YEARS AGO, a friend from India, whose company I enjoyed, taught me invaluable lessons about Indian culture.
These brief doses of real life in the course of casual conversation were entirely unsolicited. At the time, I had only a rosy view of a country I had never visited and was unlikely ever to visit. Everyone from India was, to me, an exemplar of Gandhi-like detachment and homespun simplicity, my ideas being largely derived from movies. It’s not that these positive impressions are without basis in reality. Not at all. I have known genuine exemplars of this simplicity and detachment. But my friend taught me a bit about the underside of Indian character that was unknown to me.
For instance, my friend told me:
— Lying is a way of life in India. Lies (and haggling) are a routine part of doing business, but also are a sort of everyday sport. If a visitor gets in a taxi, the driver will almost always lie about the best way to get where the customer is going. Constant lying is interwoven into everyday existence. This works out reasonably well for other Indians because they know everyone lies, but does not work out well for people accustomed to honesty. She was amazed at how little Americans appreciated that their own culture did not condone routine lying.
— Middle-class Indians are highly ambitious for their children and view education as a competition. The concept of learning for learning’s sake is not appealing to them.
— Indians are status-conscious and materialistic.
— Indians who live in this country and have gained citizenship will almost always vote Democratic, even when they embrace conservative family values, because they see the Republican Party as representing white Americans and thus against their best interests as a “minority.”
— Indians are relativists when it comes to religion. There is no such thing as truth, only different “paths.”
These are a few lessons that stuck with me. They unsettled my inclination to see only the good side. The number of Indians in North America is growing astronomically. Americans must understand the culture they are bringing with them.
