Source: www.hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI, INDIA, July 21, 2010: (HPI: The following essay by Anika Gupta is a response to Joel Stein’s recent column in Time Magazine about Indian-Americans.)
After reading Joel Stein’s column in Time magazine about Indian-Americans, many want to know why Indians can’t just take a joke.
Stein’s jokes about race, about religion and about food are accurate — but that doesn’t make them good. Why don’t Indian-Americans laugh? We have laughed. A thousand times. Every single Indian-American kid has laughed off a joke about his religion, his color or his food. We grew up laughing. Even when we asked for better treatment, we were polite. When I was 15, I circulated an e-mail petition to my friends, respectfully asking an American company to stop making toilet seats with the faces of Hindu gods painted on them.
But by the time I saw Stein’s column, I was tired of laughing. I wondered why it was okay for him to crack that same old joke about the many-armed Gods — in 2010! Or why it was okay for Time to run an article that may as well have been called, “Indians: They’re only good for funny names and ethnic buffets.”
I’m an American, and I’m also of Indian origin. I worship many-armed Gods, and I eat really spicy Andhra food. But here’s the thing that Joel Stein never saw — I’ve fought to be accepted; I’ve assimilated in ways he can’t see. The Indian grocery, the Hindu temple — these are now part of the Indian-American identity.