India on precipice of amazing, undeniable global soft power: Comedian Vir Das

New York: India is on the precipice of an “amazing, undeniable” global soft power whose "guardians" in equal measure are both those living in the homeland as well as the Indian diaspora, Emmy-Award winning comedian and actor Vir Das has said.

“I think something that the diaspora does really well is protect culture,” Das said here during a special interaction hosted at Asia Society.

Das, who won the 2023 International Emmy for Best Comedy for his comedy special ‘Landing’, said amid applause and laughter from the audience at the event that what he finds “lovely" about the Indian diaspora is that while they have an American accent and American values, but “at your shaadi, you (dance) to ‘Mehendi laga ke rakhna’.

The Asia Society event on Thursday was presented in collaboration with global media platform, community and agency South Asian Trailblazers and was held on the eve of the premiere of Das’s latest comedy special ‘Vir Das: Fool Volume’.

“India is on the precipice of an amazing, undeniable global soft power, and it only translates when the bridge happens from me to you. So we are both ends carrying that soft power,” Das said, a message for the Indian diaspora settled across the world.

“We are both guardians of India's soft power at an equal level.” Citing the example of Indian actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh, who became the first Punjabi singer to perform at the popular Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California in 2023, Das said, “When Diljit performs at Coachella, that is an amazing, undeniable thing." "The diaspora has to show up to pack Coachella. When he shows up in India, we'll pack it for him. But when he comes to Coachella, show up, for modern Indian culture,” he said.

Das, who was first nominated for the 2021 International Emmy for Comedy for his previous Netflix special ‘Vir Das: For India’, had hosted the prestigious global awards last year.

Responding to a question during the interactive Q&A session with the audience on what are some of the things the next generation should adopt from the current one, Das said one would be to know “that India is far more open-minded than you think it is. I say this with all due respect to the diaspora.

“Sometimes you are raised in a time capsule version of India, that is the last version of India that your parents left behind, and that India doesn’t exist anymore,” he said to applause from the audience.

Das added that "You are raised in more conservative households than we are, many times. So, please come and visit modern India." "Come and visit a place that does everything from Diljit to Mika to ‘RRR' to ‘Hanumankind’,” Das said, referring to the popular Indian artists, the blockbuster movie which won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 2023 Academy Awards for 'Naatu, Naatu' and the India-born rapper Sooraj Cherukat.

Das underlined that there are things happening in India right now that kids of the Indian diaspora need to know.

“The second thing is that it is okay to be flawed. I feel like children who are raised in the diaspora, you are under tremendous pressure to have model minority behaviour, more so than kids who are raised back home” because opportunities are far more scarce.

“It is a smaller community here, but try and create the abundance mindset that you had when there were a billion jobs for you. I know that there are fewer jobs, that's a very tough mindset to create, but I think your child would be better served by creating that mindset,” Das said.