On the late-night community access channel, Dr. Khemfoia Padu, who appears to be black, dons a saffron turban and shills pills with whale tails.
Dr. Padu is the Director of The Natural Healing Foundation… He is a licensed Chiropracter, Herbologist, Nutritionist, as well as a Theologian and Martial Artist. [Link]
I’m not sure whether the pagri pitches desi mysticism, evokes black musicians who wore turbans or references turbans in Africa.
Erykah Padu’s turban may be genuine, but I’m thoroughly irritated that desi culture is associated in the U.S. with hippies and New Age. You can’t go to an all-veg pizza place without drowning in ads for crystals and tarot cards. That ain’t right. A subculture has branded a billion and a half people, the tail wags the wog.
In one freakish conflation of the Indian revolutionary movement with American hippies, a town in Massachussetts actually banned a Gandhi statue. It was the absolute height of clusterfuck ignorance:
Gita Mehta details the extent of the hippie infatuation with South Asia in her classic book, Karma Cola. Westerners seek instant salvation; Easterners the quick rupee. Gurus could pack entire astrodomes in the ’60s, levitation was believed to signal salvation, and Western disciples believed above all else in moksha through easy sex and hard drugs. At one point there were over 100,000 hippies trekking all over South Asia searching for enlightenment in woolly-minded religious platitudes and a variety of uppers and downers. Religion and opium for the masses: no wonder Sherborn, Massachusetts, would have none of it.
Sherborn is the town where a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, peacemaker, spawned two death threats and a legal challenge [in 1994]… Residents of Sherborn were incensed that the statue of Gandhi had been erected next to a war memorial. Columnist Alex Beam of the Boston Globe called Gandhi a “simpering second-rate peacenik” and claimed his message of peace was an insult to the Revolutionary War town of Sherborn: “Sure, he freed 100 million people, but at the end of the day he was just another yellow-belly who never picked up a gun.” A hippie, not a peacemaker — this is how Gandhi plays in much of America.
Hippie beliefs have mutated into the New Age, which continues to feed the fascination with the lore of South Asia. The sale and bastardization of South Asian traditions is a big business. Watered down South Asian food, music, and philosophy play much better in suburbia than do the originals. Not only is this view of South Asia inaccurate, it is also outdated: hardly anybody is interested in the South Asia of today. There are five times as many classes on Harappa and Hanuman as there are on South Asian politics and economics. Those who do take the time to read about South Asia find condescending books by Barbara Crossette, V.S. Naipaul, or Mother Teresa, and come away with an impression of crushing poverty and an attitude of superciliousness. [Link]
In the decade since I wrote that essay, people finally are interested in the South Asia of today. Even if it’s only in the business angle, it’s a welcome change.
