The Indian Diaspora Project
25 years ago
July 30th, 1998.
It was the first time I was getting on an airplane.
It was the first time I was going outside the country of my birth.
I had stepped on a Lufthansa flight from Mumbai to Chicago, along with many other wide-eyed young people like me, who were both excited and nervous about what was to come in their future.
I came with $ 1500 in my pocket (literally in my pocket as cash and travelers checks!).
I didn’t have any grand plans of what life would look like.
I had chosen a path which many of my friends in India had chosen.
I was just excited to be on a new adventure. The excitement was mixed with a sense of anxiety about embarking into the unknown, and the feeling of missing my family and friends in India.
I had never seen a vending machine in real life, or a McDonalds, or had an apple pie, or had heard of or seen American football or Seinfeld or knew about standup comedy.
As a lifelong introvert, I liked the privacy and anonymity which the United States afforded me. I liked the principles of individuality and freedom, which I gladly embraced. I liked the culture of risk taking.
I also appreciated the clean restrooms everywhere you went.
Even though I was not thinking about it consciously, I was joining a large and loosely connected group referred to as the Indian Diaspora, which is spread all over the world.
The Indian Diaspora
The Indian Diaspora is 18 to 32 million strong (depending on how you measure it), with the United States having the largest (or second largest) population - close to 3 million people. The size of the Indian diaspora in the United States has grown more than 10X in the last 40 years.
The concentration of Indian immigrants is the highest in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you go to either of my daughters’ schools, it would feel like you were in a school in Asia.
Many of the newer immigrants have gravitated to tech hubs like San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin, while earlier immigrants are more in larger cities like Chicago, Houston, and the New York/New Jersey area.
I have lived in 5 states in the last 25 years - Kansas, Texas, Illinois, Washington, and California, with almost half of that time spent in California. My wife has done the same, as we met and fell in love in graduate school. We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last year.
I have lived in/near four of the top five areas with top concentration of Indian immigrants - Chicago, San Francisco/San Jose, and the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. It has given me a great window into the values and cultures in different parts of the country. The down-to-earth hardworking culture of Kansas, the large lifestyle and Tex Mex food in Texas, the broad shoulder, tough-it-out nature of the Windy City (and hatred of deep dish pizza!), the liberal outdoorsy lifestyle and love of coffee in the Pacific NorthWest, and the entrepreneurial spirit in Silicon Valley.
At the same time, it has afforded me the privilege to not miss things from back in India, whether it is good Indian food from different parts of India, Bollywood movies, plays in Hindi, concerts, festivals like Holi and Diwali, and watching and enjoying the game of cricket.
Living in different places broadens your perspective. It is an exciting experience to move to a new place, find and learn new things about your new surroundings and in turn about yourself.
The broadening of your perspectives through living in many places, comes with the difficulty to call any place home. One of the challenges when you live in multiple places, is having a sense of place or home.
It can be jarring when no place feels like home.
No place is home
Home is the foundation of our identity as individuals and members of a community, the dwelling-place of being. Home is not just the house you happen to live in, but an irreplaceable center of significance.
When one leaves their home, language, and culture to satellite in a new place, one leaves a part of who they are behind. One faces different situations, customs, cultures, words, and expectations. One changes due to the process of cultural adaptation.
At the same time, one cannot truly go back to the place where one came from, because the place no longer exists as it has changed with time. (Sometimes, it is difficult to go back there physically due to difficult political and economic situations). The language, the food, the culture, the neighborhood, and most importantly the people change.
First generation immigrants straddle two different worlds. Many immigrants who go to another country by choice, often are stuck between conflicting emotions about their home country and their adopted country. You are constantly pushed and pulled in different directions.
You feel you are sandwiched between two worlds, and you are often not sure which side you should lean into more, and how.
For me, my hometown where I grew up or any other place in India does not provide that sense of home. Nor do any of the places I have lived in over the last two and half decades.
For me, being close to friends and immediate family (including our dog Biscuit) provides me a sense of place.
For me, being on the internet with friends all over the world, provides a sense of home.
After 25 years, and with access to technologies like WhatsApp, the question of what is home is still relevant.
I have often wondered how the earliest Indian immigrants felt, when they came to the United States more than 100 years ago.
Dolores Singh
(Dolores is a popular name for girls in Mexico. Singh means “lion” and is commonly used as a last name in Punjab.)
Who were the first Indian immigrants to the United States? It is difficult to say with certainty, but an interesting part of the diaspora, closer to where I live right now, has some answers.
Immigration to the United States from India started in the early 20th century when Indian immigrants began settling in communities along the West Coast. The first small wave of Indian immigrants were from the Punjab region in India and these migrant men settled as agricultural labor in California in the early 20th century.
Between 2,000 and 6,000 Sikh, Muslim and Hindu agricultural workers came to California and Arizona from Northwest India. Most Californians referred to all of these men as Hindus, despite the fact that more than 85% of them were Sikhs.
The Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 restricted nearly all immigration from Asia. The racial rules in the early 20th century restricted inter-racial marriages, and so they were banned from marrying white or black partners. But the laws did not prevent them from marrying Mexican partners, who were considered “brown”, the same as the people from Punjab in India.
This has created a unique Mexican-Punjabi culture in this small community, which is still agricultural in nature in certain parts of California, for example, around Yuba City, California.
Ernestina and Bishan Singh’s family, photographed in 1932 (Source)
These families built a diasporic identity that is undoubtedly American in its cultural exchange and adaptability: Punjabi men learned Spanish to communicate with their wives and other Mexican laborers. The Mexican women drew from both Indian and Mexican cuisines, equating Indian roti to tortilla to make chicken curry quesadillas.
An LATimes report from 1987 said the following,
Beyond their mutual economic needs and despite the apparent cultural differences, the two groups turned out to be compatible in a number of ways. Both groups spoke English as a second language, and the color of their skin was similar, subjecting them to the same kinds of discrimination. There was an interesting intermingling of the two cultures in home life.
Sikh husbands, who had cooked for themselves and their friends as bachelors for many years, introduced pickled lemons, spicy chicken and vegetable curries, often eaten with roti, a tortilla-like bread to the households. Mexican wives contributed extensive use of corn to the diet.”
The Indian Diaspora in the United States has come a long way from the early days in California.
The prevailing stereotypes of Indians in the United States are gas station attendant, motel owner, taxi driver, and in the last 20 years, an IT professional. Or as many folks from older generations in India call it, “Computer ka karta hai” (“He/she does something about computers!”)
Obviously, reductive stereotypes never capture the diversity, individuality, and humanity of such a large group of people (or any group of people for that matter). I hope to explore the many layers of the Indian Diaspora through a combination of research, analysis, and real human stories.
I hope you will join me in this project. I would love to hear your Indian Diaspora story!