Don’t be hatin’! 
Crikey, Indian people have the whole classification system down pat! I’ve always thought “peeps” was supposed to be your friends, which was why I came in this thread in the first place. I thought, “Do I avoid my friends like the plague? Who does that?”
Uh… I don’t break down the divisions quite like anu-la1979 does. I haven’t actually heard of most of her divisions. I usually just break 'em down by state, Punjabi, Gujrati, etc.
And of course N. Indian vs. S. Indian.
I avoid my Peeps whenever possible. Being raised in the DC metro area when your relatives are rednecks, crackers, and white trash makes you reluctant to be seen with them. Luckily, they were (and mostly are) still living in their various pits of ignorance hundreds of miles from DC. So I never had to deal with them except when they’d visit for vacation. Now that I’m older, I realize that some of them are very nice people. But I still have problems with what I consider deliberate ignorance on their part and avoid them apart from holidays, funerals or other unavoidable circumstances.
Tangentially;, I went to a very diverse school system and all the Asian, middle-eastern, Indian, etc… kids I knew where as american as myself. Their parents had accents and such, but not my friends. It wasn’t until I left DC for NC that I met foreign-born Chinese, Koreans my own age. I remember being surprised that the one person had an accent. To me, the fact that she was of Asian ancestry didn’t mean that she was foreign born.
No one has yet answered you – AFAIK, “peeps” is just a simple contraction for “people”.
/hijack
Okay, I’m trying to figure this out. Earlier, you mentioned that East Indians and West Indians view each other differently – in fact, don’t feel they have much in common (like Indians and Chinese, I think you said). We’re still talking people from mainland India though, right?
And North Indians feel a division with South Indians? I got a glimmer of this awhile back when I was chatting to an acquaintance of mine. She mentioned she didn’t have much in common with the Indian community locally since she was Gujarati, and the other folks in the community were “all these southern Indians.” Said somewhat disdainfully, although I don’t know who rejected whom first.
So, am I reading you right when you say that Indians from each of the cardinal directions feel a disconnection with each other? That Southern Indians and Eastern Indians, for example, wouldn’t feel much of a kinship, even outside India?
It sounds a bit like the USA. Northeasterners, Southerners, Midwesterners, Westerners. V. fascinating. Okay, /end hijack
Mrs. Furthur
S. Indians & N. Indians are very different.
Apologies to anyone I may inadvertently offend. If you don’t fit the stereotype, you don’t and that’s all there is to it.
N. Indians often have problems with S. Indians because the majority of S. Indians tend to be either very orthodox Hindu, or oftentimes, Christian.
For example. There used to be this huge hullabaloo in my temple because the N. Indians danced in front of the deities, religious dance, dance for Holi (a festival), whatever. We think dancing to god is a form of prayer.
The S. Indians in our community got their panties all in a bunch because we were disrepecting the gods, because to them, dancing was slutty.
Not to mention that our temple was very progressive. I have only just learned that in some temples women weren’t allowed to go to temple when having their period. I had never even heard of this. So you see how forward-thinking ours was. We had women priestesses. The S. Indians did not approve.
It is practically two different countries and I have been guilty of snobbery as well, but you get tired of being disapproved of and thought less than Hindu simply because you choose to worship & live in a different way.
Years ago I used to go to great lengths to avoid Australians whenever I was overseas because all the ones I met behaved like the funny supposed “stereotypes” that Aussies laughed at. They were like those friends that embarass you in front of your family - they are laidback and pleasant company in their own home but a disaster in yours. Last time I was O/S I met several fun Aussies so hopefully that is all in the past.
Nope. West indians refer more to the Indian diaspora that ended up in South America, the Caribbean, etc. In my case, my grandparents’ families were indentured servants and then ended up in Guyana (South America) for the purpose of working on the plantations.
If you think of Indians as the French, and West Indians as Cajuns, you’re pretty close. 
Although I get extremely frustrated at some of the things we do (or don’t do, more often than not), I love my black people and always enjoy the presence of my “peeps”.
When it comes to people who avoid their own like the plague, perhaps the problem lies within that person, and not their “peeps”.
I just knew someone would come along and think they knew better than me what I want & need out of my friends & life.
I’m a white American, so it’d be tough to avoid my peeps. However, I asked my husband about this (he’s from Bombay) and the North versus South Indian question and got these answers:
His mom’s parents were from a very high social caste in North India. They didn’t like his mom’s choice in mate because my husband’s dad, from South India, was not of the same caste (he was a merchant whereas my husband’s mom’s family is considered minor royalty), and his skin was dark. Too dark. (Of course, even though his grandparents up north proclaim to like fair skin, they still call me ghostface, which I prefer to assume is a joke until informed otherwise.)
My husband, who works with Java, doesn’t like to work with many Indians because, according to him, during the software boom, many Indians were hired on by larger companies even though they didn’t really know what they were doing. Apparently larger corporations were so hot to get warm bodies in, they didn’t really check credentials, and they hired and did H-1s for a lot of Indians because they work for far less than your average American programmer would. My husband doesn’t suffer fools well, and he’s said that the Indians he knows who do a bad job “give Indians a bad name,” and create an image of laziness in the software industry. Also, since they work for cheaper salaries, even if they do a nearly adequate job, they’re still preferable to those who would do a great job simply because, unlike Americans, they’re willing to work so cheaply.
Another thing my husband mentioned was that Indian men are very into image. I can sort of see this with my husband’s dad. He’ll get a new car every couple of years because a) he can and b) he feels he needs to keep up a certain look. He has a driver because he can, has several servants, and rarely does anything for himself. Hell, when he comes here to visit, the guy is constantly asking me to clean up after him, make him coffee, make him breakfast, dinner, do this, do that. Drives me and my husband batshit. But that could just be his dad.
Anyway, I’m not sure if I agree with his take on it - I don’t like painting people with a broad brush, though I’m sure I’m guilty of it from time-to-time. I’ve never worked in software, so I just don’t know. But anyway, that’s what my husband says. Of course, he does have several friend who are Indian, and they’re all good guys. I like them a lot.
It’s funny how we’re allowed to make generalizations and have prejudices about people when they’re the same ethnicity as us. Quite frankly, I find these sorts of attitudes insulting, whether it be from Koreans or Indians or anyone else. Whatever happened to being open-minded and judging people based on their actions and thoughts, instead of their skin color or their accents? To avoid someone “like the plague” because of prevailing attitudes of that person’s ethnic group amounts to racism, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m Indian (Gujarati to be exact) but was raised in the US. Growing up, all of my friends were white, black or hispanic. I had family friends that were Indian, but didn’t hang out with them much. When I got to college, I began to meet other Indians, some raised here and some FOBs. If I had the same prejudices as some of the others here, I would’ve missed out on some great friendships. It’s funny, because I used to drink, hook up with girls (from various races), miss class, etc. while some of my FOB friends were against all of these things. But we accepted these differences and got along great. I must say that I learned so much about my culture and the reasons why some people in India believe the things that they do. And on the other hand, I had a positive impact on the lives of my FOB friends as well by showing them that it’s in their best interests to assimilate into American society, while not forgetting the important parts of their culture.
In our PC society, we take great pride in accepting the customs, practices and beliefs of other cultures. We learn about them and find so many things about other cultures interesting. And we (correctly) refuse to believe the racial stereotypes that are attached to a group. We judge people as individuals. Shouldn’t we give people from our own ethnicity the same courtesy?
The ones that give me the same courtesy, I do. The ones that start out judging me, well, I’m better off without them, I think.
I avoid everyone, equally.
I don’t avoid Thug Liferz because they’re Indian…I avoid them because they’re losers.
I am Marathi & Brahmin. North Indian/South Indian means nothing to me…Desis are Desis. My parents lived all over India before we moved to the US-including Kerala, Orissa, Delhi, Karnataka and Bombay and have friends from every part of India and Sri Lanka and Pakistan and Bangladesh and they’ve always pushed Caste/State Boundary obsession as being stupid. Marathi people are merely people with whom I can speak fluently in my native language and understand how one house can hold 50 Ganesh statues. That’s about it.
I am a white guy, so no I do not avoid my “peeps”. OTOH I am a veterinarian and I most certainly do avoid other veterinarians in a social setting. It is what I do >50 hours a week and the last thing I wanna do is “talk shop”.
Juggernaut, to be fair, most of these are not generalizations about a group on the whole, based soley on their ethnicity. The ones that are are a result of clashing with that particular ethnicity’s culture - i.e. the OP not liking the politeness factor, or Anaamika not liking the lack of a privacy around other Indians. It’s not just a matter of, “I don’t like Korean people.” (For the record, I have no problem with Korean people.)
WASP- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
H’ no. And if I did I’d never admit it. Maybe it’s different for foreigners, but a black person who “avoids his peeps like the plague” is as a rule self-hating.