I actually have OWN, Oprah’s failing network, on DirectTV, but I never watch it. Whenever I’m flipping through the channels, it seems like OWN is just doing a marathon of some unfortunate reality show in which some overweight person is sobbing hysterically (tell me that doesn’t describe half of all reality shows). But as you might know, Oprah has her own show on OWN called “Oprah’s Next Chapter”. She does sit-down interviews (with the Kardashians, notably) and she travels and documents things and it’s pretty much an extension of her old syndicated show, only there’s no audience and no giveaways. I guess. I haven’t seen it. Anyway, over the weekend, Oprah’s Next Chapter aired an episode focused on Oprah’s travels to India several months ago for the Jaipur Literature Festival – and while she was in-country, she filmed a “This is what India is like now” episode. And Indians are PISSED.

Oprah Winfrey charmed her Indian audience when she came to the country earlier this year on a tour that included a brief appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival. But now the show she was working on has aired, the spell appears to have broken.

The smell of incense (tick), the sari fitting (tick), the aspirations of slum dwellers (tick), and the glitz of Bollywood (tick). Let’s not forget arranged marriages and the fact that Indians, even rich ones, “still” eat with their hands (tick, tick).

India as Westerners imagine it, one stereotype at a time.

This is how many in India responded to the two India-focused episodes of her primetime series “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” which aired over the weekend. In India, the people she interacted with ranged from a family of five living in a 10-foot-by-10-foot room in a Mumbai slum, to Bollywood aristocracy, Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. While her show mainly targets a mainstream American audience, many criticized Ms. Winfrey for choosing to project such a caricaturized image of India to the world.

“The avg American thinking of India as a place with snake charmers and elephants as main mode of transport, I can understand. But Oprah???” said user Nandita Iyer on Twitter.

“Honestly, this Oprah winfrey has made such a royal fool of herself with this,” she added. “An unflattering, outmoded, selective and clichéd representation” of India, is how one commentator, Gargi Gupta, described the first episode of the television show.

Camera shots of “roadside cows chomping on garbage and roads choked with traffic,” are just some aspects of the show that Ms. Gupta said may make Indian viewers “groan.”

The show wasn’t a complete write-off for Ms. Gupta, however. She found Ms. Winfrey’s approach tactful when she asked slum dwellers about their hopes and fears. “It suggests a respect for human sensitivities that television anchors in India… would do well to learn,” she writes in a piece published in the Business Standard.

Not all were so kind. For Rajyasree Sen, the show didn’t have a single redeeming feature.

“Myopic, unaware, ignorant and gauche. This was Middle America at its best worst,” wrote Ms. Sen of the show’s first episode in a column on Firstpost.

She found Ms. Winfrey’s comment on Indians still eating with their hands particularly offensive. “I don’t know what people in America are eating their hot dogs, pizzas and tacos with but perhaps Oprah’s home has evolved cutlery for all that,” she writes.

Many on Twitter agreed. “You still eat with your hands? – The shocking arrogance of a clueless rich woman,” wrote Aseem Chhabra.

In her criticism of Oprah’s slum tour, Ms. Sen takes it a little far. She slams the talk-show star for avoiding “any mention of the massive LCD TV” which adorned the tiny home. “That would have killed the sob story,” she adds. (The message here seems they are poor but not that poor we should be feeling sorry for them.)

[From The Wall Street Journal]

Eh. I haven’t seen it, and while it does seem like Oprah was focusing on the “stereotypical” images of India (the slums, Bollywood, saris), a lot of India is actually like that. Like America, India has an extremely diverse and pluralistic culture. It’s not all Riki Tiki Tavi, beggars and the Taj Mahal. There’s a growing (and thriving) middle class, lots of Westerners, Asians and Middle Easterners living and working in the major cities, and a huge, American-esque income disparity between the richest and the poorest. But yes, saris! Snakes! Eating with your hands! I don’t get why that one is a big deal – is that even a stereotype about Indians? We eat with our hands? Some foods are meant to be eaten with your hands. Is that a big deal? Whatever, Opes.

Photos courtesy of Oprah, WENN.