Why today's NRIs reflect old-fashioned India more than urban resident Indians
NRI population has gotten so large, that sometimes it feels larger than the population of India itself. Land in any major city in the world, and all you'll see are Indian faces. Sometimes you can hear more Hindi on the streets of London, New York, Dubai and San Francisco than English.
There isn't an MNC — from banking to booze — in the world left where there aren't tonnes of Indians. The IITs and IIMs could easily host their annual reunions in McKinsey or Microsoft cafeterias across the world. The seminal sketch for the British Indian sitcom, Goodness Gracious Me, where an Indian father is trying to explain to his son how 'everything is Indian' is no longer a joke, it is just fact.
Often racist people say, 'In certain parts of Britain, there are more Indians than the British,' or 'Brampton, a suburb in Ontario, Canada is basically Punjab'. What they mean is White people are missing. Indians in Leeds, Toronto, Manchester, Queens in New York, Birmingham in Britain, are equally British, Canadian or American, just of Indian heritage.
As citizens, they are proud holders of a foreign passport, often celebrating on Instagram reels when their paperwork comes through. Just as British, American or Canadian as King Charles, Britney Spears or Justin Trudeau — passport-wise. The difference is in their cultural values.
Values so old-fashioned that even rural India has moved on from them. So old-fashioned that the king of old-fashioned Bollywood movies, Sooraj Barjatya, would say, 'This is old-fashioned!'. As a Punjabi friend put it, 'One part of my family is in Chandigarh and one in Toronto.
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