Mystical India

aka: Sim Sim Salabim

Just an average day in India...

India is a mystical place of turbans, rajahs, holy men (yogis and fakirs), snake charmers (and other slightly demented street performers), the Ganges and Gandhi. It's also full of temples, overgrown with humid jungle, and occasionally home to an evil cult, elephants and tigers. Snakes are everywhere, so it's a good idea to have a cute and heroic mongoose with you to take them on. At least, that's what fiction tells us.

Often, this trope goes hand-in-hand with a case of Mistaken Nationality and Interchangeable Asian Cultures, as India for some reason takes on Arab and Persian characteristics. In some older Hollywood movies, it's not uncommon to see Aladdin and Genies^note For the record, the original tale of Aladdin was from Syria but is written into One Thousand and One Nights by a Frenchman. Out-of-universe, Genies are Arabic in origin. Aladdin and the story's in-universe setting is Chinese (but with all the Islamic trappings, so it is possible the original Muslim storyteller merely called it "Chinese" to make it sound exotic), the evil sorcerer is northwest African, and the one thing that is Indian is magic carpets. tossed together with Hindu deities. To be fair, this is Truth in Television to a large extent:

• India has a large Muslim population (13.4%, according to The Other Wiki) and parts of the country were ruled by Islamic kingdoms for century-spanning portions of its history, such as the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire.
• Following the Partition of 1947, parts of what was formally British India were separated into what became the modern nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh, which both have majority Muslim populations, so India's certainly been more influenced by the Middle East than most Western countries have been.
• The languages of northern India are mostly Indo-Aryan in origin, making them distantly related to Persian and — even more distantly — to English (That's where the category of "Indo-European" languages comes from, of which Indo-Aryan is a subset, just like Germanic). Classical Persian was the lingua franca of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India, and Bangladesh from medieval times into the 19th century. Persianate culture was dominant among the elite and educated.

Becoming a bit of a Discredited Trope these days, at least in Europe and North America, where there have been significant pushes for more modern and accurate portrayals of foreign cultures, and a notable percentage of the population can and will call works set in India out on any inaccuracies. Of course, even Bollywood itself has released multiple films set in the Mughal Empire, leading to further confusion in an already confusing mix. Anime and manga also get a sprinkle of this trope due to the influence of Buddhism - a religion that originated in India - on centuries of Japanese culture. Victorian-style Anglophilia also carried elements of Mughal and British Raj-era stereotypes of India.

See Stereotypical South Asian English, Countrystan, which is Fictional Country north and west of India, with a similar Muslim influence with a touch of Ruritania, and Holiday in Cambodia, which is Southeast Asia whose region was heavily influenced by pre-Islamic India. It may be possible to constrast with Bollywood Nerd, where India is associated with science and technology rather then magic.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Kushan in Berserk, with some "Arabian Nights" Days and The Empire thrown in, and fakirs able to turn animals into monstrous humanoid soldiers. This mix-up is not as outrageous as it may sound, as it's a fictional universe with fictional states that only loosely correspond with a number of characteristics of some real-life civilisations which holds also true to the Midland which is an amalgamation of western European countries.
• While his country is unnamed, Shuraiya from Shugo Chara!, and his followers, are extemely stereotypically Indian.
• Kaolla Su and her family in Love Hina feature some Indian stereotypes, although the manga establishes their homeland, the island kingdom of Molmol, as being in the South Pacific.
• As it does with every other racial stereotype in the book, Mobile Fighter G Gundam plays this to maximum effect with Neo India's Cobra Gundam, piloted by a hypnotist/snake-charmer. Who also has a giant cobra as a pet.
• In Eyeshield 21 the World Cup arc has this in, of course, Team India. They all wear turbans, one of the players is a snake charmer, and their coach has a very thick beard.

Comic Books

• The Indian state of Gaipajama (with town names like Sethru and Jamjah) in the Tintin book Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh.
• Asterix visits this version of India in Asterix and the Magic Carpet.
• Matthew Patel from Scott Pilgrim is an Indian-American that inexplicably has the ability to conjure fireballs and summon demon hipster chicks as backup dancers to his Bollywood-style dance moves.
• Omar, one of the Escapist's friends and allies in The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. Though he's from a fictional North African country and has an Arab name, he also has Indian facial features, vague magic powers, and a Sikh turban. This is totally intentional, given that the Escapist is a superhero with a fake history stretching back to the 1940s.
• Lextropur in the Nick Knatterton adventure of The Indian Diamond Suitcase.

Films — Live-Action

• The 2019 live-action remake of Disney's Aladdin has incorporated Bollywood elements in an otherwise vaguely Arab-set Agrabah.
• India as seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, although being set in one of the princely states (ruled by princes of India that co-operated with the British in exchange for free rein), the whole 'very backwards' thing is justified. A stereotypical Indian wise man even shows up in Egypt in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Jumanji's world inside the gameboard seemed to be a Flanderized mix of this and Darkest Africa.
• The James Bond film Octopussy takes us to a very trope-laden India. Snake charmers, sword swallowers, fire breathers, fire walkers, beds of nails... the lot.
• Ricky Gervais's character in Ghost Town seems to follow this mentality when asking fellow dentist Dr. Prashar for advice:
  Bertram Pincus: Dr. Prashar - you're from a... scary country, right?
  [pause]
  Dr. Prashar: I'm from India...
  Bertram Pincus: But, you're not... Christian, like us?
  [pause]
  Dr. Prashar: I'm a Hindu...
  Bertram Pincus: Yeah. So, um, how would you extract information from a hostile?
  Dr. Prashar: Well... as a... Hindu person... I would just... ask him... politely...
• The country of the "Easterners" of Help!
• The Jackie Chan movie Kung Fu Yoga, despite being hyped up as a joint production between Indian and Chinese studios, ends up overdoing this trope that it makes the James Bond movie tame in comparison. Probably why the movie became a hit in China and flopped badly in India.
• A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song hilariously subverts it. At first, it seems that the Wicked Stepmother's live-in spiritual guru Ravi is this trope played straight, as most of his scenes involve him advising her to do things like meditate and sacrifice food to gods in order to achieve inner peace...and then Katie finds him yelling in a Brooklyn Rage accent while watching a sports game. Turns out "Ravi" is actually an Italian-Indian actor named Tony Gupta; the stepmother automatically assumed he was a spiritual guru just because he looked the part, and he went along with it so he could practice being immersed in a role.

Literature

• Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Books and their various adaptations. Kipling's Jungle Book story "Rikki-Tikki Tavi" is the origin of the cute and heroic mongoose trope.
  • "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" in all likelihood is itself based on the Panchatantra "The Faithful Mongoose", as was a Sindibad tale (where a weasel was substituted for the mongoose). Kipling was pretty cognizant of Muslim and Hindu folktales since childhood.
  • Kim can't be left out; it may be the best example of this being a cross-section of India during The Raj.
• Cleverly subverted by Barbara Cleverly in The Last Kashmiri Rose (2001) - as there is no modern interest to display Colonial India as a Disneyfied place of superstitious natives ruled by brave colonial administrators and turbaned rifle-armed Martial Race troopers, she could freely display the vices of the system: idleness, drunkenness, exploitation of cheap labor (even poor Brits could afford Indian servants), incompetence...
• The fictional Indian city of Hara in Robin Jarvis' Deptford Histories book Thomas, populated by Talking Animals. There are temples, a humid jungle, elephants, and anthropomorphic mongoose warriors battling against an evil snake cult.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks:
  • In "The Hurricane" (a Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of "Radio Bombay"), Miss Brooks, Mr. Boynton, Walter Denton and Harriet Conklin listen to a report on Walter's home-made radio warning of the imminent arrival of a fierce hurricane. Unbeknownst to them, the station was broadcasting from Bombay, India. Before signing off in anticipation of the hurricane, the reporter advises them to board up the windows with bamboo shoots, disperse all natives to the hills, and tether their elephants.
  • In "King and Brooks", Miss Brooks dreams she marries a maharajah. In Miss Brooks' dream her elderly landlady Mrs. Davis is the head dancing girl while principal Mr. Conklin appears as a snake charmer.
• Outsourced - Right outside the office you see the street has some sort of Middle Eastern-looking drapes hanging in the middle of the road.
• The Far Pavilions - the 1984 TV series and the 1978 novel on which it had been based - has them all: snakes as murder weapons, cruel and superstitious natives, sati, characters Raised by Natives, the might of The Raj putting things back in order and so on.
• Goodness Gracious Me, where the British-Asian cast subverted this trope with a recurring gag about a naive group of Indian and Pakistani students opting to spend their gap year seeking enlightenment in faraway backward Third World Britain. They encounter all the typical British tropes; for instance, a cockney Pearly King, and deal with them in the same language and manner that British people used to describe quaint things and people they met in India.

Music

• Invoked in tool's song "Die Eier von Satan". The song is a joke revolving around a cookie recipe, with the last steps before baking being to roll the cookies in powdered sugar then speak the magic words "Sim salabim bumba saladu saladim".

Pro Wrestling

• The Great Khali. Tigers, sitars, Bollywood dancing, the Mowgli haircut - over his career, his WWE iconography has had it all.

Radio

• Parodied in Bleak Expectations when Gently Benevolent poses as an Indian dignitary with an over-the-top accent and a number of stereotypical catchphrases, along with a huge turban set with a jewel that definitely isn't sucking anybody's soul out. He's quite offended when Pip says that his costume and accent were racist.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer: The Kingdoms of Ind, in the far southeast of the Old World, are a fractious land of small kingdoms, deep jungles and many strange gods, a haven for spice traders and home to many elephants and to tribes of tiger-headed beastmen, in contrast to the goat- and sheep-headed varieties prevalent in the western lands.

Video Games

• Punch-Out!! has Great Tiger, a "boxer" who fights with attacks like teleporting and illusions. Justified, as Great Tiger is also performs magic for show, and he presumably plays up some of the stereotypes as part of his image.
• Street Fighter has Dhalsim, who wears a skull necklace (probably a reference to Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction) and uses attacks with names like "Yoga Fire". Later story developments give a more down-to-earth story to Dhalsim's skulls: they are the skulls of little children who died of a disease in his home village, thus they're Tragic Keepsakes.
• World of Warcraft: In the World's End Tavern in Shattrath's Lower City, there's an NPC with this as its name.
• The "Maharajah" level in Quackshot features, among other things, a fire-breathing tiger.
• Diddy Kong Racing has Taj the Blue Elephant Genie, with his trademark stereotypical Indian accent.
• The skin and song "Whoop-de-doo" in Lumines has this as a motif. The song is comprised entirely of traditional Indian instruments and vocal samples, the blocks take the appearance of stones encrusted with pink and green gems, the background is an elaborate doorway leading out into a partially cloudy sunset, and the cursor is a multifoil curtained arch. When played against the AI with this skin, the AI character is an androgynous person whose appearance is inspired by Indian folkloric tapestries.
• The Pokémon Medicham plays up aspects of this trope, particularly the pink legs resembling bedlah pants. When it Mega Evolves, it's played up further, as it appears to wear a turban with a big jewel on the front, golden armlets, and teardrop-shaped crystals dangling from the top of said "pants."
• EarthBound (1994) has Dalaam, a vaguely Indian place existing on a Floating Continent. The mystical training that Prince Poo receives there has strong overtones of Buddhism.
• Ageof Empires II: While there's no actual mysticism involved (being a historical game and all), the Forgotten expansion's original depiction of India left a lot to be desired. Before Dynasties of India split the Indians into four civilizations (adding three new ones and overhauling the previous Indians with the Hindustanis, retaining some bonuses and gaining new ones), the entire subcontinent, with all of its unique and diverse cultures, was consolidated into one civilization. It originally had the Middle Eastern architecture set used by explicitly Muslim cultures (excluding the Byzantines), incorporating a bit of "Arabian Nights" Days into the civilization. This was rectified with the Rise of the Rajas expansion, giving them a unique architecture set based on native Hindus. However, this still clashed with the clearly Islamic-inspired specialty of camels and gunpowder (this was made even worse by a unique tech, Sultans, keeping its name after the architecture switch). Nowadays, the Indians are called the Hindustanis, representing Northern India and its Muslim invaders, so this trope is averted for the most part. Although the Hindu architecture is still present, this can be (and is frequently) justified by saying only the Muslim invaders used their native architecture (this is reinforced by the brand new Wonder and unique building called the Caravanserai).

Webcomics

• Aecast: All of human society seems to be set in a magical version of India mixed with a magical version of the Middle East.

Western Animation

• Batman: Gotham Knight: Played straight, complete with mongoose and cobra action. The plot of the short is that Bruce goes to India to get lessons from a fakir on managing pain.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Heavily lampshaded in the episode "Wishbones", where Billy goes on a Jonny Quest-style adventure, and Irwin is cast as Hadji.
  Billy: Why're you talking funny?
  Irwin: [Indian accent] Because I am from Calcutta, in the mystical East.
  Billy: No, you're not, you live down the block, and what's with that weird thingy on your head?
  Irwin: [dropping accent] It's a turban! It's what I wear. I'm from the mystical East! I'm in character, yo, so just GET OFF ME!!
• Jonny Quest: Hadji grew up in a version of this India. He could control snakes by playing his flute, had fakir-style powers such as levitation, and incredible skill at hypnotizing others.
  • Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures: Gave Hadji some quite sleazy hacker skills; though this was meant to subvert this stereotype, little did they know that hacker skills would make him even more of a stereotypical Indian, now that India is a big software development superpower in reality.
• The Simpsons:
  • Shows up in an old episode, where Homer and Apu travel to India to visit the Kwik-E-Mart HQ.
  • And again in the later episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore", where Mr Burns sends Homer to supervise a new nuclear power plant in India. While Homer has a very stereotypical image of the country, the Indian workers are revealed to be just playing along with it because he offers very advantageous working conditions - even better than the ones he had himself back in Springfield, in fact. Burns is not amused.

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