Sunday, January 30, 2011

The stereotyping

So one of my professor gave a decent set of stereotypes of Indians which is interested enough that it gets to go into the blog by itself.  ( ) give the explantion of the stereotype.

It goes along the lines that when God(s) created the Indian people, he started spreading out beauty in the north and worked his way south, (north Indians are normally fairer skinned which is seen as more attractive by Indian standards, sidenote many facial and skin beauty products over here also contain a bleaching agent to actually lighten one's skin which is weird). Then to dish out intelligence God(s), started in the south and went north. (Southern Indians are generally higher educated and more literate than northern Indians, and many northern Indian groups such as Punjabi's are stereotyped as being dumb).   Then starting in the west God(s) began to give out wealth and worked his way east (Western India is where some of the richest Indian states are such as Gujarat and Punjab, and is also where Mumbai/Bombay, the financial capital of India is located.  Additionally the Eastern states are some of the poorest states in India and many have insurgencies i.e. Maoists relating to the widespread poverty).  Finally, when it came to emotions God(s) started in the east and went west (East Indians are stereotyped as being very emotional and many of India's great artistic intellectuals and writers are from the east, with Kolkata/Calcutta generally regarded as the literary capital of India. The west Indians, especially Gujaratis, on the other hand are stereotyped as being interested in money and little else.)

While these are stereotypes and therefore not necessarily true, they are at least partly true like any decent stereotype and provide an interesting way of understanding India which is an extremely diverse country with many different languages and cultures inside the country.  Some other stereotypes that I have been repeatedly told is that people from southern India tend to be more laid back and easy-going, Punjabis are jolly people, and northern Indians are more aggressive.  The good thing about being here in Manipal is that I get to meet people from all over India without actually having to visit every part, which would take a long time.

No comments:

Post a Comment