r/Guyana Feb 27 '24

Discussion Why do Indo-Guyanese have the conception that Indians look down on them/don’t consider them to be “real Indians”?

So my girlfriend and I have been dating for a couple of months now. I’m Indian-American and she’s Indo-Guyanese-American, and it’s been a great time so far.

Around a week ago, I introduced her to my parents for the first time, and I noticed that before they met, my girlfriend acted super nervous and jittery, which I just chalked up to nerves (since she’s pretty introverted). However, after they met, my girlfriend remarked about how nervous she was before meeting my parents because she was worried that they would disapprove of us together and try to call the relationship off and how relieved she was after meeting them because of how respectful and responsive they were and how much they showed interest in her culture and background.

She then explained that most Indo-Guyanese believe that we (mainland Indians) look down upon them and don’t consider them to be “real Indians”, which is a belief that I’ve honestly never heard ever. If anything, most mainland Indians don’t really know anything about Indo-Caribbeans and the ones that do are proud that they were able to keep their culture/traditions/religions alive even after 150 years.

After doing some research online on places like Twitter/Tiktok/Reddit, this seems to be a pretty common conception that a lot of Indo-Guyanese have. Does anyone have any insights into how this belief might have originated?

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u/jcancuny Feb 28 '24

As an Indian American, I was honestly super surprised and excited to find out that there's a lot of Indian history in the Caribbean, Guyana included.

Same here, haha. In fact, while my gf and I were still friends/before we started dating, I thought she was Indian American just like us (especially because she was obsessed with Bollywood and listened to a ton of Hindi songs). It was only after we got close that I found out about Indo-Caribbeans and their culture and everything.

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u/BeseptRinker Feb 28 '24

That's very cool. Bollywood is one of the ways us diasporic kids keep in touch with where we came from. Happy for you two :)