Opinion: Who’s that girl called Maya?*

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It’s been over a week since the release of rapper M.I.A.’s sophomore album and nearly a month since she played two nights to packed crowds at the Echoplex in Echo Park. (Grown men reportedly cried when turned away at the door.) A friend and I did make it inside and, when we weren’t being stepped or spilled on, we were amused by the crowd. Skinny underage white boys moshed alongside the stray South Asian American girl and Free Palestine kids waving kefiyas. The rapper, born Maya Arulpragasam, wore slim-fitting sequined pants and an oversized brown T-shirt that read “Darfur”.

It was a fitting image for M.I.A., with her loosy-lefty global politics and her hybrid beats and samples. She’s rehabilitating the idea of world music and translating the hip hop boast to third world concerns. (“If you catch me at the border/ I got visas in my name/ If you come around here/ I make ’em all day,” she says on “Paper Planes.”) But I was most surprised by her lyrics about Indian women, though they unfortunately appear on one of the worst tracks of the album, a sentiment I share with The Times’ music critic. Obviously, if M.I.A. weren’t a South Asian woman (Sri Lankan via London, to be precise), it’s the sort of thing that would get her into trouble....

As a rap, it’s fairly typical. There’s bling, drugs, violence, sex, a vague sense of ethnic mockery. But I can’t help but close-read its politics. A lot of rap is just self-identification—it’s all about where you’re from, who’s your friend and who’s your enemy. And M.I.A. has gotten much flak (see the comments to that post) for the ways in which she identifies, whether its with ethnic separatists, the extremely poor (see her comment about coming from a mud hut, among many other choice quotes, here), or hustlers.

But M.I.A.’s switch from third to first person confuses that self-identification here, though, and speaks to her tumultuous background moving from London to Sri Lanka to India to Sri Lanka and finally back to London. Initially she seems to be praising Indian women as distinct from herself—a shout-out to the people she did live with briefly during her childhood. But then she continues with “ride up on our tanks, invade” and a sing-songy list of Indian female names, suggesting that the names being saved are Indian ones.

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering that, even if no tanks have invaded, India and Sri Lanka have an uneasy history. M.I.A. is often taken to be a supporter of the Tamil Tigers, with whom her father fought against Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated government. India has sent troops twice to Sri Lanka, including in the late 1980s to disarm those very fighters. In 1991, a Tiger-affiliated suicide bomber took the life of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (some say that bomber, a woman, was radicalized after Indian soldiers raped her). Since then, India has been hesitant to become involved in Sri Lanka. It does send non-lethal military aid to the official Sri Lankan government, and some of India’s tens of millions of Tamils undoubtedly have sympathy for their fellows across the strait.

And the unease isn’t only political. I would imagine that most Sri Lankans aren’t pleased when they’re mistaken for Indian — like, say, a Salvadoran assumed to be Mexican. It implies that the biggest country in the region is the only identity that has meaning or relevance on the world stage. So why wouldn’t M.I.A., who’s made it to that world stage, boast about her country and her fellow Sri Lankan women? Why would she choose to praise Indian women, who have enough exoticizing eyes on them, thanks to Bollywood and beauty pageants?

Despite all those eyes, there are very few depictions of Indian women in pop culture—including and especially in India, whether created by men or women—that are as brashly, crassly sexy as this verse. Unless they’re villainesses, pop-portrayed Indian women tend to be demure and too exalted and lovely to be possessed of sexuality. This verse lets Indian women own and express their sex. Coming from the mouth of M.I.A., “milk and honey,” which could have some racial, exclusionary suggestiveness, just seems to symbolize luxury. Same thing goes for the list of jewels, formerly plundered and now proudly worn. Mixed-up identification or no, the lyrics work as a reimagining of Indian women. And they’re pretty catchy, too.

*That’s a lyric from my current favorite track, ‘Bamboo Banger.’

Photo courtesy EPA.