There is a pattern so consistent it almost feels choreographed. A practice, invention, or aesthetic rooted in Indian or broader non-Western culture is labelled primitive, unhygienic, or backward for generations.
Then, decades later, a Western brand, influencer, or institution rediscovers it, strips away its origins, and presents it to the world as something new, innovative, even luxurious.
A growing wave of content creators on social media is naming this pattern out loud, and the research backing many of their claims is hard to dismiss. Here we take a look at some things that have long since been a part of the Indian or desi culture and yet were belittled, dismissed, outright stolen and appropriated only to then be placed on a pedestal of how good for the world they are.
This is in stark contrast to the way Indians, desi people, and people of colour (POC) were treated while taking part in their own culture, made to feel dirty and wrong, without class, unhygienic, and more.
Parenting
Much of what is now branded as “modern parenting” or “wellness” existed in non-Western communities long before it had a trendy name. The difference, the post argues, is whose knowledge gets validated.
This post has brought up a list of things that People of Colour (POC) were degraded for and yet are now being rebranded by Western cultures to be the new trend and the correct way to parent.
The post writes, “Attachment parenting, gut health, barefoot walking, ferment foods, our traditions, now sold back to us.”
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They wrote how, “The ways we held our babies, fed them on demand, slept beside them, and raised them through village life, were labelled uncivilised, primitive, and backwards. Yet now those same practices are being celebrated in Western parenting spaces: babywearing, breastfeeding on demand, co-sleeping, emotional attunement, and responsive parenting.”
They brought up the hypocrisy of how these cultural things are now sold back to us, along with claims of how it’s ‘research-backed’, as if that gives them legitimacy.
As an example, the post brought up how “Then: African mothers tying babies to their backs with cloth. Now: Ergonomic carriers selling for 80 pounds… Then: South Asian Families Feeding toddlers by hand without rigid schedules. Now: Intuitive eating in parenting books.”
The post also spoke about long-held cultural practices, like walking barefoot being called ‘poverty’ to now being rebranded as ‘earthing’ or using herbs and plants called ‘superstition’ and now it’s ‘holistic wellness’, and simple, natural homes were ‘underdevelopment’ while now celebrated as ‘minimalism’ or sustainable living.
Badminton’s Indian Origins
The sport of badminton is often associated with colonial India, and while that is not entirely untrue, the sport itself was not invented by the British.
Researcher Poonam Saha, in this Instagram video, brings to light badminton’s Indian origins, which are historically accurate and surprisingly little known.
The game now known as badminton is traditionally credited to British officers in Pune (then Poona) in the 1870s, and the “Poona Rules” of 1873 are considered its founding document.
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But the post correctly highlights that these British officers were not inventing a game from scratch; they were playing a version of a game that Indians were already playing widely and enthusiastically.
The Duke of Beaufort popularised it in England, and the sport was named after his estate, Badminton House. The Indian origins were quietly sidelined in official history.
Louis Vuitton’s Iconic Monogram
Media company The Juggernaut also posted this video about how the floral motifs, now iconic to luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton, might have Indian origins.
The post looks at the floral motif at the centre of Louis Vuitton’s trademark LV canvas, which bears a striking resemblance to carvings found on a 12th-century temple in Karnataka. Similar patterns also appear on Apsara statues in Cambodia.
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Indian Clay Pots
Storing and drinking water from Indian clay pots, matkas for water, and handis for cooking, was dismissed as old-fashioned and unhygienic compared to plastic bottles and steel containers. Now, the same properties that make clay pots effective are being sold as premium wellness products at high prices.
Read More: Ralph Lauren Takes India’s Famous ₹50 Jhumkas To Resell For ₹77,000, No Credit Again
Sitting On The Floor And Eating With Hands
Sitting cross-legged on the floor to eat, a practice standard across Indian households for millennia, is actually one of the healthiest postures for digestion, yet it was routinely mocked as uncivilised compared to eating at a Western dining table.
The science backs this up. Sitting in Sukhasana (the cross-legged position) engages the core, improves posture, and, crucially, the natural rocking motion people make while eating in this position stimulates the abdominal muscles and promotes the secretion of digestive juices. Research published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology has found that eating while seated on the floor is associated with better digestion and greater mindful eating.
Meanwhile, the Western habit of eating hunched over a high table, often while distracted, is linked to bloating, acid reflux, and overeating. What was framed as a marker of poverty or backwardness turns out to be a posture that modern physiotherapists now actively recommend.
Eating with hands, central to Indian food culture and embedded in Ayurvedic tradition, was long stigmatised in Western contexts as dirty and uncivilised. It is also now being recognised as a practice with genuine physical and neurological benefits.
Washing Ass After Pooping
Using water to clean yourself after using the toilet, the lota in India, the bidet in parts of Europe, the jet spray across much of Asia and the Middle East, was long treated as foreign or unsanitary by mainstream Western culture.
Now, suddenly, the West is all about washing one’s ass, with water-based cleaning suddenly becoming a trending topic.
Some claim that it was the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shortage of toilet paper that led to this. However, even before, most of the Western culture would turn their noses up at Indians and other cultures who advocated for using water after using the bathroom instead of toilet paper.
It turns out, though, that there is no hygienic argument for dry toilet paper over water. In fact, the reverse is true: water cleans more thoroughly, reduces irritation, and is gentler on the skin. Dermatologists and gastroenterologists have consistently noted that toilet paper can leave residue and cause micro-abrasions, while water washing does neither.
The global south, including India, Japan, South Korea, most of the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, has known this for centuries. Bidet usage in Japan is nearly universal, and Japanese toilet technology is widely considered the most advanced in the world.
Yet for decades, the lota and the jet spray were the subject of ridicule in Western discourse about South Asian hygiene. The pandemic-era bidet boom in the United States was treated as a revelation. For a billion Indians, it was Tuesday.
Luxury Perfume Made In India
Content creator Mohuya Khan, who also founded Labyrinthave, a platform for empowering members of the Desi community, in an Instagram post, talked about how most of the perfume sold by luxury brands worldwide is made in India.
The unfortunate thing, though, is that the real artists who are behind these perfumes priced at bank-breaking levels are hardly ever compensated properly.
In her post, she alleged that major luxury perfume houses, including Prada and Chanel, source key fragrance ingredients from India, but pay Indian labourers roughly $3 a day.
They then label the final product “Made in France,” pocketing enormous margins while erasing the people whose labour and land make the product possible.
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Clean Girl Aesthetic
The “clean girl aesthetic,” slicked-back hair, oiled skin, gold hoops, minimal makeup, simple ethnic-inspired clothing, went viral on Western social media as a fresh, aspirational trend. But South Asian and other non-Western women had been doing exactly this for generations and were mocked, told they smelled of oil, called dirty or unkempt for it.
The frustration this post captures is real and widely shared. Coconut oil in hair, kajal-lined eyes, gold jhumkas, and dupatta-style draping were all markers of being “too ethnic” or “not assimilated enough” for South Asian women in Western contexts for decades.
The clean girl aesthetic repackaged these exact elements as effortlessly chic, without acknowledging their origins or engaging with the women penalised for them.
The same dynamic applies to the bindi, henna, and numerous other South Asian practices that became fashion moments without credit. This post names one of the most visible and personally felt examples of the appropriation-to-trend pipeline.
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India And Negative Numbers
Digital content creator Samyukta Singh, speaking with author and researcher Sahana Singh, talked about the concept of negative numbers that Indians came up with.
Sahana said how Arabs were familiar with Geometric entities, with Physical entities, whereas in India, where the negative number of 0 comes from, they were comfortable with Abstract entities.
She said, “That’s how Brahmagupta, Bhaskaracharya, all the Siddhanta works, they examined everything. How does adding zero to numbers change the number? Multiplying by zero. Then what are negative numbers?”
Sahana explained how “we had even in accounting, the concept of negative numbers. Debt, what you owe to people, was shown as a negative number. So it was not all that abstract. It was actually even in regular everyday work, we had the concept of negative numbers. So that when it was transmitted to Arabs, because Al-Khwarizmi translated the Brahmasphutasiddhanta of Brahmagupta into Arabic.
So when he did that, he liked everything; he liked the Indian numerals, but he did not want the negative numbers aspect. So even in equations, he preferred to use the positive. He would change the equations to make it positive. They were suspicious of it, something less than nothing, that did not make sense.”
Singh added, “And not just them, even when it went to Europe, European mathematicians rejected negative numbers right until the 17th century. Mathematicians like René Descartes said that negative numbers are fictitious; they are not real. When it came to algebra, he didn’t want negative values coming in equations. It took centuries to accept negative numbers.”
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Not just this, but there have been several inventions in the subject of mathematics that the global world uses today, but were invented centuries ago in India.
The concept of zero as a number, not just a placeholder, was formalised by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in 628 CE. Without zero, there is no binary code. No computers. No internet. No smartphones. The device you’re reading this on exists because of an Indian mathematical concept.
Indian mathematicians, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Madhava, were the ones who made foundational contributions to the fields of trigonometry and algebra, centuries before European mathematicians are credited with “discovering” the same results.
The base-10 positional number system used everywhere in the world today is Indian in origin, transmitted to Europe via Arab scholars, which is why they’re called “Arabic numerals,” though their roots are Indian.
Within the surgical field, the Sushruta Samhita, written around 600 BCE, describes rhinoplasty procedures, reconstructive nose surgery, in documented detail. It is considered the world’s first surgical textbook.
They called us backwards while writing on a number system we invented, wearing fabric we grew, and eating off a philosophy we built. The least they could do is read the label.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: TOI, Homegrown India, NDTV
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Indian cultural appropriation, India’s contributions to the world, Cultural erasure India, Indian practices, Indian culture, Clean girl aesthetic South Asian, Indian heritage, badminton India, Luxury perfume made in India, Cultural appropriation, desi culture
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