Breaking the Cycle of South Asian Cultural Shame | Masala Podcast
I'm peeling back the layers on a tough topic for South Asian diaspora experience: Cultural Shame. This isn't just about feeling "different"; it’s about the deep-rooted psychological burden of feeling that our culture, our bodies, and our very existence are "wrong" in a Western context.
1. Why We Feel Cultural Shame
We didn't wake up with this feeling; it was designed. We explore the "why" behind our embarrassment and our "Log Kya Kehenge" thinking:
The Colonial Hangover: Centuries of being told our traditions were "uncivilized" created a deep-seated internalized racism within all of us. It’s so deep-rooted that we don’t even know it’s there. Like everything we’re unaware of, it manifests in so many areas of our lives from school, to work to relationships.
The Integration Trap: The pressure to "fit in" to survive and succeed in Western spaces means we learn (often subconsciously) to hide our true South Asian selves. We learn that being more Western, being more accepted in the world we live in.
Generational Weight: Our parents' survival instincts taught them to also blend in and now draw attention to their more Desi parts. And growing up with those values, we turned into our cultural baggage.
2. How Cultural Shame Manifests in Our Lives
Shame isn't just a feeling; it’s a set of behaviours that are deeply rooted in our bodies and minds.
The "Log Kya Kahenge" Filter: We might learn that others are judging us and this might dictate our career, clothes, and relationships.
Code-Switching: We feel the exhaustion of switching versions of ourselves between home and the outside world. And yet, sometimes this is so embedded in us, we don’t even realise that we’re doing it.
Policing How We Look: The shame is subtle yet it’s there. It might surround our hair, our skin tone, and our physical presence. This would explain why we might style our hair to look more Western, why we might wear more “neutral” clothing.
3. What We Can Do to Change
In this episode, I share how we can begin the work of reclaiming our identity:
Radical Vulnerability: Speaking the "shameful" things out loud to strip them of their power and that might even mean admitting it to ourselves.
Curating Our Own Culture: Perhaps we could start by picking and choosing those parts of our heritage that nourish us, those parts of ourselves that we have ignored for such a long time.
This episode is an invitation to stop hiding, to embrace those beautiful parts of our identity. It’s time to move from shame to radical South Asian pride.
I wrote a longer article here about cultural shame and some solutions:
https://soulsutras.co.uk/unpacking-cultural-shame-south-asian-diaspora/
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