The Long Arm of Colonialism: How Cultural Appropriation Still Shapes Our World

Cultural appropriation thrives in silence. It survives when we do not question, when we do not push back

 By Nandini Bhautoo

Once upon a time, the colonial powers of Europe treated the world as their playground. They extracted people, plants, and cultural treasures at will, diverting them to serve their growing empires. This is how plantation economies like Mauritius were born – to satisfy Europe’s rising demand for sugar in the 18th century.

Cultural Appropriation: The Stolen Inspiration. Pic – Aube du luxe

As a student, I marvelled at how the poet Alexander Pope captured this dynamic in The Rape of the Lock, where the pleasures of the British aristocracy are laid out on lavish tea tables:

‘For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China’s earth receives the smoking tide:
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.’

Though Pope never explicitly mentions sugar, the scene perfectly reflects how the luxuries of empire – tea, coffee, chocolate – flowed into British drawing rooms, often at a staggering human cost. These comforts, which later became widely accessible, were built on the backs of enslaved and displaced peoples.

The uncomfortable truth is that this pattern of appropriation has not ended. Today, the extraction of resources and the erasure of cultural origins continue in more subtle but no less harmful ways. Whether it’s chocolate produced under exploitative labour conditions or lithium mined for phone batteries in the Global South, the structure remains: profits flow to powerful corporations, while environmental and social costs are borne by the marginalized

From Runways to Real-Time Accountability

This legacy of unequal North-South, East-West power relationships is especially visible in the world of high fashion, where for decades designers have borrowed from Indigenous and non-Western cultures without credit. Moroccan textiles, Tibetan silhouettes, Latin American embroidery – these elements have been showcased on Western runways as ‘exotic’ or ‘tribal,’ rarely with any acknowledgment of the people or cultures they came from.

Yves Saint Laurent famously incorporated Moroccan designs in the 1970s and ’80s without offering meaningful recognition. John Galliano drew heavily from Roma and Mongolian traditions for his romanticized ‘gypsy’ shows. Chanel’s 2013 runway featured Native American feathered headdresses worn purely for spectacle, and Valentino’s 2016 Africa-inspired collection controversially used mostly white models.

But the age of silent appropriation is ending. Social media has changed the game. Today, cultural borrowing is quickly exposed and challenged by those whose heritage is being repackaged.

One striking example of this change is the recent Prada sandal controversy. At Milan Fashion Week, Prada unveiled toe-ring sandals that bore a clear resemblance to India’s traditional Kolhapuri chappals – handmade leather footwear with centuries of history and protected by a Geographical Indication (GI) tag. Prada had the chappals priced at $1,200, when the actual cost of making them is a fraction of this – and the benefit to the artisans who have preserved this tradition for generations is but a fraction of that fraction.

Outrage quickly followed. Artisans, politicians, and cultural advocates in India demanded acknowledgment and fair compensation. Under mounting public pressure, Prada eventually admitted the sandals were inspired by traditional Indian footwear and expressed willingness to collaborate with local artisans. Legal proceedings are now underway in India to seek formal protections and redress.

The TikTok Scarf Scandal

A few weeks prior to that, another controversy unfolded on TikTok. Influencers popularized the so-called ‘Scandinavian scarf’- a long, thin draped scarf, paired with minimalist Western outfits. Indian netizens and creators quickly pointed out that this ‘new’ trend was, in fact, the Indian dupatta women have been wearing for generations.

The issue is not about who gets to wear a scarf or a dupatta, but about the conscious or unconscious cultural erasure that happens in the process of appropriation: repackaging an Indian garment as a Nordic fashion item while sidelining its origins and the place the garment has held in everyday life, not just for a few years but over centuries.

The Scandinavian scarf scandal was set into motion by influencers, showing to what extent the legacy of colonial attitude has permeated into the mind frame of the average western citizens, who often will not think twice about appropriating ideas, traditions, thinking that the spoils of the world is still theirs to pick at leisure.

This debate highlights a recurring problem: when cultural symbols are stripped of their context and sold as something new, the people behind them are often forgotten. This erasure is made worse when there is a commercial or corporatist angle – when the people who have preserved the design for generations, often at the cost of urban comfort, are ignored by fashion houses or trendy designers

Everyday Appropriation

Beyond fashion, this unhealthy dynamic unfortunately also plays out in the food and wellness industries. There have been many attempts to patent Ayurvedic products in the US. Be it Ashwagandha or Haldi milk – rebranded as ‘Turmeric latte’ in Western cafés – these are often disconnected from their cultural and medicinal roots. Yoga has also been gaining popularity in the West for years. Though it is good that the benefits of yoga are reaching more people, this new yoga is commodified, marketed in Western studios and luxury resorts from California to five-star hotels in Mauritius, often divorced from its spiritual lineage. Yoga philosophy disappears while ancient postures are renamed and whitewashed as purely Western fitness trends. Ancient Ayurvedic practices are also rebranded as “mindfulness” or “wellness trends,” stripped of their depth and history. Thus, Pranayama becomes ‘cardiac coherence breathing.’ Shirodhara becomes ‘mindful mind cleanse.’

These examples are not isolated incidents. They reflect a larger reality: the long arm of colonialism is not just a chapter in history – it is still at work today, operating through unequal power structures that commodify, rename, and sell cultural products while erasing their origins

Sharing vs Erasing

Sharing cultures is not the problem. Cultural exchange can be beautiful when it is done with humility, curiosity, and mutual respect. But when one culture profits from another’s heritage without recognition – when erasure replaces appreciation –  it becomes a continuation of colonial patterns. There is a trend where the mysterious and ‘exotic’ East is celebrated by the press, whether internationally or locally, while this same press uses a negative discourse of representation for the people who actually practise this culture in less glamorous, everyday manner. This happens often in our local press – a typical example of what Edward Said would call Orientalism. Though not strictly cultural appropriation, this type of Orientalist reinvention becomes part of a larger reality of unequal power balance, involving silencing and erasure.

Cultural appropriation thrives in silence. It survives when we do not question, when we do not push back. However, awareness is the beginning of change.

As we are finishing the present piece, news drops of another similar controversy, this time involving the House of Dior at the Paris Fashion Week. Some of us will remember the intricate and painstaking Badla work done by women on sarees, with thin strips of metal. This is a craft which has been passed down across the generations, both by humble artisans and across families. It is called Mukaish embroidery and has recently been the centre of a new controversy, as Dior presented a Mukaish embroidered jacket, with infinitely complex metal work, crafted by countless unnamed Indian artisans over many weeks and months, never acknowledging the source of the craft and pricing the jacket at a hefty $200,000. As at today, the pilfering and theft continues.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 11 July 2025