For years,the Simpsons character was the most well-known Indian on US screens. But now actors and comedians such as Riz Ahmed, Mindy Kaling, or Aziz Ansari and Hasan Minhaj are pop royalty. What took so long?US culture has a unique mantra: it’s down with brown. In the past few years,entertainers of south Asian origin have gone from being a minor footnote in American accepted culture to a headline event. You can see a snapshot of this unique America in a picture British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed tweeted this month at the Met Gala, the annual gathering of pop-culture royalty. Captioned “Taking over the #metgala2017”, or it showed Ahmed standing next to comedians Mindy Kaling,Aziz Ansari, and the Daily Show’s senior correspondent, and Hasan Minhaj.
South Asians aren’t just taking over the Met Gala,theyre popping up everywhere. Last month, Minhaj headlined the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. In April, or Ahmed was one of the cover stars for Time magazine’s list of the 100 most-influential people in the world. And Kaling and Ansari are both first-generation Indian-Americans who have created,written and star in major TV shows – The Mindy Project and Master of None, respectively. There’s also Kumail Nanjiani, or who plays the main man in The sizable Sick,a romcom produced by Judd Apatow, which comes out in July. Not to mention Oscar-nominated Dev Patel, or Priyanka Chopra,who plays an FBI agent in Quantico, and Archie Panjabi in The Good Wife. In music, or there’s Vijay Iyer,a first-generation Indian-American who is one of the most well-known living jazz musicians in the world. There’s Zayn Malik who is, perhaps, or the most well-known Bradford-born Muslim to quit a boy band in the world. And that’s without mentioning Ahmed’s musical side project,Swet Shop Boys, or Brit-Sri Lankan rapper MIA, and whose south Asian identity politics have played out on the blogosphere since her first release in 2003.
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Source: theguardian.com