India’s Obsession With Validation From West
Tags: India, Culture, Tradition

Recently, I have come across a hell lot of stuff which compelled me to write this article. This is one of the most “not so discussed” topic in India. To give you a glance of how ridiculously this obsession hits us, I would start with the fact that people from other countries have actually figured this out, and have started capitalising out of it. Just think about it, people are actually using our emotion to make money out of it. Sounds absurd? Stay with me till the very end. I don’t blame non- Indians for that, neither I blame Indians entirely . We have historical reasons for this as well.

What happens when a non-Indian gives reaction to Indian contents? Indians go crazy, it just gets millions of views, likes, comments, absolutely for nothing. There is no hardwork, no creativity in that, but we just watch it to listen our own victories. It’s a special event for us, as the narrator is supposed to be a foreigner. He might have zero knowledge of the field he is speaking about, but still it’s a noteworthy occasion as the narrator is a non-Indian. What happens when someone from abroad appreciates our culture, overnight he becomes a celebrity. Leave their personal profit, news channels have also learnt to make money out of this stupidity, they can even make a 2 hour show for it. If you adopt baptism, don’t expect Americans to give you, any kind of special attention, but if a foreigner adopts hinduism, he/she becomes the new social media sensation. While describing the greatness of our culture, we never forget to include how many foreigners have praised it and accepted it. It is knowingly projected to the audience, and we give them special appearance on screen, there’s a hidden message behind it which is “see, white people are also liking this, that means it’s definitely great” which makes no sense to me, it is an association of things which has no meaning. If you eat pasta, record it, and post it on internet, it won’t make any sense to majority of people but if a foreigner eats biryani, record it, and post it on internet, suddenly it reaches trending section in youtube. Just imagine, people are actually going there to see it. Once someone shared me how Indian food was being praised by U.S. chefs. If you would ask me, I would say, “I am a human and I eat that food, and obviously I like that food. So if I can, then why can’t he? What is there to feel emotional about it?” We don’t even realise when this fantasy becomes a mental masturbation(when you are stupidly forcing your mind to derive pleasure out of a certain thought without being able to see it’s pros and cons).

Some of you might say, it happens because we have one of the highest populations of the world. But China has more population than us and it doesn’t happen to them. They don’t seek validation from other countries to know how great they are. Isn’t it? Then why it happens to us only?

Because deep within they know, we Indians love this, we have a secret fetish for validation from foreign countries, as if their approval only, makes our culture great. Don’t be surprised if I say people have actually made their career out of it. Why we care so much about their opinion on what they think about us? Is it really that big deal? I don’t think so. Rest of the world don’t really care if people from other parts of the world start liking their food or culture. They are just cool about it.

But why do we have such instinct of validation? If we know, that our culture is rich in heritage and beauty, why it still craves for validity? If we know that our food is rich in best of flavours, why we need them to tell us? Let’s try and figure it out. Let’s reach deep down to the roots of this instinct, which I think is historical. When we turn the pages of history, we see that we have always been victim of oppression. Be it Mughals, Portuguese, British, we have been victims of numerous invasions. Our country has a history of suffering, starvation deaths, economic slowdown, broken health infrastructure etc. We are the ones, to whom racism happens as we are categorised as brown people. We have less sex ratio and the crime rates is also high. Women empowerment is still low, and dowry is still a problem. As we can see, there are not so many things, that we can be proud of. That’s why we seek that pride, from somewhere or the other, and the cheapest method that can be possible, is getting validated by foreigners.

I know that my culture is great, my tradition is great and I know how much respect I should give to these elements. For that, I don’t want someone else’s precious opinions, especially when I know this can be a sugar coated statement only to get unusual attention from a validation seeking territory. The truth is, they don’t look down on us, we just look up to them. We need to understand, they are humans only, like us, not any giant alien creature. They can be stupid, vulnerable like us. Their opinions can have statistical and personal errors like us. Let’s respect them as humans, but there no point allowing them to shape our opinion about how should we see our country. Fair enough?