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Stereotypes of South Asians are broadly believed impressions about individuals of South Asian origin that are often inconsistent with reality. While the impressions are wrongly presumed to be universally true for all people of South Asian origin, these stereotypes adversely affect the South Asians as well as the acculturation process. With 20th century immigration of South Asians around the world, especially to the United Kingdom , Canada and the United States , ethnic stereotyping of South Asians has become common place.
These stereotypes have been found by scholars to be dehumanizing, making South Asians more prone to mistreatment and crime, a constraint on their ability to productively contribute, as well as a cause of depression and ill health. Ethnic stereotypes of South Asians have included Orientalism and Romanticism as well as scientific racism.
These stereotypes are applied in both an unrealistically ideal way and sometimes an unrealistically negative way. South Asians are stereotyped around the world in ways that are dehumanizing, and in some cases it can lead to depression and mental health issues.
South Asians are stereotyped as belonging to two socioeconomic groups. Alternatively, they are stereotyped as snobbish, upwardly mobile software programmers and doctors, who lack English-speaking fluency and are willing to take a lower salary. This contrasts with the reality that South Asians are active, in various levels of prominence and service, in every profession. Along with East Asian people, South Asians are stereotyped as model minorities with certain expected behavior.
Richwine claims, "The success of Indian Americans is often ascribed to the culture they bring with them, which places strong — some would even say obsessive — emphasis on academic achievement". The article highlights how Indian American children win spelling bee contests, but the article does not mention that some Indian-American immigrant children also struggle to learn fluent English as a second language. In a study of stereotypes held by midwives in the British National Health Service , several stereotypes were found to be prevalent against women of South Asian descent.
Second, they were stereotyped as those who make fuss about nothing. Third, they were stereotyped as lacking 'normal maternal instinct'. The study found communication difficulties to be part of the problem, particularly among women who were Muslim South Asians with Urdu as their first language; this problem vanished when hospital staff of South Asian descent were included in the team attending the expectant mother.
Further, the study found experimenter's bias in a population wide study that included native British people, people of South Asian descent and people from other parts of the world. Two conflicting but prevailing stereotypes in Europe and North America relate to alienation and assimilation by people of South Asian origins.
Naipaul — the Nobel laureate in literature of Indo-Caribbean origin — quotes Albert Memmi 's classic, illustrating the stereotype. Memmi claims they make every effort to look Western, in the hope that no one will recognise them; from this proceeds their efforts to forget their past, to change their collective customs, their enthusiastic adoption of the Western language, culture and values, alleges Memmi.
Simultaneously these people are also stereotyped as old fashioned, irrational, weird in their customs, servile to their ethnic habits, lacking all sense of individuality, not eager to learn and grow, not speaking or adopting local language for example, French or English , not wanting to assimilate and be a part of the melting pot.
Some stereotype them as betraying a past, others as betraying the future. These stereotypes reflect innate discomfort, confusion and possibly a struggle with rejection by those who stereotype as well as those who are being stereotyped. Hernandez notes, for Naipaul, after a start in a humble family background, personal and professional success could only be achieved through learning, understanding and assimilation.
This conflicting stereotype is not unique to South Asians. As Hernandez outlines, the same stereotypes exist against people from different regions of the world, such as against Rodriguez of Mexico. In , a steamer named Komagata Maru arrived in the harbor of Vancouver, Canada.
On it were Indians, mostly Sikhs. The passengers on Komagata Maru were not soldiers but workers. The provincial government stopped the steamer at sea, refused the tired passengers from disembarking for two months, argued that the South Asians didn't belong in Canada, then forced the steamer and passengers to go back to India.
Political leaders and newspaper media parroted allegations, impressions, and cartoons for two months, mocking the immigrants waiting in the boat at sea.
First, they were stereotyped as polluting the collective character of British Columbia as a land of White, European-based settlers. Second, South Asians were stereotyped to be from an insulated and unassimilable culture. Third, they were stereotyped as those who were willing to work for less than a fair wages.
Fourth, South Asians were stereotyped as unclean, diseased and a threat to public health. Robert McDonald suggests [1] that these stereotypes were false because it was the prevalent prejudice that contributed to their segregation and difficulty in their assimilation, they did not compete with Whites for employment but took the unskilled and rough jobs for which there were no White workers available, and they were neither diseased nor unclean as wealthier Europeans families eagerly sought them as cooks and errand houseboys inside their homes.
The stereotypes, claims Robert McDonald, were irrational constructions. After being forced to go back, Komagata Maru returned to India with emotionally distraught and angry Indians.
Some were arrested on arrival of the steamer in Calcutta by British officials, few shot for resisting arrest, others jumped off the ship and escaped, then joined the cause of independence of India from British rule. The Indian government in , and the Canadian government in marked the Komagata Maru incident with memorials and a reminder of the dangers of discrimination and stereotypes.
Friedrich Schlegel wrote in a letter to Tieck that India was the source of all languages , thoughts and poems , and that "everything" came from India. The term "Indophobia" was first coined in western academia by American Indologist Thomas Trautmann to describe negative attitudes expressed by some British Indologists against Indian history, society, religions and culture.
In Charles Grant 's highly influential "Observations on the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain" , [30] Grant alleged that the Hindus are "a people exceedingly depraved". Similarly, British colonial era historian, James Mill claimed that both Indians and Chinese people are cowardly, unfeeling, and mendacious. Both Mill and Grant attacked Orientalist scholarship that was too respectful of Indian culture.
Mill was later criticised for being prejudiced against Hindus. Wilson wrote that the tendency of Mill's work is "evil". Stereotypes of Indians intensified and changed during and after the Indian Rebellion of when some Indian sepoys and members of the native population rebelled against the British East India Company 's rule in India. It has been argued that allegations of war rape were used as propaganda by British colonialists to justify the colonisation of India.
While incidents of rape committed by Indian rebels against English women and girls were generally uncommon during the rebellion, this was exaggerated to great effect by the British media to justify British colonialism in the Indian subcontinent and to violently suppress opposition. At the time, British newspapers had printed various apparently eyewitness accounts of English women and girls being raped by Indian rebels, with little corroboration to support these accounts.
It was later found that some of these accounts were false stories and a few created to paint the native people of India as savages who needed to be civilised by British colonialists, a mission sometimes known as " The White Man's Burden ". One such account published by The Times , regarding an incident where 48 English girls as young as 10—14 had been raped by Indian rebels in Delhi , was criticized as false propaganda by Karl Marx , who pointed out that the story was written by a clergyman in Bangalore , far from the events of the rebellion.
The stereotype of the Indian "dark-skinned rapist" occurred frequently in English literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The idea of protecting English "female chastity" from the "lustful Indian male" had a significant influence on the policies of the British Raj to prevent racial miscegenation between the British elite and the native Indian population.
While most of these discriminatory policies were directed against native Indians, some restrictive policies were also imposed on British females to "protect" them from miscegenation. Indo-Caribbean people were brought to the Caribbean from various parts of India as indentured laborers for agricultural estates over a century ago. At these times they were stereotyped as being jealous for women of their ethnic origins.
For example:. The shortage of Indian women resulted in violence committed by jealous lovers and husbands, creating a stereotype of East Indian men, which gained in infamy, [43] coolies reputation with the police was bad and significantly while the Negroes use their tongue in the argument, the Indian commit murder, and given the scarcity of Indian women, without hesitation.
In , the Ilbert Bill , which would have granted judges of Indian descent in Bengal the right to judge offenders irrespective of their ethnic origins including those of British descent, was opposed by the British. The opposition was based on stereotyping Indian judges as someone who could not be trusted in dealing with cases involving English women, colloquially called memsahib. The stereotype of Indian males as dark-skinned rapists lusting after white English females was challenged by several novels such as E.
British sociologists Mike O'Donnell and Sue Sharpe studied British Asian students and came to similar conclusions regarding problems faced by Asian youths at lower class schools.
Whereas Black British students were respected and admired by their White British peers as " macho ," Asian youths had trouble gaining this same kind of respect and status. O'Donnell and Sharpe found that many Asian youths are stereotyped as weaklings , warriors or as a patriarch. The weakling stereotype, found in the UK and English speaking territories, refers to the idea that South Asians are conformists, intelligent, lacking in athletic ability and non-confrontational.
The warrior stereotype is growing in the United Kingdom. The word thug originates from the syndicate and was originally used as a term for South Asian criminals.
Due to the African-American hip-hop group adopting the name Thug Life , the word Thug is no longer associated with South Asian criminals. Many South Asian youths are often caricatured as rebelling against a society which stereotypes them as a model minority , as well as against their perceived strict upbringing. This has fed the stereotype that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are more aggressive and form gangs.
They are then further stereotyped as having poor social skills , being unable to speak to ordinary White British people and have poor listening skills. Following a number of high-profile controversies about the proportion of men of South Asian heritage found to be involved in child sexual exploitation, South Asian Muslims particularly those of Pakistani origin have often been stereotyped as sexual groomers.
In literary studies, critics such as Homi Bhabha and Rey Chow have theorized that cultural stereotypes prevail because they work through repetition and ambivalence, easily shifting between contradictory meanings. Thus in colonial culture the 'native' or 'ethnic' is stereotyped as sly and indolent, lascivious and impotent.
Due to China's economic rivalry with India, a large number of Chinese view India aggressively, with several negative stereotypes of Indians commonplace in Chinese culture. Within the Chinese state media, there is China's official line, parroted in newspapers and TV news media, of India as a "rival"; India's woeful infrastructure is emphasised and connected to defects of democracy. The Chinese State has often used derogatory statements about India directly or indirectly through state owned media to whip up nationalist sentiment in China and to project themselves as superior.
Raghav reported that for China's online community, "India" is a combined construct [73] of the character Rajesh Koothrappali from the sitcom Big Bang Theory , the comedian Russell Peters , images of overcrowded Indian train with people hanging off the sides, and dead bodies floating down the river Ganges. These stereotypes are frequently evoked with the descriptor, "disgusting".
The smell of curry is often used as a derogatory epithet. However, many Chinese view Indian Hindus with positive attributes too due to historic connections through Buddhism and ancient cultural contact. A commonly held view is that India is rich in culture but under-developed. There are many stereotypes concerning Malaysian Indians.
Malaysian Indians are also primely suspected of being members of Gangster or Terrorist Organisations and sometimes become victims to false accusation. Racism still remains a major problem in Malaysia and some stereotypes have led to cases of public bullying and racially hurtful commentary, such as being called a 'Keling', 'mabuk' drunkard etc.
There are also some , non-skilled foreigners currently working in Singapore — a majority of them are from the Indian subcontinent. A stereotype of Singaporean Indians is that the Indian body is lacking in athleticism.
Racism remains a minor problem in Singapore and some stereotypes have led to cases of public bullying and racially hurtful commentary, such as being called a 'black tofu'. Lower class foreign workers congregate in the Indian historical and now tourist enclave called Little India. In Fiji, another country where large numbers of people of Indian origin were brought for agricultural plantation work, over years ago, they are viewed in a manner different from some other parts of the world.
Sienkiewicz finds the stereotypes popular in Pacific Islands is that Indians are too materialistic, caring only about money; that while the Indians work very hard to attain financial success, they refuse to share it. People with origins in India are also thought in Fiji to be too private and lacking a culture of caring for larger families.
Some she interviewed claimed, "Before we were in extended families, but now we are all in nuclear families. Just a small house, their family and that's it. Relatives come and they go; they do not live in that house.
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