What's In A Name?

During the recent Oscar Awards ceremony, the song 'Naatu, Naatu' from the Telugu movie RRR was adjudged the winner. There were a handful of Indian movie industry figures who were interviewed by a reporter at that time. As they talked about how they were proud to represent 'India', I was struck by how the interviewer kept talking about 'South Asian representation'. It looked like we were about to be rebranded as 'South Asians'. That was not all.

There is a tendency to refer to all Indian movies as Bollywood in the US. The fans of RRR were understandably upset when the Oscar host called it a Bollywood production. And how about the term 'Bollywood' itself? The Indian cinema industry is much more than the Hindi films made by Bollywood.  Given all this, to call RRR a South Asian movie is lazy and a travesty (I am reminded of the time when all South Indians were clubbed under the term 'Madrasi' by North Indians). 

This is not something new. The term 'South Asian' has been in vogue for quite a few years now. But I think people in India or for that matter in the diaspora for the most part prefer to identify themselves as 'Indian' primarily. The country is of course referred to as 'India' (and in the constitution as 'India that is Bharat') and I find the use of the more generic 'South Asian' mildly annoying as it tends to erase the nationality.

The term 'Indian' in America is a source of some confusion thanks to Columbus. When he arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, he assumed that he had reached the eastern part of India. He set out to find a new route to India and had reached some place. Ergo, it must be India. Such was his logic. Without any verification, he decided to refer to the local people as Indians. He did not even set foot on the main land mass of America. I am sure he had some idea of what India was about but did not want to face the fact that he had not reached India. 

In the end, he lost the opportunity to get the continent named after him. I could care less about that but the fact remains that this led to the Caribbean Islands becoming West Indies and India being referred to as East India. How else do you explain the name 'British East India Trading Company'? It should have been easy to see that there was no West India. After all, for centuries, Europeans had been trading with India. How hard was it to accept the error of a misguided explorer and allow the native population of America to retain their own identity and spare the rest of the world some confusion?

As a result of Columbus's mistake, the native population of America became Indian. The Indian diaspora in America are Indian Americans. The terms 'Indian American' and 'American Indian' are not interchangeable by the way. I found out that the term Asian here does not typically include Indians even though India is a huge part of Asia. I suppose the term South Asian was born out of all this confusion.  

If 'India' is being subsumed into 'South Asia', the reverse is true of  'America' which rather than being a generic has come to stand for just the United States of America. What about Canada and Mexico? Actually, no one even asks whether we mean North or South America when we say 'America'. I think America is really an idea that the US strives to represent. I would like to submit that India is both a country and an idea. 'South Asia' is too nebulous a term identifying neither a country nor an idea. 

So what's in a name? Clearly a lot more than what Juliet thought there was. On the other hand, many immigrants in America routinely change their names to make it easy to pronounce. Many have two names, one ethnic and another English. The fact that many ethnic names cannot be represented correctly with the English alphabet does not help matters. Does this mean a loss of identity? In the melting pot that is America, I guess we have to expect a melding of cultures and that includes names and origins. One hopes that the various sub-cultures will nevertheless continue to flourish. This in fact is the unique lived experience of India over the ages.