A Fake Polish Celebrity in India and a Real Celebration of Dialogue

In recent weeks, the Polish celebrity gossip shop was rattled by news that a young star turned out to have completely made up a part of her career. The woman, whom I will not name, used to say she was a huge star in India. But a Polish journalist went to Mumbai and recorded an investigative report that proved she was virtually unknown in the capital of Bollywood; all she had acted in were barely known, fourth-tier works.

This follows at least two other cases I know of, both recorded in the last few years. A famous Polish disco band – this time a one popular at least in its own country – made tall claims about their towering celebrity status in China. Their success on the China scene was eventually proven to of a much lesser scale, however. 

And in a completely different instance, a Polish self-made expert presented himself as someone whose words reached even the ears of strategic decision-makers in the Pentagon. As it turned out, the person had indeed traveled to the United States, but only did a presentation for a small, virtually unknown American think tank. The think tank claimed to have realized some project for the Pentagon in the past, and so the Polish expert claimed to have reached much higher in the U.S. government hierarchy than he really had.

These cases do appear to be matters of simple fraud or, at the very least, exaggeration. But instead of digging deeper into this list of shame, please allow me to make a more sweeping point, one reaching as far back as the colonial era. Such instances harken back to a time when knowledge was mostly a one-way street. 

In the time of Western countries’ colonial rule over swathes of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, the Europeans expected subjugated communities to master the arts and crafts of the Old Continent, deemed to be superior. But the knowledge that flowed back to Europe was also mostly filtered – interpreted, that is – by White overlords. This often lead to confusion, misinterpretations, and ubiquitous generalizations. It was as if non-White, colonized people did not have voices of their own. Whatever such a person wrote or said about themselves, it would be presented in Europe, if at all, through a colonizer intermediary. 

No wonder that after the colonial era, some Indian social scientists raised a provocative question: “Can the subaltern speak?” 

Arguably, this state of affairs changed in the late colonial era. At least in the British empire, the weakening of London’s power led to contestation and concessions, such as gradually allowing Indians to take up certain positions in the administration, thus giving them some direct say in the affairs of the colonial state.

But historically, the main point stands: For decades, the White man was describing a colonized territory as if it was the Moon. The rocks would not speak; they would only exist as described objects. Their character depended on the interpreting eye of the beholder. Equally important, there was no one to question and confront the shining, rare minerals of knowledge brought by such a famed astronaut. The only person in position to do so was another space explorer – another White author who went there.

It is no surprise, therefore, that what was revealed about this small bunch of Polish stars, experts, and authors had its precedents in the colonial era – and even beyond it. As I wrote in a previous article for The Diplomat, a famed, well-established French Indologist that had probably once been the most-quoted authority on the caste system turned out to have been molding his research to fit his assumptions. His methods, it seems, included shaping and selecting field work results on social hierarchy into tables and charts that were suspiciously neat and organized, as if every community was given a definite place, cast in stone. 

Moreover, the author was apparently sharing quotes from sources so obscure that for a long time no other author bothered to read them – until an Indian professor did, proving their contents were completely different from what the French scholar had claimed.

While I admittedly have no way to prove that this is the assumption hiding in a fraudulent mind, I do feel that such attempts stem from the feeling that no one will check sources in a distant country.

After all, can we imagine a star making ostentatiously false claims about her amazing popularity in her own country? Can we imagine an anthropologist making generalized, sweeping statements about the hierarchy and history of their own society, when they are presenting those statements in their own language and country? This would mean casting their claims into the meat-grinder of instant verification. Actually, I take it back – it can happen, and it happens all the time nowadays, but such claims are instantly countered. 

It is the tall claims that are made about remote countries that have a chance to survive longer. Another condition for such a claim to go unnoticed is the barrier of language: Someone can write or say ridiculous stuff about India in Polish and hope no one in India will notice. Hoping to do the same in English would be foolish, unless the statements are published or recorded in extremely obscure media only.

Of course, I need to add that in the colonial era, such fraudulent claims would appear on one side more because the narrative, and the media, was controlled by that side. I by no means claim that this phenomenon cannot, and did not, happen the other way around. Of course, an Indian author can make ridiculous claims about Poland. With globalization, it is also not down to a simple West-East divide. As mentioned earlier, a Polish expert could make bizarre claims about a visit to the United States or vice versa.

But the main point is this: Knowledge ceased to be a one-way street with the end of colonialism, and because of rapid globalization, propelled especially by the internet. Nowadays, if I claim to be a Bollywood star, I will be the butt of everyone’s social media jokes by tomorrow. This does not mean that frauds and exaggerated claims about other societies and nations have ended. To the contrary, in the era of social media everyone is a journalist and in the era of easily accessible information everyone is an expert on everything. Fake news is probably more rampant than ever before, and whole events may be made up to mobilize people, and cause real unrest, or even deaths. This is a grave challenge.

But at least the way knowledge is being shared, and contested, no longer takes place in one direction. It took decades of revolutionary changes to challenge the claims made about India by certain Western authors in the colonial era. Now it make take days, or maybe months, to counter someone who just makes stuff up. As happens with politicians and religious leaders, many followers will still not believe the counterclaims, and live in a fans-only zone, a bubble of information of their own (MAGA crowd, I am looking at you). But at least we have a space to continuously counter each other, and to engage in a dialogue – and that is something that the colonial societies were deprived of for decades.

So what should we do to keep, and widen, these avenues of exchange? The most important step is to reach for primary sources. If someone from Poland tells you “I am a Bollywood star!” – Do not take it at face value. Talk to Indians; read Indian sources. A claim about modern India does not mean much if it is not corroborated by referring to Indian sources; and the same holds true for any country.