Those hooked to Homeland, the American TV serial now available in India on the new Star channel which broadcasts shows that Americans are currently watching, would have noticed an Indian-looking woman who plays the wife of Saul, one of the teledrama?s main characters. Her name is Sarita Choudhury and she is a British-born actress who has acted in three of Mira Nair?s movies and a number of Hollywood films apart from TV serials. She will be one among many who will feature in an upcoming and groundbreaking exhibition, ?Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation?, which opens this December at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington. The exhibition, four years in the making, will explore the heritage, daily experiences and numerous, diverse contributions that Indian immigrants and Indian Americans have made to the US. Occupying 5,000 sq ft of space at the Smithsonian?s National Museum of Natural History, the year-long exhibition is expected to draw more than seven million visitors before embarking on a pan-American tour in 2015.
Apart from the historical aspect which documents the immigrant experience, the showpiece of the exhibition will be the increasing number of Indian Americans in cinema and television. They will include portraits of Mindy Kaling, Kal Penn, Kunal Nayyar (of The Big Bang Theory) and even Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, one of the more memorable characters in The Simpsons. In fact, just about any night of the week, you can catch Nayyar?s romance-challenged rocket scientist, Raj, on America?s most popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory; Archie Panjabi?s Emmy-winning, astoundingly complicated private investigator Kalinda in The Good Wife; Mindy Kaling headlining the first show starring an Indian American character, The Mindy Project, which she also created, writes and produces. There?s also Reshma Shetty in Royal Pains, sly and sexy Hannah Simone in New Girl, the uproarious Aziz Ansari in Parks and Recreation, the dignified Adhir Kalyan in Rules of Engagement, Danny Pudi in Community, Dev Patel in The Newsroom and the gorgeous Padma Lakshmi in food-related reality shows.
The Smithsonian exhibition could not have come at a better time. While Indians have become more prominent in business, in Silicon Valley, in medicine, law and in government, they are also stereotyped in the minds of many Americans, and their presence on popular television shows or cinema (Kal Penn, Dev Patel) goes a long way in educating those ignorant of South Asians and their contribution to American life and culture, according to Dr Masum Momaya, who has curated the exhibition. Momaya is a second-generation Indian American who studied at Stanford, Harvard and Oxford, and was earlier curator at the International Museum of Women. Says she: ?We fought for citizenship and civil rights for not just ourselves, but many peoples. And, yes, we are doctors and engineers, and we drive taxis and own motels and Dunkin? Donuts stores, but there is much more.? Momaya credits television as the medium through which the general American public has gotten to know the South Asian community. ?I think in the last decade we?ve seen an evolution,? says Momaya, who believes that films have done more than television to break the stereotypes. ?Films explore things in a more nuanced way and are not under pressure to cater to mainstream audiences in the way TV is,? she says. ?That?s what allows them to push beyond the stereotype to what it means to be an Indian person living in America, a person of colour living in America, and immigrants living in America.?
Significantly, in the context of stereotypes, the exhibition will also include personal items belonging to Balbir Singh Sodhi, the Sikh gas station owner who was gunned down in the immediate wake of 9/11, a doctor?s bag belonging to Dr Abraham Verghese, who became a celebrity after his book, Cutting for Stone, and the Olympic silver medal won by Mohini Bhardwaj, a gymnast with the US team, in Athens. With music and visual artworks providing commentary, the Indian American experience will cover the late 1800s-1900s immigrant experiences, struggles for citizenship in the first half of the 20th century, professional contributions from the 1960s and beyond, and cultural contributions through food, music, dance and in the entertainment industry. After the Smithsonian, ?Beyond Bollywood? will travel to 15 sites throughout the US and is the largest project undertaken by the Smithsonian Centre in its 15-year history, and the first to focus on the Indian American culture.
