I am sitting in Vietnam right now.
In two days, I have watched Indians dance on the airport tarmac in Ho Chi Minh City, take over Train Street in Hanoi for Chaiyya Chaiyya videos, do garba in Danang — at a theme park — and blast religious slogans from luxury tour buses while people from other countries sit beside them, saying nothing.
I can’t defend any of it. Not because I don’t want to. But because there’s not one incident to explain away.
There are too many.
If anyone needed evidence that branding and media messaging actually work — not theoretically, but behaviorally — this is it.
We have spent years building a cultural narrative in India: that we are superior, that we have arrived, that our culture is worth asserting everywhere. The constant media reinforcement, the religious symbolism in public life, the othering of communities — it has worked. Not in a good way. It has produced a traveling class that feels entitled to bring their domestic posturing into other countries’ airports, beaches, and streets.
The lack of civic sense was always there. The jugaad, the rule-breaking, the noise — none of that is new.
What’s new is the pride attached to it.
The instinct is to assume this behaviour comes from a lack of exposure. First-time travelers. Tier-3 towns. People who don’t know better.
Wrong.
The dance video on the HCMC tarmac? Shot by the founder of a Bombay-based jewellery brand. And a travel company founder was involved too. Who then defended it after the video went viral.
A few months ago in Phu Quoc, a luxury wedding blasted music across an entire beach. Hotels nearby were complaining. This was not a budget group. These were people who could afford to fly to a Vietnamese island and rent out a beach celebration.
The tour buses shouting religious chants while international tourists sit alongside — those are not backpacker buses. Those are premium, curated tour packages.
The arrogance isn’t coming from people without exposure. It often lives at the top.
from okslop
As an Indian, it is saddening to watch.
Not because Indians are uniquely bad travelers — every nationality has its version of this. But because we’ve added something specific: the smugness. The sense that asserting Indian identity loudly, in someone else’s country, is somehow an act of pride rather than imposition.
We have convinced ourselves we have arrived. And the world is beginning to agree — just not in the way we imagined.
- Saurabh Parmar https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurabhparmar is a Fractional CMO who connects business with brand and culture to identify trends and opportunities
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