Rajiv Mohabir > Quotes > Quote > Tameca shared it

“I wondered how I could explain this to Aji—that people in university where white people go to learn Hindi would be interested in her songs, when her own children didn't think them worth learning. The grandchildren of the same white people who told her generation they were backward and broken now wanted to claim her knowledge systems as artifacts for study. These people would take our songs and stories and make careers out of interpreting them for other white people. I had seen it before: white scholars who tried to out-Indian me by adopting the study of India as their entire personality. My own interest was deeper than academia. Wading into the sea of this music and trying to understand it was like struggling to see myself.”
― Rajiv Mohabir, Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir