A video of a group of Indian tourists performing Garba, a traditional Gujarati folk dance, on the streets of Austria has gone viral. The woman, who shared the video on her Instagram account, said she could now tick it off her bucket list. The clip showed 43 Gujarati and Marwadi tourists performing garba in the historic old town of Innsbruck, Austria. "This is really happening," said the woman who posted the clip.
She revealed they came across two local street performers and asked them if they could play a Garba song on their speaker. At first, the performers refused, saying it would cause trouble with the police.
But the Indian group insisted they would not leave without dancing. Eventually, the artists agreed, and the group performed Garba for five minutes. "Have you ever thought of playing Garba in Europe? Well, I had and now I can tick it off the bucket list," she captioned the video.
The video went viral but also faced criticism.
One person commented, "Those performers are buskers; they are working hard to earn money. You literally disturbed them in their working hours and took away the spotlight for your own fun. Imagine someone coming to your workplace and ask you to use your laptop just to play games for fun. As a tourist, please learn to respect other art forms and artists."
Another wrote, "This is just embarrassing and the precise reason why Indian tourists get a bad name. Being obsessed with doing this and being forced to do this on foreign soil is just plain ridiculous. Even in India, nobody does this randomly. Please think of other Indian tourists when you do such stuff."
"I'm a Gujju and love garba, but sorry, I just don't get the obsession of doing it on abroad streets and being proud of something. I mean, we don't even do that in Indian on a random day and random street."
Last week, a video of a grand Indian baraat, involving around 400 people, dancing through New York's iconic Wall Street, also went viral. It showed people dressed in shimmery sarees and sequinned lehengas dancing to Bollywood music on DJ beats. The groom and around 400 people were seen grooving to the dhols and DJ beats.
