Indian criticism: “You shit indoors”

Published December 29, 2024 at 1:17 p.m.

Foreign. After Elon Musk's initiative to fill the US with Indians, the debate about the nation's controversial relationship with feces has raged within Republicans, CNN reports. At the same time, the American debate has reached an Indian audience.
 “At least we shit on the streets. You shit indoors, near where you eat,” writes an Indian.

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The comment was made after a user mocked tech billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk's initiative to increase immigration of Indians to the USA, by drawing attention to the Indian poop festival Gorehabba.

The Gorehabba festival is held every year in western India during Diwali, the festival of lights and excrement. In addition to smearing with excrement, celebrations of the festival elsewhere in India also revolve around various types of urine handling.

”Happy Diwali to all of you celebrating the festival of lights – around the world – from India to Sweden.

And a special thank you to all of you who choose to live and work in Sweden and contribute to our competitiveness – not least with cutting-edge expertise in IT. It makes us stronger.” pic.twitter.com/nJUWpFWC1H

— Moderaterna (@moderaterna) October 31, 2024

Indians are often aware that the outside world has difficulty understanding their special relationship with latrine waste and the smell that this can cause even among Indian individuals abroad.

However, the information has not reached everyone. On X, an Indian man defends Elon Musk's initiative by writing the following in a viral comment:

“At least we shit on the streets. You shit indoors, near where you eat.”

The user's claim is not without foundation. According to SVT, 600 million people in India lacked some type of toilet in 2014, and therefore defecated on the streets.

Today, the UN and local authorities have tried to build a few million toilets. But getting people to use them is slow, for “cultural reasons.”

“One of the problems is that many Indians have deep-rooted cultural and religious beliefs about cleanliness and impurity, which affects their toilet habits. According to these beliefs, it is unclean to have a toilet indoors or near the home, as it pollutes the home and family. It is also unclean to share a toilet with other people, especially those belonging to lower castes or other social groups. Therefore, many Indians prefer to continue to relieve themselves outdoors, where they feel freer and cleaner,” says, for example, the site Indien.nu, which is run by Swedish emigrants in India.

In Sweden, most people have so far come into contact with Indian defecation culture through gypsies, a people native to India. In the summer of 2022, for example, attention was drawn to how Roma had a poop fight in Hammarby sjöstad south of Stockholm. But the gypsy poop culture is basically ordinary Indian culture, and something that Swedes will gain more experience of in the future, when the government here at home, as in the US, invests in increased immigration of “highly qualified Indians” in the future.