Where the browns be internationally

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This is an American-focused weblog, but the internet knows no borders, so there are browns from all over who leave comments and post. It’s interesting to get different perspectives (OK, most of the time!). But on the heels of Taz’s post on the 2010 US Census data release I thought it would be interesting to revisit how “South Asians” are distributed outside of South Asia. To do that I had to look around for ethnic data on a selection of nations with large South Asian populations.

There are some qualifiers here. Since the non-Indian South Asian data for the USA isn’t released yet, I just looked at Indian Americans. This is “good enough for government work” in the USA I think because the brown community is overwhelmingly Indian origin. In contrast that would be a really bad approximation in the United Kingdom, where half of the brown community is non-Indian (this includes into the Indian class those who arrived from East Africa I believe). The distinction between Indian and non-Indian also gets into the “not-even-wrong” category if you are looking at the West Indies, where most South Asians arrived before partition, and so were all “East Indian” no matter where they were from (though I know that in places like Mauritius there is sometimes a post facto identification with post-partition nation-states, often based on religious divisions). Finally, for some Gulf Arab nations the demographic data is nebulous and hard to get. Part of this is due to the fact that the South Asian Diaspora in places like Saudi Arabia is quite transient, and the probability of actually becoming a citizen is low. I couldn’t find Saudi data easily, though it seems likely that there are several million South Asian residents of Saudi Arabia at any given moment. But it seems agreed upon that the United Arab Emirates is about half South Asian, and this community is arguably the most rooted, even if they don’t hold citizenship, so I’m including it in the comparisons.

Below are two scatterplots which show the absolute numbers of browns vs. the % of browns in a given nation. The second plot is log-transformed percentage so you can compare the proportions at the low end of the scale.brown1.jpgbrown2.jpg

The USA absolute number is a mild underestimate. I know that the UK has a relatively small population in relation to the USA obviously, but it still surprised me a bit that the USA now has a larger brown community than the UK. Despite this the proportions and concentrations obviously differ, ~1% in the USA vs. ~4% in the UK. And there’s really nothing like the Tower Hamlets, Leicester, and Bradford in the United States. Edison is the closest equivalent, but it has a population of ~100,000, so it lacks the scale.

13 thoughts on “Where the browns be internationally”

  1. I’m slightly curious about the religious affiliations, I’ve always been under the impression that South Asians in Europe are mostly muslim, while in North America and Australia they are hindus.

  2. You neglected to include two important countries of the desi diaspora:

    South Africa, with well over a million desis constituting over 2.5% of the population.

    Singapore, with ~half a million desis constituting over 9% of the population.

  3. I’ve always been under the impression that South Asians in Europe are mostly muslim, while in North America and Australia they are hindus.

    In north america punjabi Sikhs are heavily disproportional, especially in Canada. The earliest desi settlers in the US were Sikhs, in California.

    I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the proportion of Christian desis is also significantly higher in north america than in south Asia. Both Indian-American Governors are christian punjabis for example.

  4. Yes interesting (US desis > UK desis) but as I was watching Big Bang theory and sometimes the Offices its really astounding how Desi Americans are just pushing through both via Hollywood and Washington.

    It may be my personal experience but despite our relative population weight that doesn’t translate into influence or soft power nearly as effectively. I mean walk in London in the street and you’re struck by the number of “desis” but in television it is still rare to see an Asian face in an advertistment for instance. Though there are the Blue Peter presenters (konnie huq) and the E4 Pakistani girl, Jameela Jamil, who has a Pakistani Christian mother.

    Dubai (and the UAE) is rapidly becoming some sort of refuge for South Asians, rich and poor. Its gaining cachet as a sort of stable tax-free oasis, a couple of hours flight from Karachi. Its the only Dubai, with the advantage of time zones and being an international hub (apparently it benefits from distance from the Pacific) but its real key will be being a second base for wealthy South Asians otherwise it has no hope.

    Also the local desis will probably infuse some sort of culture to that sterile city; I remember growing up in Kuwait it was basically a transplant of some Midwestern American town draped up in Muslim culture. The Desi soft power will reverberate in these Khaleej Gulf city states.

  5. I’m slightly curious about the religious affiliations, I’ve always been under the impression that South Asians in Europe are mostly muslim, while in North America and Australia they are hindus.

    you should look at the uk census. i did a quick back of the evelope, and got ~50% muslim in the UK for south asians. hindus somewhat outnumber sikhs among the remainder. xtian and buddhist minorities. in norway it’s mostly pakistanis. don’t know elsewhere. netherlands has a large indian community from suriname, who are traditionally hindu.

  6. ZL: “Dubai (and the UAE) is rapidly becoming some sort of refuge for South Asians, rich and poor. Its gaining cachet as a sort of stable tax-free oasis, a couple of hours flight from Karachi. Its the only Dubai, with the advantage of time zones and being an international hub (apparently it benefits from distance from the Pacific) but its real key will be being a second base for wealthy South Asians otherwise it has no hope.”

    Well, only if you are muslim. Let us not say “refuge for south asians” when only a minority of them will be tolerated.

    A lot of the diaspora is Hindu, and neither distance nor tax breaks can compensate for the fact that the middle east is barbaric in its treatment of non-muslims. If you are not a muslim, you go there with the understanding you have pretty much no rights. Let us not pretend otherwise. And as a hindu, I avoid even flying through those airports or those airlines—why fund their bigotry with my education and skills? Or parts of Europe for that matter.

    • No yaar as far as I know there’s a huge Sindhi hindu community in Dubai; its a recent centre for them (Bombay, Dubai, HK).

      I’ve only been once in transit in Dubai but as far as I know its more a question of class and colour rather than religion (I could be wrong)?

      Its horrific for Desis from the lower classes (whatever their religion) but for the upper class Desis, while they encounter discrimination (God forbid you have an accident with an Emirati) its not really divided on religion.

  7. ZL,

    I would argue that the Sindhi community in Dubai is more a testimony to the Sindhi resilience than any civility on part of the Emirati.

    You may be right, it may be class or color. I identify with the class and color they discriminate against in any case. But to stick my neck out re: religion—even their laws make it ok to discriminate against non muslims. If I remember right, I would be classified as 1/3 human, while any hindu woman is 1/6th according to them. It may be that it isn’t practiced exactly that way, but seriously, who do they think they are?

    It isn’t that we are paragons of virtue in India or in the West. But at some level, we aren’t proud of our mistakes, and that gives me hope. But the middle east is actually happy to be that way, that isn’t something I can forgive.

    I think there is a second issue here as well, even if we ignore religious differences. The upper class desis of the past who were happy to turn a blind eye to their compatriots—and implicitly or explicitly participate in the discrimination themselves—in the past were “old money”. A lot of us, at least from India and I suspect from B’desh or SL as well (don’t know about Pk), cannot do that. We were that “lower class” a generation or two ago.

    Yes, money talks, and on that basis, it isn’t as if I expect to be discriminated as soon as I land on Dubai’s tarmac. But I know the airport, and everything therein is built on slavery, and those slaves are us. I cannot condone that, and I wish the rest of us spoke out with our wallets as well. I think we South Asians roll over a little too easily, and are too quick to jettison our own kind.

  8. re: muslim vs. non-muslim south asians, my personal experience is that arabs talk a big game about how they are different (when i mean talk, i mean literally, they would yammer at me about this stuff like i cared when they found out my family background). e.g., “muslim aren’t ‘dirty’ like the hindus.” but this is pretty standard issue, an arab friend whose family lives in israel said the same about balkan slavs who came to worth in israel in the 90s. the muslims were the only ones who weren’t ‘dirty.’ i don’t think this is a real observation on hygiene, but the common prejudice of a lot of muslims about ‘unclean’ kufars. that’s not too abnormal for barbaric people and cultures, caste conscious hindus do the same (a few even defend the practice on these message boards!), and the spaniards did the same to converted jews (‘marranos’).

    but, i’m moderately skeptical that it makes that much substantive difference. we do look the same, and at the end of the day money talks. i think the talk about how ‘dirty’ non-muslim south asians are is just verbal compensation for the fact that they treat poor muslims from india, pakistan, and bangladesh, like slaves like they treat poor filipinos or sri lankans. OTOH, all things equal i do think it is better to be a muslim than a non-muslim, because there are explicit and implicit legal codes which give preference to muslims.

  9. You are not treated “well” in Dubai if you are desi, regardless of religion.

  11. I think it’s better to go by % rather than the number itself. I’ve lived in the US and Canada, and although there may be more brown people in the US, I always felt like most people viewed me as an outsider. Not so in Canada–much easier to feel like you’re a part of the country and the people without having to assimilate.

  12. I don’t know how all these graphs and research etc. missed a million people of Indian decent in South Africa. You may remember a famous Indian South African by the name of Karamchand Gandhi? Ok, I know they will say he was born in India etc. but my grandfather came to SA in the same period. He stayed and hundreds others stayed. We have lost all familial ties with India. But culturally, like most of the peoples who leave we cling to our religions, foods, Bollywood and other facets of Indian culture. I am third generation South African we lost our ability to speak Hindi (Bhojpuri ) very well. There were also Tamil, Telugu and Gugaratis and others that settled in SA.

    We used to boast that we were the largest bunch of Indians outside India. That was until the new migration started in the 1960s to the UK and in the 1970 to the US and Canada,