Every now and then, when I come across new people, I am asked this question: Are you from India? The sentence structure may differ: “So you from India?”, “Where in India are you from?” and even “Are you from Madras?” My Nepali nationality comes into action: No, I am from Nepal, toned to clearly let the questioner know that their basis for the judgement is wrong. I simply do not understand what makes some people think that they can tell the nationality of people by judging their looks. If that was possible at all, citizenship identification problem would have never existed.

I see two possible reasons why people make the mistake of asking that question. The first is their ignorance. Some people think all non-whites can be classified into three groups: African, Indian and Chinese. Just like all whites are ‘Americane’ to most people in Nepal. These people ask a person from Taiwan if he is from China and ask a Pakistani if she is from India without knowing the effect of the question. They fall in to the category of people who know not and know not they know not.

The second reason people ask the question is due to lack of proper etiquette. Why take risk predicting someones nationality when a simple question like “Where are you from?” would do the trick. If the answer is as per the expectation, one could always boast ones knowledge by saying “I thought so because….”. But if the reply is something different from the expectation, that would save a conversation from going wrong. At least that would have saved so many conversations that went wrong with me.

Nationality is something that everyone takes pride in. To me, asking if I am from a country I am not from is a serious mistake. Is that so with you?