The Myth of the “Smelly” South Asian
From colonial disgust to “imagine the smell” memes, the racist trope is back. But the real question is: who decides what stinks?
When Rahma Ahmed was in seventh grade, she remembers crowding around her friend’s lunches, which would feature the likes of idli sambar and paneer. “We would all really enjoy the food that his mom cooked and packed for him,” Ahmed told The Juggernaut. But not everyone was so appreciative. One day, a classmate interrupted them with a familiar taunt: “Ew, that stinks. I can’t believe you guys are eating that!”
Ahmed was shaken. “I was so upset,” she said. But she was familiar with the trope — and so were her parents, who “consciously” didn’t give her home-cooked food so she wouldn’t be accused of “stinking like curry.”
For decades, South Asians in the diaspora have found themselves on the receiving end of an enduring, racially coded stereotype: we smell bad. Regardless of whether it’s curry, body odor, lunches, or spices, the message so many of us received remains the same. We thought we’d made progress, yet the “South Asians are smelly” discourse on TikTok and X has only exploded in recent years. For example, #IndianGymStink and #IndianSmell has racked up over 70 million views. Why?