By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23
Staff Writer
This summer, as my Netflix subscription was renewed, I excitedly scurried to my laptop to watch Mindy Kaling’s new and much-hyped show, “Never Have I Ever,” pakoras and coffee in hand. But, as the show progressed and my coffee cup was downed, a sense of disappointment set in. “Never Have I Ever,” while striving to fill in the space of representation, falls short of the goal it sets out to achieve, instead caricaturing Indian identity and recycling regressive stereotypes. It doesn’t attempt to explain the origins of these practices, nor does it try to challenge them. The show works to reimagine what it means to be Indian in a way that caters to non-Indians and reinforces casteism, racism and other stereotypes.
The show begins with our protagonist, Devi Vishwakumar, arms folded and praying to a set of Hindu gods — and her geometry textbook. She prays for a high school survival kit: parties, alcohol, drugs, thinner arm hair and a boyfriend (“a stone-cold hottie who could rock me all night long”). As she prays, a different voice takes over, introducing us to Devi and himself — legendary tennis player John McEnroe — the narrator throughout the whole season. The problems start here. “Never Have I Ever” could have been an opportunity for an Indian voice to talk about the Indian experience, but instead, this voice is handed over to an American man, one who cannot tell the story from the inside and one who cannot even correctly pronounce Ganesh Puja or Devi Vishwakumar. The very idea of representation is defeated by delegating the voice of the Indian diaspora to the white man once again.
John McEnroe’s clumsy placement is coupled with cringey characters, mainly Devi’s mom Nalini and cousin Kamala. Both characters talk with an eccentric accent, desperately trying to establish their “Indianness.” On a talk show with the Los Angeles Times, Richa Moorjani, who plays Kamala, describes how she watched YouTube videos and underwent coaching to establish her “Indian accent,” as she herself had more of an “American accent.” While Moorjani claims this as a move to establish authenticity, it does quite the opposite. It others the Indian from the Indian American, making the former seem backward. Worse, it sounds nothing like an actual Indian accent.
I have personally viewed the Indian accent as a source of embarrassment. I remember arriving in the United States before my first year of college to stay with family. I was asked how I would manage my accent in the United States and was advised to take accent classes to fit in like they had decades ago. Did I want all the contact numbers? I politely declined. Devi feels similar embarrassment when Kamala speaks, and the Never Have I Ever team does nothing to battle this, instead normalizing this feeling.
The caricaturing continues throughout the show. As writer Paroma Soni discusses in The Swaddle, a gender and culture magazine in India, “inspired in part by Kaling’s own life, this show does touch on many experiences familiar to Indians everywhere,” but “points them squarely at a Western, non-Indian audience in an exotified treatment of everyday Indian life.” From Nalini and Kamala to the group of gossiping aunties, an endless volley of tiresome tropes permeates the series. Nalini bears the brunt of several of these, from commenting on dropped textbooks to chiding Devi for wearing sleeveless clothes during a TikTok dance to telling her that the itchiness of her saree is a “rite of passage for women.” These dialogues scratch the surface of the ideas they want to explore. Introducing the superstition of books falling on the floor, for example, provides no context for why the religion holds that practice. Additionally, is it an oversight that the mangalsutra, an auspicious thread that is worn during marriage by a woman, still hangs around Nalini’s neck? Or is it a tokenistic attempt to make her look more culturally Indian?
The cliches continue; Devi's crush, Paxton Hall Yoshida, likens Devi's beauty to Priyanka Chopra in a dream sequence. This generalizes all Indians to look like the token Indian actress in Hollywood, again catering more to Western audiences. Mindy Kaling’s position as an Indian American assumes the audience will accept the show as gospel. Simply having a diverse cast does not absolve her of her responsibilities to the South Asian diaspora.
The show also asserts its main characters as complacent upper-caste Hindus, as seen in their trysts with marriage. Aarti Mann makes a cameo as Jaya Kuyavar, a woman ostracized from the community (and her family) for the cardinal sin of marrying a Muslim man. When she later dialogues with Kamala on her marriage and divorce, she regrets not listening to her parents, warning Kamala not to screw up her own impending arranged marriage. This quietly encourages the formula: Adhere to existing upper-caste Hindu norms and marry within your community, and you will be happy. When Kamala finally finds herself preferring her arranged marriage to being with her boyfriend, Steve. While trying to foster the idea that all arranged marriages are not bad, “Never Have I Ever” does so while once again promoting caste endogamy and pushing out characters like Steve and Jaya’s ex-husband as examples of what not to do.
As discussed in Wear Your Voice magazine by Monica M, “Kaling is more interested in packaging Indian upper-caste Hindu American identity for the white gaze than she is in authentic storytelling. Shows like these continually erase the complex dynamics of South Asian experience and place their heads in the sand when it comes to critical socio-political realities that ground their shows.”
Coming from a Tamilian family like Devi’s, I felt a twinge of discomfort when I saw my cultural practices tossed about carelessly. I hope “Never Have I Ever” does not stop at making the show relatable, but in season two, takes the opportunity to question and challenge stereotypes. Only a show that commits itself to these goals will give the South Asian diaspora more of what it deserves in terms of representation.