A new trend emerged online very recently, where netizens from the Subcontinent were seen bashing the ‘Scandinavian scarf’ trend, calling it cultural appropriation of South Asian fashion and rebranding it as Western wear. The dupatta, or South Asian scarf, whose origins can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilization, has been the symbol of South Asian fashion for centuries, but was conveniently stripped of its true meaning. This cultural erasure has been given a formal nomenclature as well, Orientalism. The term was introduced by Palestinian-American writer Edward Said in 1978, and is still relevant decades later. Why does Orientalist thought continue to romanticise and strip cultures of their true meaning? 

Before going into the modern manifestation of Orientalism, it is important to know the term itself and what it truly entails. In his works, Said’s work peels off the ideas, images, and knowledge that the West has constructed of the East. The term “Orient
collectively refers to several regions like North Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Middle East. Edward Said also discusses how this portrayal is not innocent or coincidental, and that it became a policy rationale which shaped and facilitated the political and social hegemony of the West.  

One of the key features of Orientalism is how it created the East-West binaries. It positioned the East as mysterious, exotic, backward, and different from the civilized, modern, and rational West. The term “Oriental” is a semi-mythical construct that uses geographical vagueness to group people from across different cultures and countries into a single unit. This, combined with stereotypes, used essentialism to paint the West as superior to the East and justify imperialism. 

The legacy of Orientalism was born during Napoleon’s 18th-century invasion of Egypt. He brought a class of scholars, historians, and orientalists to study and use their knowledge of the locals strategically, weaponizing it to manipulate and control the local population, and portraying the East through Western interpretation of its traditions. According to Said, this created legacy, Orientalism became a language of creation, it was systematically constructed by Western scholars to establish Western hegemony. 

This is reminiscent of various Western works from the 18th and 19th centuries that have been propagating........

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