It was as if I had gotten on a time machine and travelled back fifty years, to an India that was still obsessed with all things British. Except this wasn’t India, but Kenya. I was in Nairobi this summer, to attend a wedding. Everyone in my generation had a British accent. This wasn’t because they had ever lived in England, but because they went to British school in Nairobi. Some of them were a bit more justified in having a British accent, because they went to Rugby and then Oxford or Cambridge and hence have spent half their lives in England. I felt like I was in a P.G. Wodehouse novel, surrounded by Bertie Wooster and Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright and the rest of the gang. Except I was in Kenya, not Piccadilly, and all of these Bertie Woosters were brown.

If you are Indian and born anytime after 1990, you probably will not understand these references. If you are American, you most certainly will not.

Most of the guests were of Indian origin, but had lived in Kenya all their lives. A lot of them had moved from Kenya to various Western countries: Canada and England being the most common. But none of them had moved to the U.S.This is in stark contrast to Indians from India. Most Indians are desperate to get to the U.S. somehow, as the long lines outside the U.S. embassy for visas imply. In a social gathering in India, it is taken for granted that someone there is an NRI (non-resident Indian) who is back on vacation to India but lives in a suburban mansion in the States, and talks nonchalantly about driving their kids to ‘soccer practice’ and watching ‘football games’.The Kenyan Indians who now live in England, on the other hand talk about playing rugby and living in Kensington.

The ones who live in Kenya aren’t much different.They are more British than the British. They love gherkins and tea. And wear ‘jumpers’, not sweatshirts. And of course they watch cricket. It is obviously a matter of prestige and social mobility to be British in Kenya, much like the India of the 1950s. It felt like a blast from the past, a vision of what India could have been if Anglophilia had run unchecked. But it was not to be. There was another player on the scene. America had decided to make its presence felt in India. When I was in school in Bombay (a city that was Americanizing at a particularly fast rate), I remember saying ‘cellotape’ and being scorned by my classmates. They told me pityingly that ‘cellotape’ is “SO yesterday”. One of my classmates (a girl with an American accent because she went to Boston for three months over the summer) told me that it was, “Scotch tape. Like DUH.”

I think it’s interesting that this cultural shift is happening at an unprecedented rate. There are only three years between my brother and I. However, his childhood is completely different from mine. We could have been in different generations. I grew up reading Enid Blyton, P.G. Wodehouse and Asterix and watched “Mind your Language” once in a while. He leapfrogged right into the twenty-first century. He started off reading American comic books (Batman, Spiderman, etc.) , playing PS2, watching Cartoon Network. He does like the English Premier League and I do like Friends, so we were caught in the middle of a cultural mishmash. I was mostly British with a little bit of American thrown in, while he was the other way round. The gradual shift from Anglophilia to “Amerophilia” happened around when I was thirteen, which was also around the same time that I moved to Bombay. And now, of course, I am at the University of Texas at Austin, the heart of Americana, and am surrounded by pop culture references that I don’t understand because my early childhood was so screwed up. I was a casualty in this long-drawn out battle. And I supported the wrong side.

We’re going through a shift in which American pop culture is successfully challenging the primacy of British pop culture. And it’s winning, hands down. Britain represents a chapter of Indian history that most Indians would rather forget. Enid Blyton and P.G. Wodehouse, remind us of the days of the License Raj, when kids would go to Catholic and boarding schools exactly like Mallory Towers. The widespread appeal of the Beatles, or Enid Blyton or Tintin lasted for almost thirty years in India probably because society in India remained static and unchanging for those thirty years. The last twenty years, however, have seen a radical change. Now, if they can afford it, people send their kids to IB schools or American schools so that they get a headstart when it’s time to apply to universities in America. There are some Indians who go to college in England, but it’s more often than not a family tradition. It is significant that the highest approval rating for America outside of America is in India, at a time when it is fashionable to dislike America all over the world.

But even so, the American phase, thank goodness, is only a phase. I say thank goodness, because it’s always a good thing when a country’s indigenous pop culture is considered the height of sophistication. It builds nationalism and pride in one’s country, something that was markedly lacking in India pre-1991. We have become more comfortable with our culture, and have fewer identity issues when we go abroad. Rather than belonging to a post-colonial world in which India is a basket-case of malnutrition and social ills, we can now belong to a world where India is an emerging world power. And this manifests itself in pop culture. Even as I speak, indigenous Indian pop culture is starting to become the model to emulate. Don’t get me wrong: Indian pop culture always had a very strong base in India. But it was never an element of social mobility. Hindi movies were made for the lower and middle classes, not for the upper and upper middle classes. If you wanted to move up the social ladder, you had to Anglicize or Americanize (depending on when you were born). But now, Hindi is becoming high-end. The upper middle classes in India are comfortable wearing clothes by Ritu Kumar instead of Versace, watching Hindi movies over Hollywood ones, and in general are proud of their Indianness. Cartoon Network now runs Hindi programs. There are animated movies like “Hanuman” that appeal to an Indian audience, as opposed to “The Lion King”. And while this isn’t new, ten years ago this would’ve been considered “dumbing down” or “appealing to the masses”. Now, this is what’s “in” or “cool”. This trend is going to continue and this will involve a massive change in public tastes.

The best example is in the Madras Club, back home in Madras (or Chennai). The Madras Club is the quintessential British club. It used to be the mansion of some British administrator. The clubhouse is a good example of late Georgian colonial architecture. In colonial times, there would be a sign outside the club saying “Dogs and Indians not allowed.” People are not allowed to enter the clubhouse even today without putting on evening shoes - those wearing shorts get no further than the front gate. In short, It is the stereotypical stuffy English club bogged down by protocol and one of the last bastions of the Raj. But even within the Madras Club, things are changing. They have Bollywood dance nights in the clubhouse and they are building a gym and entertainment area next door. Many old members are deeming it sacrilege, shaking their heads in disgust and wondering what the world is coming to (my father being one of them). But these Bollywood dance nights are participated in by the crème de la crème of society in Madras. The upholders of the “White Man’s Burden” would be turning in their graves about now.

The fact remains that I’m in a very awkward position. I’m simply not poised to take advantage of this new found pride in all things Indian. I’ve always been told that Enid Blyton will endure. And now it’s all gone. Gone with the wind. Good for India! But what about me?

Photo Courtesy: corrieb

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