Doing as the Japanese do

The World Cup teaches us that we don’t have to try hard to accrue goodwill for the way we conduct ourselves abroad

The Japanese have been getting into a lot of good books with sports fans around the world, thanks to their annoying habit of cleaning up before they leave a venue. It makes messier people like us look bad, because no one has ever expected anyone from India to leave a place cleaner than before. Sure, we like to inform our children that cleanliness is next to godliness, but even a blind person walking down any of our streets will find the hypocrisy of that sentiment amusing. It’s probably why the Japanese will never need a ‘Swachh Japan’ PR campaign to boost the image of some criminal masquerading as a politician in their country.

These reports compelled me to try and think of what Indians are known for abroad. I am pleased to say that the list I drew up was long and interesting.

It shouldn’t upset us that some Asians are perceived as nicer or cleaner or better behaved than others. It’s not as if we don’t bring glory to our country and heritage in other ways. It has long been established, for example, that we are second to none when it comes to sniffing out and exploiting a legal loophole. If there’s something that can be tweaked and twisted into yielding a profit, chances are there’s some representative of our country behind that grand scheme. We may try and make it sound respectable with inane terms like ‘jugaad’, of course, but everyone knows that a scam by any other name is still a scam, so I believe it’s time we owned up to that reputation and embraced it. We can be known for cleaning up too, albeit in a slightly different context.

Another thing we carry with ourselves around the globe is our deep and abiding respect for bureaucracy. Walk into any Indian consulate, or agency hired by a consulate to manage immigration-related issues, and you will find yourself yanked back to the 1980s and a world of nationalised banks where time has always stood still. There will be computers and the Internet, of course, but the attitudes of people behind those desks will remain unchanged. For tourists and foreign visitors, these men and women remain committed ambassadors of what it really means to encounter someone from India.

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Then there’s our well-known and debatable accommodation of all religious beliefs that has been so much a part of our tradition as a secular democracy. As the English city of Leicester found out earlier in 2022, it doesn’t matter how many years some of our countrymen spend away from our bigoted shores; there’s always a tug at the back of their minds to an imagined past where all of India bowed before the same gods and goddesses, leaving no room for any others. We keep the healthy practice of communal rioting alive and well, without which the world would be a nicer but undeniably boring place, and I don’t see why we don’t get more credit for this. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Respect for the environment is another virtue that ought to be assigned to us even if noise, air, and water pollution are such an intrinsic part of our rituals and traditions. It’s the thought that counts, even if our actions are often misinterpreted. Take the Canadian city of Brampton, for example, whose city councillors voted unanimously in favour of a fireworks ban after a surge in complaints two months ago. The complaints were all made during some of our religious holidays, but I would argue that we respect the environment on at least four or five days of the year, for which we are never praised.

Finally, we should be recognised for the respect we always show our women. Our country may be one of the most unsafe places on Earth for women, but very few Indian men abroad will wear their misogyny on their sleeves, for which they should be commended. They always take care to restrict this unavoidable aspect of their personalities to covert honour killings, domestic violence, and the like, which reveals a commitment to protecting India’s reputation in the world outside.

In the spirit of fairness, I will admit to a few minor faults among us too, such as our honourable caste system. There have been increasing media reports abroad about how it is deeply rooted and systemic in nature, persisting through cultural notions and impossible for Indians to escape, but I think we should let this criticism slide. 

It’s our culture.

When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira

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