The Round Table

The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs

ISSN: 0035-8533 (Print) 1474-029X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctrt20

Indian is the New Black? The Rise of Indian-

Americans on American Television

Amit Gupta

To cite this article: Amit Gupta (2016) Indian is the New Black? The Rise of Indian-Americans on
American Television, The Round Table, 105:1, 43-55, DOI: 10.1080/00358533.2015.1126957

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2015.1126957

Published online: 28 Jan 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 38

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ctrt20

Download by: [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] Date: 04 April 2016, At: 03:46
 The Round Table, 2016
Vol. 105, No. 1, 43–55, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2015.1126957

Indian is the New Black? The Rise of

Indian-Americans on American Television
AMIT GUPTA
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

United States Air Force Air War College, Montgomery, USA

ABSTRACT This article argues that the growing use of Indian-American characters in American
television programming results from a combination of societal shifts in the United States as well
as changes in the international system—specifically, the increasing ethnic diversity in America as
well as the rise of non-western nations as important players in a globalized world that has led to
a growing global market for American television programs. Further, the portrayal of such char-
acters also ranges from what the British Broadcasting Corporation calls ‘color-blind casting’
(where the race and ethnicity of characters do not determine or limit the roles they portray) to
more stereotypical renderings of the Indian-American community. It concludes by suggesting that
changes in demography, as well as market forces within the United States and abroad, will prob-
ably lead not only to more Indian-Americans on television but also to their portraying roles that
fit into the reality of the Indian-American status and experience in American society.

KEY WORDS: Indian-Americans, television, Hollywood, The Simpsons, Bollywood, Thugees,

stereotyping

Introduction
The role of television and movies in creating popular images about ethnic groups has
been discussed for decades in the United States. Now the creation of such images has
been magnified by social media as well as transformations in a globalized economy that
have led to increased interactions between people from different nations through remote
interactions via call centers. At the start of the new millennium, American perceptions
about the Indian-American minority came from interactions on college campuses, deal-
ings in the service industry (7-11 convenience stores and hotels), and through the char-
acter of Apu in The Simpsons. Then came Bangalore and outsourcing, which created a
different image of Indians and Indian-Americans in the country. This article examines
how and why these images have changed as well as the extent to which they match the
actual reality about the community. My argument that is central to this discussion is the
fact that the media, particularly television, have played a role in shaping the image of
Indian-Americans among the general public.
Indian-Americans, like other Asian American groups, have been termed a model
minority, but, unlike other groups, they were an invisible minority in the United States
until the early 2000s.1 The community is a model one because of its high levels of

Correspondence Address: Amit Gupta, Department of International Security Studies, United States Air Force
Air War College, 325 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB, AL 36112, USA. Email: amit.gupta1856@gmail.com

© 2016 The Round Table Ltd

 44 A. Gupta

education and median income, but invisible because until recently it was not part of the
broader American discourse on ethnicity or even a noticeable political group. In fact,
Asian American studies in the United States have tended to focus on East and
Southeast Asian diaspora groups rather than on South Asians—the latter being mostly
Indian-Americans. Yet in the last decade we have witnessed the increased visibility of
this ethnic group in politics, business, and now on television.
This article argues that the growing use of Indian-American characters in American
television programming results from a combination of societal shifts in the United
States as well as changes in the international system—specifically, the increasing ethnic
diversity in America as well as the rise of non-western nations as important players in a
globalized world that has led to a growing global market for American television pro-
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

grams. Further, the portrayal of such characters also ranges from what the British
Broadcasting Corporation calls ‘color-blind casting’ (where the race and ethnicity of the
characters do not determine or limit the roles they portray) to more stereotypical render-
ings of the Indian-American community. In the latter sense it is a case of everything
one learned about a community being from television. Before examining the portrayal
of Indian-Americans on television it is necessary, however, to establish a rudimentary
ethnographic picture of the community.

Who are the Indian-Americans?

According to the 2010 US census there are approximately 3.1 million Indian-Americans
living in the country and the Pew Research Center makes the following points about
the community:

 ‘Nativity and citizenship. Nearly nine-in-ten (87%) adult Indian-Americans in

the United States are foreign born, compared with about 74% of adult Asian
Americans and 16% of the adult U.S. population overall. More than half of
Indian-American adults are U.S. citizens (56%), lower than the share among the
overall adult Asian population (70%) as well as the national share (91%).
 Educational attainment. Among Indian-Americans ages 25 and older, seven-
in-ten (70%) have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree; this is higher than the
Asian-American share (49%) and much higher than the national share (28%).’2
 Income. The Indian-American community now has a median income of
$100,547.3

Additionally, the community is left-leaning with the vast majority supporting the
Democratic Party.4 This despite the fact that its two most prominent political successes
—Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley—are Republicans who have converted to Christianity.
Jindal was born a Hindu while Haley was born a Sikh.
What emerges from this snapshot, therefore, is a community that is professional,
educated, upwardly mobile, and seeking to assimilate into the broader American society.
The Indian-American reality, however, only partly fits into the popular perception of
India or even of Indian-Americans in the United States, where the image widely fluctu-
ates, on the one hand, between the stereotypical 7-11 convenience store owner (best
portrayed by Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in The Simpsons), the ‘Hotel-Motel-Patel’
 Indian is the New Black? 45

image5 constructed by the monopoly of Indian-Americans of Gujarati descent in the

family-owned hotel business;6 on the other hand, there are the large numbers of infor-
mation technology millionaires and doctors who make the community disproportion-
ately successful for its size.7 In the information technology world Indian-Americans
such as Satya Nadella, Ajay Bhatt, Vinod Dham and Vinod Khosla have been path-
breakers, and Nadella has become the head of Microsoft.8 One also needs to point out
here that part of the success of Indian-Americans has come from the fact that they are a
new community—only migrating in substantial numbers since the 1960s when they
entered the country as educated professionals.9
Indian-Americans, consequently, have been labelled, like other Asian American
groups, a model minority. Further, it is quite a homogenous community since close to
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

80% of the community has married within the community. Yet, while these statistics
may be impressive, the Indian-American community was, until the events of 11
September 2001, a largely invisible community—one that was successful but did not
have a presence in the American cultural or political consciousness.10
It was only after the terror attacks of 11 September that the Indian community politi-
cally mobilized to combat discrimination. Indians faced hate attacks and some were dis-
missed from their jobs because post-9/11 regulations led to certain positions being
restricted to US citizens. These regulations particularly hurt that section of the commu-
nity with green cards and members of airport security workforces. Since then, the
Indian community has sought to build a strong political presence in the country by
seeking to get legislators of Indian origin elected and to create a politically effective
Indian caucus on Capitol Hill. In fact, the India caucus on Capitol Hill has the largest
number of members for any such group in Congress. Further, Indian-American groups
now claim some of the credit for successfully pushing the India–US nuclear deal
through Congress at a time when there were still concerns about India as a potential
proliferator of nuclear technology.11
Despite such progress within the US political system and an increased public pres-
ence, the Indian-American minority remains both a model one and an invisible one.
Stereotyped portrayals of Indian–Americans as the IT guy or doctor reflect this model
minority, but these images are far removed from how Indians and Indian–Americans
used to be portrayed in Hollywood and on television. In the media the image has
shifted from one constructed in colonial times by the British to reflect a somewhat more
accurate representation of the state of the community in the 21st century.

Indians in Hollywood and on Television

The first Indian to have a significant presence in Hollywood was Sabu (non-screen name
Sabu Dastagir) who played Mowgli from The Jungle Book and a range of other period
pieces as Indian and Sri Lankan characters mostly wearing loin cloths. In doing so he
exemplified the exotic in the portrayal of India in popular culture, which fit in well with
the then general global image of the country in the 1930s and 1940s, which came from
colonial tropes.12 It is important to remember that when Sabu made his entry into Holly-
wood India was going through a mass movement for freedom led by Mahatma Gandhi.
It was not Gandhi’s drive for non-violent protest that shaped the image of India abroad.
Instead, it was the stereotypes that came from colonial perceptions.
 46 A. Gupta

Thus, on the big screen India was the land of jungles, animals, human sacrifices and
a certain malevolent evil—all these linked preconceptions, incidentally, were revived by
Stephen Spielberg in the second Indiana Jones movie The Temple of Doom, leading the
Indian government temporarily to ban the movie. Moreover, Britain still ruled India and
the narrative about India tended to focus on British representations of the country as a
land that was poor yet exotic and dangerous. In fact, the portrayal of India and Indians
in the Sabu movies had a lasting impact and continued into the 1980s, as seen by the
script of The Temple of Doom.
The Sabu period was also marked by Indians not being allowed to immigrate to the
United States. In 1960, there were reportedly only 12,300 Indian-born immigrants in
the country.13 Regulations on immigration only loosened after the Immigration Act of
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

1965, which allowed Indians to immigrate to the United States. While immigration
opened up, the portrayal of Indian-Americans did not change since they were an invisi-
ble community, and this was reflected in their representation in popular culture. Holly-
wood, in its occasional portrayals of Indians, would go with the common stereotypes
that Geetanjali Jha argues covered ‘belly dancers, tribals, colonial subjects, poor men in
turbans and women in saris, and images of Indian kings’.14
A good example of this occasional and stereotypical portrayal was the Man from
U.N.C.L.E. episode ‘The Yellow Scarf Affair’. The episode summary on the Internet
Movie Data Base (IMDB) brings out the bizarre stereotype of India:

An UNCLE agent transporting a Thrush device is killed when members of a

revived Thugee cult in India rob a plane and cause it to crash. Solo picks up the
trail of the murdered agent. He must deal with both Thrush and the cult.15

Thugees were disbanded in the 19th century and since then have not been a criminal
force in India. Bringing them into a 20th century narrative of India reinforced the
stereotypes about India and Indians. Jha goes on to show that even in the late 1970s a
picture such as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was to portray the exotic in
India with a prince living in a Muslim architecture-style palace with Hindu gods around
him.16
The invisibility of this minority was reflected in the fact that many of the popular
perceptions of Indians came from British television shows from the 1970s. At this time,
the English were having a hard time adjusting to the influx of migrants from South Asia
and this discomfort was reflected in the television programming, which derived humor
from stereotypes about immigrant groups in Britain. As I have written elsewhere, ‘In
the 1970s, for instance, one of the hit shows in Britain was ITV’s Mind Your Language,
which was about an English teacher educating immigrants in England. Among the
show’s running jokes was a black character’s proud declarations of her being English,
followed by much canned laughter’.17 Sarita Malik points out that the show’s humor
lay not only in portraying racial differences, but also in circumscribing Englishness.
The show’s producer defended the program by saying that seeing different races on
screen would ‘familiarize and neutralize them [to] a White majority viewing public’.18
LWT’s Michael Grade pulled the show for indulging in offensive stereotyping.19
It was only much later that western movies began portraying a different picture of
India—through the lens of an Indian family that had fled Idi Amin’s Uganda to settle in
 Indian is the New Black? 47

Mississippi. Mississippi Masala not only accurately brought out the challenges faced by
an immigrant family, but also discussed the tensions between the traditions of India and
the culture of the United States. It also took an honest look at the uncomfortable subject
of South Asian racism against Africans and African Americans; however, Mississippi
Masala became a successful art house film that did little to change popular perceptions
about the Indian-American community in the United States.

Apu: Racist or Parody?

The British representation of Indians became the American representation of Indian-
Americans on television because there were so few Indians in the country. The Indian-
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

American community’s most famous representative, who first appeared on television in

the late 1980s, was the cartoon character Apu in The Simpsons. Hank Azaria, who
voices Apu, has stated that his Apu accent is a combination of 7-11 convenience store
owners he had interacted with in Los Angeles, although this was the accent that the
Peter Sellers character, Hrundi V. Bakshi, made into the stereotypical Indian accent in
the 1960s movie The Party.20 Apu split the Indian-American community in terms of
their receptiveness to the caricature. On the one hand there were those who objected to
the stereotyping of the character in terms of his owning a Kwik-e-Mart and being an
unscrupulous businessman (which, incidentally, is a stereotype that Indians have suf-
fered from in both Africa and Asia). Manish Vij, writing in The Guardian, discussed
why the character was deemed offensive by some Indian-American groups:

But The Simpsons has long irritated some Indian-Americans because of the thickly
stereotypical character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon … Apu is quite a unique char-
acter on The Simpsons. Unlike the show’s parodies of policemen and Irish-Ameri-
cans, he’s the only character to mock a small American minority relatively
unknown in the mainstream, and he’s by far the most visible immigrant. For desis
(South Asians) growing up in America, just one eighth as concentrated and visible
as in the UK, Apu shadowed us at every turn.21

What made the caricature all the more insulting to some Indian-Americans was Apu’s
PhD in computer science (from the Springfield Heights Institute of Technology (SHIT)).
By the 1980s when the Simpsons premiered, the bulk of the Indian community in
America consisted of professionals in the sciences.22 Thus, the convenience store-
owning Indian was viewed as an inaccurate portrayal of the community. Other Indian-
Americans see Apu in the way that the show’s creators intended him to be viewed—as
a parody of a stereotype—and Apu has endured as a character in our television-viewing
consciousness for nearly 20 years. As Saptarshi Ray, a British Asian, wrote so percep-
tively: ‘Apu may run the local shop, he may indulge in some jiggery-pokery with best
before labels and he may count “five-finger discounts” as among his pet hates but he is
also intelligent, funny, assertive and impatient with stupidity.’23 She continues:

The image may not be accurate across the board but I challenge anyone to go to
India itself and not see the polyester/moustache combo in abundance. And after
all, Americans hardly get a free ride in the Simpsons, nor do Scots, Mexicans,
 48 A. Gupta

Jews, Italians, teachers, old people or comic-book guys. Portrayals may be

amusing or ribbing, but they are rarely malicious and I would find it very hard to
believe the Simpsons writers and actors do not hold affection for all their creations,
including Apu.24

What is important here is not the fact that the character may be offensive to some
Indian-Americans but that his origins come from a broader stereotyping of Indians that
has its roots in the racial politics and generalizations of the British Empire. Since there
were no discernible means for the broader American viewing public to see a different
India, it was Apu’s India, which was Peter Sellers’s India, which was a caricature from
British colonial India, that became the stereotype for the Indian-American community.
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

Several factors, however, have changed the way television portrays Indian-Americans
and in the future this will reflect on the way the community is perceived by the Ameri-
can public. First, by the start of the new millennium major economic and political
changes had led to a growing public awareness in the United States about the Indian-
American community and thus created a somewhat different popular image about the
community. The Y2K scare (year 2000 software problem) of the late 1990s led to com-
puter programmers being imported from India and other countries (between 2000 and
2009, 46.9% of the programmers brought into the United States on H1-B visas were
from India)25 and this served as the first major boost to the then emerging Indian infor-
mation technology industry. Within a few years Bangalore had become the city that
American jobs were being supposedly outsourced to and Americans had to deal first
hand with Indians at call centers in that city. These interactions had both their racist
and amusing moments. Indians working at the call centers adopted western names and
pretended that they were responding to customer complaints from the United States
while some Americans, who were having a hard time understanding Indian accents and
were frustrated by the inability to have their technological issues properly dealt with,
resorted to racist name calling.26 Within 10 years of the Indian IT industry emerging as
a global player, the word Bangalore had become a verb and the perception of Indians
in popular culture had shifted from 7-11 store owners to include technological geeks.
Further, the events of 9/11 made the Indian community, which until then had been
successful but invisible, adopt a more public presence to challenge the discrimination
that followed the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The Indian community
was a victim of hate crimes and since many were green card holders (resident aliens)
they were fired from government jobs—particularly in the field of transportation secu-
rity where post-9/11 regulations required the hiring of American citizens.27 This led to,
among other things, the younger generation of Indian-Americans deciding in the early
2000s to start seeking a greater political role in the country and to deal with the post-9/
11 discrimination head on. Coming from well-to-do families, these young people sought
to enter public service and to mobilize in order to have more Indians elected to public
office in the country. The subsequent election of Bobby Jindal in Louisiana and Nikki
Haley in South Carolina (although not due to lobbying and campaigning efforts by the
Indian-American community) helped to bolster the image of the community as one that
was politically active and had more influence than was expected from a such a small
population demographic. This was particularly the case in the area of public service.
Indian-Americans such as Sanjay Gupta and now Vivek Murthy have become
 Indian is the New Black? 49

household names thanks to their role in the medical field. Similarly, Deepak Chopra,
with his self-help books, has become a celebrity in the United States and supposedly
the basis for the Mike Myers character Guru Pitka in the movie The Love Guru.
Coupled with an increasing presence of Indian-Americans in the public sphere was
the fact that they were growing up in neighborhoods and studying in high schools that
had diverse populations. Acknowledging this demographic shift, Hollywood started to
transition to color-blind casting in the way it sought to develop characters in its scripts.
Color-blind casting is a term that the BBC started to use as it ‘... cast actors in shows
regardless of whether their race fit the historical period or social or geographical context
in which the show was set’.28 This was best reflected in the BBC1 show Merlin (and
after the election of President Obama there was also an attempt to cast a black Doctor
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

Who).29 In the United States color-blind casting gained acceptance in the early to mid-
1990s when the African-American actor Wesley Snipes was cast as the action lead in
Passenger 57 and later Will Smith was cast as the lead in Independence Day, Men in
Black, and later as Jim West in The Wild Wild West (Robert Conrad, who played the
character in the original television show, was white).30
More recently, Hollywood and popular culture have sought to blur not only color but
also gender as they recast and reinterpret characters into newer versions that are both
more representative of America and lead to more interesting storylines. Thus Nick Fury,
the white head of SHIELD in the Marvel comics, has been successfully portrayed by
the black actor Samuel Jackson in the recent spate of Marvel blockbusters. Marvel, in
its line of comic books, has introduced a female Thor, thus reshaping the image from
Norse mythology of the traditional Asgardian warrior. Captain America, once the
blond-haired blue-eyed poster boy for Marvel and the American military, is now recast
as a black man as Marvel seeks to shake up its line-up of superheroes. In the successful
CBS detective show Elementary, Lucy Liu has been cast as Watson and she has taken
the character away from the buffoonish persona that had been imposed on the male ver-
sion since the Basil Rathbone movies of the 1930s. The character of Starbuck in the
cult hit Battlestar Galactica was changed from a man to a woman, thereby helping the
new show to have a richer plot line than the 1970s original by bringing in a strong
female action character.
Fandoms have also encouraged blurred color and gender lines. Fans of Doctor Who
encouraged the show’s creator to change the time-travelling doctor’s gender; show-cre-
ator Steven Moffat followed their suggestion and changed the main villain’s gender dur-
ing the 2014 season.31 There has been a push from some fans as well as actors such as
Helen Mirren to make the Doctor regenerate into a woman, and it will be interesting to
see how this plays out with the BBC’s venerable science fiction show.32
Nevertheless, color-blind casting has allowed talented Indian-Americans (or other
members of the Indian diaspora) to emerge on television. Two of the most popular
Indian-American figures who have been on recent shows are actually British Indian
actors, Navin Andrews on Lost, and Parminder Nagra, first on ER and then on Blacklist.
But color-blind casting has been only partially successful because for every show like
Covert Affairs, where Sendhil Ramamoorthy played a CIA officer who was adopted by
a white CIA power couple, or Parks and Recreation with Aziz Ansari, there remain
characters like Rajesh Ramayan Koothrapalli on The Big Bang Theory and Pinder on
Franklin and Bash who are closer to the media stereotype of the Indian-American.
 50 A. Gupta

Some also believe that one of the reasons there has been an explosion of Indian-
American actors on television—leading to Nayyar’s statement that Indians are the new
black—is that in a post-9/11 era they represent ‘diet Muslims’. Writing in Slate, Nina
Rastogi questioned:

To float another, more radioactive theory: Are Indians getting a boost from Amer-
ica’s interest in the Middle East? Do Indian characters—and it does seem to be
mostly Indians, as opposed to Pakistanis, or Bangladeshis, or Nepalis—function as
what film actor Satya Bhabha jokingly called ‘diet Muslims’?

Whether or not Indian characters are a way of safely avoiding the specter of other,
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

more ‘dangerous’ brown people, the fact that South Asian actors can easily pass
for Middle Easterners may very well be contributing to their professional develop-
ment. Performance historian Brian Herrera theorizes that South Asian actors may
have gotten a boost from the flurry of terrorist-type roles that followed in the wake
of Sept. 11.33

Indian-Americans on 21st Century American Television

On a positive note, color-blind casting has led to a situation where the race and eth-
nicity of the character are incidental to plot development and in that context some
Indian-Americans have benefited from the shift towards content rather than token
representation and stereotypes on some shows. The best example of this is The
Mindy Project, where Mindy Kaling has created a humorous and intelligent show
that is not based on her ethnicity but, instead, on her experiences as a young urban
American woman. The Mindy Project has developed its own cult following and
gone on to gain critical acclaim.34 Similarly, in the case of Covert Affairs, the long-
running spy show on the USA Network, one of the male actors, Sendhil
Ramamoorthy, gets his legitimacy from being an effective covert operative rather
than due to his ethnicity, as does Parminder Nagra on the Blacklist. On the other
hand, there is a tendency to continue the stereotypes that have characterized the
negative portrayal of Indian-Americans on television. In her book about Indian-
Americans on television, Shilpa Dave explains that while there are increases in
Indian-Americans on television, ‘many shows have incorporated characters that are
live action variants of Apu’.35
Dave argues that most of the Indian-Americans who have broken into television
have done so in comedy formats and that requires perpetuating the stereotypes of
accent and behavior as well as making gender differentiations. The stereotypical rep-
resentation of the Indian-American male is knowledgeable, but inept around women,
which makes him non-threatening and funny; on the other hand, Indian women,
Dave argues, are exotic and desirable but without the Indian male characteristic of
intelligence. By contrast, Indian men are ‘knowledgeable but not necessarily desir-
able’.36 Nowhere has the portrayal of this new stereotype been better exhibited than
in the show The Big Bang Theory, which has Kunal Nayyar play the part of Rajesh
Ramayan Koothrapalli.
 Indian is the New Black? 51

The Big Bang Theory and Rajesh Koothrapalli

The Big Bang Theory has become one of the most popular sitcoms on network televi-
sion because it has managed to appeal to viewing audiences ranging from those who
enjoy seeing geekdom engage in awkward human and social interactions to those from
the geek world who identify with the characters and love the scientific dialogue and
intellectual inside jokes in the script. The show has succeeded in the United States and
indeed globally because of good acting, humorous plot lines, and the fact that in mod-
ern day post-industrial and technocratic societies being a techno-geek is considered
cool.37 There is, therefore, considerable truth to the comment made by the dominatrix
Irene Adler in the new BBC show Sherlock: ‘Brainy is the new sexy’.38
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

Yet while there is an acceptance that the geek is now a part of mainstream America,
The Big Bang Theory plays on the old stereotype of the socially inept scientist even
though its main characters have made substantial achievements in their careers—one of
the lead characters becomes an astronaut while Koothrapalli’s work is considered cut-
ting-edge enough that he makes the cover of a popular magazine. Koothrapalli’s charac-
ter, however, has raised the ire of some Indian-Americans who see him as perpetuating
the myth of the knowledgeable but undesirable Indian male that Dave writes about. Ini-
tially, Raj is painfully shy around women and can only speak to them after getting
drunk. He is a metrosexual wannabe and long after the other male members of the
group have paired off with women he remains the lonely forlorn character who falls in
love with the voice of Siri on the iPhone. Commentators also complain that when he
does go to bed with the Penny character he does not consummate the relationship, con-
firming the social and sexual ineptness that makes him acceptable to American audi-
ences while at the same time not offending the racial sensibilities of those who find
interracial sex offensive (this is particularly the case since the standard American televi-
sion formula for a comedy or drama involving young single people is that sooner or
later everyone sleeps with everyone else).39 Rajesh Ramayan Koothrapalli, therefore,
represents the popular image of the typical Indian male who is a graduate student or a
faculty member at a tier one research university.
By contrast, his sister Priya is intelligent, beautiful and quite aggressive sexually, thus
emphasizing the exotic ethnic female stereotype. Writing about Priya one critic laments,
‘When Raj’s sister Priya, a beautiful Cambridge-educated attorney, comes to town, she
sexually pursues one of Raj’s friends, Leonard. The stereotype of the sexually aggres-
sive minority female is emphasized when one character notes that Priya has “the smol-
dering sexuality of a crouched Bengal tiger” and that she comes from the culture that
wrote the book on sex’.40 Both the male and female stereotypes play to the comfort
zones of American audiences—and paradoxically reinforce them.
While The Big Bang Theory in some ways reinforces a stereotype of the Indian
techno-geek, one could on the other hand argue that the show is not engaging in ethnic
stereotyping but playing on the fact that Raj is not only a geek but also, as an immi-
grant, not fully conversant with American culture. He is portrayed as being intelligent,
witty, and quite perceptive in pointing out the relationship flaws of his friends and tries
to help resolve them. But where the Rajesh character rings true is his attempts to reject
the traditions and conformity of India. The show’s writers bring this out well by show-
ing his dislike for arranged marriages, the continued interference of his parents, and the
fact that his sister, in the eyes of his conservative Indian parents, cannot date a white
 52 A. Gupta

man. In fact, perhaps unwittingly, the show’s writers have quite accurately brought out
the challenge for immigrants who are torn between two identities and, as V. S. Naipaul
has written, then have to decide on where they belong.41
A similar example of the new portrayal of Indian-American men on mainstream tele-
vision is Pindar Singh, an agoraphobic but brilliant lawyer on the show Franklin and
Bash (Pindar is played by the Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani who also stars
in the HBO show Silicon Valley). Pindar is an intelligent, socially inept and undesirable
man who provides a comfortable stereotype to viewing audiences. Like Raj
Koothrapalli, he too is shy around women and when he finally meets a woman who is
both attractive and attracted to him it leads to speculation among the lead characters as
to whether she is a mail order bride or that she is trying to use him to get his money
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

and a green card. The show does a good job, however, of showing that the relationship
is real. In both the cases of Raj and Pindar, the portrayal does play on the humor of the
sexually non-threatening persona of both characters. So where then does this discussion
leave the portrayal of Indian-Americans in the media and how does it work to shape
their images in the popular culture?
The answer lies in three interrelated facts. First, while things have improved, more
steps can be taken on television and in the movies not only to create positive portrayals
of ethnic groups but, given the trends among young Americans, also to make ethnicity
irrelevant in the development of characters on television. Color-blind casting is the way
to go in the future because it makes the ethnicity or race of the character incidental to
the story and thus reinforces the images that younger Americans have of what the soci-
ety they will inherit will look like. As the Pew Report on Millennials points out,
younger Americans are both politically liberal and racially diverse. More importantly,
by 2044 the majority of Americans will be non-white and market forces will demand
that this be reflected in popular culture.42 American television will continue to show
Indian-Americans in roles where they are portraying a character rather than just being
ethnic props for the lead actors in the show. As this continues it is the marketability of
the actor rather than her/his ethnic origins that will determine whether we see more or
less of the star. This trend will be reinforced by the second factor—the racial, political
and social attitudes of the upcoming generation of young Americans. We are already
seeing this transition as the new Captain America is black and Iris West, the wife of
Barry Allen in the Flash comic books, has on the CW network TV show become a
young African-American woman. Similarly, Hawkgirl, another Caucasian action heroine
in the DC comics, will be portrayed in the TV show Legends of Tomorrow by Ciara
Renee, a young Latina.
To understand the youth of America one really has to look at college campuses in
the country because they are the educational, cultural and intellectually innovative
future of the country. What we see is a generation that is by and large not racially con-
scious, not sexist, not homophobic, and increasingly not religious.43 This generation has
generally seen students and professors from all ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds
and, therefore, views their college setting as a microcosm of the future of America. As
a consequence, the next educated generation is less burdened by the fights and stereo-
types of the last generation and instead hopes to create a society based on principles
that are post-ethnic and post-racial—hence the move away from religion, which is
viewed by some young people as being intolerant towards other religions and gays. In
this changing social context the shift from outdated or comforting stereotypes to the
 Indian is the New Black? 53

new reality of American society will happen quicker than expected. For it is this
generation that will write, direct, produce, and act in the next set of popular television
shows.
Third, in the new America market forces rather than racial and ethnic affiliations will
determine whether an Indian-American can be the star of a show and aspiring actors
from the community will not have to depend on ethnic humor to get that status. We
have already seen this happen with Mindy Kaling, and if a young Indian-American
male is able to come up with an imaginative show that can bridge the different markets
that attract advertisers then we shall see the first Indian-merican male action star.
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

Looking to the Future

Television has changed the image of Indian-Americans in the country from the Peter
Sellers/Apu stereotype to one that, while acknowledging their technological competence
and educational success, still views them as being creatures of their ethnicity and essen-
tially non-threatening. This is likely to change quite rapidly for as the next generation
of Americans accepts jobs in Hollywood they will come with their own experiences that
reflect the changing ethnic breakdown of the American population. Perhaps in 10 years,
therefore, we shall be looking at a show like The Big Bang Theory or The Rules of
Engagement and wincing at the portrayal of ethnic characters on them because new and
more realistic images are being developed by scriptwriters, actors and directors.
Market forces, particularly those created by globalization, may also lead to Bolly-
wood and Hollywood teaming up, thereby allowing Bollywood actors to cross over to
be Hollywood movie stars. At the very least, we may see what has happened in Holly-
wood movies for the past few years where, in order to tap into the Chinese market,
Hollywood has added Chinese characters, yanked graphic content from the movies, and
chosen not to include material that the Chinese censors consider derogatory to their
country. China’s ability to do this comes from the fact that Hollywood now gets about
70% of its revenues from the foreign market and an increasing number of Chinese pro-
duction companies are investing in Hollywood.44 As India becomes an equally big mar-
ket, Indian money is invested in American movies and there is a larger flow of movie
stars from Bollywood to Hollywood, we may say an additional reason for the rise of
Indian/Indian-American action stars. Moreover, it may also help shape how American
comedies and other TV shows portray Indian-Americans. Thus changes in demography,
as well as market forces within the United States and abroad, will probably lead not
only to more Indian-Americans on television but also to their portraying roles that fit
into the reality of the Indian-American status and experience in American society.

Notes
1. Amit Gupta (2004) ‘The Indian diaspora’s political efforts in the United States’, Observer Research Foun-
dation Occasional Paper, September, p. 4.
2. Pew Research Center (2013) The Rise of Asian Americans. Washington, DC: Pew, 4 April, pp. 45–46.
3. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2015/cb15-ff07.html, αccessed 22 July 2015.
4. Sixty-five per cent of Indian-Americans support the Democratic Party (Pew Research Center, 2013, p. 46).
5. Nearly half the hotels in the country are owned by Indian-Americans and in this community the subgroup
of Gujarati Americans (many of whom are from the Patel community) are particularly dominant. This has
 54 A. Gupta

led to the expression Hotel-Motel-Patel in the Indian-American community. For a discussion, see Aarti
Virani (2012) ‘Why Indian-Americans dominate the U.S. motel industry’, The Wall Street Journal (India),
11 June, http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/06/11/why-indian-americans-dominate-the-u-s-motel-indus
try/, accessed 23 July 2015.
6. Indian-Americans own about half the motels and hotels in America and they come predominantly from
the Indian state of Gujarat. Pawan Dhingra (2010) ‘Hospitable to others: Indian American motel owners
create boundaries and belonging in the heartland’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(6), 1,089.
7. One source shows that while Indian-Americans are around 1% of the population they make up about 7%
of the doctors in the country. See Lata Murti (2012) ‘Who benefits from the white coat? Gender differ-
ences in occupational citizenship among Asian-Indian doctors’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(12), 2,050.
8. ‘The most powerful Indian technologists in Silicon Valley’, The Guardian, 11 April 2014, http://www.the
guardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/powerful-indians-silicon-valley, accessed 23 July 2015. Further, as
Vivek Wadhwa points outs, Indian-Americans are at the helm of one in six Silicon Valley start-ups; see
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

Vivek Wadhwa (2015) ‘Why I am not ashamed to be an Indian American’, The Washington Post, 25
May,http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/powerful-indians-silicon-valley, accessed 24 July
2015.
9. Jason Richwine (2009) ‘Indian-Americans: the new model minority’, Forbes, 24 February, http://www.for
bes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americans-opinions-contributors_immigrants_minority.html,
accessed 22 November 2014.
10. For a discussion of the limits on Indian-American participation in the American political process and the
subsequent discrimination after the events of 11 September 2001, see Vinod Janardhan (2013) ‘Political
participation of the Indian diaspora in the United States’, Journal of International and Global Studies,
5(1), 22–24.
11. For a detailed discussion, see Dinshaw K. Mistry (2014) The US–India Nuclear Agreement: Diplomacy
and Domestic Politics. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
12. For a biography of Sabu Dastagir’s life and career, see Philip Leibfried (2010) Star of India: The Life and
Films of Sabu. Oklahoma: Bear Manor Media.
13. Monica Whatley and Jeanne Batalova (2013) ‘Indian immigrants in the United States’, Migration Policy
Institute, 21 August, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/indian-immigrants-united-states, accessed 1
December 2014.
14. Geetanjali Jha (2014) ‘Portrayal of India and Indians in British and American films’, Theses and Disserta-
tions, paper 192, p. 16.
15. IMDB plot summary, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0641159/, accessed 24 July 2015.
16. Jha (2014, p. 29).
17. Amit Gupta (2013) ‘Doctor Who and race: reflections on the change of Britain’s status in the international
system’, The Round Table, 102(1), 44.
18. Sarita Malik (2002) Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television. Thousand Oaks,
CA and New Delhi: Sage, p. 96.
19. Malik (2002), p. 96.
20. Hank Azaria (2004) ‘Fresh Air’. Interview with Terry Gross, National Public Radio, WHYY-FM,
Philadelphia, accessed 1 December 2014.
21. Manish Vij (2007) ‘The Apu travesty’, The Guardian, 16 July, http://www.theguardian.com/commentis
free/2007/jul/16/theaputragedy, accessed 2 December 2014.
22. The section on Indian-Americans in the Pew Report, The Rise of Asian Americans, gives the high educa-
tional level of Indian-Americans (Pew Research Centre, 2013, p. 45), and the fact that at 9% they have
the lowest poverty levels in the United States. Hence the Apu caricature does not match reality.
23. Saptarshi Ray (2007) ‘The wonder of Apu’, The Guardian, 17 July, http://www.theguardian.com/comment
isfree/2007/jul/17/thewonderofapu1, accessed 25 November 2014.
24. Ray (2007) ‘The wonder of Apu’.
25. H1-B Visa Program: Reforms are Needed to Minimize the Risks and Costs of Current Program, United States
Government Accountability Office, Report to Congressional Committees, Washington, DC, 2011, p. 33.
26. Chris Walker and Morgan Hartley (2012) ‘The culture shock of India’s call centers’, Forbes, 16
December, http://www.forbes.com/sites/morganhartley/2012/12/16/the-culture-shock-of-indias-call-centers/,
accessed 3 November 2014.
27. Interview with Anna Pediyakal, India Abroad Center for Political Awareness, 23 July 2002. Cited in
Gupta (2004, p. 11).
 Indian is the New Black? 55

28. Gupta (2013, p. 46).

29. Gupta (2013, p. 46).
30. Although one could argue that the first true case of color-blind casting on US television was on the
original Star Trek.
31. Earlier, Moffat had suggested that a woman would eventually play Doctor Who; see ‘“A woman will
eventually play Doctor Who”: Sci-Fi show’s writer Steven Moffat says a female star will take on the role
of the famous timelord’, Daily Mail, 5 December 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-
2862743/A-woman-eventually-play-Doctor-Sci-fi-s-writer-Steven-Moffat-says-female-star-role-famous-time
lord.html, accessed 22 April 2015.
32. Rob Leigh (2013) ‘Helen Mirren wants Doctor Who bosses to seriously consider casting a female Doctor’,
The Mirror (UK), 12 June, http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/new-doctor-who-rumours-helen-1947902,
accessed 22 April 2015.
33. Nina Rastogi (2010) ‘Beyond Apu: why are there suddenly so many Indians on television?’, Slate, 9
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 03:46 04 April 2016

June, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/06/beyond_apu.2.html, accessed 25 April 2015.

34. The Mindy Project, while critically acclaimed, was cancelled and eventually picked up by Hulu, http://
www.laughspin.com/2015/05/18/the-mindy-project-lives-on-hulu-picks-up-cancelled-series-for-season-4/,
accessed 24 July 2015.
35. Quoted in Monique Nazareth (2013) ‘Beyond Apu: Indian-Americans on television’, TVWW, 17 May,
http://www.tvworthwatching.com/post/Indian-Americans-on-television.aspx, accessed 28 April 2015.
36. Nazareth (2013).
37. http://www.cbs.com/shows/big_bang_theory/news/1002098/, accessed 24 July 2015.
38. Sarah Crumpton (2012) ‘The timeless appeal of Sherlock Holmes’s sexy logic’, The Telegraph (UK), 1
January, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8987577/The-timeless-appeal-of-Sherlock-Hol
mess-sexy-logic.html, accessed 23 July 2015.
39. See, for example, ‘The Big Bang Theory’s season opener: slut shaming and racism are funny’, http://
www.womanist-musings.com/2011/09/big-bang-season-opener-slut-shaming-and.html, accessed 15 October
2015.
40. Anita Felicelli (2012) ‘The Raj prototype’, India Currents, 8 April, https://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/
2012/04/08/raj-prototype, accessed 25 July 2015.
41. For a discussion of Naipaul’s views on conflicting identities in diasporic communities and the quest for a
sense of belonging, see Yurong Wang and Li Lin (2014) ‘The exploration of sense of belonging: an
explanation of Naipaul’s novel half a life & magic seeds’, International Journal of Literature and Arts,
2(5), 187–191.
42. Pew Research Center (2014) ‘Millennials in adulthood’, 7 March, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/
03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/, accessed 25 July 2015.
43. See ‘Millennials in adulthood: detached from institutions, networked with friends’, Pew Research Report,
7 March 2014, pp. 13–15.
44. Gary Susman (2013) ‘Is China taking over Hollywood?’, Rolling Stone, 1 October, http://www.rolling
stone.com/movies/news/is-china-taking-over-hollywood-20131001, accessed 25 July 2015.