All through the 1900s Indian actors played stereotypical roles – the cab driver with the funny accent, owners of stores, and doctors.  All these were minor roles. The industry could not, and the public would not accept these brown-skinned actors as part of the American fabric – at least so was the thinking of the creators of the shows. And they had been proven right when they included an Indian in the cast, the actor only lasted for one season and then his character was written out.

Then how did this all change? If you examine the Indian actors working today most of them were born in the States, so their accents and mannerisms are American. When people like Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling  did their stand-up routines, Judd Apatow took notice and befriended a few of them and cast them in his films and encouraged others to do the same. Still, as Aziz Ansari told the HFPA, it is not an easy thing to change attitudes. “Every time you watch TV the only time you see someone who has brown skin or is Muslim, they are always playing the bad guy on Homeland or on 24 or whatever it affects people’s attitudes, all I can do to change that attitude is to show my goofy dad (on Master of None) and to say there is this other guy as well. When I first started acting I was offered parts of cab drivers with an Indian accent and I just wouldn’t do it, I just wanted to take roles away from the white actors, to steal their parts that is what I’ve made my career doing. “ But this did not really happen until 2008 when he was cast in Parks And Recreation playing the character of Tom Haverford.

The 2000s saw an influx of Indian actors on TV. Kunal Nayyar in The Big Bang Theory and Kal Penn in House and Designated Survivor, Janina Gavankar in True Blood and The League. Asif Mandvi, Archie Panjabi, Hanna Simone, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra are just some of the working actors who have come to prominence in the past few years and who now appear on TV and on the big screen.

Mindy Kaling, Kal Penn and Priyanka Chopra.

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Have we reached a time in history where color no longer matters? I don’t think so, but the infant steps are being taken, it will take a long time but what with the diversity movement moving rapidly ahead the prospects seem good. And there’s evidence to prove it. Mindy Kaling was the first Indian actor to get her own TV show with The Mindy Project, did she see the changes coming, that Indians would have a certain amount of power in Hollywood? ”I’m Indian American but growing up knowing the power of Bollywood my entire life and knowing how Shah Rukh Khan and other Bollywood stars loomed so large in my life, I knew that there was outside of the United States a great audience and a great desire to see Indians, but it was not in the United States. That I was hoping that in my lifetime it would catch up, the resurgence of South Asian actors is amazing, after my show there has been, Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, Riz Ahmed and they are not just side actors with goofy accents, they are the handsome leading men, Hasan Minhaj’s face could stop a clock. And this is to say nothing of Priyanka Chopra who has had her own show since mine. But it is wonderful that the only way to succeed as an Indian person with dark skin is not just to be Miss America, and be known for your beauty, we can now excel in comedy and other areas. So, I feel excited about that.”

Not everyone is as optimistic or excited as Mindy. Kumail Nanjiani thinks that we are many, many years away from being a true presence in the media, he thinks that the test would be if people would ask him “if you were a super-hero who would you play?” I should be Captain America, why can’t there be a Capitan America like me? I am American.

Having worked in the television Industry myself since the late 1950s, I’d say “Indian actors have come a long way”.

Yes, there is more to be achieved but I never imagined I’d see so many Indians in so many shows and on the silver screen in my lifetime.