Navigating India’s Reference Identity Crisis

Caught between Bharat, India, and the world, a new generation is navigating competing codes of belonging and progress. But what if fractured reference points could be a capability, not a crisis?

You see it on LinkedIn. On Instagram. Behind the many displays of Indian national pride lies something more complex: an Indian identity fractured by multiple frames of reference. These shifting frames create a peculiar kind of identity turbulence. Let’s call this “reference identity vertigo”: the disorienting experience of balancing multiple, often contradictory, measures of success, belonging, and self-worth. 

In a world shaped by global wars, shifting political rhetoric, and multiple economic shocks, young Indians have to constantly adapt their psychological state in the face of rapid change. The “other” is now a shifting goalpost, and stable benchmarks are hard to come by. We can box it into impersonal terms such as VUCA, but it’s much more intimate than that. As frames of reference multiply, so does the turbulence. This turbulence influences how we think and express ourselves economically, culturally, and emotionally. More than that, it alters how we relate to ourselves and others.

A person rejecting arranged marriage still uses astrologers (or a similar app) before job interviews. A million-dollar businessman pitching to Silicon Valley moves a 500+ people strong office building to another location because of ‘vastu’. This code-switching doesn’t just exact a personal toll; it reshapes our delicate social fabric. Many young Indians feel more in sync with their global tribe than their kin. These lead to the new shadow lines, not across geographies, but across Indians who no longer have common reference points of what defines success, meaning, and even reality.

Take Mohini, a 26-year-old marketing professional in Mumbai. She spends her 9-5 and beyond driven by the Indian cover of Western business etiquette - Slack chats, client presentations, and the occasional stretching to accommodate Pacific time zones. Her evenings are spent binge-watching Korean dramas and following Japanese skincare influencers on Instagram. She even attends the occasional cultural pop-up. Late into the night, she finds herself on Reddit arguing about the merits of calling the country India vs Bharat. Sometimes, the night blends into day as she has the same conversations with some of her colleagues. Mohini’s daily cultural juggling isn’t hers alone. It’s symptomatic of more powerful currents pulling at India’s collective identity. These currents have evolved dramatically since Indian independence, reshaping how we locate ourselves in the world.

Modern India is a different beast. It’s no longer an economically limited post-independent nation. Nor is it simply the economically euphoric post-liberalisation India. It’s also moved beyond the predictable growth of the 2010s. We now live in an economically entangled global economy. Where tariffs and pandemics can suddenly wreak havoc. Where countries around us are turning inward, not just in times of stress, but as a way of life. So, where do we look and what do we measure ourselves against? What are these global reference points that influence us?

The Allure of Global Reference Points

The Western Benchmark of the US, Europe, and Canada is the default for standard of living, air, and modernity. America still stands for the land of “opportunity”. It doesn’t hurt that, yet again, the biggest technological revolutions in AI are American, despite regressive stances like Roe V. Wade taking us back decades. Europe continues to exemplify “class”, despite the EU implementing many protectionist measures in recent years. A decades-long obsession with Western standards has resulted in a cultural import of education, policies, and the image of excess. Most of the globe’s systems of aspiration often still flow East from these imported scripts. We just happen to be in the path of the river.

Roe v Wade was controversially overturned after 50 years. The landmark judgement overturned women’s constitutional right to an abortion, seen as a major step back in women’s control over their bodies. Image Credit: Unsplash/Harrison Mitchell

The Eastern Horizon is where many are now turning. The “Look East” advocates see Singapore’s success, Vietnam’s potential, and Malaysia’s ambition. Having worked in Malaysia, I can personally attest to the region’s momentum. It’s a different kind of aspiration – not just apeing the West but creating a new kind of reference point. Where old mixes with new, where life is valued more than just lifestyle, where being global means not losing parts of yourself.

The Emergent Frontier of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America draws people because of untapped opportunities and less saturation. But these places, too, are evolving. The Middle East wants to be more than just oil. Africa, more than its natural resources. They offer opportunities for reinvention, and deep cultural roots yet to be felt beyond their cosmopolitan cities like Dubai. Entrepreneurial Indians are already here. But they aren’t fully established reference points yet. Yet, with opportunities moving to newer markets, expect them to grow beyond dunes and savannahs. 

With so many global reference points at play for the average Indian, it gets even more complicated when a nation with such layered historical consciousness attempts to build its global image. Unlike other countries, India compresses centuries of identity evolution into decades. Negotiating colonial legacies, democratic aspirations, and civilizational revival simultaneously, India is doing this all while projecting itself onto the world stage.

 
The Self-Reference Paradox of Brand India

Brand India is becoming a unique cultural force on the global stage. From tighter ties with Russia while balancing the Ukraine issue to declarations of arrival on the world stage. Who can forget a viral post of a young man saying, “Hum US ko bolte hain, kaun ho tum?”, the calls for using ‘Bharat’ instead of ‘India’, a bigger focus on national symbols, and heroing ISRO. 

Unlike previous generations who had stable (if not problematic) reference points, today's Indians experience ‘aspirational whiplash’ – the psychological consequence of reference identity vertigo, where we are pulled by a contradictory set of values simultaneously. A strong Indian identity doesn’t resolve this tension, but rather refracts it to create a ‘self-reference paradox’. Here, attempts to define authentic Indianness become yet another frame competing for our attention, often contradicting the very values it aims to preserve.

This fragmentation shows up in branding, too. Brands are marketing to global tribes who are constantly rediscovering India and must speak multiple cultural languages. Some mimic Western minimalism, others lean into K-pop aesthetics, and still others double down on traditional Indian narratives. Shifting goalposts apply here as well.  What looks like cultural authenticity is often shaped by outside expectations. Look at Chumbak, a brand that redefined Indian-ness, but now faces stiff competition from brands that appear more ‘desi’. That’s why indigenous brands are constantly attempting to (re)prove their Indianness. Today, it may be local weavers of Khadi. Tomorrow, it could be royal items sold in Jaipur’s City Palace. The day after, it could be exotic mashups of local and global tastes, like INJA restaurant’s Indo-Japanese menu. Historical, regional, and narrative references compete. Everything is Indian and simultaneously nothing is. 

Quench Botanics is a Korean-inspired Indian skincare brand positioned on the simplification of complex Korean skincare routines and crafting products for Indian skin. Image Credit: Quench Botanics

It’s easy to dismiss this as food, fashion, and lifestyle brands. What has India done to command a reference for the rest of the world? This was the very debate I had with a friend who is perpetually skeptical about India. He asked me, “Tell me the one contribution India has made in the last decade that has changed the world”. My answer: UPI. Not space missions, not quick commerce - arguably enabled by cheaper labour. But UPI has skipped the West and entered Emerging Frontiers like Africa. It’s left paper and card currency markets like the USA and others reeling, unable to adapt. It’s not about flash but function. The building of infrastructure and a new reference point for the world to follow.

Once we start seeing turbulence as something we don’t just navigate, but how we can shape the world, that’s how we move one step closer to crafting new anchors for the world to reference us. To become the center of gravity that others can orbit.

The Skill of Meta-Reference Thinking

This fracturing of reference points will continue to be a challenge, but it can also create something new. ‘Hybrid identities’ that others might eventually adopt. Indian models of climate resilience, digital governance, and family business are becoming new frames of reference globally. 

Look at Barefoot College, where rural women, including grandmothers, with no formal education, have been trained in solar technology installation and maintenance. This Rajasthan-origin model has been applied in many African and Latin American countries, empowering marginalised communities. Larger Indian enterprises like the TATA Group have quietly put community before profits. Rather than simply chase short-term profits, this approach, now over a century old, has weathered many financial upheavals that would have toppled Western giants. Large parts of our digital backbone, from UPI to Aadhaar, have been built without ceding control to Western big tech. An approach that many developing nations are now taking inspiration from. 

This shows that India’s real power comes not just from being many Indias. Not in languages or cuisines, but in our ability to hold contradictions. This is our ‘meta reference advantage’: the ability to work with multiple reference frames without being trapped by any one of them. In a world of volatility, this skill of navigating multiple reference systems isn’t cultural. It’s strategic.

It’s time to move past binaries. East Vs. West no longer helps us think. It’s a cognitive bias that puts us on the road toward easy, and often reductive answers. But this moment demands harder thinking. Not introspection but imagination. Finding your own True North. Few have done it well. But in not defaulting to inherited scripts lies freedom. 

You choose what to adopt. You stop “othering”. Because only then can you discover “you”. Not against or responding to something. Just being. A human being. Indian or not. 

What else can India contribute as a cultural reference frame in the next decade? Community-first urban design, frugality as innovation? The answer lies in embracing the vertigo of our identity, not escaping it.