cultural appropriation – Brown Pundits

When producer Namit Malhotra began explaining the Ramayana to Hans Zimmer, the legendary composer cut him off:

“You don’t have to explain it to me. Something that has lasted thousands of years clearly has meaning. Let’s just do our best. It’s beyond us.”

Malhotra took this as reverence. In fact, it was erasure.

No serious Western artist would score The Ten Commandments or Schindler’s List without knowing the story. Imagine a composer saying, “Don’t explain the Illiad to me, it’s beyond me.” They’d be fired. But when it comes to Indian epics? The bar is subterranean. That’s not reverence.

That’s: I’m Western, I’m famous, I’m here for the cheque; not the history. The tragedy isn’t Zimmer’s line. It’s Malhotra’s awe. A Westerner shrugs off our most sacred text, and we call it wisdom. That’s not cultural pride. That’s civilizational confusion. It’s a pattern. Many elite Indians are fluent in the language of Islamic grievance; but tone-deaf to Western condescension.

Divide and rule still works:

Hindus thank the British for “freeing” them from Muslim rule
Muslims thank the British for “protecting” them from Hindu majoritarianism

Meanwhile, the West shrugs at our stories and we applaud.

Shravan Monday at the New England Temple

Continue reading Hans Zimmer and the Polite Dismissal of the Ramayana

I recently saw a cringeworthy clip of Rainn Wilson, yes that Rainn Wilson, earnestly trying to explain Ta’arof (while not even being able to pronounce Tahdig). The famed Iranian art of polite refusal was reduced, predictably, to the idea of “saying no three times.” A charming simplification, perhaps, but a misleading one.

The Ritual of Misunderstanding

Ta’arof is a millennia-old Persian artform; rooted perhaps as far back as the Achaemenid Empire. It is centered on flattery, politeness, and ritualised courtesy and is not merely etiquette; it is the performance and ritualisation of it.

Because Tarof isn’t about numerical formulae. It’s not just “no means yes after the third try.” It’s not a knock-knock joke.

Onunchi, Ta’arof, and High-Context Societies

Tarof is best understood as high-context negotiation within deeply hierarchical and emotionally attuned societies; a kind of cultural Onunchi (온눈치), for those familiar with Korean sociolinguistics. It’s the art of reading the room before the room speaks. More than etiquette, Tarof is a performance of dignity through flattery, deferral, and intuition.

And that’s precisely what’s being lost; not just in Rainn’s version, but in the Westernisation of diasporic Persian culture more broadly.

Tag: cultural appropriation

Hans Zimmer and the Polite Dismissal of the Ramayana

Ta’arof & The Art of Flattery