It\u2019s no longer considered ok to make fun of women, or the LGBTQ community, or other social or cultural identities like Black people or people of Chinese descent. So why is making fun of the Indian accent ok? Is it considered lighthearted fun, or just a joke?<\/p>\n
I am the child of immigrant parents. My parents were born and raised in Sri Lanka and my father\u2019s extended family is from South India. We came to the US when I was 9 months old. As a result, I don\u2019t have an accent. Or rather, I have an American accent.<\/p>\n
I am also a yoga teacher in the Ashtanga method and have been practicing solely Ashtanga yoga for the past 12 years. I love the Ashtanga system and method of teaching, however, I don\u2019t love the habit many teachers have of imitating the Indian accent. In fact, I find this mimicry confusing, unnerving and frankly offensive.<\/p>\n
Ashtanga is a very traditional system, which originated in Mysore India from Krishnamacharya and Sri. K. Patthabi Jois. The Jois family has developed a credentialing system of authorizing teachers who are able to teach this method. For some reason, many of these \u201cAuthorized\u201d teachers have adopted mimicking the accent, mannerisms, and intonation of Patthabi Jois as part of their teaching and in some cases they have adopted parts of the Indian culture as their lifestyle.<\/p>\n
I have been conditioned to accept this habit of imitating the Indian accent for the past 53 years of my life. White people think it\u2019s funny, or charming perhaps, while I was raised to grow a \u201cthicker skin\u201d and ignore it. My parents would tell me that people were being \u201csilly\u201d and I shouldn\u2019t let it bother me. But, after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, the ensuing wave of protests against systemic racism and the treatment of Black and brown people in this country, and spending almost every day in the summer of 2020 marching in protests with my adult daughters for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the countless others killed because of their race, I can\u2019t sit back and accept this seemingly benign habit any longer. There is no reason for Ashtanga teachers to put on a false accent to somehow accentuate their teaching. It doesn\u2019t add anything to the student\u2019s understanding of the practice, or the posture.
\nWhat it does is make a mockery of the Indian people.<\/p>\n
The first weekend of February, 2022, I attended a much anticipated Ashtanga workshop. Since I have been a longtime fan of this popular Ashtanga teacher, I encouraged all of my students to attend as well. Several of them took my advice and registered for the workshop. As we started the Mysore portion of the workshop I could hear this teacher go around the room adjusting people and giving them instruction. I was shocked to hear that she was imitating an Indian accent! I felt myself bristle and thought to myself, is this really happening? Haven\u2019t these teachers learned not to do this? Somehow, in the absence of in-person instruction during the pandemic, I’d forgotten that Ashtanga teachers would commonly pepper this type of speech into their instruction.<\/p>\n
Several days after the workshop I still couldn’t shake how upset this behavior made me. One of my students even reached out to me to express some concern and ask my thoughts. I responded by explaining that I didn’t not agree with how the accent was used<\/p>\n
and was embarrassed for having recommended the workshop in the first place. The more I sat with it the more I decided I had to act: I called the teacher personally to explain how offensive I found her imitation of Patthabi Jois. She was extremely apologetic and stated that she did it out of reverence or homage to her teacher. She maintained it was a form of \u201ccultural appreciation.\u201d She never dreamt it was offensive in any way. She mentioned that she liked to speak in the voice of her teacher to honor him. I found her response very confusing, because it doesn\u2019t actually improve her teaching, or imbue it with any additional information to help a student learn. For example, saying, \u201cbackbend, you do,\u201d while mimicking the Indian \u201chead wobble\u201d doesn\u2019t actually help a student do a backbend. Clearly it\u2019s done with the intention of lightening the mood and making some students laugh, but I don\u2019t find it funny, I find it disrespectful. I believe this to be offensive and racist behavior.<\/p>\n
After speaking with me, this teacher also wrote an apology to my students who are of South Asian descent. I have shared it with them. I think this was very magnanimous of her and she did it of her own volition. But, it still leaves me confused. Why is this considered ok in the first place? I did some research and apparently, Indians are one of the last acceptable groups of people to poke fun at. It\u2019s no longer considered ok to make fun of women, or the LGBTQ community, or other social or cultural identities like Black people or people of Chinese descent. So why is making fun of the Indian accent ok? Is it considered lighthearted fun, or just a joke? Comedian Hari Kondabolu asserts in his documentary, THE PROBLEM with Apu, \u201cIt’s not a joke, it\u2019s racist.\u201d<\/p>\n