"Finding Freddie" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - November 2011)

Farrokh Bulsara as a Young Peterite

The halls of St. Peter’s School are lined with frames that hold photographed highlights from each school year – athletic competitions, scenes from plays, and such. Of these, the ones from the late 1950s have pictures missing, notably those of a flamboyant musician and a star “All Rounder” at sports and studies. All that remain are captions that say Farrokh Bulsara. 

In time, even that name would go missing. Freddie, Bulsara’s nickname, eclipsed his original moniker, and the last name he took on reflected his mercurial character. Three decades after Mercury attended St. Peter’s, I wandered down its hallways as an eight-year-old who had started at the boarding school at about the same age as the rock star. Like Farrokh, I too had been “sent back to India” from the diaspora. I often stared up at the frames, wondering who the lad in the missing pictures had been.

The Bulsaras, Parsis from Gujarat, worked in Zanzibar, East Africa, where Farrokh was born on September 5, 1946, the year before India’s independence. Already from an Indian minority culture, the colonial Asian-African displacement further removed the Bulsaras. In sending their son to school in India, even if it was a British institution, Farrokh’s parents might have been attempting to retain their roots and acculturate their offspring. The school in India reflected the Bulsaras’ own displaced multiculturality. St. Peter’s attracted students from all over India and the diaspora, making for a culturally, but not necessarily economically, varied student body. The postcolonial diversity departed from the intent of the school’s original purpose: it had once been named The European Boys’ School. The name change notwithstanding, the student body continued to be exclusively male. 

Vista View of St. Peter's School

Memories of Freddie lived on long past his tenure at St. Peter’s, his eccentricities so at odds with the ostensibly staid school, one that still held on to its British colonial era character. Nestled in the Western Ghats of Panchghani, Maharashtra, some hours’ drive from Bombay, indeed, what should have been considered odd was the anachronistic school itself. Conceivably, it was here that Freddie Mercury learned to become British even before his family immigrated to England in the 1960s. 

The School's Emblem

Institutions such as St. Peter’s, which in 2004 celebrated its centenary, arguably followed Lord Macaulay’s famous 1835 call for education that would create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” This attempted hybridity reveals a class-based strain of Indianness, but also the manufacturing of British identities on other shores. Mercury’s transnationalism blurred these lines. One wonders if the ostentatious, spandex-clad, and sexually provocative musician was the prime subject Macaulay had in mind when he wrote his Minute on Indian Education.

Mercury’s vanished Indianness as he rose to fame in England has been the subject of much speculation. On the one hand, it is undeniable that his Persian-Parsi background, manifested in the colour of his skin, likely allowed the entertainer to pass for being Anglo. There was also the name change: “Farrokh Bulsara, Rock Star” was presumably not going to cut it in popular mainstream culture during the heightened racial climate of 1970s Britain. Those were the formative years of Queen, the band that Mercury came to front. Concurrently, the political tide was turning. The Iron Lady, Conservative Prime Minister Thatcher, ascended to office at the end of the decade. 

But on the other hand there are the vague but still cognisable cultural self-references. There are Mercury’s orientalised lyrics with Islamic allusions in the songs “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Mustapha.” These fuzzily signal a Persian-South Asianness, where Koranic and Middle Eastern themes hint at a historically multicultural Indian subcontinent. The lyrics draw a connection between the many Persian influences on Indic culture, though the references are not specifically Zoroastrian. Stylistically, the baroque flourishes of Queen’s repertoire in such songs as “Bohemian Rhapsody” are akin to the Arabesque excesses of Mughal-era art and architecture. Even in his choice of name, the performer stuck with Freddie, the nickname acquired at his Indian school and which had emerged from “Farrokh.” The inventive “Mercury” suggests the mythical and   questions the assumption that some names are more authentically Indian than others. This can hardly be the case in a subcontinent that has served as a major confluence for people of so many cultures and religious faiths. Yet, what is inescapable is that his name needed changing.

Despite his light complexion, Mercury’s dark and dense moustache, familiar to us simply as “The Indian Moustache” for its ubiquitousness, also intimates other possibilities. It is probable that Freddie had discovered his sexuality much before arriving England, perchance at an all-boys school in India. Mercury’s moustache, figuratively and subversively represented an affectation of masculinity, evidenced in such Western gay visual and popular cultures as Tom of Finland illustrations and the music of The Village People. The singer’s follicular trademark could be read as both homosexual and desi. Finally, there’s the band’s name: Queen. It juxtaposes the image of England’s leader alongside queer parlance for flamboyancy. Simultaneously, Mercury’s position as a postcolonial queer immigrant, born and schooled in the colonies, and then culturally ruling the British airwaves challenges the old guard as represented by Her Majesty. To borrow the title of the controversial song by Mercury’s contemporaries, the Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen...

The Famous Moustache

This year Mercury would have been 65. November 24, 2011 will mark the 20^th anniversary of his passing from the AIDS virus in the 30^th anniversary year of the disease’s advent. Mercury did not reveal that he had the disease until the day before he died. It was suppressed from public knowledge like so much else in his life. What remains is the ambivalence that surrounded Freddie’s identity. Perhaps it was by design, or maybe it was an ongoing, self-reflective negotiation – the kind seen in the opening words of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia: “... I am an Englishmen born and bred, almost.” Mercury’s Britishness was already filtered through Asian and African coloniality and as an Indian minority born in Africa, the cultural position he occupied was a queer one.

Freddie’s identity is like the missing pictures at St. Peter’s School – memories framed by everything else around them. I once animatedly remarked to an elderly Goan woman in England, upon finding out that she had lived in Zanzibar: “Freddie Mercury was born there!” I then apologized for the oblique reference, thinking she might be unaware of who he was. Instead, she replied, “Yes, I used to see little Farrokh running outside my house.” The complete picture may be missing, but Freddie’s identity continues to unsettle easy assumption. Long Live Queen. 

An online version of the article appears here and a different version in O Heraldo. The article was also republished in Kenya's AwwaZ Magazine.

"Dia de los Muertos" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 29 October 2011)

Sugar Skulls

Traditions

All Hallows or All Saints’ Day is preceded by Hallowe’en and followed by All Souls’ Day. In Mexico, the November dates are commemorated with sugar skulls and remembrances of the dead, fusing Catholic traditions with indigenous ones that predate colonization. American celebrations of 31st October are synonymous with costumed children trick-or-treating and cinematic horror. The neighbouring countries share a fraught history in which borders, labour, and cultural influence have been hotly debated. Against this backdrop, Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, in Mexico and its diaspora, captures issues of colonization and discrimination. 

Like Goa, Mexico too had Iberian colonizers, Portugal and Spain respectively. Catholicism was the common imprint. However, despite conversion, the cultures in the two regions were not completely translated. What emerged instead were localized traditions that refused to abandon the past.  Anthropologist Robert Newman refers to this as the “synthesis and co-existence of cultural elements of different origins.” This may appear to imply allowances made by the colonizer. Rather, the syncretization of Iberian Catholic traditions in the colonies entails resistance and a reconsideration of mortality.

Death

The commonality between Hallowe’en and Dia de los Muertos is a recall of death, but where the celebrations differ is in how the finality of life is regarded. American commercialized festivities lend themselves to the macabre – death is equated with horror. In contrast, Mexican community merriment around the transience of life makes light of it. As influenced most notably by Aztec culture, the inevitable is caricatured in flower-bedecked skeletons. Death is embraced as part of life and not simply its end. The revelry departs from the sombreness of European Catholicism where even triumphant events such as the Resurrection relegate rebirth to the arena of the miraculous. Death, in the meantime, is associated with infernal terror. Arguably, fear was a useful quality in colonial projects in which religion played its part. The melding of native and colonial traditions stands testament to how colonial authority was challenged and subverted. 

Olvera Street Altar to Casualties of the Iraq War

Dia de los Muertos continues in popularity echoing the lasting signs of resistance against empire. If in Mexico such cultural opposition was in response to the Spanish empire, then in the diaspora artistic efforts that reclaim indigenous Mexican traditions speak out against other empires. A 2004 Dia de los Muertos style altar to Iraq War casualties in Los Angeles’ Olvera Street, the city’s original Spanish settlement, brings to mind the deathly efforts of neo-imperialism, the U. S. Army’s opportunistic enlistment of soldiers of colour, and renewed coloniality.

Hector Silva's Art

Syncretism’s Lessons

Mexico’s syncretic traditions offer lessons to Goa in the religio-colonial similarities the two share, primarily in the possibility of recovering community. Newman refers to the Little Tradition – persistent kinships and beliefs across Goa’s cultures despite colonization. This urges recognition of the subaltern indigeneity which is the basis of Goan culture. In this there exists the opportunity for communal liveliness and, moreover, an acknowledgment of All Souls.







 A version initially appeared here.

"Cracking Columbus" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 1 October 2011)

San Antonio, Ibiza

Chickens and Eggs

Following his discovery of the New World, Christopher Columbus was invited to dine with some Spanish aristocrats. Naturally, discussion centred on the Genovese mariner’s feat, which had been patronized by the Spanish crown. The noblemen demeaned Columbus’ accomplishment, arguing that one of their own countrymen would have done the same if given the opportunity.  

Columbus listened to his detractors and then asked for an egg. He enquired of the others if they could make the egg stand on its end with no external aid. No one could. The explorer tapped the egg on the table, so as to crush one end, thus balancing the egg upright. Once something is accomplished, he wished to demonstrate, it is easy to claim it is simple. 

This account is apocryphal at best. However, I find it interesting that I learned the story at school in India, a postcolonial state. The anecdote was dispensed with nothing said of the Age of Discovery, colonialism, or the decimation of Native Americans. If anything, our young minds were being offered the exploits of a hero whom we should seek to emulate. No doubt, this tale is taught globally, the Americas included.

Between Two Indies

In October 1992, indigenous American tribes protested national celebrations of the 500^th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage. Among other events, plans to sail a replica of Columbus’ boat in San Francisco were halted. Similarly, it was only last year that the Portuguese ship Sagres circumnavigated the globe. Its arrival in Mormugao harbour coincided with the quincentennial anniversary of Goa’s capture by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510. The ship’s visit was described as being one of goodwill by Goa’s former colonizer, a naval stopover devoid of political intent. Several Goan freedom fighters saw the incident differently and famously protested. 

NRP Sagres

The Iberian-sponsored “discoveries” of the Americas and the Indies are connected as we know. Columbus was in search of the latter, which is why there are now two parts of the world whose natives bear the “Indian” moniker. Eighteen years apart, celebrations and protests highlighted the 500^th anniversaries of European incursions into those areas. How might these legacies be reconnected? Certainly not by focusing on the colonizer alone.

Decolonizing Education 

What makes the tale of Columbus’ Egg particularly apocryphal is its lack of recognition of the navigator’s failure in finding the Indies. The hero only became one because of a mistake. Regardless, colonization still found its way across the globe. Furthermore, the story casts the sailor as an underdog in the land of his benefactors. He is othered by his lack of privilege in comparison to the aristocrats who mock him. Meanwhile, the recipients of colonization recede into the backdrop. It is Columbus, instead, who serves as the repository of otherness. The narrative and real effacement of the natives in their own homelands make room for new identities, such as Columbus’ – the underprivileged seafarer with a dream. Empty Continents thereby become Lands of the Free and stories of the colonized go unheard. 

Despite indigenous protests, Columbus Day continues to be celebrated in the United States.

Previously published here.  

"10: 9/11" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 3 September 2011)

Crossing Borders

“So, you’re Indian?”

“Uh huh...”

“But you were born in Kuwait?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering if my passport had magically altered itself.

“I see,” the customs official responded, not seeing at all.

It was two weeks since 9/11 and while “swarthy” skinned folk expect the allegedly indiscriminate scrutiny they attract, I knew it would now be exponential.

“Returning from the U.K., huh? That where the accent’s from?”

“Oh... I went to an Anglo-Indian school –”

“And you’re a U.S. resident now?” The official asked, cutting me off. “You look...” He stopped himself, likely about to say “black.” “And you have a... What is it? A Spanish name?”

“Portuguese.” I so desperately wanted to point out the irony of this interrogation given that the official was East Asian American, but I knew that my seemingly muddled identity was dangerously close to having me tossed in a secret detention centre. Not how I wanted to end this holiday.

The man finally handed me back my passport, but with one last question: “Why?”

“It’s called colonization,” I said, and hurried away.

The Inscrutable Goan

In 2003, Berna Cruz fared far worse. Returning from seeing family in India, she transited in Chicago where her Canadian passport was declared a fake because it was thought inconceivable that someone of Indian origin could have a “Spanish” name. Denied contact with Canadian authorities, the distraught traveller was deported to India on a Kuwait Airways flight. Fortunately, she was assisted by the Canadian consulate in the Gulf.

It would seem as if diasporic Goans, travelling for the most mundane reasons, are international people of mystery - our displacements and colonial history not easily lending themselves to nationalist projects of categorization. But why should they?

U.S. War Department Pocket Guide to China (1942)

Similarly Different

Borders are pierced every day, as painfully proven ten years ago by those hijacked planes. The United States descended into a perilous spiral when the terror was brought to its own soil. Attempting to make itself whole again, the nation’s ire was directed externally against Afghanistan and Iraq through vigilante foreign policy. Internally, xenophobic attacks erupted nationwide against those that were or bore any resemblance to “Muslims” or “Arabs” – South Asians, Jews, and even Latinos. These events only further demonstrated that terror comes in supremely white hues too, as also seen in the July Norway bombings. Rather than critique the chauvinism responsible for post-9/11 attacks against their communities, the understandably assimilatory impetus of the aggrieved was to instead reiterate their own Americanness: We are not like “those” terrorists. But who exactly “those” people are has never been a stable qualification. The other always changes in marking the difference against which a nation can define itself. Even as multiculturalism is celebrated, it is not a wholehearted embrace of difference. Rather, it is the re-characterising of difference as being suitably Nationalist.

If colonial projects were about managing difference – for example: extending Portuguese monikers to Catholic but not Hindu Goans; then neo-colonial ones are about successfully deploying difference. When a neo-imperialist war continues in Iraq, does it make much difference that the U.S. President is a black man? The world changed after 9/11, but some things continue unaltered. Not least, a decade on, the importance of acknowledging difference and allowing it to be exactly what it is – a challenge to the status quo.

 A version of this article appears in print and here.

"Becoming Portuguese" - O HERALDO: The Transient (Goa - 6 August 2011)

Identity Malaise

An instructor from Portugal who was to teach in Goa took ill upon arrival. She had fallen victim to that age old oriental problem: the infernal heat. Admitted to a hospital, the nurse in charge looked over her chart, only to quickly look back at the white woman lying in bed. “You have a Goan name!” she amusedly remarked. Taken aback, the Portuguese teacher was quick to retaliate: “No! It is you that has a Portuguese name.” The nurse was unconvinced, her departing expression one of much concern for her patient’s state.

In this month that commemorates India’s independence from the British, Goa finds itself between the 500^th anniversary of colonization by and the 50^th anniversary of decolonization from the Portuguese. At this juncture, the intriguing impasse between the aforementioned postcolonial characters serves as a metaphor of what history has wrought: The legibility of Portuguese identity because of Goa. Consider that the teacher does not have to realize her “Portugueseness” until discomfited by the Goan nurse’s comment. It is in the deep offense felt at being challenged by the “other” that the teacher attempts to rectify her displacement, recalling the identity bequeathed her by colonial history.

Afonso de Albuquerque

500 Years Not So Long Ago

In 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque defeated Adil Shah, the ruler of Goa, and quickly enacted his Politiça dos Casmentos. The Marriage Policy’s purpose was to encourage inter-marriage, particularly with the desirably fair-skinned widows of the vanquished Muslim soldiers, and create a progeny of “white” children. This new white tribe, created out of racialized and gendered subjugation, would ostensibly form the basis of Portuguese rule in the East.

However, the Portuguese inception of whiteness in Goa would require a suspension of disbelief that it was not miscegenated. If this newly established identity was to function as a continuance of Portuguese identity in the colonial sphere, then it would also function to subsume the miscegenated culture of Iberia, coloured by its Moorish past. To rename the new miscegenated identity as authentically Portuguese, would reinvent what it meant to be Portuguese in the new world order. The defeat of Goa, especially in being ruled by a “Moor,” not only allowed Portugal to redeem its former subjugation by the Moors, but also the opportunity to recreate whiteness. Yet, race-making in the new colony was not predicated on any illusion of erasing difference; it rather served to perpetuate racialized colonial hierarchy. Ultimately, the Portuguese would still be whiter and more powerful than their native wards.

Liberation?

As Goa approaches the 50^th anniversary of its decolonization, nostalgia dangerously veers towards recovering the erstwhile colonizer’s legacy. The argument between the Goan nurse and the Portuguese patient offers a counter-intuitive way of thinking about that legacy: The patient would have hardly thought about her identity had she not been challenged. Undoubtedly, Goan identity has also been transformed in the colonial encounter, not least through the Inquisition, conversion, and syncretism. An examination of what constitutes the evolution of colonial and postcolonial identities from an indigenous standpoint cannot be complete without including the too easily overlooked perspectives of gender, race, and caste – It is only in so doing that reengaging the colonial legacy can be truly liberatory in understanding Goa’s contribution to itself and the world. 

A version of this article appears in print and here.

"Quilted Together" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - August 2011)

On July 15, 2011, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, California, inaugurated the exhibit “Soulful Stitching: Patchwork Quilts by Africans (Siddis) in India.” Curated by Dr. Henry J. Drewal, Professor of African and African Diaspora Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Sarah K. Khan, Director of The Tasting Cultures Foundation, New York, the exhibition displays 32 quilts, or kawandi, by members of Karnataka’s Siddi Women’s Quilting Cooperative, a non-profit. Siddi is a term used to describe various South Asian communities of African origin – Their presence is as widespread as Balochistan, Pakistan and Junagadh, Gujarat. The collection at MoAD, however, comes specifically from descendants of Africans enslaved by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and brought to Goa. Fleeing most notably during the Inquisition (1560-1812), the runaway slaves set up free communities in nearby Karnataka which still exist.

Dumgi Bastav (2004)

Kawandi visually embody the inter-raciality and syncretism that occurred over centuries between Africans and Indians in Goa and Karnataka. Pieced together from saris and other fabric, the quilts may bear crescent-shaped ornamentation to signify the maker as a Muslim woman while the works of Catholics incorporate cross motifs. Interestingly, Dumgi Bastav’s 2004 quilt, featured in the exhibition, bears both icons. What is common to all kawandi is that they are considered incomplete if not embellished at the corners with layered triangular pieces. These are called phula, which in Konkanni – a language spoken in Goa and Karnataka - means flowers. The incorporation of this arguably vestigial adornment, both linguistic and artistic, alongside other cultural signifiers, emblematically bears witness to historical hybridity and contemporary culture in the everyday use quilts provide in Siddi households.

“Soulful Stitching” bills itself as the first exhibition of quilts by Siddis outside India. However, this legacy is little known within India itself. Generally, the cultural imaginary associates India’s experience with Africa through the British colonial-era diasporic presence of primarily Punjabis, Goans, and Gujaratis in the now free nation-states of East Africa. It was also from Africa’s east coast, ironically, that the Portuguese trafficked slaves and where, too, an Afro-Asiatic commerce existed prior to European contact. MoAD’s exhibit here in the United States – a nation itself no stranger to the African slave trade - offers an opportunity to rethink Afro-Indian diasporic cultural heritage through the symbolic quilting together of these identities and their markers in the patchwork of kawandi. The exhibit runs through September 18, 2011.

Versions of this article appear in print and online at India Currents (California) and O Heraldo (Goa). An online version of a longer print article on the exhibit can be read at AwaaZ Magazine (Kenya).

"Pan-South Asian Identity" - ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES TODAY (2009)

Pan-South Asian American identity refers to the shared collective identity of South Asian individuals living in the United States, who otherwise have distinct national origins. South Asian Americans include Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Indian, Maldivian, Nepali, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan Americans. Despite religious, ethnic, and regional diversity within the South Asian American population, the shared experience of European colonization, displacement, and discrimination in the United States are some factors that have fostered the development of a pan-South Asian identity. Because it is a relatively new phenomenon, debates among South Asian Americans remain whether a pan-South Asian American identity is possible, whether one even exists, and how it exists within a larger Asian American rubric.

These multiple and layered identities are the result of cultural and population exchanges between regions, of arrivals of people from outside South Asia who became part of its cultural fabric, and of displacement caused by European colonization. The legacies of the colonial period continue to manifest themselves in South Asia and in diasporic communities; hence, it is not unusual to find South Asians whose migrant journeys span generations and continents, as is the case with Parsis, an Indian ethnic group of Persian origin who found employment in East Africa under the British colonial administration that also ruled India. In 1972, expelled along with other Asians by post-independence dictator Idi Amin, they may have attempted to find refuge in Canada because it is part of the British Commonwealth and, itself, a former colony. Other multiple diaspora South Asian origin groups include Indian Fijian and Siddhi (African descended) Pakistani Americans, for example. As immigrants, South Asians share many similarities with other Asian American groups, but they have not generally been part of the larger ethnic umbrella group.

“Desi” is a term often used to encompass pan-South Asian identity in the United States. Originally meaning “of the land,” the word desi connotes the idea of origin and connection while also recognizing the transnational, shifting, strategic, and pieced-together identity of an otherwise diverse and often disparate group. The appearance and adoption of the term desi, even if not uniformly, implies a process of self-definition and a means by which to construct a multifaceted immigrant identity.

AFFILIATION AS IDENTITY

The region of South Asia has long been synonymous with India, and more specifically north India, whose historical, religious, and cultural sway have greatly influenced the area and the global imagination at large. The mistaken interchangeability of India with the wider and very diverse location of South Asia adds even more confusion to questions of naming of ethnic American identities, when it comes to South Asians in the United States. Consider that the term “Indian,” as used in North America, does not necessarily differentiate between those of Asian origin or Native Americans (perhaps explaining why the U.S. Census has employed the classification “Asian Indian” for clarity). Also, the term “South Asian,” which has gained currency only lately and not necessarily within all ranks and generations of the community it seeks to aggregate, correctly identifies geographic and historic origin but seems phenotypically at odds with the commonly held notion that Asian Americans are only those of East and Southeast Asian origin.

In the civil rights era of the 1960s, Asian American identity centered on ethnic movements that attempted to address the lack of recognition of communities, some which traced their immigration histories back to the nineteenth century such as Chinese and Japanese Americans. In comparison, while indentured and other laborers of South Asian descent had been in the United States during this period, their numbers were far smaller and generally understudied. Increased visibility came with the arrival of greater numbers after the 1965
immigration laws changed to attract educated and skilled immigrant labor from South Asia and elsewhere.

Immigrants who arrived during the post-1965 period were thus differently skilled than those South Asians, primarily Punjabis, who settled in the Pacific Northwest and California in the early nineteenth century and onward and who took to farming, which was in keeping with their agricultural background. What both sets of immigrants—nineteenth century and post-1965—had in common is that shared religious and cultural practices allowed for community formation. The Punjab region crosses the borders of what are today northern India and Pakistan and is also a multifaith area, with Sikhism being one of thereligions followed. Though secular and multifaith, India’s population is predominantly Hindu, as are most U.S. immigrants from that country; similarly, Pakistan, a theocracy, is largely Muslim, as are most of its emigrés. These differences may suggest that South Asian immigrants of various ethnic and national origins limit their associations with each other in their adoptive countries, and while that possibility exists, shared histories, customs, and, in some cases, religious backgrounds, have fostered panethnic community formation for South Asians in the United States.
Professional and class-based affiliations should also be credited for the roles they play in this process. At universities, South Asian student-founded organizations, though often ethnic-specific, may also offer opportunities for multiethnic desi programs, focusing on culture or community service. These youth-based
affiliations also extend into off-campus venues, such as the club scene. These trends, though largely more visible among second-generation South Asians, have also aided gender-based community projects, such as South Asian women’s organizations that counsel and shelter female victims of domestic abuse, including
women who are first-generation immigrants. Just as pan-South Asian identity may be fostered through community design, factors external to the community can also play their part. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in which the World Trade Center’s “Twin Towers” were demolished by hijacked planes, many South Asians found themselves detained by authorities for interrogation or fell victim to vigilante violence by those seeking revenge against anyone thought to resemble the perpetrators of the attacks. The conflation of Muslim/Islamic, Middle Eastern/Semitic, and South Asian identities, be they in targeting individuals based on phenotypic appearance or erroneous assumptions about religious and ethnic garb, caused both the ironic possibility of pan-South Asian solidarity in protest against the violence and detentions, but also equally widespread disidentifications based on ethnic and religious differences within the larger South Asian community and against other national-origin communities, usually Muslim-identified ones. This desire for safety was thus predicated upon an appeal to American solidarity, but it also ostracized specific groups within and without the South Asian community. Some took great pains in explaining the significance of religious garb unique to their faiths to mainstream audiences in hopes of gaining acceptance and tolerance. However, these same efforts also resulted in disidentifications between various marginalized communities.

PROFESSIONAL DIFFERENCES

The high visibility of U.S. South Asians in lucrative professions related to medicine, finance, engineering, and computers, among others, is often in contrast to those, equally visible, employed as taxi drivers and convenience store clerks. While the former, described as immigrants of opportunity, made their way to the United States post-1965, their sometimes less-privileged kin followed suit under family reunification provisions made in the 1980s, and they had to take on professions that did not match those of their more affluent sponsors. In some cases, it is the enterprising, earlier-arriving family members whose investment in the form of a motel or franchised convenience store has provided the possibility of employment for a newly arrived family member of lesser means. South Asian–owned franchises of popular businesses, such as fast-food restaurants and gas stations, rely on kinship networks to staff their venues, but they also attract nonfamily employees of similar ethnic origins. These kinship and ethnic-solidarity networks, while supportive, can also be fraught with the possibility of abuse, where new or undocumented immigrants may be taken advantage of because of their lack of knowledge or because of their precarious position in the eyes of the law. To protect against these and other kinds of labor abuses, including those by corporations, organizing efforts have given rise to desi organizations such as New York City’s Workers’Awaaz, a nonprofit dedicated to educating South Asian women employed in domestic service about their rights, and Taxi Workers Alliance, which protects the rights of taxi drivers of South Asian origin.

In addition to class and professionally based distinctions between South Asians in the United States, there is also the added dimension of ethnic and national origin. Not all South Asians immigrate to the United States directly from South Asia. Those that come from other diasporic locations, such as the Caribbean, Guyana, Suriname, parts of Africa, or Fiji, may be differently skilled than their counterparts from South Asian countries. Even within South Asian countries, not all have the same opportunities available to future immigrants, often necessitating their departure in search of opportunities abroad. This also indicates that South Asians, of various class and ethnic backgrounds, often have transnational families and maintain ties that cross continents. Thus, while South Asians in America may regularly be identified as a model minority, this is not a uniformly panethnic trait and is a supposition that belies the class diversity and some of the issues facing these communities.

Published here.