Dear () :
First, allow me to congratulate you on your excessively clever handle. Normally, I’d be jumping out of my chair like the little cartoon man who signifies “stellar!” for the San Francisco Chronicle’s arts reviews, out of appreciation of your FANTASTIC taste in music, but I am almost 99.9% certain that you weren’t paying tribute to a three-year old release from Sigur Ros with the whole empty parentheses schtick.
Second, allow me to even more sarcastically congratulate you on your attempt at incisive commentary, issued in support of the link you wanted to tip us to…ouch, I think it gave me an owie:
Islamic terrorists attack IISc in Bangalore and shoot a professor dead. Such beautiful gift from our loving South Asian brothers deserve a mention on this blog….or perhaps you’d choose to bury your head in the sand and pretend that this doesn’t/didn’t/won’t happen.
Not.
This trifling game is getting so old, I can pay a premium for it (still in the original box! mint!) on eBay. This Mutiny is brown. We like the term “South Asian“. We write about stuff that happens in the countries that surround India. We care. If you don’t, then that’s unfortunate. Getting snide in an ANONYMOUS tip isn’t going to change our minds, surely you had to be aware of that. If not, let this “musing” of mine clue you in: inclusiveness is how we roll, even though every one of our parents once had an Indian passport and exactly eight dollars in their pocket, upon landing at JFK. Speaking of that now legendary phrase–“eight dollars (in my hand)”– which my much-loved Father shouted on an every-other-day basis as a counterpoint to my spendthrift proclivities, my Daddy is the reason why I am a hard-core South Asian. Oh, and if you’re not sure what I’m referring to with my magic eight bawl, apparently my father (and several other Uncles etc) weren’t allowed to just stroll in the country with benjamins in their money clips. For whatever reason, my exhausted, anxious father had just that odd and small sum on him when he landed in New York, walked to a coffee shop in the airport, paid $0.50 for a single cup of kappi and then nearly fainted as one-sixteenth of his net worth left his hands in exchange for a tiny caffeine rush.
Two-and-a-half decades later, when he heard that I spent $2.50 on a cappuccino at Stanford, during a JSA one-day conference where I debated something foreign policy-y, he yelled at me for close to an hour about my extravagance, converting the sum to rupees and that most hallowed currency of all, the original eight dollars which created my family on American soil. “$2.50? $2.50! When I came to this country, I paid a fifth of that princely sum for a cup of coffee and my hands shook! Brazen girl! Are you the Maharani of Travancore? Have you no shame? Almost three dollars– for COFFEE! ende devam-ay, this one and money, it just falls through her hands…” 😉 I got a phenomenal Braun espresso machine for Christmas that year (1990), as my father grumbled that I would never get robbed for caffeine again.
Where were we? Ah yes, why my father made me a South Asian. When I was a wee thing, I got a globe for my sixth birthday from a very close Uncle. Fascinated, I noticed that there were “tropics” for both my and my father’s astrological signs, but not my mother or sister’s. I realised, for the first time, that America was a very big place. And I saw that India was very far away from San Francisco. My father found me peering at the “kite” and smiled with amusement. “What are you looking for?”, he asked. “Thiruvilla!” I exclaimed. Carefully, Daddy drew a tiny dot with a permanent marker, near the south-western coast of the kite. “There.” I kept studying, until I finally decided that India was a very big place, too. Daddy got a hazy look on his face and sighed. “It used to be even bigger.” Then he pulled me on his lap and told me about how maps were arbitrary and the lines which defined them weren’t drawn with the sort of marker he still held in his hand.
I asked him about my Montessori preschool teacher, who looked just like one of my Aunts. “She’s from Ceylon. She’s just like us. Remember when she came for tea? How it sounded like she was speaking Malayalam? She was speaking Tamil, which is one of the languages Malayalam is based on…Tamil is what your cousins in Madras speak, remember?” I wasn’t following. “So she’s Indian like us?” He replied negatively, but hesitated. “Not really. Not officially. Ceylon is a different country. But that doesn’t matter. She taught you the same way I was taught at Syrian Christian Seminary. She was tough and she understood that we appreciated that.” I glowered at him. When people at Montessori weren’t looking, she had pinched my ear once or twice, with my parents’ adoring blessing. “The thing is, edi…we are more similar than different. In this country, no one cares if you were rich back home, or if you were a Brahmin, or if you came from one side or the other of Punjab, because part is here in India and the other is there in Pakistan…you’re just a foreigner. Maybe your children won’t be considered such, but by then, who knows how many countries this will be,” he concluded, fingers lightly tracing the subcontinent. “Be proud to be Indian, but don’t think that makes you better or different from your teacher or your Uncle Nasir. They aren’t Indian exactly, but in this country, that doesn’t matter and it never will.”
:+:
Dear Santa, Gosh it’s good to be Orthodox. I get your full attention now that you’re done with that OTHER Christmas. 🙂
I haven’t published a “list” this year, but I think I know what I want: I want tolerance, respect and compassion. Musing all this blogginess has convinced me that THOSE are things I really could use. Sometimes, I feel like the random, mildly offensive Amreekans who compliment me on my flawless English are kinder than other brown people are, as evidenced by the SM tip above. I know it’s not kosher to assume things, because when you do, it makes a kundi out of you and me, but I have this suspicion that the person in the parentheses didn’t grow up here.
They didn’t know what it was like to be the only Indian, hell, the only Asian, fcuk it, the only non-white kid in school. They didn’t have classmates circle them and make “oooh-wah-wah-wah” noises by quickly touching their lips with their fingers, over and over again, in some horribly insulting mimicry of a misnamed kind of Indian. They didn’t walk a mile in my moccasins. So they don’t know where I’m coming from, just like I can’t even commence imagining what it’s like to walk a few kilometers in their chappals. I just think if you give me what’s on my Christmas list, this blog (ahem, and this world) would be an even awesomer place.
Also, if you could reclassify “sarcasm” so that it’s no longer naughty? That would be soooooo helpful, for both of us (less making a list for you, less items on it from me).
Oatmeal raisin and one-percent okay this year? I’m no Brimful, but I’ll bake them vs buy them, promise. Also? The fireplace isn’t real (there’s no chimney!) so just use the front door, yo.
Lowe,
A N N A
Hmm….you think you have grown up and learnt all there is to know about the world around you, till some wise guy comes along and shake the very earth on which you stand. Actually, Bong Breaker, that is the most profound thing ever written in the comments section.
Of this Website.
Until comment 51 that is
When everything else fails, bring up the Nazis or the holocaust.
But when it comes to music, family values, food and all the other things that the first generation of immigrants had in common, an all-encompassing term is needed.
That is quite hegemonic and bigoted, BongBreaker. Who are you to inflict South Asianitis on those who politely dissent, eh? The only solution is to agree to disagree. There is no bridging this chasm. You be South Asian-Americans or South Asian-Scottsmen, or South Asian-Zambians; we be Indian-Americans or Indian-whatever else. Finis.
Sure, I’m a bigot. Well proven, from my HIGHLY bigoted comments.
Actually, your closing statement is wrong Mark. You’re an Indian-American, I’m a South Asian Brit AND I’m an Indian Brit. As I said before, they are not mutually exclusive. But yes, I agree that we should agree to disagree!
Fin.
I was wondering who would call Godwin’s Law
In honor of ANNA’s dad, may I just say “Po Oombe” to this entire conversation of whether anybody needs to validate how anyone else chooses to identify.
Bong Breaker I started typing a response to on-going debate, but I’m sorry I just can’t bring myself to care about this discussion again. Suffice to say that I would hazard a guess that those viscerally opposed to the handle of ‘South Asian’ are those who, as VBSF puts it, myopic. South Asian is more about culture than political affiliation. It certainly isn’t about religion, as all religions exist in all South Asian countries.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20051203.htm
And before you point out about all the genocide of Minorities in India. I would say check the change in the percentage of their population in India since its Independence and match with other countries.
The truth is to me it doesn’t matter whether you accept how I identify myself or not. I will not root against Pakistan in a cricket match any more than I’ll root for India. It’s Kenya that I love, and we did some major ass-whopping last time, so you’ll do well not to underestimate our asses 🙂
well, i was born in bangladesh…but left when i was 4. i kind of get weirded out when people call me a ‘bangladeshi american’ since i was born not to much after the country was created. i think south asian is surely an accurate term, though personally, i just say ‘brown.’ latinos here in the states are trying to create a ‘brown power’ movement, and i think real browns should forcefully reappropriate that term, cuz latinos have all those names and identities (hispanic, mexican-american/cuban-american/etc.) already, they can spare one. you know what they say, ‘if you’re brown, stick around.’
i certainly don’t share many of the priorities of manish/abhi/anna & co. because my life experience is very different from theirs. but i understand what they are trying to do in their particular contexts. i.e., they do not live in india (or pakistan, or whatever), so these india vs. pakistan arguments have only so much relevance. though this site tries to be wide ranging, i think it is clearly americo-centric, and i think it needs to be taken that way. in the UK browns can be ‘asian,’ but here ‘asian’ is identified with east asians and there are already ‘indians’ out there (and native americans actually prefer the term american indian, just as blacks prefer that to african american). i have read this weblog enough over the past year to observe multiple instances where individuals upbraided the posters for ‘betraying indian interests’ (paraphrase). some FOBs and indian nationals seem to be unable to move past the fact that american browns have a distinct and different identity and interests which are at root american (in addition to the multiplicity of voices and opinions). some indian americans want to maintain nationally derived (i.e., indian) or local identities (i.e., kashmiri pandit). good luck to them. ultimately the viability of such an identity is dependent both on how that identity coheres within itself (endogamy rates, etc.) and how the general society relates to it (can they make distinctions between kashmiri pandits and other browns or middle easterners???). as a matter of empirical reality i think that the outcome will be diversely textured, and there won’t be one outcome to rule them all. i predict that
a) some brown americans will dissolve into the ‘non-hyphenated american’ population via interrmarriage. even 10-20% outmarriage rates are in the long term significant, especially if immigration rates decline in the future, whether through legal fiat or prosperity in south asia.
b) some will hew to particular identities which will have great salience within group, though their visibility in the mainstream society will be negligible. i.e., ismaili muslims will have a brown identity, but their core identity will be as gujarati speaking ismaili muslims, even if the mainstream society does not understand or comprehend these distinctions very well. the same might apply to a small group of kashmiri pandits, or punjabi khatris, etc. etc. who do not outmarry.
c) some will generate a post-ethnic and pan-brown identity. this is what i see happening on this weblog. i think compromises will need to be made and new cultural conformations will arise de novo. to give an example, recently kxb objected that diwali is not a pan-brown hindu identity marker as bengalis do not celebrate it. this sort of confusions abound. i once had a north indian explain on my website the gotra-exogamy traditions of his region as if it applied to all of india. the reality though is that ‘deviant’ groups, like bengalis, who assimilate to the pan-brown hindu sub-identity will have to accept that diwali is part of the package (as well as hindi movies and bhangra [sp?] music). this sort of ‘identity generation’ has happened many times. the afrikaners created a dutch reformed identity out of a german, french and dutch melange. the quebecois in france assimilated many other european groups before the mid-20th century and recast their history as that of pure descendents of the 18th century settlers. i am not saying that there will need to be new myth creation, but the new identity will emerge out of group consensus and compromise. an exclusivist conservative strident form of islam or christianity will not accommodate the implicit religious pluralism well, and neither will an exclusivist conception of hinduism. individuals might retain adherence to particular ‘faith traditions,’ but they will express a ‘but we all believe in the same god anyhow’ outlook.
anyway, the numbers of a), b), and c) are to be determined. i think the #1 slot will be between a) & c), i don’t give b) a chance because i don’t think most groups have the numbers to maintain a strong ethnic-religious-caste identity (ismailis, gujarati patels, etc. might, but kayasthas from west bengal, no).
blagh. this me v. you, our v. your, them v. us argument makes me want to gag. all these labels are just constructs (thank you Kenyandesi, what an appropriate word!) that can be re-tooled and re-positioned based on one’s purpose and worldview.
you say potato, i say oorlakazhangu…
Razib do you identify with the brown identity because you would rather be only American than anything else and since our brown color is the reason that the mainstream refuses to accept us brownies as full Americans, it makes sense to adopt the brown identity as we can not really get away from it. Thats how I feel anyway.
Rajib, You always do an excellent job of dividing Indians into several sub groups. Good Job again here.
i think brownness is the most salient aspect of my brown/south asian/desiness. it is what i am genetically. on the other hand, i reject ‘south asian’ religion, many of the norms, have little interaction with the popular cultural forms and am illiterate in its languages. i do have some culinary biases, etc., but none of these are powerful enough that i would be able to honestly say that i am ethnically identified.
You always do an excellent job of dividing Indians into several sub groups. Good Job again here.
categorization is a characteristic of the western mind 🙂 seriously.
to razib: is there any issue for which you don’t have a rational argument? ’tis very much humbling at times! 🙂
sand nigger, tell me why i love this shit, i gotz no rationalization of dat.
Vick you seem to be in a rather unnecessarily pedantic point-missing mood today. By saying that all religions exist in all South Asian countries, I never once implied that religious freedom exists. I just wanted to exempt religion from the argument. Most of the people who hate to be associated with Pakistan are Hindu – we can agree on that, right? Their opinions tend to be clouded by anti-Muslim sentiment and my point was that there are more Muslims in India than Pakistan. Hence it’s meaningless to draw religion into the South Asian vs. Indian debate.
Razib raises a good point which I’ve often talked about on here. If you’re so against being associated with other South Asians who aren’t from your particular country (eg India), then how are you comfortable being called ‘Indian’ at all? India doesn’t export one identity. Neither does South Asia.
And again following on from Razib, I follow no South Asian religion, don’t fit in with the majority of South Asians in the UK and am only 50% Asian at all. Yet I have no problem being called South Asian.
There’s almost an aspect of control to the discussion of South Asian vs Indian, Indian-American, etc. In other words, how you choose to identify yourself isn’t the most important thing: it’s how others would have you self-identify that matters. So, we have this back and forth where one person says, don’t call me this, and another says, yes, not only can I call you that but you are that. I made a little joke in my last comment, but it was a joke with meaning! Being an American is the most important thing for me – I think that is the case not because of a nationalist sentiment, but because in the hodge-podge, in the melting pot, I can be myself, most truly and freely. I am of South Asian ethnicity, but I am so very Americanized in the common parlance, that I feel to identify myself as South Asian or brown first somehow turns me into a type, instead of an individual. I am me. I think this is a very Western and American concept. I’m not saying that only Westerners or Americans are interested in this type of individualism, but it is a very peculiar part of American lore: the iconoclast, the loner, the pioneer, the cowboy, etc. Laugh, roll your eyes, shake your head, by all means recognize your own very different experience, but I feel most authentically myself when I just let it go…..I am American, raised in America of immigrant parents. I state, again, I am me.
Okay, to summarize:
Arrgh, I meant: I don’t particularly want to be part of a group….except a group of commenters here on SM….
not to be partisan, but i do have to note that it seems that those who use the term ‘south asian’ tend to be positive their actions, i.e., they use the term, but i don’t see people saying, ‘you aren’t indian americna, you are ‘south asian’,’ etc. the dialogue is not symmetric. ultimately i think the debate in the american context is moot, i have an obviously muslim name to most people, so the ignorati assume i am middle eastern and worship muhammad and revere cows and my mom has a dot on her forehead. that’s what makes the ‘we are not south asian’ line a bit ridiculous to me, since most of the ignorati in the USA think that ‘pakis’ worship cows before they blow up buses, so you really aren’t changing anything by differentiating between anything if you switch to ‘indian american’ (though in the long term there might be a yield, but i didn’t know people laid seeds so far ahead).
South Asia man, catch the fever!
I dunno razib, isn’t saying that people are only going to see you as brown kind of the same thing? At least, that’s what some of the comments read like. It’s not a symmetry, but it is like saying, you can call yourself whatever you want but since the average American won’t accept you, you are just dreaming. As for the ignorati part, there’s plenty of ignorati out there and it’s directed at all kinds. Ask my Italian friends, or heck, just ask my Iowan friends who move to NYC and people assume all kinds of wierd stuff about them. Okay, that’s not a symmetry, but I’m getting at an emotional point, razib. What I’m saying is that my first identifier, for myself, how I think about myself, is not South Asian. What others think: well, that’s not my emotional life. I can’t and am not interested in directing that. Does that make sense?
actually razib, when a commenter says mainstream america will never except us, we are brown first: isn’t that like saying you are South Asian before you are anything else? Maybe I’m misunderstanding 🙂 ?
Seriosuly though, MD to my mind brings up a good point. vis a vis diaspora identity. Razib probably has a theory on this, with evidence, but its almost like we’re at a new place here, where national identity is some countries is much less ethnically tied. The unfortunate violence of the last few years has somewhat retarted this development, but I think its pretty cool. And “brand desis” are at the forefront of the global citizen trend. I love Woody Guthrie and Abraham Lincoln, I am somewhat verses in particularly american idioms, I also know who the Sugar Hill Gang is, and I know a little bit about Ghalib, and a bit more about Waris Shah. And also Baba Ambedhkar. All this goes to say, we are in a way new men and women here and lets celebrate that. All the ig’nance that gets in the way notwithstanding. Do we have time for power politics in India, B’desh, Sri Lanka, Pak? I’m fully ok with people from India being proud to be Indian. Go on with your goonda selves
A google news search on “Indian American” turned up 257 hits. South Asian American turned up 109 (most of which had nothing to do with South Asian Americans.) So “Indian-American” certainly exists as a category in the American media.
Razib I do not mind Brown, but I think Mexicans will eventually co-opt it.
So long as the great majority of immigrants from the subcontinent are from India, the Indian (as opposed to the South Asian identity) will certainly have continued salience (and I am presuming there will continue to be some immigration in the future). This would not be as easy to do in England, given that Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are represented in greater numbers.
I believe that Trinidadians refer to themselves as Indians in Trinidad; they haven’t developed any sort of South Asian identity. Note that the Indian (and Hindu and Muslim)identities have endured even as caste identities have disappeared.
“..we are in a way new men and women here and lets celebrate that.”
Sahej – I love that.
md, i know what you’re saying. i know that you grew up in iowa 10 years before i grew up in eastern oregon, but my hometown newspaper had a story titled ‘the blacks of our county’ in 1990 when they surveyed all the black people who lived in the whole county and had little stories about them (there were 15), so i think we share some common experiences. but in regards to the brown thing, well, my point is addressed at those who think that distinctions between indian and pakistani are going to be extremely relevant in how one relates to the mainstream society. i.e., i don’t have a problem personally if sikhs went around with t-shirts that said ‘i’m not a muslim’ after islamic terrorist attacks, but i’m skeptical as to their value because the retards who beat the shit out of people after such attacks just want to beat up ‘ragheads,’ details of accuracy aren’t relevant to them (as i noted when i pointed out that sudanese christian refugees in atlanta were beaten up by local blacks for being muslim). my parents told my relatives in bangladesh that after 9-11 they felt really bad for the sikhs, since they dress differently. if you would ask me what separates me from the typical american, i suspect i would list my atheism as #1, as that is generally considered more weird than even islam (check out the pew poll’s recent surveys on this topic, the public perceives muslims more positively than atheists, hey, tim mcveigh might have been an atheist, but most people i meet assume he was a christian so that can’t be it). to some extent one can shape one’s own identity, i.e., i reject being called a muslim because that is my familial origin, and i have made a point here on sepia mutiny of correcting people when they term me as such (i.e., an ‘atheist muslim’) because i do not identify as such and do not adhere to the ethnic conception of islam some people have. on the other hand, south asiannness or brownness is less fungible by its nature. neither of these are particularly important identifiers to me, but they are roughly accurate, so i have no particular objection to them.
ah, I see, I was misunderstanding your point. But, in a way, I see that it sort of underscores it 🙂 Those people that want to distinguish themselves from, say, Pakistanis are more likely to be first gen: they identify with a national and cultural identity: India. It has less relevance in the US, so that here, as Americans, identifying as South Asian makes more sense. Ahhh, lightbulb goes off…..
Don’t I have an endearingly creative attitude toward punctuation?
actually razib, when a commenter says mainstream america will never except us, we are brown first: isn’t that like saying you are South Asian before you are anything else? Maybe I’m misunderstanding 🙂 ?
there are many people who will never accept you, but many people who will. i know numerous people in the latter category. in any case, i think society is changing a lot. as i have observed, when i was a kid i got complimented on my lack of accent and asked where i was from every few weeks. that happens perhaps once every 6 months now. re: south asiannness, i don’t think that manish, abhi or anna are south asian before they are american (i’m speaking for them, so they can correct me, but i need some people to use as examples who are flesh and blood :), but south asianness is what distinguishes them from other americans, so that is the term that gets used. americanness is a background assumption that you take as a given. some ethnic types do reject americanness and dwell on their rejection (or perceived rejection) from mainstream society, and that is a different affair altogether.
Anna, your father sounds like a truly remarkable man and you have my condolences. He sounds like my late grandma – at least, from what they tell me she was like.
You know, it’s funny how similar your story is to mine. I grew up in a Malayali family (I’m half Malu, quarter Tamil and quarter Kannadiga), I had a Sri Lankan nanny(I learned about half my Tamil from her, and then forgot almost all of it when I came to America) and I faced the same kinds of racism you did in school. lol However, I found the Native American kids were more accepting than the white kids. Sort of like “you’re Indian, I’m Indian and were both getting put down by the Man. Wanna be friends?”
I’m a first generation Indian immigrant, but since I was only 9 when I came here, I behave like an ABCD and my Indian friends label me as such. I’m sure you can relate to all these various forms of racism: North Indian desis don’t think you’re Indian because you don’t speak Hindi, White kids ask you what tribe you’re from, other Asians think you’re some kind of disgrace and refuse to consider you Asian..etc. Of course, there were and are individuals above such prejudices, but still, such moments do hurt.
The whole Indian vs. South Asian thing seems pretty silly. I mean, why claim you’re Indian at all? If you’re so intent on such nationalism, why not call yourself Hindustani? I’d prefer being called South Asian for simply geographical and cultural reasons. Most East Asians/Orientals don’t accept or awkwardly accept Indians as “Asian”, while Middle Easterners wouldn’t consider Indians among them at all(and vice versa). I guess the same would go for Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Nepalis and possibly Afghans as well. South Asia has a culture and history distinct from the rest of Asia.
However, this did bring up a random question in my mind. Who are the North Asians? I though Russians referred to themselves as European.
Razib probably has a theory on this, with evidence, but its almost like we’re at a new place here, where national identity is some countries is much less ethnically tied.
there were several waves of jewish emigration to the USA. the two primary ones were the mid-19th century bavarian-german one, and the 1900ish east european one. when the east europeans came they were separated between galicians, litvaks, hungarians, etc., but they were an amorphous uncouth east european mass before the german jews (‘our crowd’). eventually the homogenized east european jewry absorbed the german jews so that askhenazi jews in the USA today usually don’t have a strong identification as ‘polish jewish’ vs. ‘hungarian jewish’ (most are mixed).
btw, i suspect ‘south asian’ identity will be mostly a hindu-sikh affair. i think muslims who are ‘into their heritage’ will be absorbed into the islamic american subculture, and christians will in general be absorbed into the general american matrix, but i don’t know enough about this topic really to do anything more than guess.
MD,
Since last five months I have been visiting SM, we get along quite well. We have different political affiliations but sometimes I agree with you more here than the group of people I identify with (liberal ideals).
Don’t you think you claim of being an “Me, an American only” is technically and emotionally correct and well within your rights and dreams but also shows that deep down you always feel your Americaness is in mortal danger and needs to be defended every second. Why this insecurity? Nothing wrong with proud and all that…but still. America is a great country, and nobody will take it from you (unless you act like Bobby Fisher) so why wrap the flag at all times.
I have a lot of Cajun friends – there as American as Apple pie but all of them (I mean all of them I know – one of them had his soldier cousin killed in Afghanistan a few months ago) will never compromise their distinct identity. The same holds with Texans – they always sem-seriously tell you that they want to cede from the American federalism [Between Texas and Louisiana, I have lived 10 years there]. All the Oregon cowboys tell me how rest of the country is “bunch of …”. Abhi and I work in same field – he will tell you we have very little minority in them unlike your profession – most of the people I work and hang around hardly even ever mention being American – years pass by.
Hmm, iconoclast, lone, cowboy – a hell of lot of folklore or from Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns (which I enjoy a lot). The truth is that a lot of American immigration occurred through ghettoization – Italian immigrants would move to towns where they were Italian-Americans and then name streets from their home country. All towns in upstate New York are Greek – Utica, Seneca, Ithaca – because the chief surveyor was a Greek immigrant.
I mean not take away anything from you, don’t take me too seriously – Happy New Year. Anna, excellent story.
Who are the North Asians? I though Russians referred to themselves as European.
historical point: peter the great (early 18th century) was important getting russia declared part of ‘the west’ and europe. before that orthodox russia was not viewed as part of ‘europe,’ whose frontiers were at poland-lithuania. these definitions are to some extent imposed constructions. remember, hindus weren’t a unitary religion until muslims declared them as such.
Utica, Seneca, Ithaca
hm. well, i don’t know, re: greek, seneca was a roman (latin) statesmen, not a greek one. i do not believe that the ‘seneca’ indians call themselves seneca, so that can’t be the origin.
Razib,
That what I thought when I arrived Ithaca…..untill dozen of Cornell professors told me over dinners and lunches. If I have time, I look up at the history of upstate NY or email one of them – they will surely laugh why am I asking them now – I’ll tell them about Sepia Mutiny.
Kush Tandon – funny, I thought of it as a celebration and intellectual riff, but I can see how it could read that way. Isn’t interesting how one can try to explain oneself and it’s still not enough?
Kush, despite being an MD (ha, ha) I’m not an analytical person. I’m not razib 🙂 If you asked me to explain myself I’d sooner paint a painting than use a set of words to lay an argument….I’m not being defensive or trying to wrap myself in the flag. I’m being emotional and exploring my own emotional terrain. I’m not insecure in my beliefs or in who I am (well, not more than most, I should think). Dude, it’s a riff, it’s poetry, as I wrote on another blog, it’s emotional poetry….what I mean to say when I’m American is what others mean when they say they are South Asian and not Indian. It’s how they feel.
i’m not denying the greek surveyor. i’m just saying that seneca is latin from what i know. seneca seems to have been their gens (family) name from what i can tell, so i suspect it would be latin in origin….
MD,
Peace, we are often allies here @ SM except Bush-talk. I was being funny too.
No, I also understand that as a woman, American ideals has a special place for you.
actually, as an arty-farty loon with pretensions of, er, arty-fartyness, all my crazy mixed up ideals have a special place for me. I swear, I’m so going abstract after this thread (see Stuart Davis and Jackson Pollock….:) )
Gee, thanks. Do you need to badmouth Indians/Pakistanis/whatever in order to feel good about your “south asian” identity?
It is understandable that a central theme of the “South Asian” identity is an attempt to distinguish this identity from that of the “native South Asians.” It seems to me that this is being done by positing that the “South Asians” are not encumbered by the caste/nationalistic/religious divides that plague South Asia, and thus presumably characterize the “native South Asians.” Implicitly, it is being asserted that “South Asians” are superior to the “natives” because they are more open-minded and tolerant.
All this is fine, even if somewhat hurtful to a native South Asian. I suppose we all “validate” our own identities by asserting our “superiority” to others. One only has to look at the Hindutva characterization of Muslims and the converse or for that matter, some Indian representations of Pakistanis and the reverse to see this in action. If characterizing all Indians as goondas – yes I can imagine you saying, no not all – helps you do this, fine.
As an Indian with quite a few Indian-American cousins, I can appreciate the problem of identity. I also appreciate the insensitivity that characterizes many Indians (probably also Pakistanis/Bangladeshis/Sri Lankans though I don’t know that much about them) when they fail to appreciate that Indian-Americans are not Indians. But paying back one misrepresentation with another: is that the way to go?
“go on with your goonda selves” is an attempted pun on the american saying, “go on with your bad selves”. Its a positive saying. I substituted “goonda” for “bad”
suresh, i think you make some good points. the key is that, back to my tendency to categorize, we need to be careful to break down the various groups into their constituents. or, we need to give people the benefit of the doubt that such habits are background assumptions and that they are making a case in good faith. myself, i think that the posters on this weblog are relatively fair to browns in brownland, though they express a definite outsider viewpoint with outsider priorities. the ‘problem’ that anna alludes to is, i think, from newbie non-american browns who misunderstand the core focus of the posters and assume that indian/brown/south asian american == indian, etc. then there is the debate between brown americans between those who perceive a ‘big tent’ sense of brownness vs. those who perceive a ‘small tent’ sense of hindu & indian american sense of brownness. then, there are people, like ‘kumar,’ who are cautious about focusing on brownness if it would dilute their own particular ethno-religious identities which they find precious.
lol Sahej, you should probably add in a “(pun intended)” next time.
btw, i suspect ‘south asian’ identity will be mostly a hindu-sikh affair. i think muslims who are ‘into their heritage’ will be absorbed into the islamic american subculture, and christians will in general be absorbed into the general american matrix
Bingo, which is why so many people are averse to the whole South Asian thingy and prefer Indian-American. Heck, if its going to be predominantly Hindu, then why not Hindu-American? Atheists and agnostics can be “cultural Hindus”. Jewish-American certainly works, and no one associates that identity with bigotry or nationalism. We are goddamn mionorities ourselves, why do we have to develop a coalition with everyone else from the region when the benefits of such a coalition are so few (maybe even negative), except in a few instances, like the coalition of taxi drivers in nyc. And don’t kid yourselves, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis aren’t lining up to be South Asians. Only Indians are.
It seems to me that this is being done by positing that the “South Asians” are not encumbered by the caste/nationalistic/religious divides that plague South Asia, and thus presumably characterize the “native South Asians.” Implicitly, it is being asserted that “South Asians” are superior to the “natives” because they are moe open-minded and tolerant.
Bingo #2! And that natives–as opposed to the oh-so-enlightened “South Asians Americans”–are in need of reform. In the process they are attacking their own identity and it breeds, IMO, a good deal of self-hate in some of the “activists”.
Static identities are impossible, pointless, unrealistic and hinder growth. This is not to say I don’t love my heritage, religion, languages and overall culture, but what good is all that if I am not functional (and nice while at it) in my current reality? Pf what use is being an Indian at an NFL game or South Asian while being a general asshole?
Subtext: People are different and the way of the world does not encourage homogeneity. Thank goodness for that.
then why not Hindu-American
you’ve seen the problems on this very website: sikhs and jains do not necessarily want to be part of the ‘hindu american’ identity because they do not usually consider themselves hindus even if hindus (this is contentious obviously). additionally, you should note that two of the individuals who are central to SM are from christian backgrounds (i do not believe that vinod is religious though). even if something is predominantly x, that does not mean that it is necessarily judicious to define it as x.
Bingo #2! And that natives–as opposed to the oh-so-enlightened “South Asians Americans”–are in need of reform. In the process they are attacking their own identity and it breeds, IMO, a good deal of self-hate in some of the “activists”.
this is the kind of crap i am talking about. how do you know how they define their own identity??? perhaps they do not want to be associated with x & y (good for the goose is good for the gander!). when a given culture shifts into an alien matrix it mutates and evolves into something new. jewish american culture is just that, it is not the shtetl culture, neither is it the sophisticated vienna assimilated culture. american jews have never had any compunction of attacking and disagreeing with both the reactionary medievalism of orthodoxy & hasidism, or, the strident secularism of non-orthodox jews in europe. the USA is particular in that its jewry have developed a vibrant non-orthodox religious culture. the ‘south asian,’ predominantly, but not solely, hindu, american culture is likely going to be very different from that of south asia. if it criticizes indian norms and forms, that is not self-hate, because it is not indian, it is indian american (or south asian, or whatever).
p.s. as a matter of personal preference i have many disagreemants with ‘activists,’ but i tend to think accusations of ‘self hate’ are not in good faith because likely a given person is acting in their own interest, even if you can’t understand it because you aren’t them.
as a matter of personal preference i have many disagreemants with ‘activists,’ but i tend to think accusations of ‘self hate’ are not in good faith because likely a given person is acting in their own interest, even if you can’t understand it because you aren’t them.
Woah! I hit a nerve. Sure, dissidents, loners, ascetics, people who adopt other cultures–I welcome it all, and you are right, it may be self-love and not self-hate that motivates them. Who am I to say.
we need to give people the benefit of the doubt that such habits are background assumptions and that they are making a case in good faith
Sadly, I dont see much good faith in most of the comments by the Anti-South Asian crowd. To flame further, I know this Indian American dude who is rooming with a Pakistani American and a week back in a discussion, they both said that it was easier to identify with the other than with people from back home.
Also the Indian American guy is nominally Hindu while the Pakistani American is Muslim.
For people who have grown up in the US, there is a lot more in common in experiences with both their parents and the world at large between Indian and Pakistani Americans than some people think. The values of the immigrant parents from both India and Pakistan are pretty similar, the obsession with their kids going into lucrative careers are pretty similar, the food, the cultural gaffes, the zany sayings, the frugalness,the scorn for American decadence and permissiveness are all similar in Indian and Pakistani households in the US. The growing up experience is actually very similar. From ‘desi’ food to ‘desi’ music and movies to the treatment accorded by the other Americans is pretty similar. So its no surprise that some Indian and Pakistani Americans might not see each other as that different.
On further reflection… I guess we are all a bundle of identities: gay or straight, Californian or New Yorker, Mets fan or Yankees fan, Pakistani, Bengali, Brahmin , Sudra, Christian and so on…adding South Asian doesn’t matter that much. As the great Buddhist philospher Nagaruna might have said, all identities have no inherent existence, they are “empty”. For example “gay” cannot exist without “straight”, “Indian” cannot exist without a host of other competing identities like “Pakistani” or “American”. “west” cannot exist without “east”, “motion” cannot exist without “rest”. Most of our self-identifications are dependent upon a critical appraisal of others (as Suresh points out), and that in itself is bondage–at a collective level it leads to patriotism or nationalism. Individually, in the Buddhist view, there is nothing there, there is no self, these identities are mere graspings, bubbles in the stream, the lead to attachment and unhappiness. It is the “quieting down” of mental conceptualizations that leads, in the Mahayana view, to enlightenment and to empathy for all beings, including our fellow humans.