Worldwide, the uncouth, boorish Indian who makes people run for cover is more visible than the thoughtful, courteous and enlightened one. It’s all there on YouTube
The notice board outside the club in South Korea that denies entry to Indians
The YouTuber tells you in a reasonable, sincere voice about Raj, an Indian who went clubbing in South Korea one evening and was stopped at the gate. The notice on the board read — PAKISTANI AND INDIA MAN’S [sic] DON’T FOLLOW THE RULES OFTEN, CAN’T ENTER OUR STORE.
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The YouTuber, who goes by Nikita Thakur, is all fired up that Indians are so openly discriminated against. Reverse colonialism, she cries. The British did it first in their whites-only clubs where dogs and Indians were not allowed. How dare a piddling disco in a mini-country with a negligible population and an obsession with plastic surgery bar one of the world’s most luminous cultures, led by a man chosen by God himself?
Thakur has the ears of 1.28 million subscribers and her brand of poorly-researched vitriol is popular. The rest of the video trashes South Korea as a country obsessed with “lookism” and superficialities. We are shown a notice where (she claims) South Korea’s Ministry of Labour specifies the looks and bodily features an applicant should bring (including cup size) in order to qualify.
A shot shows a van with an inflammatory board saying “ISLAM – HINDUS — OUT!” and she beats up South Korea some more.
If you didn’t believe her, suggested Nikita Thakur, you should google Koreans Hate Indians and see what turned up.
Being me, I googled Koreans Love Indians instead and got a quite different flood of videos. Several of them slammed Nikita Thakur for trying to incite anger among YouTube viewers with lies, factual errors and sensationalism.
Raj, the man shown clubbing in her podcast, released an irate video on his YouTube channel, Subtle Crazy Korea, calling out Nikita Thakur for lying and misrepresenting him. He accused her of perpetuating myths and inciting divisive misconceptions about a largely peaceful country. Married to a South Korean, he has lived in that country for the best part of a decade. In his video, he systematically takes apart her podcast’s flaws and errors.
Firstly, the Korean club keeps out Indians not because of their citizenship, race or skin colour but, as the board says clearly, because they “don’t follow the rules often”.
The Ministry of Labour notice, written in Korean, does not specify any physical or facial requirements to qualify for a job in Korea. Instead, it states that no amount of plastic surgery or facial contouring can give a person a kind, gentle look.
The response to Raj’s video also revealed that, far from hating Muslims and Hindus, South Koreans knew next to nothing about both religions and even thought they were similar. Many began apologising profusely when enlightened about this, and many others began asking questions to learn more. Doesn’t sound very different from Hindu fundamentalists who have never read the Upanishads or the Ramayana but will happily butcher a Muslim for eating the same meat that Hindu sages of yore used to consume.
Abhiraj Rajadhyaksha and Niyati Mavinkurve, a thoughtful and inspiring married couple with their own YouTube channel (6m subscribers) also took apart Thakur’s subversive diatribe. They neither agreed nor disagreed with her but intelligently pointed to the many obnoxious failings of Indians on their own home turf—their harassment of foreigners, the reprehensible public hygiene, the lack of civility in public life, the readiness to brawl on the slightest pretexts, and the growing nationalist vanity that being Indian alone bestows greatness and superiority.
You cannot expect to be respected by others, they say, when you don’t respect yourself. A pedestrian is shown emitting a stream of paan-stained spit on a crowded footpath.
They speak of how nationalism, racism and discrimination are treated as interchangeable in illiterate online conversations that consist of brief, abusive exchanges between easily offended strangers with no time to think things through.
Loy Machedo, another YouTuber, regularly argues that the uncouth, cavalier Indian who makes people run for cover is the one the world sees the most, not the quiet, thoughtful, kindly and enlightened one. An Indian resident in Thailand, Machedo is an outspoken, blunt, no-punches-pulled critic of boorish behaviour by Indians. In his eponymous YouTube channel (63.6k subscribers) he records his podcasts walking through rural Thailand bare-chested and tattooed from skull to toe, holding nothing back about cringe-worthy Indian behaviour abroad.
Machedo says Indians shout when they talk, bargain for the sake of it, are poor tippers, always look for ways to sidestep rules and regulations, offer bribes to get their way, talk rudely and—unforgivable in Thailand—have body odour. I’m yet to meet a foreigner or well-travelled Indian who disagrees.
Have I encountered any of this? More than once. There was the aggrieved Indian man who whined about online dating profiles these dates that state: MUSLIMS AND INDIANS SWIPE LEFT PLEASE.
The travel agent I deal with normally charges 25k for securing a long-term resident visa but said up front that it would be 35k for me. Why? That was the special Indian rate. It’s just how it is; Indians pay more.
This year, when another Indian friend wanted her visa service, she said they no longer served Indians.
Why?
“You’re a good client, sir,” she said diplomatically, “but Indians are—too Indian.”
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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