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South Asia is a beautiful region home to mountains, glaciers, rivers and the darkest shades of greenery. As written by Amit Singh in Kajal Magazine and a host of other South Asian writers, South Asia is also a place with a complex history that is usually forgotten and rewritten by western white liberals.

These same westerners will mock the mother tongue, will dip their fingers in a rose-syrup galore gulab jamun and call it an American deep-fried donut. White liberals will quickly point out the inhumane nature of gay violence in India, will gawk at how it was ridiculous many Indians were upset Richard Gere had kissed Shilpa Shetty, but above all, will refuse to acknowledge the role of the British in propping up South Asia’s backward standards and reversing the sexually fluid and dynamic society it had once been before colonization.

Last Tuesday, I was talking to my History of South Asia Professor, Tariq Ali, about the West’s perception of India. He said, “There is a view of South Asia amongst Americans as a place of the exotic — the place of elephants, temples, mother goddesses and Kama Sutra. This certain characterization by white society needs to be understood in its historical formation.”

That historical formation is often ignored and stripped of its importance. Much like on campus, where yuppies will do yoga to “open their third eye,” there is an aspect of commodifying this deeply spiritual practice without understanding its intricate background.

There is a certain co-option of Desi culture on campus, an eerie indulgence into “foreign” and “outlandish” practices for the white gaze that goes unnoticed. On Quad Day, I remembered seeing white women spearheading yoga classes, extracting the “spiritual” goodness for their own consumption. But it doesn’t even have to be yoga, it could be chai tea on the quad — let’s forget the funny redundancy of the westernized drink, its cultural significance is ignored and disappointingly, is never served with Parle G or cake rusk.

Another example of South Asian culture being hijacked and changed by westerners is the warped misinterpretation of the Kama Sutra. The Kama Sutra of Vātsyāyana is a revolutionary and feminist ancient Indian text popularized and consumed primarily because of its interpretations of sex positions, which in reality only make up only a small portion of the text. In 1883, it was translated by Richard Burton Francis for the western gaze. Burton Francis lazily spent little time on anything in the book that wasn’t sexual. The Kama Sutra encompassed love, intimacy, adultery and included excerpts about marriage. But most of all, it had a strong emphasis on women’s pleasure and an openness with sexuality.

Whenever I thought about the Kama Sutra, I imagined white couples in hemp pants with quinoa recipes in their backpacks practicing positions. Even more precisely, these videos by Cosmopolitan magazine came to mind, where white couples will practice the sexual positions without even mentioning the historical importance, or where those positions came from. Progressive white couples have championed the Kama Sutra as a frisky book to send your friends, paradoxically not even bothering to open a single page.

Wendy Doniger, an American indologist, points this out in her essay, titled “The ‘Kamastura’: It Isn’t All about Sex.” She writes, “The Burton translation is most accurate in the sections that deal with the sexual positions, the topic for which the book became famous. Was this because this was what Burton cared about most, or worked on most carefully?” Burton Francis had skipped over anything to do with homosexuality and focused on heteronormative sexual positions, implanting a rigid and backward perception of sexuality in Indian society.

As Amit Singh suggests, this isn’t to detract from real issues that exist in South Asia. This isn’t to deflect criticism or to ignore the very real problems in India. It is to recognize that these problems are symptomatic of a colonial legacy that still affect Indian society today. Building on Singh’s commentary, without this analysis, criticisms are reeking with a neo-imperialist agenda, an implicit affirmation of a colonial product.

Our campus should stop commodifying Desi culture and should not make blanket statements about the Indian culture if people aren’t willing to recognize the West’s role in creating the current society that is hard for marginalized people. There are patterns of decontextualizing historical formations of South Asian culture on campus that exist, whether it be yoga, chai tea or the Kama Sutra. This consumption and manipulation of history should always be criticized, questioned and condemned.

Rubab is a sophomore in GWS. 

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Editor’s note: This column has been updated with citations.