Who is Who?
Of Practical Matters, and Profiling Instincts.
Many Indians face a dilemma when dealing with other Indians.
When people look similar, how do humans relate?
Indulge in a behavior that is unavoidable: using identity markers aka profiling.
By language, region, caste.
Often done subconsciously by the use of last name, appearance, or location.
, commenting on a post, asked a complex question — how do Indians know another Indian’s background just by name alone.Indeed, how?
If born in India, Indians are primed to know. Others learn through the simple process of being raised and educated in India.
It is a survival technique. Classify, group, understand, proceed.
Maybe.
Sharma? North Indian.
Rao? South Indian.
Ketkar? From the region of Maharashtra (Mumbai being its famous city).
Born in Chennai? Most likely to not speak Hindi.
Nursing? Possibly from the state of Kerala, historically.
An educated guess for someone from Gujarat — vegetarian, most likely runs a business.
From Punjab? Possibly in the armed forces, farming. Also, lively, fun-loving.
Inbuilt. This profiling instinct.
Sometimes, used to raise one’s group advantage over another, and revel in it.
Yet, at other times, simply to find a way to make sense of this myriad differences in eating habits, family norms, cultural nuances, and acceptable practices.
When Indians meet other Indians, this profiling instinct is automatic.
Sometimes overt, “Where are you from?”
It’s a way of exchanging business cards.
I might trust you more if I know your group antecedents.
Unless you are born overseas, or emmigrated as a child.
Then, all bets are off, and your family is considered in a third group: foreign-returned, or British/American-desi.1
Influence of foreign cultures is seen as beneficial in overriding the group’s negative characteristics. These days, most middle-income Indian families have someone or the other living overseas.
Even a returning NASA scientist of Indian origin, may encounter the awkward social question: Where’s your family from?
While in other places, such a question may seem harmless (or not, depending on the context and person), in India, it signals a wealth of background that you may neither identify with nor wish to reveal.
A good test: try withholding it from someone in a social context, they will spend the entire evening guessing, seeking confirmation, and will not rest until they have adequately placed you.
Here’s how that might go:
Where are you from?
Bangalore.
No, where are you from?
US.
But where is your family from?
Bangalore.
What do you speak?
English.
No, what does your family speak?
English.
An uncomfortable silence.
A new member joins the group.
Where are you from?
But if you are born in city A, educated in City B, working in city C, or migrated to Nation Z, you have what is considered a cosmopolitan profile.
The new India, mixed generations.
Yet, the older Indian, the uncle, will recollect with affection, “I knew a Sharma once. Great man. He helped me a lot. So you are a Sharma? Good, good.”
Similar to class identification by accent or school in England. Only more complex. With hundreds of distinctions, layered in multiple ways that stump even the locals.
Humans — their need to categorize, define, identify, and satisfy themselves: a way of belonging, claiming a membership, inheriting the group’s best features, excusing its worst tendencies, and in a foreign land, overriding the national identity.
So the Gujarati, or other associations in American cities, or the Telugu Association of North America each promoting a subculture, with sufficient wealth, networking prowess, and clout. To raise funds for pet cultural projects in their adopted cities or Indian hometowns.
In cities here, many worry which outside culture is dominating the local culture through migration, real estate ownership, business clout, and influence over decision makers.
Stationary shops opened in hundreds, by people from Rajasthan. Speaking the local language like natives. Or not.
Some lamenting the loss of local nuances, in this mad rush for growth, upset about the fading of local languages. Others influencing to protect it at all costs, the inexorable march of change. In the modern world.
Jobs, markets: reflecting a global reality.
A mom and pop store imports dollar goods, or household essentials from China, but when a customer asks where it’s from, hedges, suggesting the question is irrelevant, “Everything comes from China now.” Except when espousing ‘Made in India,’ as a buzz word.
Using it in ads, offering assembly as proof to customers.
In the 75 years since its independence, India has not built a world-class passenger car that Indians would proudly buy as the best in its segment. Its share of the global passenger car market is less than 1%.2
Especially when the purchase decision is not driven by budget alone.
The last one that attained some fame for pricing at $2k was discontinued as unsustainable.
Since 1953, imported cars in India have faced tariffs of over 100-120%, depending on their price.
So some Indians end up paying upwards of $35k for a $20k Honda SUV.
Unless it is assembled in India. A way for brands to overcome this barrier.
India makes components for global automakers3 competitively positioning itself as an alternate hub for those hedging bets against global realities.
Global automakers, attracted by access to the third largest and fastest growing global economy4 projected by IMF, opened car assembly plants, powered by tax incentives on the promise of job creation.
But upwardly mobile Indians, recognizing that high quality comes from the Japanese, the German — sometimes the Korean — automakers, spend their rupees accordingly. Even the two Indian domestic brands for the budget segment have imported tech, or acquisitions to bolster their capabilities.
The exception: electric cars rejigging market positioning.
What of energy?
India has no significant oil resources. In 2022, 82% of crude oil was imported.5
Yet, marketing slogans for decades continue to advocate, ‘Be Indian, buy Indian.’
The same everywhere, identity as a group offering a path of pride.
Practicalities ignored when inconvenient in the tech age of short attention spans and hyperbole: No modern nation is an island.
Yet, the spiritual seekers of India teach, through the ancient texts, and direct experience, mining the depths of the spiritual ocean.
The soul knows no gender, no race, no caste, no name, no nationality.
It transcends these superficial barriers, returning to source, and being reborn, until it understands an essential truth: its purpose: a solo journey to discover its source Self.
The rest, mere tools, enabling or limiting progress on that journey.
Cautioning: swim not on the surface of the ocean, but dive deeper, where the unseen resides.
Unknowable, immeasurable, all-pervading, indistinguishable.
Truth.
No matter what human veils do to hide it.
Its sun resplendent, if we only remove the smudges from its outer covers.
Yet, at a spiritual event, you hear, “So, where are you from?”
Maya, the eternal illusionist, binding souls, until someone yearns to break free.
The teacher arriving only when the student is ready.
Thus, it goes.
The modern human, wrapped in identity, seeking belonging in a material world.
Hindi. Desi=Native=indian.
770k units sold of 90M sold worldwide.
India is the 4th largest auto-component producer globally, but most of its ~$74 billion output is consumed domestically to support its large automotive market. Exports account for ~$21 billion, or roughly 30% of production, with only ~3% share in global component trade. Source.
IMF projections for 2025 place India at the 4th largest economy globally, with a nominal GDP of approximately $4.19 trillion, on par with Japan. It further forecasts that by 2027, India will surpass Germany to become the 3rd largest economy worldwide.
India is the third-largest oil importer globally. India's crude oil import dependence is estimated at 87.7% in Fiscal Year 2023-24.
Thank you Jayshree for the education, you are always a wealth of information. Large community of Punjabi Indians, in my community. In fact, I tutor little girl whose grandparents are from that region in India, so I’m exposed to their culture everyday. I’m very good friends with both her parents and grandparents. I’ll be taking to them, and they will say something like when referring to a mural Indian,”He’s from the south.” I guess this is also true in America, the United States has its own distinct areas of cultural influence and accents.
Very enjoyable and instructive, as usual. Thank you for your posts.