India is a beautiful country; from the deserts in Rajasthan to the wetlands of Tamil Nadu, India has a lot to offer. However, the bottom half of the country is usually forgotten about. The Northern part of India is recognized more because of the movie industry, the dances, and famous monuments. Overall, South India is not recognized as much as it should by the world. All parts of India are beautiful, but today we will be discussing certain elements and why they are more popular in the North.
When anyone talks about Indian movies, the first things that come to their mind are Bollywood and Shah Rukh Khan. Bollywood is one of the biggest movie industries in the world, so without a doubt, that is what people will immediately think of. We assumed that the rest of the world only knew about popular North Indian actors, but to our surprise, even many North Indians themselves didn’t know much about the South Indian film industry.
On our Instagram page, we did a survey and split up North Indians and South Indians. We asked North Indians if they have heard of popular South Indian actors and asked South Indians if they have heard of popular North Indian actors. The results were mind blowing.
According to the data, North Indians were not too familiar with South Indian actors. Less than 50% of North Indians knew each actor. But, South Indians were extremely familiar with Bollywood actors.
We also asked them if they had heard of the top Bollywood film in the past year, Gully Boy, and the top South Indian film in the past year, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo. 86% of South Indians had heard of Gully Boy, while only 20% of North Indians had heard of Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo.
Because Bollywood is so popular and focused on, it’s almost as if South Indians have to force themselves to learn about Bollywood because otherwise, they won’t “fit in”. In fact, Nikitha and I were having a conversation and I found out she has never seen Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani before and I asked her, “how have you never seen this movie?”. But that made us realize, when we mention a South Indian film to our North Indian friends and they say they haven’t seen it before, we take it lightly and aren’t really shocked. Why is it that South Indians are required to watch hundreds of Bollywood movies to fit in, but North Indians don’t have to do the same?
We understand again that Bollywood is a HUGE industry, but it’s so important that our North Indian friends also learn more about the South India region, and an easy and fun way to do this is by simply watching movies.
Not only is there South Indian underrepresentation in India as a whole, but there is underrepresentation in South India.
South Indian movies don’t hire South Indian actresses. In fact, when we were deciding on what South Indian actresses to use for our polls, we were stumped because most South Indian heroines are actually played by North Indian women. We are aware there are so many aspiring young South Indian women wanting to be actresses, but why does the industry continue to choose North Indian women to play these roles and have someone voice over them?
Kajal Agrawaal, Tamannaah, Amy Jackson: they all have one thing in common. Light Skin. We mentioned in our Beauty Standards post that lighter skin is more desirable and beautiful in India, so these more “beautiful” looking women are hired instead. Even background dancers in South Indian movies are usually Caucasian women instead of Indian women. Tollywood, you need to do better.
Tollywood/South Indian films need to include actual girls from South Indian states. North Indians should be learning and appreciating the culture of the South, and South Indians should be helping the North learn about the South’s culture. By learning and educating each other, India as a whole can become more united. South India is just as important (and cool).
Similar to how society thinks of the Bollywood film industry, when they think of India, many people only think Bollywood dance. There are numerous dance forms in India; six of these dance forms (Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Manipuri, Kuchipudi, and Odissi) are recognized by India as classical dance forms. Once again, we polled our audience on our Instagram stories to see if they were familiar with the dance forms from the other regions.
We asked our North Indian audience if they had heard of Bharatanatyam (a classical dance form that originates in Tamil Nadu) and Kuchipudi (a classical dance form that originates in Andhra Pradesh). 88% of North Indians were familiar with Bharatanatyam and 70% were familiar with Kuchipudi.
We asked our South Indian audience if they had heard of Kathak (a classical dance form that originates in Uttar Pradesh) and Bhangra (a folk dance form that originates in Punjab). 98% of South Indians were familiar with Kathak and 96% were familiar with Bhangra.
We started to see a pattern not only in the movie industry but in the dance world too. Why is it that more South Indians were familiar with dance forms that originated in Northern Indian, but not the reverse? Once again it was almost as if South Indians were forced to learn about North India just to “fit in.” I (Nikitha) have been doing Kuchipudi since I was 5 years old and I had heard of other dance forms briefly when I was younger, but I was not familiar with North Indian dance forms until I started collaborating with other dancers who did them.
The third and final poll we conducted was about music. We asked our North and South Indian audiences whether they listen to more North Indian music or South Indian music. 64% of our audience said they listen to more North Indian music than South Indian music. This poll also follows the same trend as the previous polls, however, the percentage is significantly lower. Overall this shows that music is more universal and well known compared to actors, actresses and dance.
Another area where many North Indians don’t know much about South India is food. It didn’t occur to me that many North Indians didn’t know about South Indian food until I was on TikTok. The comments under several TikTok videos made me realize that the only foods people think of when they think of South India are dosa, idli, and sambar. At first I thought, “Oh maybe this is just what teenagers on Tik Tok think.” However, then I realized that these three foods are usually the only South Indian foods served at Indian restaurants. How is it that even when it comes to food, South Indians are underrepresented?
When a Non-Desi thinks of India, they usually think of the North region of India. In order to prove this theory correctly, we randomly asked a few of our Non-Desi friends of what they first think of when they picture India.
Most of our friends mentioned the overall culture, but when it came to food, our friends said they mostly thought of naan, butter chicken, samosa, and tandoori chicken: all North Indian dishes. A few other friends said they thought of the Taj Mahal. More friends said they think of Indian clothing, more specifically, a Lehenga Choli. The similarity between all of these? They are all aspects of North Indian culture. This proves our theory correctly, and we need to do a better job of exposing India to Non-Desis. They are forgetting about a whole region of India that is equally as important. Although South Indians do try their best to educate their Non-Desi friends about their culture, it is mainly the mass media that needs to educate themselves. The mass media is responsible for portraying India as only North India. Hollywood needs to shoot scenes in places other than Rajasthan and the Taj Mahal. But, South Indians, make sure to educate your Non-Desi friends about the beautiful culture of South India.
Check out next week’s post on living a double life as an Indian American teenager!