Photo via The Nod
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You may have seen her on your TikTok ‘For You Page’ or another platform’s timeline—India’s ‘cool girl;’ Diya Joukani.
Her short videos give viewers a glimpse of what everyday life looks like for her in Mumbai, meandering around the city and doing random and unexpected activities as if the rules don’t apply to her—she is often seen casually being lifted by a bulldozer or riding horses in busy streets. She showcases the baggy jeans and bejeweled sweaters that she designs while exuding an effortless confidence, mirrored in Frank Ocean’s song, “Nights,” the soundtrack of the majority of her videos.
Online depictions of India are usually degrading and perpetuate racist stereotypes. YouTube videos might follow an adventurer who dares to enter India’s slums for 48 hours or a solo female traveling in India, questioning whether or not it is safe. The narrative is overwhelmingly saturated with illustrations of India as crowded, dirty, and hazardous with one YouTube video titled “How Long Till I Get Food Poisoning in India? (not long).”
It follows that Diya peacefully roaming Mumbai alone and having fun with her community left people shocked and subverted stereotypes about India. She eats fire paan, not worried that it is unsafe, and enjoys playing soccer with local children during sunset or chatting with vendors and cab drivers. Common comments under her videos, however, reveal pervasive preconceptions about India: “Maybe India isn’t bad at all” and “actually India looks cool from this perspective.”
Despite appearing to appreciate India in a new light, these backhanded compliments affirm the condescending Western accounts of India. Orientalists, or rather “Western scholars,” aimed to uphold Western power out of colonial desire by portraying the ‘Orient’ as an ‘other.’ The surprise that accompanies recognizing India as ‘cool’ and attractive shows how successful the West has been in ‘othering’ Asian countries. Moreover, it reveals how the West centers itself in the global state system, without an understanding of other countries being desirable as well.
This carefully constructed divide between the West as the pristine standard and the Orient as primitive or riddled with poverty is not so pronounced, considering America’s homelessness and the fact that citizens in the Appalachian Mountains live 14.3% below the poverty line—higher than the nation’s average. Populated cities in India are characterized as being chaotic and filthy, but New York City has been ranked the dirtiest in the country. No country is perfect, and Western countries are no exception. Most countries have both poor and wealthy, calm and chaos, but imperfections account for a disproportionate share of the Orient’s characterization, exacerbating derogatory online imagery.
It is for this reason that Diya going about her life in Mumbai happily and harmoniously comes as such a shock. The way she freely moves through the city—walking behind vendors’ counters, serving food, and walking off or even hanging off the back of a truck–makes her appear so cool, prompting people to comment that she ‘has the keys to the city.’ It is how she openly interacts with her community—giving leis to passersby and walking hand-in-hand with locals—that makes India attractive to her viewers. The community is willing to engage with her videos and indulge in her extroverted requests to walk goats through the street or feed cows. Her videos serve to humanize Indian people in the face of centuries of dehumanizing stereotypes by portraying them as individuals.
While social media can allow for broader exposure to different cultures, it just as easily spreads the misinformation that Orientalism confronts. Comments under Diya’s videos are indicative of the West’s skewed knowledge of India. These narrow understandings are rooted in historical desires to establish clear differences in order to maintain notions of superiority. It is difficult for conditioned viewers to acknowledge that India is not so different from their own Western countries and is, or always has been, dynamic because they have been fed false narratives about a distant and exotic land. Accepting the more comprehensive portrayals of India that Diya puts forth would dismantle prejudiced notions that serve to form the global hierarchy.
With more representation similar to Diya’s, this pattern has the possibility of shifting; however, negative comments only reinforce the pervasive doubt about India being ‘chill’ or worthy of respect by underscoring how shocking this alternative imagery is and emphasizing that it could not possibly be true. Thus, it is important to gain exposure to accurate representations of other countries and to recognize racist biases in online discourses.
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This article was edited by Samantha Morales and Ella Keddy.
Nathan Wellman 
Javeer Khan 
Nadia Garriga