No, We Aren't Offended When White Girls Wear Bindis

Cultural appropriation. Words that are as heavy as they sound, yet are flung around as though they weigh nothing. What do these words even mean? A benign understanding lends that it is the adoption of a “cultural element” by people of another culture. Who’d have thunk this simple exchange would warrant the formation of an “appropriation police” of sorts? Indians as a whole don’t shy away from taking offence, whatever it may be.

Cows, breasts, goddesses, bangles, bindis, saris, cow urine, yoga - you name it, and we have a problem somewhere. Are we really that insecure about our culture? Is our culture so feeble that one white person’s Facebook or twitter post stands to dismantle elements that have held their ground for thousands and thousands of years?

A Teen Vogue article has recently been doing the rounds regarding the “cultural appropriation epidemic at Coachella.” While there are several sound arguments being made, calling out white privilege, disrespecting of cultures and “stripping a cultural object of its significance and donning it like a costume,” as Jessica Andrews puts it in the write up. We feel there is also a counter argument to be made, more a different stream of thought than argument as such, and here we look to Zui Kumar-Reddy’s piece giving us a different perspective in the Indian context.

This article first appeared on Odyssey.

“It’s been two and a half years since I packed my two and a half suitcases full of bindis and bangles and flew across the oceans from Bangalore to the U.S. of A. I was brand new, bright, shiny and ready to dive into a world I heard about in between bedtime and road trip stories. Deer leaping across highways to get to the Bob Dylan show in time, moonshine, sunshine, gun shots in a grimy LA alleyway, hotdogs from that stand on Venice beach, midnight deep dish pizza delivered by the guy who lost that last game of poker and had to trek through the three feet of slush and snow, some kind of wonderful, some kind of magic that came with being anonymous in a new world that had a river and a chocolate factory running through its heart. There I was, in Asheville, North Carolina, ready to do my shit, which at that time I believed was getting a biology degree, plain and simple. Little did I know that I would be stepping straight into the self-proclaimed land of holy basil and my whole ‘brand new bright and shiny’ would soon become the far more jaded ‘namastay the f*ck away from ya’ll.’

I prepared myself for college as well as I knew how: by sniffing markers and new books late into the night, but I was utterly unprepared for the onslaught of the cultural appropriation paranoia that ended up leaving me with no way to pawn off my godforsaken bindis and bangles! It seeped in slowly, like a warm piss in the ocean. There were the white yogis who tried to educate me on the ways one can get their kundalini to rise—the most popular being drinking a freshly brewed cup of b.s. and yes, holy basil while working on your butt. See, I was ready to be asked if I rode to school on an elephant and that kind of thing, I guess I was still living in 2006, but some trustafarian reciting the importance of my own culture to me was not something I had foreseen. Silly, I know, but one would think that the constant ‘polite declines’ of my bindis and bangles on account of them being culturally inappropriate for a white person would also teach said white person to not try and explain f*cking surya namaskara to me; I mean, bro, I may not have stretched a limb in my life but that shit is in my blood.

I had no concept of this abhorrent trend until I arrived at college to a pile of dream catchers by the trash. No one wanted to offend anyone, so they were considerately dumped by the empty pizza boxes. I mean, in my head, the stuff that is offensive is like blatant racism and the ongoing promotion of violence and hatred, but yeah, hanging a dream catcher by your window or wearing a bindi is unspeakable too I guess. But I was so clueless about this whole thing that a bunch of white people had to sit me down and explain it to me, “You see, this is why it’s wrong to wear bindis and bangles,” and it happened so frequently that I started to question my own wearing of said embellishments.

None of this is that bad, worse shit happens in the world, but it gets complicated for us Indians in ‘the land of the foreign’ because there are three ways we approach this whole being in a new country thing. You can pull a head-to-toe whitewash, where India becomes an afterthought, that is only reminisced during meal time, but you’re otherwise 100 percent American, from baseball to Trump, only using your Indianness as a tool to get ahead when necessary, saying ‘yes, yes yoga and yes, yes namaste sir ji white-person with a namam across your forehead.’

You could do a full on money and ambition drive where you have your kids study to be neurosurgeons while also learning Bharatnatyam and how to make Gulab Jamuns. Finally, you could do what I did and just have your mouth ajar for two and a half years as you received lessons on your own culture/country/identity/family/beliefs from someone so far removed from all of that. However, once I had managed to gather my jaw off the floor and comprehend my five million thoughts, I could see very clearly how I felt about this entire situation—I didn’t really care about the bindi wearing, crushing the expectations of the cultural appropriation police.

How ridiculous would it be if some white chick in a bindi could offend my years of Diwali morning oil baths from my grandmother, my skin silky and golden, jasmine in my hair, my perfectly placed third eye seeing right through you, all the way back to your great grandma in chaddis? I mean, please oh please, wear your bindis, I’m too busy being a goddess.

There’s this other thing too—here in India, we take ourselves very seriously, way too seriously, and you don’t have to concern yourselves with it too much but this is for solely educational purposes; We bathe in self-righteousness and cow urine. Last year sometime in my beloved home of Bangalore, a mob of angry ‘culturally offended’ fools pulled some white guy out of a restaurant and beat him to a pulp because he had a Hindu god tattooed on his leg.

So, what all of this first world drama is actually doing is justifying that happening. To all the trustafarians and white yogis out there: all the rules you made about appropriating Indian culture are 1) stupid 2) inherently flawed because: no to bindis, but yes to whitesplaining and 3) doing no one anywhere any good. Indian culture is hardcore shit, Parvathi meditating naked in Manasarovar waiting for Shiva to wake up, decorating his jewels with Jasmine. It is so crazy and multidimensional that even we forget all these electric aspects of it while trying to fizzle it down to the ridiculously boring ‘virtue and righteousness,’ qualities that this whole ‘appropriation’ is based on, qualities that have little to do with anything.

I can’t speak on behalf of other cultures, because... you know, appropriation; but I can say this, the rejection of bindis and bangles on account of them being culturally offensive is hugely self-indulgent. When did you start to think that you had it in you to offend my ancient-and-straight-from-the-gods culture? But, don’t be upset, dear children, all I’m saying is— wear whatever the hell you want, I’m just drawing a big, fat, curry-scented (for clarity) line at you trying to explain holy basil to my tulsi-fed soul.”

To check out more of Zui’s work watch this.