An essay for the two women on the Dublin Bus.
There aren’t too many accounts of lived experiences of foreigners in newspapers and magazines, unless they’re celebratory.
Private groups on social media end up being the only source of data, but even there, administrators delete posts that may be considered “political”, such as reports of racialised violence or hate speech.
One issue that sometimes escapes categorisation as political, and has been popular over past months, is reports of Indians being malodorous.
Take one account on Facebook by an Indian working professional. Two women got onto a Dublin bus, and hesitated before they sat in front of him, and proclaimed loudly before they sat: “Maybe they don’t all smell.”
A common topic of conversation in the Indian community is how to smell right on dates and job interviews. I find myself often on Fragrantica these days, even if I’ve zeroed in on a caramel-tonka bean for a while.
Given the world faces more pressing issues, I hadn’t given this much thought. This is also because body odour in India is a caste and even a communal issue (superiority of one religious or ethnic group over others), and something I’d long encountered.
But then two things happened.
One is that, in an anonymous post by an Indian respondent addressing the issue of the smelly Indian, after advice on carrying deodorant, the discussant writes: “Let’s distinguish ourselves from Bangladesh and Pakistanis.”
The other is a sudden and dramatic spike in posts on Instagram and X on the smelly Indian, collated by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, originating in the US, Canada, Australia. Hence this guide.
When I first arrived in Dublin almost eight years back, the landlady in the first rental I viewed inquired politely, “I hope you don’t cook very often.”
Admittedly, a “currydoor” is not to everyone’s taste. Most forms of Indian cuisine involve frying onions, garlic, ginger, cumin – this does give off a strong distinctive smell. But here’s what is new to the Indian in Ireland – an open-plan kitchen and limited ventilation owing to the weather.
In the place I now rent, there is thankfully a separate kitchen with a window, and the door is always closed when I cook. When I forget to close the door, the apartment smells (delicious, to me) and any clothes I leave on the drying rack are cumin-ed and ginger-ed.
In 2024, a viral Instagram post by Shivee Chauhan, an Indian living in the US, on “How to Not Smell like Curry” warned: “If the smell sticks to your jacket, it's not going away until you dry clean it. And even then, it might not come out.”
While we may be in two minds on the ethics of such a post, it is clear Indians are not used to winter-wear, nor is dry-cleaning a regular option among students.
Most Indians in Dublin are students, and those starting their careers without support. Shared apartments with open-plan kitchens, and a prohibition on leaving clothes to dry outside are common among them.
One way around this is to rent or buy a house that’s well ventilated. If you have your own house or your own Tesla you wouldn’t subject yourself to questions about your smell.
This could be an option for Indians; since last year there was a prolonged hate campaign initiated by X user Michael O’ Keeffe who wrote, "Another house bought up by Indians. Our tiny island is being colonised by a country of 1.5 billion people."
But as the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has shown last month, highly-educated and labour-active migrants have a much lower home-ownership rate than Irish citizens, and non-EU migrants spend approximately 50 percent of their income on rent.
And most Indians I know in Ireland do not have financial support from family in starting a life, and lack the funds for well-ventilated houses.
In addition to economic considerations, “gastro-politics” as a tool of segregation has been a subject studied by sociologists and anthropologists for a while; the best way to justify otherness of any community is to cast aspersions on how they break bread.
Attributing a diet-based odour is a time-honoured way of maintaining segregation for all eternity even if one were to break the class barrier.
Since smelling spicy means you’re un-dateable, un-sit-next-to-able, there is an incentive to not associate with others who do (or might).
This is also within a country: one way in which social hierarchy is created between Muslims in the state of Kerala in India, as Shahdab Perumal notes, is to distinguish between coastal Muslims who smell of fish and inland Muslims who are deemed more capable of white collar jobs.
This has also been a primary caste trope – via both dietary habits and pointing to the physicality of jobs: lower caste Hindus stink, as against pure vegetarian Brahmins.
New research by Jusmeet Sihra shows that when people of a lower caste are associated with an area, they cannot escape the area and caste-based discrimination, as they carry their odour wherever they go.
This may explain why several Indians on social media and WhatsApp groups in Ireland seek to distance themselves from Bangladeshis and Pakistanis – such distancing enacts communal politics and privilege.
This division, this distancing, is not always practised in the South Asian diaspora. Suketu Mehta, for instance, recalls the reality of “trans South-Asian gatherings” in Brooklyn, which “would not be possible in South Asia”. The diasporic population collectively “ate our curries, drank, and gossiped”.
Diasporic fracture takes place when distinction and distancing is a tool of pandering to the host country’s people. Disunity would be music to the ears of xenophobic nationalists – divisiveness guards against the threat of collective action.
In his controversial but influential 1995 book on How the Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev argues that Irish migrants in America sought to distinguish themselves from other migrants, and engaged in collective action such as unions. Without the solidarity that collective action requires, the Irish diaspora may never have been able to settle so successfully in America, Ignatiev argues.
Speaking of the US as well as Canada, one of the ways in which members of migrant communities have sought favour with the host country is by endorsing conservative values, and distancing themselves from the pains of other migrants.
Reflecting on a 2025 Canadian survey that showed 55 percent East Asians and 56 percent South Asians expressing support for the Conservative Party (an “unprecedented uptick in Conservative voting intention” while there was a simultaneous increase in racial harassment), sociologist Emine Elcioglu argues that this is a way of signalling to the white majority that “I’m not like them. I’m one of you.”
On social media groups of Indians in Ireland, this is why concerns such as the pain of being judged as smelly are written anonymously, and even then there are responses advising on carrying deodorants, and suggestions on making efforts to integrate.
In the spirit of honesty, I can talk about this issue with the distance that a newspaper provides; I would not find the courage to do so among a gathering of Indians.
The obvious question is – why is this an issue now? Why is it so frequent?
This is because it’s a global hate campaign against the racialised foreigner in an increasingly intolerant world.
The two women on the Dublin bus who thought all Indians smell have likely enjoyed a WhatsApp forward, or something that cropped up on X or Instagram or Facebook about smelly Indians.
The internet has been awash over the last year with this discourse. It is hard to point to its origins, but when Kamala Harris was contesting for the office of President of the US, a post that went viral was by Laura Loomer, activist and ally of the current government. It read, simply, “White House will smell like curry.” The slur “pajeet” has become popular; if there is protest or calling out of hate speech, then the silencing tool is “pajeet triggered” – the migrant Indian must be hysterical to object.
Thus, staying silent or even recommending silence is a survival strategy within a harassed community.
When instances against migrants have been explicit in Ireland, such as the 2023 Dublin riots, as well as hate against Nigerian women during the 2004 citizenship referendum, there was clear prevalence of transnational hate discourse.
Hate travels.
“Most people I know, they don’t know what to do.”
Increase fines for the offence, and boost parking enforcement so people begin to fear getting caught, they say.
But the passport office wouldn’t budge.
The council is planning to put the job of operating it out to tender, and also move its location.
