[QUOTE=acsenray]
This is a nonsense question. Either someone is your blood relative or isn’t. Conversion has nothing to do with it.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, okay. I was taking “blood first” to mean all Indians. So, this means helping just relatives? I guess I’m referring more to those who you just met but want to help more than others because they happen to be like you.
[QUOTE=Guest1]
The example I used was :A Hindu may go out of their way to not be around non-Hindus because of “blood first”
[/quote]
And who said this is the case in Indian culture?
You’ve had to generalize so much that there is no longer any content to your hypothesis. Every human being treats someone closer to him or her better than he treats someone less close.
The Indian cultural value is not “assist your fellow Hindus above everyone else.” It is not “treat your group better than others.”
The duty is: “You must help your own people when they need help.” That means if your brother needs some money on a downpayment on a house, you are obligated to help if you have the money. That means if your 30-year-old son doesn’t have a job, then you can’t kick him out of the house. That means when your parents retire, they live with you, not in a retirement home.
Okay, what are your data points?
You’ve got the roommate thing (easily explained by non-racist factors).
You’ve got the stick together thing (which you admit exists among all groups.
You’ve got two very bad managers who probably should be facing discrimination charges, if what you say is true.
And you’ve got the holding hands thing and the “I just wanted sex” thing, which have absolutely nothing to do with your “Indian culture is insular” hypothesis.
So, basically you’ve got nothing. What exactly are we supposed to convince you of?
This has nothing to do with Indians or with Detroit. People around the world tend to congregate with other people with whom they have something in common. Please explain how this fits in with an “Indian culture is insular” hypothesis.
:dubious: And this shows Indian culture is insular? American culture has been exported around the world in the form of movies, television, music, etc., for nigh on 100 years. This is not true for most of the world’s cultures. Indians tend to expect Americans not to have had much exposure to their culture, because perhaps until recently by and large Americans did not have much exposure to their culture. Imagine that!
It’s not insularity. It’s because, in the experience of most Indians, Americans have tended not to have much exposure to Indian movies or food.
The world didn’t begin with your birth, Guest1, and it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone’s expectations should be based on Guest1’s personal life experience.
If Indians expect that Americans might not be used to chilis in food, maybe it’s because they have encountered Americans who are not used to chilis in food. Yeah, believe it or not, it’s happened!
This is a minor example, but when I was a kid in school, people would ask me, “Are you black or white?” I’d say “I’m Indian.” “Oh. … So are you black or white?”
Even to this day, I have to explain my name several times upon meeting a new person. Well, it’s because people aren’t used to Indian names. It’s a simple matter of lack of familiarity. Just last year, someone asked me why I don’t Anglicize my name.
I have read through most of the preceding posts and I have to agree with ascenray that Guest1 is not looking to have his mind changed or opened. Which is sad.
Barring American culture, most cultures can be termed “insular” by the very broad definitions you apply. Most people will help their own and most people marry within their own.
American culture has a whole bunch of subsets of culture - all of whom follow the same general rules! Now there’s exceptions in every culture but what you are describing as ascenray says is human nature not “Indian culture”.
ascenray, you’ve made me curious - what is your name? PM me if you don’t want to say it on the boards.
[QUOTE=Anaamika]
I have read through most of the preceding posts and I have to agree with ascenray that Guest1 is not looking to have his mind changed or opened. Which is sad.
Barring American culture, most cultures can be termed “insular” by the very broad definitions you apply. Most people will help their own and most people marry within their own.
American culture has a whole bunch of subsets of culture - all of whom follow the same general rules! Now there’s exceptions in every culture but what you are describing as ascenray says is human nature not “Indian culture”.
ascenray, you’ve made me curious - what is your name? PM me if you don’t want to say it on the boards.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think it’s fair to accuse me of not willing to change my mind on my opinions when in my last post, I said that I have come to realize an all Indian roomate situation may not be racist or even insular but may be for practical reasons such as religion or a comforting way of dealing with an environment. So how is moving from my initial assertation"Oh, that must be racist" to “well, there may be other non-racist factors” not willing to change my mind?
That being said, I feel really bad if I’m coming off that that 
. I guess my strategy is: This is what I’ve observed, this is what I think it means–what *else * might it mean? I guess it probably would have helped if I had stated this in the beginning…
Okay a couple of points:
The duty is: “You must help your own people when they need help.” That means if your brother needs some money on a downpayment on a house, you are obligated to help if you have the money. That means if your 30-year-old son doesn’t have a job, then you can’t kick him out of the house. That means when your parents retire, they live with you, not in a retirement home.
This is perfectly understandable. I feel the same way about my loved ones/friends. What I mean is more along the lines of if an Indian person is looking at applicants for a job and says..“OK what do we have here..white, black, Chinese, Spanish. Oh wait, Indian! Well, I don’t need to interview any of those other non-Indian people.”
This is more along the lines of what I meant by insular which I have observed (more than other groups) amoung the Indian people I know. So would my example be part of the culture or more an exception?
And you’ve got the holding hands thing and the “I just wanted sex” thing, which have absolutely nothing to do with your “Indian culture is insular” hypothesis.
With these two points. The “I just wanted sex” thing to me means: I can only see things through my own unique cultural lens that I can’t see that using someone for sex could be hurtful even if others would “think bad about them”. As for my ex, I really doubt that his pushed my hands away because of any consideration for me. His expression was more along the lines of a kid caught sticking his hands in the cookie jar. And the way it was done, not subtle, but quickly, like GET AWAY FROM ME, was pretty insensitive any way you look at it. The insularity comes in again when you treat others outside your own cultural group like you would those in your group, even though you are fully aware that things are done differently in the latter.
It’s not insularity. It’s because, in the experience of most Indians, Americans have tended not to have much exposure to Indian movies or food.
Okay this is a perfectly reasonable expectation too. I try and learn a lot about other cultures but if Indians have had a lot of experience with ignorance of their culture, I gues they would feel the need to warn about the spice or be surprised at familiarity with their movies.
The world didn’t begin with your birth, Guest1, and it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone’s expectations should be based on Guest1’s personal life experience.
These are good points. Looking at it, I guess I’m a unique in my outook at other cultures than some (maybe most?) Americans. For instance, there are a lot of Hispanics in my neighborhood. One of the Mexican restaurants where I eat semi-regularly sometimes doesn’t have any English language speakers working when I go. I feel guilty and bad for the other person that they have to deal with this non-Spanish speaking person because at that moment happen to be a minority in a Spanish majority situation.
So, although I try to transcend cultural barriers, sometimes I forgot that not everyone is interested in that.
There are 2 Indians in my office and they can only communicate in English because of language barriers. I have to assume there are enough cultural differences in India, including the cast system, to make the quest for an Indian roommate too vague in its description. It may be that American culture is too alien to appreciate. If I went to school in India I would certainly seek out a roomie from an English cultural background.
[Note: I have no idea if I should put this here, but if there’s an “Ask the Indian/Hindu” thread I’ve managed to miss it. I feel like I’m interrupting a perfectly good argument here to inquire…]
The OP’s mentioning that the ‘roommates wanted’ ads were primarily around a university reminded me that a sociology prof of mine once told us about going to India for his research. He said that as a university visitor he was treated as if he had an honorary position in a high/wealthy/respectable class. (Being a sociology prof, he ignored this whenever he felt like it. He once asked a street sweeper to show him how to do the proper swirly motion with the broom. Both his hosts and the street sweeper were fairly freaked out.)
Is this usual for visiting scholars? I’ve always wondered. The professor is Iranian by birth, but had already been a US citizen for quite some time when he went.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
To some extent is arises directly from notions of family loyalty, because you can only be a member of one family. Thus, when a girl gets married, she becomes a member of her husband’s family and is no longer part of her parents’ family.
[/QUOTE]
Oh okay. I didn’t realize that.
YumemiSama, we had an ask the Hindu thread awhile back.
Apologizing for the delay in replying-- I posted in this thread just before going away on a week’s vacation, and have just returned.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Is “foreign barbarian” is original definition? Because I was under the impression that it started meaning “unclean” and spread to the other meanings. Guess I had it backwards.
[/QUOTE]
It does seem to be the original definition. My reference is the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary. The noun म्लेञ्छ mleccha is derived from a verbal root म्लेछ् mlech- ‘to speak indistinctly (like a foreigner or barbarian who does not speak Sanskrit)’. A participle derived from this verb is म्लिष्ट mliṣṭa ‘spoken indistinctly or barbarously, withered, faded, faint; indistinct speech, foreign language’. So the semantic development is similar to that of “barbarian,” as the etymology posted by groman indicated, originally meaning unable to speak fluent Greek. It looks to me like this originally linguistic term got a connotation of “someone who doesn’t share our values because they’re foreign”–sound familiar? We get that in American political discourse a lot. I hear a lot of nativist rumbling from Europe along these lines too. It isn’t really an Indian thing at all, xenophobia is a universal human foible, that’s all. The thing with Hinduism is how it classified peoples into categories like caste and then regulated the interactions between such groups. Compared to practices of ancient peoples like the Hebrews who massacred other ethnic groups, this comes across as relatively enlightened–a place for everyone and everyone in their place. It’s to the credit of Hindus throughout history that even though so many different nations entered India, instead of massacring one another they found ways to demarcate their ethnic and caste identities so as to live side by side in peace. As times change, and the rules of Hinduism stayed fixed, what was once more enlightened could come to look overly strict if it didn’t change with the times. Keeping groups in their place does not look very progressive from the post-Civil Rights era perspective, but recognize that the USA had a sort of caste system in the days of slavery and Jim Crow too. Hey, how come the OP got banned?
[QUOTE=Anaamika]
If two men are seen holding hands there - which does happen, you know, same-gender affection is fine - it would never be assumed they were gay*.
[/QUOTE]
Finally, an excuse to share this great picture from an old classmate of mine.
[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Finally, an excuse to share this great picture from an old classmate of mine.
[/QUOTE]
Who added the homophobic wisecrack?
[QUOTE=Johanna]
Who added the homophobic wisecrack?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, really.
In addition to that, the homophobic wisecrack makes no sense. Yes, there is a strong streak of homophobia in Indian culture (or at least “homoignorance”), but two men holding hands is not seen as being an indicator of sexual inclination in Indian culture. There’s no reason why two policemen holding hands would engender a lack of respect for them.
[QUOTE=Omega Glory]
Oh okay. I didn’t realize that.
We had an ask the Hindu thread awhile back.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and you see how well it worked. It’s just that - well, I’ve said this before, but my neighbor will pray differently from me, run her house differently, and probably subscribe to a marginally different form of Hinduism. She may speak a different language in her home, and she may not.
It’s hard to say “all Indians are like this”. No, really, impossible.
Imagine this scenario if you will.
You live in NY. You speak Punjabi. You may or may not be Sikh. If you are, you worship your Gurus. If you’re not, well, you mostly worship farming Gods.
New Jerseyians - your neighbors - speak Hindi. They probably worship a different class of farming Gods. Some may the same as yours with different names. Most of the time you can understand them and they you - sometimes, Hindi speakers do not understand Punjabi. (Very few Punjabi speakers do not understand Hindi.) Canadians speak a different language (Arabic) but they also speak Urdu which you can understand. And the Urdu-speakers understand Hindi. But when Urdu is written you cannot understand it and they can’t read written Hindi. They are Muslim, and worship Allah.
Then, we get to…oh, say Pennsylvania. They speak Gujrati. Maybe they speak Hindi, probably not. They worship yet another class of Gods.
Connecticut? They’re in the desert (metaphorically) and speak Rajhastani. They dress differently and worship lots of Gods of water, etc.
Then let’s skip a bit and jump down to Tennesse. They speak Tamil and Telegu there. No one speaks a word of Hindi. When North Indians & South Indians communicate they use English; it’s the only common language. Their Gods are dark-skinned and dusky and have names straight out of Sanskrit or Tamil/Telegu.
Let’s get back down to the specific.. When I prayed, I was a Krishna devotee. My second cousin is also a Krishna devotee.
My aunts pray to Satya Sai Baba and other sages.
My grandmother prayed to Vaishnu Devi.
My uncle prays to Vishnu.
How could any one thing I said be applicable to all? I can sit here and tell you some generalities; sure, but the fact remains that unless ascenray and I were raised in the same household - and possibly not even then - we would share very little in common.
This is why Hinduism can, and is, adopted without a belief in God. Hinduism is a way of life and a way to guide one. The path you choose to your moksha (what Westernerns know better as nirvana or enlightenment) is eternally personal and no one else can tell you what is the right path. All paths will eventually lead to moksha - if not in this lifetime, then perhaps some lifetimes down the road.
I’m not saying I believe in all this - but I do believe that the path you choose is your own. It may be affected by others or altered but your choices eventually brought you to where you are.
Whew! Sorry I got so long-winded!
You don’t even have to travel from New York to Canada to find those Arabic-speaking Muslims. Those people next door can be completely different and screaming at you for polluting their vegetarian oxygen with your fish fry.
In Tennessee, strict vegetarianism is an essential component of Hinduism, but in Ohio, the Hindus sacrifice goats on the altar of Kali.
Hinduism … it’s all in there.
(Actually, I don’t think there are any significant Arabic-speaking populations in the subcontinent.)
[QUOTE=acsenray]
In Tennessee, strict vegetarianism is an essential component of Hinduism, but in Ohio, the Hindus sacrifice goats on the altar of Kali.
[/QUOTE]
Those are the Kali Fornicators; they live much further west.
