Defending a Culture that Refuses to Defend You

by Kavya Patel

Individuals of this country who do not fit the conventional white construct are expected to self-identify as hyphenated. We aren’t just “American”, we’re “Indian-American”, as if our relationship with this country requires qualification, our bodies are six letters and a hyphen removed from belonging. While our inherent difference, our “otherness”, is something we are constantly reminded of, we live in a country that actively works to homogenize its population. They pick and choose the parts of our culture they feel comfortable with, dilute it, and commercialize it (e.g. “chai tea” lattes, yoga), blatantly rejecting the rest.

I’m from California, home to the largest concentration of immigrants in the country. We work hard to retain a notion of where we come from, celebrating our culture, traditions, and rituals, finding community in our shared rebellion. I spent most of my childhood weekends at Indian festivals and celebrations, dressing up in my salwar kameez and falling asleep to my parents humming ghazals on the drive back home. My friends and I would dance the night away to the sharp rhythm of tablas, our bare feet slapping the cold waxed linoleum floors, laughing with the crescendo of the music. I had a home among these bright colors and melodies.

And then I turned twelve and had my first period. The women around me told me I was tainted, that I wasn’t allowed to eat at the table with the rest of the family, that I couldn’t go to the temple and pray, that I had to sit in the back of the car. Three days of every month were given to isolation, discomfort in my own skin, and confusion. It was my first, most vivid reminder of how despite its lavish beauty and rich emotion, Indian culture can be highly traditional in its gender roles and heteronormative ideals. It reminded me of every time that I had been told to go help my mother in the kitchen, every meal where I had been expected to clear the table while the men were given time to “digest”, every instance I had been told “no” or was subject to lower expectations because of my gender.

I felt unrooted, strafed from every side. Here I was, trying to preserve a culture that facilitated connection with my parents, grandparents, and ancestral history to combat an oppressive system bent on one-dimensionalizing my identity, and yet, in some respects, that very culture was oppressing me. How was I supposed to defend a culture that refused to defend me?

The dichotomy is an intricate, nuanced one to navigate; it would be easier to choose one identity and refuse the other, yet the compromise made in either is suffocating.

I’ve come to the conclusion that culture is man-made and flawed; it’s meant to evolve, with each generation choosing the best of itself to pass on. Rather than disregard an entire ideology in favor of a false absolute dichotomy between good and evil, I feel stronger embracing select parts of my culture. We’ve grown up with the context and historical understanding necessary to distinguish derogatory from misinterpreted, harmful institutions from fundamental beliefs. As the children of a resolutely Western nation and Indian immigrants, we get to choose from the best of both, with their strengths and weaknesses complementing one another and adding depth to our personalities. Rather than have white mainstream media define perception of our culture based on political convenience and cultural commodification, we should define it through our brazen, uncompromising living of it.