Indians in a Gun-Free (Fictional) Paradise
Recently, I was reading a thread on Quora, all posts answering someone's questions regarding the pros and cons of settling down in the United States. Unsurprisingly, most of the answers were from men, as up until recently, it was men who made the decision to stay and their wives, regardless of whether or not they had a career, who stayed with them. Things have obviously changed. Now, women can purposely seek a life in the States as a part of their life plan, a freedom that many women are taking advantage of, a fact that I am very happy about. The right to choose is relatively new for members of the female persuasion, especially in the Indian context, but it is a welcome change.
Trust me, I wanted to just be proud and be done with the thread. But of course, one woman on the thread had to say something that now has me typing away in the middle of the night, with much to say and nobody to hear me.
Just go on. Read what she wrote:
I'll be honest, her reply left me feeling embarrassed. It is hard not get defensive about the place you were raised in, the one which gave you much of what you have today, even though any NRIs refuse to acknowledge the contributions of IITs and ISIs and many other universities and a traditional family structure in their achievements. As a knee jerk reaction, I wanted to tell this woman (a Bengali woman, one who was probably never exposed to the misogyny and dangers of much more regressive states anyways) that I may not have had a similar sparkling clean park in India, I did enjoy street shopping, street food, and tiny benches under banyan trees, all things that could be relegated to 'cute' by Westerners but had deeply calming and reinvigorating influences on my life, especially when I was in college.
But then the knee jerk reaction was over, and I was struck by a more disturbing realization. This woman is acutely aware of crimes against women in India, and yet, she doesn't seem to register the horrific and inexplicable gun violence in the United States. One day it's a church, the next a school, and then a concert. Lady, innocent children are dying in the middle of class and a hell lot of people think that the answer to that is more guns!
I'm sure some people on the thread pointed this out to her, to which she replied that she was simply stating an undeniable fact. However, her obvious inclination to state the horrible undeniable facts of one country while completely overlooking the undeniable facts of another country signals to a disturbing pattern amongst Indian expats to cherry pick in a way that justifies their decision to stay in foreign lands at the expense of the reputation of an entire country full of people.
Now, there are three possible explanations for this.
The first is that when these people arrived in the United States, they were taken by the obviously better infrastructure, cleanliness and the freedom of being able to start over in a place where nobody knows you. I reluctantly say that this is quite understandable.
However, I believe that the second explanation is more likely. This explanation revolves around a perpetual need of some Indian expats to paint themselves as lifelong victims of oppressive, regressive and sometimes violent systems. If you read the pieces written by these women (including another piece I commented on a few months ago, which many people read and commented on), one notices that their pieces sound somewhat similar to those written by women who escaped, well, the Taliban or North Korea. Sometimes, they claim to be "immigrants" the same way those illegally crossing the border to flee dangerous homes claim to be "immigrants" (I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few who uses the term "expat.") The gun violence doesn't register to them, because that recognition doesn't benefit their narrative. At the end of each piece, when they stoically leave their beloved families behind or resist tears when making the decision to settle away from their motherland, it is obvious that their language is borrowed from accounts of real victims, which is shameful because if most grad students who come to the US, especially women, come from relatively well-off families, have educated parents, attended private schools and later reputed universities which operate as liberal bubbles, and (I know I am generalizing here, but still) were for the most part insulated from the lack of freedom or violence that they allude to. Don't get me wrong. Obviously, I am one of those women. The only difference is that I don't use my from-a-developing-country status to spin myself a tale of escape and liberation.
To think of the fact that a few years ago a private conversation between Aamir Khan and his wife, where they talked about leaving India due to safety concerns, became such a heated debate, but there's hundreds of NRIs selling stories of escaping the shackles of India, and even though they are not famous, they do have a voice on the Internet.
I understand that my comments on this matter might seem inflammatory to some. Some might argue that, well, this woman was just stating her opinion and everybody is entitled to do so. I would counter that by saying that language is very important, and the way many of these pieces are written often don't blame personal problems of a strict family or Indian customs, but of vague, generalized social problems that they can't allude to having much first-hand experience in. In fact, those are the parts where they start to write in more literary and imaginative language because these are not really their problems. So, yes, everybody is entitled to their opinion, and I'm entitled to point out what I consider to be stories and would be happy to debate anybody who would like to challenge me. You see, even though I grew up in the same country these women did, I am capable of constructive debates. I actually prefer it to unnecessarily being a victim. Would you look at that!
Trust me, I wanted to just be proud and be done with the thread. But of course, one woman on the thread had to say something that now has me typing away in the middle of the night, with much to say and nobody to hear me.
Just go on. Read what she wrote:
I'll be honest, her reply left me feeling embarrassed. It is hard not get defensive about the place you were raised in, the one which gave you much of what you have today, even though any NRIs refuse to acknowledge the contributions of IITs and ISIs and many other universities and a traditional family structure in their achievements. As a knee jerk reaction, I wanted to tell this woman (a Bengali woman, one who was probably never exposed to the misogyny and dangers of much more regressive states anyways) that I may not have had a similar sparkling clean park in India, I did enjoy street shopping, street food, and tiny benches under banyan trees, all things that could be relegated to 'cute' by Westerners but had deeply calming and reinvigorating influences on my life, especially when I was in college.
But then the knee jerk reaction was over, and I was struck by a more disturbing realization. This woman is acutely aware of crimes against women in India, and yet, she doesn't seem to register the horrific and inexplicable gun violence in the United States. One day it's a church, the next a school, and then a concert. Lady, innocent children are dying in the middle of class and a hell lot of people think that the answer to that is more guns!
I'm sure some people on the thread pointed this out to her, to which she replied that she was simply stating an undeniable fact. However, her obvious inclination to state the horrible undeniable facts of one country while completely overlooking the undeniable facts of another country signals to a disturbing pattern amongst Indian expats to cherry pick in a way that justifies their decision to stay in foreign lands at the expense of the reputation of an entire country full of people.
Now, there are three possible explanations for this.
The first is that when these people arrived in the United States, they were taken by the obviously better infrastructure, cleanliness and the freedom of being able to start over in a place where nobody knows you. I reluctantly say that this is quite understandable.
However, I believe that the second explanation is more likely. This explanation revolves around a perpetual need of some Indian expats to paint themselves as lifelong victims of oppressive, regressive and sometimes violent systems. If you read the pieces written by these women (including another piece I commented on a few months ago, which many people read and commented on), one notices that their pieces sound somewhat similar to those written by women who escaped, well, the Taliban or North Korea. Sometimes, they claim to be "immigrants" the same way those illegally crossing the border to flee dangerous homes claim to be "immigrants" (I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few who uses the term "expat.") The gun violence doesn't register to them, because that recognition doesn't benefit their narrative. At the end of each piece, when they stoically leave their beloved families behind or resist tears when making the decision to settle away from their motherland, it is obvious that their language is borrowed from accounts of real victims, which is shameful because if most grad students who come to the US, especially women, come from relatively well-off families, have educated parents, attended private schools and later reputed universities which operate as liberal bubbles, and (I know I am generalizing here, but still) were for the most part insulated from the lack of freedom or violence that they allude to. Don't get me wrong. Obviously, I am one of those women. The only difference is that I don't use my from-a-developing-country status to spin myself a tale of escape and liberation.
To think of the fact that a few years ago a private conversation between Aamir Khan and his wife, where they talked about leaving India due to safety concerns, became such a heated debate, but there's hundreds of NRIs selling stories of escaping the shackles of India, and even though they are not famous, they do have a voice on the Internet.
I understand that my comments on this matter might seem inflammatory to some. Some might argue that, well, this woman was just stating her opinion and everybody is entitled to do so. I would counter that by saying that language is very important, and the way many of these pieces are written often don't blame personal problems of a strict family or Indian customs, but of vague, generalized social problems that they can't allude to having much first-hand experience in. In fact, those are the parts where they start to write in more literary and imaginative language because these are not really their problems. So, yes, everybody is entitled to their opinion, and I'm entitled to point out what I consider to be stories and would be happy to debate anybody who would like to challenge me. You see, even though I grew up in the same country these women did, I am capable of constructive debates. I actually prefer it to unnecessarily being a victim. Would you look at that!
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