Racism Against Indians Online 

the white girl who gave me hell for being indian and hindu throughout middle and high school now runs a yoga studio 💀💀

people be like 'stop asian hate' until it's about indians or south asians in general

And then there's enablers saying shit like "I'm an indian and i dont think this is racist"

I have fair skin. I was once mistaken as a greek by an old cleaning white lady. The lady was very nice and caring, she always used to casually greet some students in the elevator and campus residence area. I always remember the shock on her face when i told her i am indian, not greek. No casual greetings afterwards from that point on by her. This is from sydney, Australia btw.

being racist to Indians is actually considered funny on the internet. ” curry ” and several other terms for the mockery of Indians is so normalized at this point, hope this video reaches to a whole lot of people for awareness.

The one thing that turned me off PewDiePie completely was how he contributed SO MUCH towards casual racism against Indians.

Another thing I find crazy tho is that whenever an attractive brown person goes viral or people mention how Indian people are attractive people always say that “not every Indian person looks like that” or “he or she is just a small percentage the average Indian doesn’t look like that.” It’s like they have to find an excuse to affirm to themselves that brown people just aren’t attractive. Idk if it’s just me but when any other attractive poc person goes viral for their looks their comment sections don’t look like that.

As a Chinese American person I feel a similarly in that growing up I knew other Chinese ppl who were not proud of being Chinese due to people's sinophobia. Chinese culture is not really popular in the western world compared to other East Asian cultures. I think it's so amazing how connected many Indians are to their culture which is so ancient and beautiful. I love Indian traditional clothes, philosophers, art and dance. Love how Indians also embrace other traditional cultures. Whenever I see ancient Chinese dance videos there is often comments from Indian ppl appreciating it.

Finally, it’s wild how normalised being abhorrently racist towards Indians online is seen. Extreme levels of generalisations and so

Why does NOBODY ever talk about this???? It’s crazy to me. I’m a white person born & raised in Canada, & the every day racism towards Indian & Middle Eastern people is so blatant, I don’t understand how people don’t talk about it. Like it’s SO normalized, it seems crazy to me that none of the big leftist content creators ever bring it up

Most people think that Asia only has China and japan 💀

The amount of 'I know it smell crazy' comments I've seen is crazy like even when it's not relevant it gets brought up.

I work in IT and often work with Indian software engineers. Last year at a company I was working for, my tech lead made an incredibly racist joke about not wanting to hire Indian folks because the “office kitchen would always smell like curry.” I reported the “joke” to management, and I was fired less than 48 hours later. Yes me, not the man who made the joke. That’s how normalized it is. I can’t imagine it would have gone that way if I had reported an offensive joke about anything else.

i’m not indian , i’m african american, but i’ve always found it so strange how indians are treated on the internet. like not only the racism, but the way other races who know prejudice respond / don’t see it as a problem either. that’s why i’m subscribe to your channel, because you’re informative about a race i’ve only ever seen painted in a negative light

I cant imagine the amount of racism desis have to face around the pewdiepie vs t-series thing

I'll never forget when I said "as an Asian" or something like that and my WHITE friend said "I don't think Indians count as Asian" LIKE DAWG WHAT ARE WE THEN????

Saying “you’re not Asian your Indian” is the same vibe as “Egypt isn’t in Africa, Africa is a country”

Hi, Saji! I'm from Pakistan and I am a stutterer. I'm deeply affected by your courage to put your stutter out there on the internet without any hesitancy. It is really inspiring.

Few days back on fb a Bangladeshi man commented a mean comment on a South korean youtubers comment section and somehow everyother people in his reply section assumed he is Indian and started fightinghim by saying "oh it's still better than tingalinga slinga","Oh like ur curry mustache","You Indian"..i mean they stereotype every brown looking guy with mustache is Indian,i replyed a comment by saying he is not Indian but Bangladeshi and someone from Indonesia replyed me by saying they all are Indian we don't think them as a different country blah blah,it really pissed me off

so many Indians are taught to hate themselves, i guess this is true for a lot of people. Whenever I find myself feeling good for being far from Indian stereotypes or my (fairly) ethnically-ambiguous appearance, I really try and take a deep dive into why that is. It’s rough

This is one of the things about "selective racism" that's so weird to me. Racism against east asians is apparent, racism against native Americans is apparent, racism against black people is so visible and acknowledged. But racism against indians and south asians is just "jokes" and casual remarks to the point they aren't even seen as racist? Like, it's selective as hell and it's so fricking weird.

being punjabi descent, what grinds my mf gears is that how many people don’t know how after 9/11, how many older punjabi sikh were murdered because they were mistaken for terrorists. other thing that bothers me is how many indian stereotypes are pushed on other south asian ethnic groups and then people pull the “well all y’all look alike” card.

This past summer was the 1st time I personally started noticing people saying nasty and hateful things online against southeast Asians. There seems to be an influx of tons of vids and clips of southeast Asians cooking street food or in food factories. I’ve seen these clips especially on instagram and I’m sure it is also on tiktok but I’ve never had tiktok. I try to leave comments arguing points but it’s a losing battle, It’s like trying to argue with a tsunami. It just feels (to me) like these past 6 years the racism online has gotten out of control with *everyone* , it’s too easy for a person to hide behind a screen. This is also the 1st video I’ve seen of a content creator speaking on the online racism towards Indians and it really needed to be done. I’ll definitely be checking out more content from this creator in the future.

I AM Indian! i proclaim it with pride. I don't give a slight f*ck if you are uncomfortable with that. Our history is filled with bravery, courage and we never bowed down. Though the contrary is being taught.

The casual racism towards Indians is insane. People are so nonchalant about it and get so confused or even offended when they're called out for it. It doesn't help that many people within our community are willing to let it go to appease to others (KSI saying the p slur) and act like just because they're okay doesn't mean that it's correct. The T Series incident was so weird to me, India is huge as a country and a people, it's not surprising they would use youtube and listen to their country's music, family certainly did. Then we have big youtubers getting so shocked that Indian people exist and subscribe to content that appeals to them

As a Mexican, I can't help but feel for the Indian community because when you think about it, we are both stereotyped as dirty, stupid, ugly, making fun of people with thick accents, etc. It always rubbed me the wrong way how normalized it was, and it's not just white people, either. It causes so much ignorance, too. India is such a diverse country with a huge mixture of cultures, so when people just reduce Indian people to stereotypes, it's just insulting, honestly.

so this is the other side of the spectrum, just watched a 3 hour long video on "Racist Indians" then I watched this and realized, the world is just racist all over

I’m so exhausted defending everyone against racism but when people are racist against us, everybody just laughs. Not saying I’m gonna like Be Racist against others now in retaliation, but man I wish people protected us as much

The story about the girl’s food hit me so hard because that happened to me. In elementary school kids told me my food looked disgusting and gross and because of that I stopped taking food to school for YEARS. It took me until college to finally be comfortable taking my Indian food to school. And now all my friends tell me it looks delicious and they always want to try it! And still to this day it’s hard for me to believe people when they say that it looks good 😭

it's so disappointing how often I've seen people call India or Indian people dirty or smelly and act like that's totally fine, there's so much casual racism

Others may have probably pointed this out, but in order for the indian community to come together and stand up to this racism more as a community i we have to create more unity amongst ourselves. There is still so much division amongst even different Indian ethnic and language groups but also among caste and among different religions to state a few examples. This also results in alot of toxic and terrible traits of our culture such as: caste discrimination, rampant sexism, religious discrimination, racism against other POC communities, colorism(within our own community), and so on. We we as a community can't even see eye to eye ourselves, how we can we take on something like this? However, I hope and pray we can get over most if not all of these issues in the coming years and completely stand up and squash these issues of racism against Indians online and IRL. Which I agree, is sadly rampant, especially now. Thanks, Saji, for this video!!

literally, online. nothing is more racist against indians than train lines

I can't tell you how sad it makes me that Raj from Big Bang Theory is probably one of the most recognized roles for Indians in English language media. His character, like all the others on that show, was a gigantic stereotype but because of the racial element made it so much worse.

As an Indian, it’s weird to be acknowledged at all. I used to take whatever I could get, but you learn that it’s probably worse to watch racist media then no media.

I have Black, White, and Native American in me and I've had people be racist to me for being Indian. And they didn't mean "Native American", Indian. Most times.

disclaimer to all people who instantly click on new comments and agree with the video it doesn't seem to have racist comments in top comments but it sure does have some disgusting and racist in new and if i mean it does it means it is FILLED with racist comments

This video was so informative c: as someone from Australia i witness so much racism towards brown people and lumping them all together as indian and it makes me feel so gross, I'm indigenous Australian myself but because of the genocide of our people's and how we were basically bred out im am very white passing and i have to witness white people think im a safe space to be racist around

as an Indian racism on Indians on instagram is so causal, its like taking breakfast everyday

I stopped following PewDiePie after that video. I'm Mexican and the "dark magician" comment reminded me of the times when US Americans would tell me I "speak brown". Loved the message, this ain't about targeting individuals but understanding the oppression dynamics that are at play. Class consciousness is powerful, and I'm all in for these topics finally being talked about. Greetings from Mexico 🇲🇽

Bit of a side note but as someone with a stutter, thank you for not editing around the stutters, it makes me feel normal 💙

As an Iraqi, I'm so glad you mentioned that Asia also includes us, it's nice to hear someone else knows. Also, I noticed that some of the racist stereotypes of food overlap, I had people saying my food stunk as well and it sucks. Can't wait to see more from you!

the thing with racism against us Indians online is that no one ever wants to call out their favourite creators for being racist, because in india's there's a mindset of "oh we can take jokes!" and even if the jokes do hurt them, and they aren't really jokes they don't want to consider themselves "snow flakes" so they'd rather have the racist stereotypes continue and becoming a laughing stock rather than just call the creators out

Man, people don't respect India enough, it's sad. The Indus valley is underrated as hell. India is so culturally/ethnically diverse too. Hell, South Asia period, it's so overlooked. Not to discredit up north though too.

Oh, it's always such a treat to witness the intellectual prowess of the younger generation on RU-vid. Their profound insights, like refusing to date Indians or finding them unattractive, truly showcase their remarkable depth and maturity. It's simply mind-boggling how anyone could make such comments about an entire race. Bravo, youngsters.🙄 Remember, people of all backgrounds radiate beauty, but there's something undeniably captivating about us folk, like a mesmerising sunset. Golden, bronze, and black skins radiate an ethereal and majestic aura, like shimmering sunsets over a tranquil ocean. Our foods, colours, music, flavours, clothing, and traditions exude an undeniable elegance and a remarkable sense of grandeur. Be proud 🙌

I’m black, and my grandmother brought me fried tilapia and potato wedges she made to school one day when I was in fifth grade. It was totally normal food-and my grandma was sitting RIGHT THERE-and people still made fun of me for bringing “black” food.

racism towards indians was not only accepted but encouraged during the whole t series vs pewdiepie war lol. It was insane how normalized it was and still is, happy to see that someone FINALLY made a video on it :)

I'm in year 8 and I'm 13, and I've been getting a lot of racism due to my skin colour and how people mock my Hindi. The world is wild 💀

Hello, as a Moroccan who didn’t really grew up around people from South Asia, this video was really educative, thank you so much for this video

I remember that last year in my chemistry class, my teacher had an accent. I’m desi so I didn’t care, but all the “popular” kids in my class decided to make fun of her accent, talk during class, and just be overall terrible students. She’s so nice and she deserves everything, literally she cried 5 times during class last year. I don’t understand why she takes all these kids harassment and doesn’t report them when she heard them doing stuff like mocking her.

I'm white but growing up, all my closest neighbors were Indian. At school once, someone was making fun of my friend because her dad owned and cooked for an Indian restaurant, and I remember asking my teacher "Why is it bad to own a business?" I obviously understand the context now, but I still find it just as ridiculous for someone to bully a kid because their dad is a successful & hardworking member of society...

Why do we as Indians even need to seek validation anyway. Every person gets their own month. Blacks, Hispanics, East Asians, Indigenous people. Where is Indian History month? No one cares about us unless it's money related.

this is why we as south asians need to stop being so passive and just accept racism coming from others, we need to fight back, show people that we are not people to be messed with, we have the largest population in the world, I mean what are we doing, if we stay united and have each others backs, no one would dare mess with us

I’ve noticed racism against Indians growing so much lately glad someone’s made a video

finally saji solves racism we knew you could do it king

so happy someone made a video on this icl thank u sm man

Let them be racist. Let them make their jokes. It won’t stop me. It won’t stop us.

saji youre so cool i literally cant

Respect to India and it's culture. As a Korean, I actually hate seeing other Asian cultures get passed over or outright mocked. I hope that changes soon.

my friends themselves are so fucking racist. I am so tired of them making fun of indian accents and blatantly calling them smelly dumb stupid etc. I am bangladeshi and it really bothers me that my friend is like this

It’s kindve crazy to me that I grew up relatively always defending myself against someone tryna make a brown joke, just for it to feel like it died down when i got into middle school. Then high school came and I rarely ever heard crazy racist shit everyone was mostly chill. Now 2024 I can’t even hop on a random instagram reel about india without a thousand comments disrespecting indians. It’s strange

As a black person I feel very sorry for all Indians that have to go through so much racism. You guys are a beautiful group of people, never let anyone tell you otherwise. Much love 💕🙏🏿

As someone from Canada, a country that is home to many Indian immigrants and international students, THANK YOU for this video. The casual racism I see online and not so casual irl racism towards them is appalling.

India: A third world country acting like one. US: A first world country acting like a third one. THAT IS IT.

I’m a white hillbilly, I was raised in an environment where we are suspicious of outsiders at best, being different than your people will get you shunned. I was always curious, “Too smart to live” was a saying used to describe me, the outside world was a siren song I couldn’t resist. I’ve had to teach myself over the years to realize “white” ain’t the baseline of the world, the world thankfully is a literal supernova of color. Any racism I’ve had in my life became oafish clownery after experiencing other cultures, literally melted the fear and ignorance away. We all are the same, we just go about the same tasks in unique and wonderfully different ways. I appreciate media like this because it’s an entryway to dismissing fear and ignorance, and building unity through our shared humanity.

Haven’t watched the video yet. But, in my personal experience, this isn’t limited to online spaces. I’m not Indian-I’m black-but my best friend growing up and to this day is an Indian man. He was born in Calcutta, adopted as an infant, and raised in the United States. As kids, he used to try and distance himself from his Indian identity, something he’s only relatively recently grown out of as we’ve matured into men. When I asked him why he felt the need to conduct himself in that manner, his answers almost always came down to the way people treated him once they found out. Racism against Indians is, for some reason, extremely casual-and shockingly normalized. Just a few months ago, I’d befriended a Japanese exchange student at my university as we quickly bonded over our shared passion for watching and playing American football. One day after training together, we sat down on the turf and started discussing the differences between American and Japanese culture. Somehow, we came to the topic of India-and this dude (who I’d only known for a couple of weeks at that point), became offended at my referring to them as “Asians”. He started a rant about how Indian people were, in fact, not “real Asians” and laid out for me all the reasons why he thought they were inferior to him. I was sitting there genuinely dumbfounded at how a person of color could be THAT vitriolic and hold such a demented level of racist beliefs. I excused myself, said goodbye, and never hit that dude up again. In my head I thought, if he’s that fired up about Indians, I don’t want to hear what he really has to say about black people. Removed him from my life as quickly as he’d come into it. That was the most extreme example I’d ever seen of racism toward Indians, but not the only one. I try and verbally defend them and call out prejudice whenever an instance like that arises-but am always made out to look like I’m strange for it, as if Indian people aren’t worth defending.

young people need these kinds of videos. I'm half hispanic and half indian. growing up in the early 2000s was tough, being called names & being told to "go back to india." All I wanted was to be white. And I'm STILL working through a ton of internalized racism! Great video, Saji.

Recent comments r crazy

this so true bro like racism online against us are so crazy if someone has Indian bf or gf then racist remark if india achieved something like the moon mission then racist remark like bro if somehow India is mentioned in good light racist comments start idk why they do it but it pisses me off i am living in india and see these comments online idk about how the ppl living outside are treated

the online racism against indians make me so frustrated. nobody seems to acknowledge it, and it's fucking everywhere and it makes me sad

It's crazy to me how the population of India is a little over 1 billion yet every part of India is just stereotyped into one culture. In reality there are 28 states that make up India with there own unique cultures. Even as a whole, India is a beautiful country in multiple ways (especially the food and music). Obviously it has its problems; the pollution, the insane population density, the corruption, the caste system, ect. But I'm from the US, so I've had to learn to appreciate the good that's in a country.

I just only realised you have some kind of stutter. It's so subtle I thought you were doing it on purpose for emphasis, kind of like the Rick and Morty stuttering. Thanks for your very interesting work, cheers from France !

Seriously though they don't even care if the person is Indian or other south asian. some guy from Pakistan/Bangladesh says something effed up in the insta comment section & immediately people start replying racist af things about Indians.

Im half pakistani and the desi racism is so unrestrained 😭like people would put on an indian accent and people would think its ok 😥

I'd say Pewdiepie played THE BIGGEST ROLE in normalising racism against Indians, hands down. He took isolated cases of we!rdos on the internet and generalised it with the entire population of a literal subcontinent. And the craziest thing is that neither him nor his other white RU-vidr friends ever faced any consequences for it, despite arming an entire generation with vile racism and prejudice against Indians.

India needs to build it's own online platforms.

thanks for making this video. I have been pissed about this subject ever since the pewdiepie t series thing, which was so obvious to me despite not being brown myself. like why is it so casual and accepted

Receiving racism from East asians as a south asian was the funniest/saddest/ironic thing ever😅. The proximity to whiteness hierarchy is real no matter how many east asian youtubers/influencers tell you otherwise because the next breath they will celebrate aapi month by ONLY talking about east asia and MAYBE southeast asia. It sucks that even within this dialogue and with the rise and visibility of racism against east asians since covid, you would think we were more on the same page but racism toward SAs from EAs has gotten worse! Especially if you're darker skinned. Double for Arabs being racist af toward desis (yall know who you are and the way you and your families talk about us!). I have STORIES omg. That hurts more than yt ppl being racist. Ugh

holy shit that diss track by pewdiepie was insane. and i get he apparently doesn't do racist things anymore for content but im genuinely surprised he has been able to get awat with all of that without having to address it unlike other creators.

The Indian comedians who mock the Indian accent and culture are enablers too.

this is very very off topic but your room looks so cool I am going to use it for inspo

"You know how many kinds of white people there are--Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek, German, French! The list unfortunately goes on forever" gotta be one of the most underrated lines in this video

I’m black but I’m also a Canadian and racism against Indians is rising over here. My childhood best friend was Indian, her and her family were genuinely kind and sweet people, we have a lot of Indian immigrants in my town I see them all the time especially in stores an the white people here keep whining about the Indian immigrants (as if their immigrant grandparents didn’t colonize and murder the Ingenious people here smh 🤦🏾‍♀️)

I’m Indian too, specifically from Punjab, and while I haven’t faced much discrimination (most of my classmates are from diverse communities in India plus other countries in South Asia), I was internally joked from my classmates, sometimes they’d call me Gujarati or something just because my name sounds like it even though they’re different things.

Outstanding discussions

the whole thing with t series suddenly gaining so many subs and americans saying 'it has to be bots' as if number of internet users in india wasn't raising rapidly around that time... it felt really racist. i had arguments with people on reddit who were sooo sure it can't be real people subbing. like no shit there's a lot of people in india if they use youtube they will sub to channels like t series.

White people will make fun of Indian food for having a lot of spices as if we didn’t spend like twenty years trying to get our hands on those spices and failing miserably

I’ll make this quick so all the people that identified with the vid get the floor. Just wanted to say this is my first vid of his and he has blown me away. People only see a stutter as a repeating of letters. I do the ‘can’t get the word out’ stutter and my god do I respect the bravery of this man. Bravo you are my hero!

i happy there’s a video on this didn’t even know people were highly racist to indians during the t series beef but i didn’t really feel the effects most of it was online racism and the best thing is to ignore it millions of people have access can’t change their minds

The casual racism online, even in "liberal" spaces like Reddit, is pretty baffling. What's worse is that when it's pointed out they try to convince that it's "just a joke". Nice job talking about this issue Saji

Mexicans 🤝 Indians Getting stereotyped like we’re still living in the 19th century

I was looking for some kind of videos on this topic i faced to much racism online either it was Omegle or any other social media when they know i am from India they immediately block me

What's up with the recent comments? Which edgy discord server brought them here?

Hey thanks for having me be a part of this, I appreciate it!

You definetely gotta cover adin ross bro. as an indian some of his newer streams/content have just been blatantly racist. shame hes one of the bigger ones on the internet

love this commentary !! but i wish intersectionality in oppression against indians/ desis was also explored. for example, racism differs and intersects on factors like gender. the racism a desi woman faces differs to a desi man. different aspects of racism come about, since for different marginalised groups, different concepts are upheld. beauty is seen as a socially important requirement of women, and since desis are seen as undesirable, it’s exacerbated for desi women. or, if they are attractive, they’re always compared to other races which are seen as more attractive e.g. ‘you don’t look pakistani’, ‘you look arab’ etc. to compensate for it. sort of like cognitive dissonance where people try to rationalise attractiveness because according to stereotypes, desi people ‘can’t be attractive’. it would be really great to see desi women’s perspectives of racism towards south asians online !!

Casual racism is so crazy in australia Youll be having a normal conversation and theyll just drop some insane take or joke that everyone else just ignors or encourages

I’m not gonna lie, as an Indian guy who was born and raised in the U.S, I actually never realized that people were racist towards me until around a year ago. I was at my freshmen orientation for university, and one of the professors said to raise our hands if we had experienced racism, and I didn’t, because I didn’t think I had. Then, after I went home, I thought about some more, and my stupid self finally realized that people telling me to “go back to India” after not understanding some things about American or white culture and making comments about how my house probably “smells like curry” and “Haha cow god” was actually racist. Heck, when I was younger, I actually supported PewDiePie in his campaign against T-Series, because ya know, screw those poopy curry-scented Indians taking over RU-vid! I just feel like it’s so normalized (and also because I was fortunately never physically harassed) that I didn’t even give it a thought until I was 18.

As an Iranian, I completely understand how Indians feel. Iranians and Indians are closely related ethnic groups and communities with widespread diaspora, and we face a lot of racism around the world, but it's often rarely talked about. Thank you for talking about this important subject.

Saji, thank you for talking about this!

Me and my friend (both white but I'm also Hispanic/Latino) were talking and my friend, he likes just beefing with random people on Snapchat, complete strangers💀💀 but this one girl got real upset about it, they were going back and forth and added him in a GC with her bf, based off of their bitmojis, both were white, my friend added me and eventually we're all going back and forth but the boyfriend started being REALLY RACIST, calling us both variations of the n-word and then ig because my bitmoji looked more tan, the bf started calling me Indian and using multiple racist stereotypes, the whole mention of the foods and saying that I stink and stuff and I was just shocked, they involved another two people and now it's three men, one black two white and all three are now being racist, calling us racist slurs towards black/African people and Indian people, when mind you, these things don't even apply to us, I was calling them out and one person said "where is the being racist?" Implying that they didn't even realize just how bad these things are, they even acknowledged that in comparison to them, that we are Americans and I was just laughing in disbelief and disgust at this point, the fact there are people who have to deal with this stuff everyday and on different levels just hurts in ways I probably can't even properly fathom