In the episode “Homer the Heretic,” Springfield’s multifaith volunteer fire department mobilizes to save the Simpsons’ home—and Homer’s life. Reverend Lovejoy explains to Homer that God was working through his friends and neighbors, including Ned Flanders, a Christian, and Krusty the Clown, a Jew. But the minister comes up short when he points toward the other firefighter, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. After a nonplussed pause, the minister characterizes the convenience store operator’s religion as “miscellaneous.” This level of ignorance is too much for the normally mild-mannered Asian immigrant. Apu explodes: “Hindu! There are 700 million of us!” Corrected, Lovejoy replies with condescension, “Aw, that’s super.”
Despite a surge of immigration from the Indian subcontinent and a growing interest in beliefs outside the Judeo-Christian traditions, most Americans are as in the dark about Hinduism as Reverend Lovejoy. A few aspects of the faith have penetrated Springfield’s consciousness: Lisa patronizes a New Age store called Karma-Ceuticals, which features a shrine to Vishnu and a Kama Sutra poster, and where the owner offers the traditional Hindu greeting, “Namaste.” There is a Hindu priest in town, Sadruddin Mabaradad, host of an exercise show called “Yoga Party” on the Springfield television station and author of the ghost-written The Unsinkable Sadruddin Mabaradad. “Just let your head flop back and forward,” the priest tells viewers. “Your neck is a well-cooked piece of asparagus.” (Incidentally, Sadruddin is typically a Muslim, not Hindu, name.)
For other residents of the town, Apu is their introduction to Hinduism. Simpsons creator Matt Groening, a fan of obscure Indian music, initially suggested that the operator of the Kwik-E-Mart come from the subcontinent. “With Apu, that kind of character has not been seen on U.S. TV,” Groening told a British magazine. At first, writer-producer Al Jean told TV Guide, “we were worried he might be considered an offensive stereotype.”1
Apu in the series was named for a character in a trilogy of Indian films made in the 1950s by famed director Satjayit Ray. In one episode, a photo on the wall of The Simpsons character’s father is similar to that of the actor who played Apu’s father in the Ray movie Pather Panchali, one of Groening’s all-time favorites.
In many ways, the character is stereotypical of Asian immigrants to North America, and a model minority member. Born in Pakistan, Apu migrated with his family to Ramatpur in India and later studied at the Calcutta Institute of Technology (“CalTech”), where he graduated at the top of his class of seven million. In the 1970s, he came to the United States on a student visa to do graduate study in computer programming at the Springfield Heights Institute of Technology (try the initials). During his nine years at the school, he took a job at the convenience store to pay off his student loans, a choice that evolved into a career. Apu often works eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, and, on at least one occasion, worked ninety-six hours straight. He is frequently the victim of shoplifters and armed robbers.
However, not all of the stereotypes Apu embodies are positive. For example, he is apparently a Hindu nationalist: On the shelf in his apartment is a record album entitled “The Concert against Bangladesh,” with a mushroom cloud on the cover, obliterating India’s poverty-stricken, Muslim neighbor. He refers to Springfield residents with a different area code as “foreign devils.” An obsequious shopkeeper, he is known for outrageous overcharging ($1.85 for a 29-cent postage stamp and $4.20 for $2.00 worth of gas) and for selling foods well beyond their expiration dates. “I think he really loves his job and the power that it gives him to frustrate other people,” Groening says.2 As Apu has prospered—offering everything from flavored iced treats called “Squishees,” to beef jerky, to Playdude magazine, to violent video games—he has been able to follow another immigrant pattern, that of bringing to America other members of his family.
Yet next to Marge and Ned Flanders, Apu is probably the most good-hearted and saintly character on The Simpsons, qualities presented on the show as an outgrowth of his Hindu faith and of his Indian culture. At his dinner table, with Homer and Marge as guests, he recites a grace that is clearly a parody of one familiar to the Simpsons: “Good rice, good curry, good Gandhi, let’s hurry.” Of course, the beloved independence leader and martyr Mohandas K. Gandhi, although worshiped by millions of Indians, is not a part of the Hindu pantheon. On another occasion, Apu swears by “the many arms” of the god Vishnu and keeps a statue of Shiva in his apartment, but his continuing allegiance is to a deity less well known in the West—Ganesha.
With four arms, a potbelly, and the head of an elephant, Ganesha is a god who bestows happiness and banishes sorrow—ideal for a character in The Simpsons. There are various explanations for how and why he came to have a pachyderm’s head: he betrayed his father, Shiva; he defended his mother; he lost a race to his brother. Ganesha is popular in the west and south of India and is the focus of a joyous, annual ten-day festival in Bombay. Most statues of Ganesha, such as the one Apu places in a shrine in the Kwik-E-Mart’s employee lounge, are two to four feet tall. In his first encounter with the statue, Homer is particularly scornful of Apu’s devotion, in much the same way that some evangelical Christians still dismiss Hindus as “pagans” or “heathens.” For offering the statue a peanut, Homer is ordered out of the store by the Indian. “No offense, Apu,” Homer says, “but when they were handing out religions, you musta been out taking a whiz.” Naturally, there is some theological sparring between Apu and Ned. In one episode, Flanders assesses his chances of winning a baking contest by saying he “wouldn’t have a Hindu’s chance in heaven.” On a drive to Canada to buy cheaper prescription drugs, Ned tries to convert Apu, who tells him, “I don’t believe in one God.”
Over time, in small ways and large, and in more than a dozen episodes, Apu articulates essential elements of Hinduism, Indian culture, and the plight of immigrants, including:
1. Vegetarianism. Apu wears a tee-shirt with a red circle and slash, superimposed on a cow, with Bart’s slogan, “Don’t Have a Cow, Man!” and he secretly substitutes tofu for beef in the hot dogs he sells. The storekeeper is a vegetarian, but he acknowledges to Lisa that it is not easy. The girl lets slip that she includes cheese in her diet, which Apu says he does not, since it comes from an animal. Lisa concludes that he must think her a monster for this lapse. Indeed he does, Apu replies with a smile, in what is a clear distortion of Hinduism. “As any yogi or Hindu will tell you,” says yoga instructor Ted Srinathadas Czukor, “we drink milk and eat ghee, yogurt, cheese, lassi, etc. This is why the cow is considered such an important animal in the Hindu culture.”
2. Reincarnation. Sideshow Mel, one of Krusty the Clown’s television sidekicks, says, “You only live once.” Apu pipes up, “Hey, speak for yourself.”
3. Meditation. Apu has a secret stairway in the Kwik-E-Mart that leads to a rooftop garden, where, he tells Lisa, “I go when I need some refuge from the modern world.”
4. Pluralism. “I learned long ago, Lisa, to tolerate others, rather than forcing my beliefs on them,” Apu tells the girl. “You know, you can influence people without badgering them always.” The Simpsons writers used Apu to take a well-deserved swipe at anti-immigrant hysteria in California, which gave rise to a referendum called Proposition 187 in the 1990s that would have barred the children of undocumented workers from public schools and from all social services. In the episode, it is a proposed local ordinance called Proposition 24, which would expel all immigrants from Springfield in order to pay for patrols to guard against marauding bears. Homer is all for the measure until he figures out that it will affect Apu. Apu has overstayed his student visa by years, although the merchant has done everything he can think of to fit into American society, including going bowling and learning to square dance.
Things get out of hand when an anti-immigrant mob gathers outside the Kwik-E-Mart in support of Proposition 24. Apu attempts to placate the mob by feeding his statue of Ganesha Yoo-Hoo, a chocolate milk drink. “If you help me out, I’ll give you the rest of the bottle,” he explains to the deity, demonstrating that bargaining with the divine is not confined to the Judeo-Christian tradition. (Even for well-informed Indian viewers, there are inside jokes on The Simpsons. Six months earlier, in India, a craze swept the country as some Hindus claimed a “milk miracle” in which a Ganesha statue appeared to be drinking milk from a spoon. “The milk-drinking episode was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of nations,” says Acharya Palaniswami, editor-in-chief of the U.S. monthly magazine Hinduism Today.)
When Apu’s offering to the Hindu deity fails, the convenience store operator panics. He replaces his shrine to Ganesha with a periodicals rack, featuring magazine covers of movie actors Tom Cruise, a prominent Scientologist, and Cruise’s former wife, Nicole Kidman. “Who needs Ganesha when I have Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to guide me?” he tells Homer. Still, his betrayal provokes a tearful flashback to his departure from India, where his parents urge him, “Never forget who you really are.” Apu admits that, in an attempt to fit in as an American, he has turned his back on his faith. “I cannot deny my roots and keep up this charade,” he says. “I only did it because I love this land, where I have the freedom to say, and to think, and to charge whatever I want!” In the end, Lisa realizes that Apu has been in the United States long enough to qualify for amnesty, which enables him to take—and pass—the citizenship test.
5. Assimilation. A member of the Brahmin caste (a Brahmin would never be a shopkeeper in India), Apu faces similar challenges to maintaining his minority faith when it comes time to marry. Like Jews who become Episcopalians and Koreans who become Baptists, the immigrant must decide what road to take. In the U.S., many modern immigrant parents still prefer arranged marriages, although they are more willing to make the process seem voluntary. Apu’s mother arrives from India, wanting to know why he says he cannot marry the young woman to whom he was betrothed when he was eight (sealed with the promise of a dowry that includes ten goats, an electric fan, and a textile factory). Her arrival affords her an opportunity to explain to Bart and Lisa the meaning of the red dot, called a gopi or bindi, on her forehead.
The main reason Apu does not want to marry is that he has been having the time of his life playing the American field after starring in Springfield’s Charity Bachelor Auction. A plot to convince Apu’s mother that he is already married—to Marge—fails. Apu protests that one in twenty-five arranged marriages ends in divorce (compared to one in two U.S. “love matches”), but he eventually agrees to the match, to be held in the Simpsons’ backyard. Upstairs before the ceremony, Apu worries about the custom of not seeing his future bride until the wedding ceremony, and wonders if the whole world has gone mad. Homer, Mr. Diversity, blames it on “your screwy country.”
Alas, there is no Hindu priest (perhaps Mabaradad is out of town), so Reverend Lovejoy agrees to be drafted to conduct the ceremony. After all, as the minister observes, when it comes to performing a wedding, “Christ is Christ,” and anyway Lovejoy has consulted a Hindu Web site to customize the service. The wedding goes forward, with Apu wearing a turban and riding an elephant, heralded by trumpets and guests wearing floral garlands. Homer attempts to break up the ceremony the best way he can think of, by dressing as Ganesha, complete with elephant head. He shouts that Ganesha is angered by the wedding and that all present will die unless it is called off, but he is subdued by an Indian guest and stuck up in a tree until the ceremony is completed. To his delight, Apu finds his bride Manjula beautiful and witty, and is reconciled to the match. The couple walks around the sacred fire hand in hand.
The course of the love that follows is not without interruption, as Homer and Marge learn when they are invited to the Nahasapeemapetilons’ book-filled apartment for dinner. A fight erupts between the Indian spouses, and the Simpsons excuse themselves. As they leave the apartment building, a copy of the Kama Sutra comes flying out the window and lands at Homer’s feet, provoking his interest in at least one aspect of Indian culture. For the most part, however, Apu is known to be so devoted to his wife that all the other husbands in Springfield fear he will make trouble for them on Valentine’s Day. But later he has an affair, scandalizing the community.
In another episode, Homer sets off a series of events that culminates in a TV exposé of Apu’s shady practices at the Kwik-E-Mart, and the merchant is stripped of his franchise. At first he is angry at Homer for causing this misfortune, but he realizes that his Hindu faith requires that he make amends to his customer. “I blamed you for squealing,” Apu says, “but then I realized, it was I who wronged you.” It is up to the Indian to work off his karmic debt to Homer, who shocks Apu by pointing out that “karma can only be apportioned out by the cosmos.” There is but one way the matter can be resolved and Apu restored to his rightful place at the Springfield Kwik-E-Mart: Homer must accompany him to the chain’s Himalayan mountaintop headquarters in India and plead his friend’s case. As one might expect, when the pair arrives at the airport in India they encounter young Christian proselytizers rather than the Hare Krishnas familiar to American travelers. In any event, the debt is forgiven, and balance returns to the universe.
Like Catholics and Protestants, some Hindus have objected to their portrayal on The Simpsons. In the mid-1990s, Southern California Hindus protested the representation of Ganesha. The president of the Federation of Hindu Associations, Prithvi Raj Singh, called Fox Television to complain. A spokeswoman returned his call, Singh told Christian Century magazine, offering the network’s standard response. “She said it was not a planned attack on Hinduism. . . . ‘The show treats other religions humorously too,’ she said.”3 Unlike the Catholic League and Media Action Network for Asian Americans, however, the Hindu group was not able to force The Simpsons to knuckle under.
With the help of Hinduism Today, I informally surveyed attitudes toward The Simpsons. What I found was that Indian immigrants and adolescent and teenage children of immigrants—especially orthodox Hindus—were generally offended by Apu and his stereotype. They also have specific complaints about what they feel is doctrinal error and distortion. “Hindu kids growing up in America have enough trouble adjusting during middle and high school, and they don’t need The Simpsons fueling teasers with misinformed jokes about Hinduism,” Amit Chatwani, then a Princeton University student, said. “I think that Hinduism is trampled to add more laughs to the show. People who don’t know anything about Hinduism watch the show with the idea of a ‘goofy, sacred elephant statue’ that is Lord Ganesha. This skewed view then becomes their only knowledge of Hinduism.”
By contrast, American converts to Hinduism, steeped in our culture of irony, seemed amused and unfazed by the portrayal of their faith on the series. “Unlike Hindus, The Simpsons have no sacred cows,” said Fred Stella, an actor and yoga instructor from Michigan who identifies himself as an Italian-American adherent of Hinduism. “But more than making fun of Hinduism, the writers tend to mock people’s perception of Hinduism. They do the same with Christianity.”
Ty Schwach, an orthodox Hindu from Los Angeles, said that the humor involving Hindus and Apu “seems quite clearly to be poking fun more at the stereotypical ideas and preconceived notions of mainstream America regarding the Indian culture. The incidents involving Apu always leave me feeling a sense of respect for him and the way he responds to the provincial notions of his neighbors and friends who truly know very little about his culture and religion.”
Bo Lozoff of the Human Kindness Foundation in Durham, North Carolina, agreed. “I like the way The Simpsons makes no effort to pretend that elements of Hinduism, like Ganesha, seem sensible. I trust that perspective, because we know where we stand with each other,” he said. “What I enjoy about the show’s religious plurality is that the bottom line gets back to the actions of the adherent and not the trappings of his or her religion that can seem weird or blasphemous to outsiders.”
There are exceptions to the division between American and Indian Hindus—those Indian immigrants to the United States who said they see beyond the errors and the caricature. “Sure, it skewers us,” said the Indian-born novelist and journalist S. V. Date, author of the satires Deep Water and Smokeout. “But The Simpsons skewers everybody, and in the process, it’s obvious that it likes us, and that’s what makes it okay.”
Kartik Mohan, an animator from Bombay studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York, said he is a huge fan of The Simpsons and watches episodes repeatedly and learns many by heart. “I don’t think there is anything the least bit offensive about their treatment of the Hindu religion or their depiction of Indian people over and above the general irreverence towards all people and norms that makes the show so uniquely funny.” He acknowledged that “there are a number of hot-headed Hindu fundamentalists who are defensive about their status as a newly emergent, highly successful immigrant group in the United States and are all too eager to take offense at anything even obliquely derisive of our culture.”
Vikram Rangala, a Hindu who has taught a course on spirituality in popular culture at the University of Florida, said he is also a huge fan of the show, which he considers “the best television show on the air.” It is “supportive of religion and even spiritual itself,” although it does require “a depth of understanding beyond stereotypes.”
“Apu is a sophisticated composite,” says Sanjay Patel, an Indian American animator who worked on The Simpsons for a season, before joining Pixar in 1996. “My hat’s off to the writers for the Sajit Ray reference. Kudos there. That’s very heady. It’s a really smart choice.” Apu, he told me in 2006, five years after the first edition of this book was published, is “very truthful, a very clever composite, because it’s relatable. But I want to get The Simpsons writers and artists by the ears and tell them this: That caricature has changed. There are a lot of Asians, Indians who are doing a lot more than running convenience stores. We are also affecting culture in terms of art, design, and music. And I want to raise my hand and say, ‘Hey, I’m one of them.’ It’s a bit dated now.”
For Acharya Palaniswami, the editor of Hinduism Today, the double-edged response to The Simpsons is entirely understandable: “It is often difficult for good, religious people to smile at their faith’s foibles. That’s natural. Religion is a serious matter for the devout, and when things they hold precious are held up to humorous scrutiny or even ridicule, they are offended. Among Hindus, such offense is not unknown, but Hindus are more forgiving and perhaps a little more at ease with disdain and ignorance than most. Largely due to an innate ethic of tolerance, Hindus can and do personally enjoy Homer’s stupidity and narrow-mindedness toward their religion, and Apu’s unctuous money grubbing. They’ve seen it before, and endured less good-hearted ridicule—probably daily if they live in Memphis or London.”
Palaniswami stresses that humor can signal cultural receptivity: “Hindus in America don’t yet understand that ridicule is actually part of the process of acceptance of minorities here, that once a minority has become prominent enough to attract ridicule in fictional pieces, be it cartoons, movies or TV shows, that is part of a process of education. It does seem strange, even cruel, but the creation of ‘stock jokes’ about a minority is part of letting them in, so to speak, welcoming them into the great melting pot.
“Still, Hindus will cringe knowing that The Simpsons is seen by millions of Americans who don’t have a clue about the ancient and profound Hindu beliefs and customs. At least when characters go after a Christian or a Jew, most in the audience have a sense of the reality that writers are mining for humorous nuggets. They know about Christian beliefs and the people who follow Christianity, mainstream and fringe. When it comes to the Hindu references, the uninformed audience sees only the denigration, the inflated tale, the twisted view. They have met a dozen Indian spice-or-sari store owners, but probably have not been introduced to a single Indian neurosurgeon or high-tech CEO.
“Hindus will note the factual failings of the writers, who would do well to consult more with those who know. . . . Most Hindus will enjoy the fact that karma and reincarnation are subjects for today’s films and cartoons, reflecting the fact that the West is intensely interested in and believes in these fundamental Hindu principles. They will smile to see Apu rejecting Lord Ganesha, then coming back, just as so many Indians abroad have done, coming to America the Beautiful, Land of Money, then later rediscovering their faith.”
What would the editor of Hinduism Today have Homer Simpson understand about the “miscellaneous” Hindu faith?
“Tell Homer there are a billion Hindus in the world; one-sixth of the human family living on Earth today. Tell Homer that in Hinduism it’s okay to be a heretic, an agnostic, a disbeliever. Tell him there is no eternal hell in Hinduism, and that all spiritual paths are honored and encouraged. Tell him Hindus believe every single soul will ultimately reach God, not just the saintly ones, not just the chosen believers of this Christian denomination or that Muslim sect. Tell him Hindus learn the value of nonviolence from childhood and have spread the principle to the far corners of the Earth. Tell him all that, and you might one day find Homer going back to India for good.”