A few months ago, in the middle of the Sonal Shah controversy, I wrote a blog post criticizing Vijay Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk as a somewhat inadequate historical account of the Indian-American community. The example I focused on was the “Yankee Hindutva” chapter, which I thought was unbalanced and prone to cast aspersions rather than actually illuminate the topic at hand. But other chapters in Prashad’s book have similar problems: Prashad’s book is more a critique of the “desi” community in the U.S. than it is an introduction to it: we are too bourgeois (the “model minority” myth), too racist (i.e., against African-Americans), and too religious.
We now have a more comprehensive introductory book on the history of the South Asian American community, Vinay Lal’s The Other Indians: A Political and Cultural History of South Asians in America (see an earlier post on Vinay Lal by Abhi here). Lal’s book covers some of the same topics as Prashad’s Karma but is much more heavily factual and closely researched -– it’s a work of history rather than a political polemic –- and it’s rich with useful and well-sourced statistics. If I were to ask students to read something about the history of South Asians in the U.S., say, in conjunction with a segment of a course relating to Indian immigrant fiction, I would probably assign this book.
In lieu of a comprehensive review, below are a few highlights and interesting tidbits from The Other Indians that I picked up on: Elihu Yale, early Immigration/Legal issues, Religion, and the old terminology question. Elihu Yale
Lal’s chapter on the early American relationship with India was interesting to me, specifically the account of Elihu Yale (i.e., the Yale who gave Yale University its name):
Well before Indians first began to arrive in some numbers in the United States a little before 1900, trade had brough the products of ‘East India’ –tea, spices, silk, muslin, opium—to New England homes. Salem owed its greatness to the commerce with the East . . . It is the ‘magnificent Oriental plunder’ accumulated by Elihu Yale in India, who served as a lowly clerk in the East India Company’s offices before he rose to assume charge of the Madras Presidency, that lifted a New England college founded in 1676 from the doldrums and prompted its founders to rename the college in honor of the wealthy donor. As a young boy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, later to be known as the ‘Sage of Concord’ and the leader of a group of writers and thinkers who would be characterized as the ‘Transcendentalists,’ often visited Boston’s ‘India Wharf’ which had by his time becomethe leading center of trade with China and India. Emerson confided to his journal in 1836 that everything in ‘this era’ had been made ‘subservient’ to ‘Trade,’ and ‘On us the most picturesque contrasts are crowded. We have the beautiful costume of the Hindoo and the Turk in our streets.’ (Lal, 8)
I have sometimes wondered whether folks at Yale today ever stop to think about the colonial legacy of Elihu Yale. (Is there anyone reading this who went to Yale, who’s looked into it?)
The Dark Years: Bhagat Singh Thind, 1920-1940
I also found Lal’s account of the legal history of Indian-American citizens following the Asian Exclusion Act informative. After allowing a first wave of immigrants from India around the turn of the century, U.S. immigration authorities started to tighten restrictions on Indian immigrants by 1910, rejecting more and more applicants, in part because of fears about the Ghadr movement, and in part because of rising general xenophobia about immigrants from Asia. Still, prior to 1923, many Indians could get around racial restrictions by claiming to be ’Caucasian.’ In 1923, this was reversed, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Bhagat Singh Thind needed to be ‘de-naturalized’:
In early 1923, the Supreme Court heard on appeal from the Immigration Bureau the case of Bhagat Singh Thind, whose application for naturalization had been granted in the face of the Bureau’s opposition. Thind, a Caucasian of ‘high-caste Hindu’ stock ‘of full Indian blood,’ enterd the U.S. through Seattle in 1912, enrolled as a student at Berkeley in 1913, and was one of a handful of Indians who fought in World War I under the U.S. army. . . . Thind’s lawyers rested their case on the two-fold argument that, on the anthropological evidence, north Indians were Aryans and thus Caucasians, and, secondly, by judicial precedent Caucasians were to be construed as whites. Justice Sutherland took the contrary view: in the ‘understanding of the common man,’ . . . ‘white’ clearly denoted a person of European origins. ‘It may be true,’ wrote Sutherland, ‘that the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable profound differences between them today.’ The ‘Aryan theory’ had been ‘rejected by most, if not all, modern writers on the subject of ethnology,’ and the word ‘Caucasian,’ Sutherland argued, ‘is in scarcely better repute.’ (Lal, 37-38)
Funny that Judge Sutherland, in 1923, was casting doubt on the Aryan invasion theory even then. (Isn’t it strange that some people still want to believe it’s true, even today?)
Another surprise in Lal’s account is of the years subsequent to the Thind case: despite the fact that the U.S. had decided it could de-naturalize Indian immigrants who had achieved citizenship, in practice, it happened to very few people. A lawyer named Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, who was a naturalized U.S. citizen, successfully went to the Supreme Court in 1927, to defend his naturalization as valid, and after that de-naturalization was quite rare. The real impact of the Asian Exclusion Act and the Thind case was that Indians no longer immigrated to the U.S., and many who had already settled here decided to leave. According to the U.S. census, there were 8000 Indians in California in 1917, but only 1,476 by 1940 (Lal, 40). Throughout the entire country, there were only 2,045 self-identified Indians present in the U.S. in 1940. (Just forty years later, in 1980, the Census recorded 387,223 Indians in the U.S., and that number has of course jumped again in both 1990 and 2000.)
Religion: Hindu Temple Architecture
I also learned from Lal’s treatment of religion as it is practiced by Indian Americans. He does not ignore some of the radical religious groups, like the VHP-A. But he doesn’t obsess over them either, and he makes space for a detailed account of the complexities of Hinduism as it is actually practiced in the U.S. by ordinary people. He has, for instance, interesting details on houses of worship, referring to some of the new temples that have been built with strict adherence to architecture stipulated the Shilpa Sastras, as well as the more syncretic temples that are structured very differently than they would be in India. I thought the following was interesting, along these lines:
A large metropolitan center such as Los Angeles is home to a Murugan temple, at least two Radha Krishna temples, a Kali Mandir, a Devi Mandir, a Sanatan Dharma Mandir, a Lakshmi Narayan Mandir, a Sri Venkateswara temple, and close to a dozen other temples. The nondescript Valley Hindu Temple of Northridge, where a sizable Indian community has developed over the last two decades, is representative of the other, nonsectarian tradition of Hindu temples in the United States, insofar as the temple houses a diverse array of deities—Shiva, Ram, Krishna, Durga, Lakshmi, to name a few—and welcomes Hindus in the diaspora of all persuasions. It has sometimes been suggested that Hindus in the diaspora may be less attentive to distinctions which hold sway in India, such as those between north and south, Vaishnavites and Saivites, and so on. Whether this is partly on account of their own minority status in the U.S. is an interesting and yet unresolved question. Whether this phenomenon is as distinct as is sometimes argued is also questionable. While images of both Vishnu and Shiva are not usually housed under one roof in Hindu temples in India, and the mythological works known as the Puranas—where the history, genealogy, and worship of these gods is articulated—are exceedingly sectarian, the Puranas are less exclusive than is commonly argued. Thus, a Vaishnava Purana usually elevates Vishnu as the supreme God but still has ample room for Shiva; a Saivite Purana inverses the order. A Devi Purana, dedicated to the Goddess, will similarly render secondary the male Gods. (Lal, 73-74)
I wonder if any readers who have been to different temples around the U.S. (and perhaps also in India) might have any comments on temple construction in the U.S. vs. India. (It might seem like an obscure topic, but actually I think architecture of houses of worship says a lot about the way people practice their faiths.)
The Old Terminology Problem: Desi, South Asian, etc.
Though I think very highly of Lal’s book, his discussion of terminology did raise some questions for me at certain points. Lal eschews the word “desi,†and settles on “Indian-American,†and explains carefully why he’s doing so. I can’t reproduce all of Lal’s arguments along these lines, but the following paragraph stood out to me as an interesting (though not necessarily compelling) critique of “desiâ€:
Though there is no gainsaying the fact that many proponents of the term ‘desi’ similarly seek to invoke its widest and most pluralistic meanings, calling forth the shared lives of many South Asians, the term operates on many different and disjunctive registers. As I have often been reminded by an old friend from Jaisalmer, in Western Rajasthan, words such as ‘country’ mean quite different things to people from metropolitan centers and those who earn their livelihoods in India’s tens of thousands of villages and smaller towns. When my friend chances to remark ‘Hamare desh me aisa hota hai’ (‘This is how it happens in our country’), by desh he clearly means his part of the country. The observation invokes not so much the nation in the abstract, much less Bharat, but rather a frame of mind and a set of habits. The word ‘desi’ also calls to mind home-grown products: thus, for example, no that liberalization has opened the Indian market to a whole array of foreign goods, including Western/hybrid varieties of fruits and vegetables, one hears often of the contrast between foreign vegetables and those branded ‘desi’—the latter being small and (in common belief) much more palatable to the taste than foreign varieties. There is, it appears to me, something unsettling and certainly odd about the fact that the most enthusiastic proponents of the word ‘desi’ are precisely those diasporic Indians who, in many ways, have least claim to the word and its multiple inheritances, considering their location in metropolitan centers of thought and their immense distance from local and vernacular knowledge systems. For these reasons among many, I have, except in a few particular instances, eschewed the word ‘desi’ when speaking of Indian Americans. (Lal, xi)
I understand Lal’s reasoning, though I don’t think it’s necessarily always a mark against “desi” that many people who use the term are diasporic, and perhaps less connected to South Asian culture. I don’t think the variations in the way “desi” (and videsi and pardesi) is used within northern India necessarily make the diasporic deployment of it less true within their context. Language can change.
Later, Lal also addresses the term “South Asian American,” and introduces some concerns about it that will be familiar to readers of the endless debates over terminology that have taken place on this blog over the years (to wit: the problem of tokenizing or ignoring ‘smaller’ countries in South Asia; the fact that few people outside of secular/progressive communities would actually identify themselves primarily as “South Asianâ€; the confusion of South Asia with Southeast Asia; the difficulties of limiting South Asia geographically, with Afghanistan on the west and Burma on the east, etc.).
[Incidentally, I also addressed the terminology question in this published essay.]
Again, while the problems with the term “South Asian” (or “South Asian American”) are real, they are not insurmountable, and Lal’s reasons for electing not to use the term were not entirely convincing to me. In the end, he seems to settle on “Indian American” because, “it appears to me to best do justice to those people who are the subject of this book.” In effect, it seems to me that Lal may have decided for practical reasons to focus primarily on immigrants from India in particular as the subject of his book, and some of his arguments about the problems with the term “South Asian†(or “South Asian Americanâ€) might be beside the point.
That said, The Other Indians is a great read and a very helpful book overall.
thanks for the pointer. fwiw, people talk about “indian” not “south asian” at SM meetups i’ve been to.
I propose “undivided India”, instead of south Asia. It captures the spirit behind the south Asia term, and also includes all the people and countries involved.
I propose “undivided India”, instead of south Asia. It captures the spirit behind the south Asia term, and also includes all the people and countries involved.
ok, i will declare this my last comment on the topic in this thread.
1) most south asian americans are indian origin (on the order of 80-90%)
2) a large fraction of pakistani and bangladeshi americans are going to be more muslim-identified as opposed to national-origin identified, increasing the % of 1) among the subset who are part of the “community” (and lots of pakistanis are happy to be considered part of west, not south asia, anyhow)
3) the largest cultural groups among “south asian americans” already have a tendency to define many aspects of the “community.” e.g., the punjabi-gujarati element seems to have status as cultural lingua franca, and most indian americans are OK with it because this isn’t india and we all have to speak english anyhow in our day to day life.
4) the national divisions have less salience in terms of the cultural foci which serve to bind american brownz anyhow. it’s a whole different issue for international relations, but a lot of raised & 1st gen and now later are going to be more fixated on american, not south asian, politics.
people assume i’m indian most of the time, and if i don’t know them or it’s a casual interaction i won’t correct them as to the national origin of my family. it’s not a big deal. and if i did correct them, i wouldn’t say i was “south asian.” if i was the type of person who cared a lot that people referred to me as “bangladeshi american” vs. “indian american,” i probably would be a lot less likely to read a weblog like this, to be honest….
Disagree on a number of levels, esp. with Razib’s last line for obvs reasons. Related post:
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005580.html
The book does sound interesting!
I can’t remember if this made it on SM two years ago, but in 2007 Yale took down a portrait of Elihu from its corporation room after protests about the apparent collared slave shown beside him. http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/19794
It’s interesting to note that the controversy seems to have stemmed from uneasiness related to the university’s connections to the African slave trade. I can’t find much in the coverage that really takes the Indian component seriously. It should be said though that the boy portrayed (though obviously a convention of contemporary portraiture and power more than a life study) in the portrait could very well have been one of the not insignificant number of African slaves living in India in the late 17th century or someone of local non-African ancestry. In any event, I don’t think the university has done much to think through this particular set of historical links.
I very much doubt that most Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would want to be identified with “undivided India.” (I met a Bangladeshi who insisted he spoke “Bangla” and did not speak “Bengali.”) Not to mention the other South Asian countries, which IIRC were never part of “India” at all.
Thanks for the link, MF. It’s an interesting story — no mention at all of the British Raj!
The N.W.O. would not at all welcome a United Brown Front. Or would it? Obama said he was “desi” afterall, so maybe.
Actually, to be honest, “indian-american” represents higher SES than “bangladeshi-american” in America, and that must matter to someone so obsessed with socio-economic status.
uh. Subcontinental.
duh.
In defense of Vijay Prashad, when the Karma of Brown Folk came out 9 years ago, there was nothing out there like it (that I knew of). That book really helped me put in perspective the model minority, Deepak Chopra, and threw out many clues to follow up on later.
This is coming from someone who is half Indian but looks full–growing up with an Indian father who purposefully suppressed Indian culture and being around Indians in order to fit into white society. In 2000, Prashad’s book helped lift the veil quite a bit–but I guess all of you full Indians knew everything anyway unlike us bastards.
Thanks for the reading tip, will definitely check it out.
I agree with razib that there is a certain set of people in the pakistani-american community who identifies as muslim-american more than south-asian american, but I think there are also lots of people who feel primarily south-asian or “desi” rather than muslim. Also, while I know a lot of Pakistanis who want to pretend they’re middle eastern, that’s completely factually wrong. Our language, food, dress, and all the other anthropological marks of culture are much more south-asian than Arab. Even south-asian islam is quite different from arab islam.
Personally, I am in favor of the most inclusive label possible. If something is marketed to “Indian-Americans” than I feel excluded even if I otherwise have much in common with the target audience. This feeling of exclusion doesn’t exist with the broader “South Asian American”.
Hi Half-and-half…
I should be clear — Prashad’s book does have its uses. Your example especially is one that fits what I think the book is good for, and you’re right that it was the only book of its kind for a long time. I also think the book was a powerful tool for second-gens who feel marginal in the Indian American community for one reason or another.
But it’s less effective as a teaching tool or as a general introduction to someone outside the community. I have at times assigned chapters from “Karma” over the years in my classes, only to be disappointed initially that my students weren’t getting more out of it. Over time it became clear to me, after repeated attempts with “Karma,” that Prashad is more focused on demystifying myths and making a critique of certain diasporic sins than he is in working through the history in a systematic way. In other words, if someone hasn’t heard of the “model minority myth,” there’s no point reading an essay on why it’s problematic.
Actually, to be honest, “indian-american” represents higher SES than “bangladeshi-american” in America, and that must matter to someone so obsessed with socio-economic status.
get over yourself. we all look and seem the same to “americans”. terrorist 🙂
Heck, in Canada, add the term “Indo-Canadian” to the mix. I even heard the term Indo-American on NPR the other day.
I do agree with Lal’s criticism of those who exploit the mystic Indian schtick like Chopra (his Jackson responses lately have been way too self-promoting IMHO). And it was the only book of its kind for a long while – remember finding it in a bookstore and being impressed.
My favorite story is years back when I visited Savannah, GA for a work trip (a beautiful place with, great, eclectic history, architecture and very friendly peoples).
I was sitting in a room prepping for a software upgrade at a customer site we were doing, and one of their IT guys turns around and asks: “Y’all Canadian?”
Now, the company I work for out of Vancouver is VERY multicultural (which just reflects the populace they hire from). So it was not uncommon to have an entire team of folks show up who were all east asian, south asian with maybe one african and I’d joke one white guy to drive so we wouldn’t get pulled over. I’m sure people probably thought we were based out of Hong Kong or something. But we did have many white folks as well.
So, I replied in the affirmative, that I was and we were indeed Canadian. He thought about it and responded, “You don’t look Canadian”.
So, I bit – “What does a Canadian look like?”
He thought about it, and stated “Like in the movie Strange Brew” – basically a bunch of white guys in toques calling each other hosers.
Also, in our Support department, at one point we had about 6 folk from Africa, and only 2 were actually black the rest were made up of two whites, one Indian and one east asian. Even my gf’s Dad jokes that he is truly African-American since he was born in Tanzania and didn’t even travel to Indian until age 20.
As mentioned before, I got a tatt in India of a pre-partitioned Bharat and have always respected the theme behind the Ram Mohammed Singh Azad alias used by Udham Singh – we’re all from the same sub-continent and peoples – Bengali, Pakistani, Indian, etc – basically it’s all good. Cultural, national and religious identities don’t have to fight each other for supremacy – we can be many things at the same time. I can be Punjabi, Canadian, Indian, Sikh (from a cultural and family background) and Atheist all at the same time.
White Woman’s Burden There are a small number of blogs now, by women from the West in the process of getting married to, or already with, an Indian husband. Interestingly many of these blogs call out to themselves in “skin color” terms: “WHITE Indian housewife” or “GORI girl”. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but there seems to be a mild air of prejudiced condecension in the subtext of these blog titles. ‘Look at me, I am white but I am trying to make it with a “colored” man in very difficult circumstances. I am liberated and don’t care about race (what about those color references as the defining characteristic of the blog titles?) but look at my husband’s family and country — caste system, higher fees at parks for foreigners, they shit and spit in the street, mom-in-law looks at my “blonde” hair and “fair” skin in envy — so much of a white woman’s burden (sigh!).’ Methinks there is an externalization of collective prejudice perhaps? When 9/11 happened, Sikhs got murdered in Phoenix, AZ, coz some European-Americans couldn’t be bothered with the difference between them and Al-Qaeda! Sikhs and Muslims thrown into the same category because they have turbans and beards is the ultimate irony! And speakin’ of Australia — well, lets examine the immigration policies from a few years ago or how “aborigines” have been treated…..the less said the better! Australia, South Africa, and the US are examples of institutionalized prejudice in European-dominant societies, in the same way as one might think of the caste system in India. There is unfortunately no racial monopoly when it comes to prejudice, although the evidence points to greater violence related to institutional prejudice in “white” societies. Another important point about these (mis)conceptions is the equating of race with skin or eye color. Any decent anthropologist or evolutionary biologist will tell you that human beings are essentially all racial hybrids and are genetically indistinguishable from each other racially compared to other species, say, apes or mice. Indians and Europeans are actually all caucasians who even share a common original language called proto-Indo-European — read Max Mueller!! This is what really gets me: that these women/men think they actually have married into a different race because of differences in skin color. It never occurs to them in their ignorance that they should question the prejudices they grew up with in their own societies/families. The externalization of ignorance is the the very essence of prejudice.So skin color is just a political manifestation of “racial” self-identity in institutionally prejuduced societies: us vs. the aborigines, us vs. the “blacks”, us vs. the injuns, us vs. the japs we put in the internment camps, us vs. the wetbacks, us vs. the curry-smelling brown guys, us vs. the shudras, etc., etc. I have never actually seen a WHITE-skinned person, they are mottled pink or cream, or yellow, or brown, or whatever. White is the color of the printer paper next to your PC — its an invention of convenience to define separateness in very superficial terms. So, I might ask, are Westerners like that only, but I may be accused of generalizing to an entire group or race or set of countries, and that wouldn’t be right, now, would it?
I don’t know how old the use of the word desi in the US, by Indian Americans, is. But my feeling is that it might have come from old Bollywood movies, especially the ones with a rural theme, where “des” referred to the region one came from. For Indians in the US, instead of a village like in the movies, desh expanded to include all of India (the country of origin). So the use of the word in this context makes a lot of sense. Liberalisation came very late to India, as contrasted to migration to the US, so the term desi in the context of “desi, videshi” (which makes more sense to current India, since we have lot of foreign goods), doesn’t really apply to Indian Americans. As for the temples, I see a clear distinction the US between “South Indian” and “Gujarati, north Indian temples”. At least this is true in Detroit where I live. This may have not been true in the past , when the Indian community was smaller. In newer North Indian temples, even in India, generally all deities are represented (older temples like Badrinath and Kedarnath have a clear distinction, but everyone visits both temples anyway). So the distinctions are eroding not just in US, but even in India. I have no idea about the South, so can’t speak about them.
Personally I don’t like the term “desi”, it seems to be something that mainly American NRIs use, I have very rarely heard it used by diasporic communities in Africa or the UK, I am still unclear as to what exactly it is meant to mean; it seems to stem more from the discourse that minority groups in the US tend to have in trying to differentiate themselves from the WASP mainstream and each other; but this is a minor point as such things don’t revolve around my like or dislike.
“Undivided India” has some legal connotations, in terms of the citizenship you can claim; in anycase it is likely to include Sri Lanka which wasn’t officially part of British India but a separate crown colony.
I haven’t read Prashad’s book but I am more sympathetic to his views particularly on the Sonal Shah issue; from my impression given his political views, I would be surprised if e would claim to be writing an objective history of Indian Americans since that isn’t his style which is much more ideological and engaged. I only know his work on Indian topics, his book “Untouchable Freedom” is very good imo about the sweeper community in Delhi. He is perhaps too earnest and too keen to drive home his own political agenda which would hamper his analytical abilities if it significantly constrained his ability to be impartial. I don’t think Vinay Lal, and again I haven’t read this particular book but know Lal’s work in Indian history, is all that different in terms of where he is coming from than Prashad, despite their differences in style.
16 · svaha on July 4, 2009 05:07 PM · Direct link White Woman’s Burden There are a small number of blogs now, by women from the West in the process of getting married to, or already with, an Indian husband. Interestingly many of these blogs call out to themselves in “skin color” terms: “WHITE Indian housewife” or “GORI girl”. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but there seems to be a mild air of prejudiced condecension in the subtext of these blog titles. ‘Look at me, I am white but I am trying to make it with a “colored” man in very difficult circumstances. I am liberated and don’t care about race (what about those color references as the defining characteristic of the blog titles?) but look at my husband’s family and country — caste system, higher fees at parks for foreigners, they shit and spit in the street, mom-in-law looks at my “blonde” hair and “fair” skin in envy — so much of a white woman’s burden (sigh!).’ Methinks there is an externalization of collective prejudice perhaps? When 9/11 happened, Sikhs got murdered in Phoenix, AZ, coz some European-Americans couldn’t be bothered with the difference between them and Al-Qaeda! Sikhs and Muslims thrown into the same category because they have turbans and beards is the ultimate irony! And speakin’ of Australia — well, lets examine the immigration policies from a few years ago or how “aborigines” have been treated…..the less said the better! Australia, South Africa, and the US are examples of institutionalized prejudice in European-dominant societies, in the same way as one might think of the caste system in India. There is unfortunately no racial monopoly when it comes to prejudice, although the evidence points to greater violence related to institutional prejudice in “white” societies. Another important point about these (mis)conceptions is the equating of race with skin or eye color. Any decent anthropologist or evolutionary biologist will tell you that human beings are essentially all racial hybrids and are genetically indistinguishable from each other racially compared to other species, say, apes or mice. Indians and Europeans are actually all caucasians who even share a common original language called proto-Indo-European — read Max Mueller!! This is what really gets me: that these women/men think they actually have married into a different race because of differences in skin color. It never occurs to them in their ignorance that they should question the prejudices they grew up with in their own societies/families. The externalization of ignorance is the the very essence of prejudice.So skin color is just a political manifestation of “racial” self-identity in institutionally prejuduced societies: us vs. the aborigines, us vs. the “blacks”, us vs. the injuns, us vs. the japs we put in the internment camps, us vs. the wetbacks, us vs. the curry-smelling brown guys, us vs. the shudras, etc., etc. I have never actually seen a WHITE-skinned person, they are mottled pink or cream, or yellow, or brown, or whatever. White is the color of the printer paper next to your PC — its an invention of convenience to define separateness in very superficial terms. So, I might ask, are Westerners like that only, but I may be accused of generalizing to an entire group or race or set of countries, and that wouldn’t be right, now, would it?
Actually, your Max Mueller was a Nazi racist. Moreover, you’re talking about how similar all humans are and how you resent whites trying to be Indian and all, yet, you go through great lengths to show that Indians and whites are both Caucasians. Keep in mind that South Indians are NOT Caucasians/Caucasoids. Moreover, neither are Eastern Indians from Nagaland area and Mizoram.
Regarding Shudras: More than 90% of Hindus are the feet of God. Patels, Jatts, and over 97% of South and Bengalis are Shudras.
If this is a poll, I vote for the term “desi.”
Like Paradesi pointed out, some people may be offended by the term “desi” because they think they are being called a “country bumpkin” or “someone from the village.” However, I do not think that is the prevalent association for Indians/South Asians in the US. Personally, I prefer desi over South Asian because it denotes an intimate connection. There is no place called South Asia on the atlas but there is a place called des/desh in my heart and imagination.
However, “desi” can also be used in the general sense to identify people from a similar cultural background. When I see people like me on the street, it is natural to claim them as desis even if I do not know where they are originally from and how much they identify with the Indian/South Asian identity.
Thanks for the note, amardeep. The book is on order:)
Ajay Gandhi, a graduate student at Yale published an oped piece coinciding with Yale Presiden Rick Levin’s viist to India. http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/04/stories/2005050400441000.htm
Yale, India, and the failure of the `global university’
Ajay Gandhi
Yale, through its historical amnesia about its roots in colonialism and slavery, its unethical investment policies and demeaning work culture, abrogates the responsibility it claims to bear as a global university.
FROM JANUARY 2 to 8, 2005, Yale University president Richard Levin visited India. This unprecedented visit by the head of an elite American university signalled, in his words, that India was finally “emerging as a global economic and political power.” In between meetings with the Indian Prime Minister and the chiefs of powerful Indian companies such as Infosys and Reliance Industries, Dr. Levin lectured on Yale’s vision of “university citizenship.” With missionary zeal, he propounded a notion of the “global university” standing for “transcendent principles” and embodying a “noble mission.” In so doing, he was continuing a tradition stretching back to Yale’s inception, whereby lofty rhetoric has disguised powerful self-interest.
Dr. Levin’s university is named after Elihu Yale, a fervid Anglican who served in the British East India Company between 1670 and 1699 and was governor of Fort St. George at Madras from 1687 to 1692. After his reign, American Puritans in Connecticut seeking patronage for a college appealed to Yale’s history of support for missionary activities in the East Indies and Americas. The colonial administrator was responsive, initially sending books on Anglican subjects. In 1718, Yale finally donated textiles and arms towards the construction of the university’s first building, forever stamping it with his name.
In India, Dr. Levin noted Yale University’s commitment to educating “distinguished leaders” and its focus on the “transparency and accountability of public and private institutions.” Curiously, he failed to mention Elihu Yale’s own record of leadership and accountability while in Madras.
As governor of Fort St. George, Yale purchased territory for private purposes with East India Company funds, including a fort at Tevnapatam (present-day Cuddalore). He imposed steep taxation towards the upkeep of the colonial garrison and town. His punitive measures against Indians who defaulted included threats of property confiscation and forced exile. This spurred various Indian revolts, which were ruthlessly quelled by Company soldiers. Yale was also notorious for arresting and trying Indians on his own private authority, including the hanging of a stable boy who had absconded with a Company horse.
More audaciously, Yale amassed a private fortune through secret contracts with Madras merchants, against the East India Company’s directives. This imperial plunder, which enabled his patronage of the American university, occurred through his monopolisation of traders and castes in the textiles and jewel trade. By 1692, Elihu Yale’s repeated flouting of East India Company regulations, and growing embarrassment at his illegal profiteering resulted in his being relieved of the post of governor.
Though Elihu Yale’s legacy in India was notably absent from Dr. Levin’s pronouncements in India, he did mention another historical link between the university and India. In 1892, Sumantro Vishnu Karmarkar from Ahmednagar graduated from Yale. The university president proudly upheld as one of its “distinguished alumni” from India. Although this was intended to be symbolic of Yale’s global diversity, Dr. Levin sidelined the university’s historical complicity with the exploitation and exclusion of minorities. For example, Yale’s first endowed professorship, first library fund, and first student scholarship came from slave owners and slavery proponents. Indeed, pro-slavery leaders were among Yale’s earliest professors and administrators in the 18th century. In 1831 such forces suppressed the construction of a Negro College at Yale for educating African-Americans. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Yale administration honoured this dubious history by naming nine of its colleges after slavery proponents and owners.
Yale University’s history, bound up with violence against both Indians and African-Americans, is forcefully symbolised in a portrait that hangs in a campus boardroom. This picture from the early 18th century shows Elihu Yale adorned in colonial splendour, with a black slave kneeling in the foreground, silver collar and long metal chain hanging from his neck. In India, Dr. Levin claimed that Yale embodied the best of a “global university,” with a mandate to educate the “citizens of the world.” Yet the university’s refusal to acknowledge how its history is bound up with colonial profiteering and violent slavery makes this lofty rhetoric hollow and disingenuous.
At other events in India, Dr. Levin discussed the “progressive, forward-looking” proponents of global patent regimes. He was referring to the vigorous debate in India over the Government’s conformity to the World Trade Organisation’s intellectual property rights regulations. Opponents of this framework have argued that Indian farmers and consumers will have to pay increased prices for seeds and brand-name drugs bought from multinational companies instead of being indigenously produced. Indeed, farmers in States such as Andhra Pradesh have already experienced significant hardship due to the encroachment of western agri-business companies on to the seed market, displacing Indian companies and burdening farmers with onerous debt.
Dr. Levin termed these concerns for Indian farmers and consumers “parochial,” hardly surprising given that India’s conformity with patent regimes is in Yale’s interest. Since the 1980s, Yale has been aggressively commercialising research done within its science and engineering departments. As its president noted in India, the University has spun off 25 companies in the past decade based on biotechnology innovations, accumulating millions of dollars in profits.
The true implications of this corporate research model for the public interest were revealed in 2000-2001 when Yale came under scrutiny for its patent on the AIDS drug stavudine. This is marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) as Zerit, a partnership that had brought the university more than $129 million. In late-2000, the Indian drug company Cipla and medical relief organisations requested a non-exclusive license from Yale and BMS to sell stavudine in South Africa in the light of an AIDS epidemic. Indian companies have become specialists in producing generic drugs for public health emergencies in the developing world, a primary argument for non-compliance with intellectual property rights regimes.
In 2001, Yale refused to release the licence, and it was only through sustained pressure from local unions and international relief organisations that the University was embarrassed into agreeing to legal non-interference. Clearly, Dr. Levin’s argument for India to adhere to intellectual property rights is intertwined with Yale potentially gaining lucrative profits from its patents being enforced in India’s consumer market.
Dr. Levin’s equivalence of corporate self-interest with a “progressive, forward-looking” ethos is confirmed in Yale’s broader investment policy. Its $12.7 billion endowment is partly managed through global hedge funds that are inaccessible to its stakeholders. This continues despite the fact that Yale’s investments have previously breached the administration’s own ethical guidelines, such as prior investments in apartheid-era South Africa.
Yale’s direct investments in South Asia include a Canadian oil and gas company, Niko Resources Ltd, which operates fields in Gujarat, the Bay of Bengal, and Bangladesh. In January 2005, a massive fire broke out in the Bangladeshi gas field of Tengratila  days after Niko commenced operations. Bangladeshi newspapers reported that the flames were as high as 500 feet and that between 10,000 and 20,000 people were evacuated. Government inquiries regarding environmental damage and compensation are going on, with suggestions that safety protocols were violated to undertake risky drilling.
GESO’s role
The primary means by which Yale’s unethical global investment has been uncovered is the campus organisation Graduate Employees and Students Organisation (GESO). Though Dr. Levin claimed in India that Yale’s mandate was to encourage the “full realisation of human potential,” the University has consistently denied such possibility to its workers and teachers. For example, within the Ivy League its history of labour relations with its workers in the maintenance and clerical trades has been notable for rancour and tumult, resulting in numerous strikes over the years. GESO itself has been actively seeking recognition for over a decade as a representative of post-graduate teachers and researchers. Dr. Levin’s response has been to systematically deny that they are workers, demeaning their efforts by maintaining that such work is merely a form of “apprenticeship.”
This once again masks with fancy language the exploitative labour hierarchies underpinning contemporary university research. In India, Dr. Levin touted that Yale “invests” in Indian students through limited scholarships, forgetting to mention that Yale profits enormously from these students’ labour. This is especially true in the sciences and engineering, where South Asian and other international students conduct the majority of research for increasingly profit-driven projects and joint university-industry initiatives.
Dr. Levin maintained in India that Yale was committed to a “wider world beyond the university walls, a world in which we bear enormous responsibility.” Currently, Yale, through its historical amnesia about its roots in colonialism and slavery, its unethical investment policies and demeaning work culture, and its refusal to value the education that its graduate teachers impart, abrogates this responsibility. GESO’s drive for union recognition from the Yale administration directly addresses these concerns. Its members in the past have forced Yale to release its patents on the AIDS drug Zerit, uncovered its investment in Niko’s operations in Bangladesh, and detailed its links with slavery. GESO’s eventual recognition will codify its efforts to reconcile the gap between Dr. Levin’s lofty rhetoric on the “global university” and Yale’s embarrassing lack of accountability and accessibility, particularly to international students and scholars such as those from India.
(Ajay Gandhi is a Ph.D student in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University, and is a member of GESO.)
boston_mahesh wrote:
Actually, there’s some debate about that. Throughout history, Dravidians have been classified as Caucasoids, Australoids, Mediterraneans, Africans, etc… Basically, we’ve been classified as just about every race under the sun (except Mongoloids).
Let’s not worry too much about this.
Caucasoid, negroid and mongoloid are outdated terms.
I was taught in elementary school social studies that Indians are a mix of all 3.
They have the skin of the negroids, the features of the caucasoids and the hair of the mongoloids.
This is all outdated psuedo-science and why is anyone even using these terms anymore?
i prefer dosa.
I like desi because, as someone said before, it’s intimate. When I say “desi”, I mean one of my people. Not that they look like me or I know that they identify with all the same things that I do, but I recognize something in them that we share. To me, it’s a fluid and very subjective term.
Lal eschews the word “desi,†and settles on “Indian-American,†and explains carefully why he’s doing so.
Does he consider brownz? If not, we should not take him – or his book – all that seriously. BTW, what a pretentious reason for rejecting desi. He sounds like a nattering ivory tower type.
In my circle of then friends, the term ‘desi’ came to be used before we were aware other people were using it. Like other neologisms that catch on, its success lies in addressing multiple needs. One was being able to say ‘Indian’ in a Hindi conversation without non-Hindi speakers catching on. (Yes, sad to say, we frequently used Hindi so people around would not follow the conversation.) The second was that the term nicely mirrored the ambiguity of not knowing if a given person was Indian, Pakistani etc. without recourse to the then awkward sounding ‘South Asian’.
You can say that again Nuvos Ordo Seclorum! Posters on SM consider themselves so educated but they continue to use outdated Post Colonial European made theories on race and terminoloy. It’s amazing.
In defense of Prashad’s book I think it’s a good demystifier for White Americans who look at “model minority” Desis through rose-colored glasses. It’s a counter balance to putting Indian Americans on a pedestal.
First time I visited a temple in US (some 15 years ago) – my comment to my parents was – It was like a supermarket for temple goers. You want vishnu – he is in that corner, you want ganpati – second box on right, shiva and nandi – other corner. Lakshmi – right in the center. (few more (lesser?) gods in the basement) Similarly they celebrated the festivals (sacred days??, don’t really know the right English word) for people from different states differently. Back home, I have never seen such odd combination of gods in a temple… It took care of the devotee’s needs I suppose …
The Agasthiar Koil in T. Nagar, Madras, houses different deities. So this “supermarket for temple goers” style is not peculiar to the US.
More like a mall. Which is great because those who don’t want to shop can go hang out in the food court and eat dosas.
“Exceedingly sectarian” is the sort of thing Hinduism’s critics say. “Less exclusive” is the sort of thing Hinduism’s defenders say. The author is not sure what his own position, so he has inserted both phrases. Should such sentences be in an academic publication?
At least Prashad’s book is readable, and fun. Can’t say that about too many books……
Max Muller died in 1900. From all accounts he is widely respected as a friend of India. Moreover, he had a brain, in which respect he is one up on the vacuous hot-head from Beantown.
When I was there, Yale was essentially making undergraduate students raise the alumni donations themselves for South Asian studies to be taught. The President went on record in 1993 or so offering the study of ‘India’ as an example of the kind of thing that was important, but that Yale couldn’t afford to offer. It now does offer more offerings through ‘Globalization’ but in the late 1990s, there was a couple of history classes, a few religion classes, a politics course, etc., but no formal programme of study, and a $7 billion endowment – I thought I didn’t even have a programme of study until I realised that I had created my own South Asia studies programme by accident. So I would be surprised if the University that still has a hall named after slavery defender John C. Calhoun had done meaningful, rather than cursory or pr driven introspection into the role of colonialism in the renaming of the institution.
btw, for the post above, Levin is more of a university bureaucrat than an academic and I think the term Dr. should be reserved for those who are more interested in academics or medicine than bureaucratic power.
God forbid, Ash.
On an aside, you miscited the source of Prashad’s Letter to a Young Hindu in your original post – it was first posted on Pass the Roti, not Sulekha.
It is important that these studies are taught, but when you ghettoize it into its own department rather than part of the larger study of history or sociology what you end up with is an inane circle-jerk filled with inane pontifications from people trained in a specialization without any knowledge of how it makes sense in a larger, more holistic context.
Exactly, Yoga Fire! Like, say, the claim that corruption doesn’t hurt economic development!
he..he.. I used to go to the temple when I was a grad student for the food court.
Even in India, i think there are non-sectarian temples at least the ones i frequented, every temple will have Pillaiyar/Vinayaka/Ganesha/Elephant god in the entrance with the main God/Goddess in the centre. and the nine idols (navagraha) in a square near the corners. I guess the appetizer gods are present in all the temples and the main God differs from temple to temple. The temple gets its name from the main God/Goddess but that does not mean you won’t have other Gods. I guess that’s the same in the US too. the appetizer gods are present in all temples but there is only one main god who gives the name to the temple.
In the US we also lack the funds and the real-estate to build 2 or three temples every few kilometers the way they have in India, so we make the most out of our limited real-estate.
<
blockquote>every temple will have Pillaiyar/Vinayaka/Ganesha/Elephant god in the entrance with the main God/Goddess in the centre. and the nine idols (navagraha) in a square near the corners.<‘/blockquote>
My understanding is that Pillaiyar and navagraha are special. I think there is some Hindu myth that justifies Pillaiyar standing guard outside (at least, Siva) temples. I am not sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that Parvati created him to prevent others from walking in on her when she was taking a bath. He stopped Shiva because he was unwilling to make any exceptions to the rule, at which point Shiva cut off his head. This kinda ticked Parvati off, which is why Shiva outfitted him with an elephant head to avoid being banished to the couch. (I am not sure if Parvati being ticked off had enough earth shaking consequences that all the gods had to rig up the elephant head, or whether S&P settled the manner in-house). Navagraha are for warding off the evil eye, they are more like holy spirits or lesser gods, as they stand for the planets, so again they are different from the main gods.
My understanding is that Pillaiyar and navagraha are special. I think there is some Hindu myth that justifies Pillaiyar standing guard outside (at least, Siva) temples. I am not sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that Parvati created him to prevent others from walking in on her when she was taking a bath. He stopped Shiva because he was unwilling to make any exceptions to the rule, at which point Shiva cut off his head. This kinda ticked Parvati off, which is why Shiva outfitted him with an elephant head to avoid being banished to the couch. (I am not sure if Parvati being ticked off had enough earth shaking consequences that all the gods had to rig up the elephant head, or whether S&P settled the manner in-house). Navagraha are for warding off the evil eye, they are more like holy spirits or lesser gods, as they stand for the planets, so again they are different from the main gods.
(Reposting the comment because it got screwed up the first time).
shame on you for perpetuating the south indian dosa-idli-sambar-only stereotype, rahul. dosa is fine and all, but what’s a good food court without some variety – puliyodharai, masala vadai, filter coffee…
for amardeep and others who have read the book – does the author reject this terminology, as well? i can see how this is problematic in some ways (for instance, would it include sri lanka, or even nepal and bhutan? also, way too many syllables) on the other hand, it seems like a top contender for an alternative to s. asian. and i still don’t quite understand lal’s erection of ‘desi’ – it is, after all, a multi-faceted word, by his own admission – and most people seem to be able to distinguish the intent of the usage by the context.
er, that should read ‘rejection’ of ‘desi’
ak on July 7, 2009 10:25 PM:
ak on July 7, 2009 10:26 PM:
Wow, why the, er, 180-degree turn in 1 minute, ak?
rahul, as you well may (or may not) know, things can go flat in just about that amount of time
Sorry, the dosa is the only desi stereotype I succumb to, so I don’t understand what you mean here. Maybe it is a consequence of all the time you’ve spending with manju?
Are you slandering my poor manju, or do you speak from personal experience?
“puliyodharai”
my ears are burning…