The South Asian Nation, formerly called the South Asian Tribe, is an Instagram account dedicated to fighting patriarchy, breaking stigmas, celebrating representation, and curating South Asian content. The account features meaningful posts from South Asian creators so that they can reach a bigger audience and is a place where you can find educational accounts to follow, books by South Asians, brands started by South Asians, and more. Moreover, the account is also home to original posts that help empower others. Via email, I was able to communicate with Divya, who is directly involved with this amazing platform, and ask her a few questions about the South Asian Nation.
When inquired about what the South Asian Nation is and its purpose, Divya said,
The South Asian Nation is a platform that celebrates the representation of South Asians around the world in a very unique way. We highlight our issues, conflicts, and problems with the world to start a conversation around stigmas within our community. The patriarchal issues which were not touched upon, the cultural changes and how our audience is challenging it. Our main audience is the millennials and GenZ, being millennials ourselves, we are working on laying a foundation for GenZ to make their own rules and challenge the community to make a change.
Divya also said that the main goal of the South Asian Nation is to help millennials, GenZ, and future generations become more accepting of other cultures and to help communities at the grassroots level. The South Asian Nation has already made progress towards achieving this goal by working with organizations on the ground level through women empowerment workshops, women’s health summits, and helping migrant workers in India. The South Asian Nation was launched in January 2019 with hopes of making an impact and changing the tides. Divya stated,
Till 2019, we have seen a very commercialized representation of the South Asian Community. It was largely into lifestyle and fashion. We wanted to show that we are more than what the world thinks about us.
Divya and the others who are a part of the South Asain Nation felt that there has been a huge gap between South Asians in home countries and South Asians in diaspora and to fill that gap, we must share stories of South Asian culture for South Asians in the diaspora to become more aware of South Asian culture, history, and artists who have helped the South Asian Nation in creating that change that they hoped for. The South Asian Nation also wants to bring light to women’s rights which are not the same in all primary South Asian countries versus the South Asians in the diaspora. As of now, the South Asian Nation is in the process of creating their website, so that they can highlight more stories and share them through the internet. Starting next year, they will be hosting meet-ups and events on different topics all around the US, UK, Africa, and South Asian countries.
The South Asian Nation is making a positive impact on the South Asian community by educating and empowering everyone who is willing to learn. Please check out their Instagram account @southasiannation to view their content and if you would like to be featured yourselves, all you need to do is tag @southasiannation in the post you would like for them to share.