my grandfather, who fled for his life during the partition and then fought for India in the Indian air force, thanks God that “I am out of the Godforsaken country that is India.” It is a tragedy of the highest order.
I am Indian and I am brown. These facts are indisputable. What I chose to believe about these facts, however, is up to me. I replace the shame and the inferiority I was taught to feel with pride and power. These things are easier said than done, especially when so much internalized shame looms beneath the surface, but the path back home starts from here. From a place of self-awareness and a desire to heal. To come back home.
