July 4, 2004

When people move to greener pastures how do they adjust to society in their new homeland? S.L. Sharma studies Indian emigrants sociologically

AS in India, so abroad: the social structure of overseas Indians is marked by a multiplicity of communities based on regional, linguistic, religious, or in some places, caste lines. Region and religion seem to be more important determinants of their social organization than language and caste. The evidence of it can be seen in the greater popularity of regional associations and religious organizations than pan-Indian organizations.

Based on cross-cultural evidence, Fisher hypothesizes that the tendency of ethnic divisiveness is found more among those Indian immigrants who hope to repatriate to India. Such immigrants keep channels of communication and exchange open between themselves and their families back home. Scouting for mate selection in the homeland, maintenance of property, frequent visiting and sending remittances are some of the ways in which immigrants maintain ties on a continuing basis.

I find this hypothesis rather problematic. This is so because it ignores the schismatic orientation of Indian immigrants towards repatriation. At one level, most of the Indian immigrants harbour a desire to ultimately return to India. At another level, a very small number of them is really serious about it. If the former is taken as true, the hypothesis loses its punch. If the latter is the case, how come that parochial ethnic organizations are so preponderant, as reported by Fisher himself. At any rate, it needs a deeper probe.

Coming to the second theme, Indians are known for jealously preserving their cultural identity. They continue to cling to their norms of endogamy, marital stability and family solidarity, kin orientation, religion and mother tongue. They are always nostalgic about Indian food and their women tend to stick to their lovely saris.

As for the mechanisms of their cultural preservation, mention must be made of temples and gurdwaras, practice of keertan and akhand path, audio cassettes of devotional songs, video cassettes of Ramayan and Mahabharat, festivals and functions, and ethnic associations and organizations. What is more, even picnics provide occasions to reinforce old cultural practices. For instance, I was truly astonished to see Antakshari (a verbal game in which the last letter of the verse recited by one participant has to be used as the starting letter of the verse by another participant) played in Sanskrit hymns in a picnic of Indians in Salt Lake City in the USA.

Overseas Indians adhere to their traditional culture so ostensibly that at times it appears that they are more Indian in their cultural orientations and practices than resident Indians in India. Take, for instance, the Sikhs who are quick to take to modern ways in India but they tend to be rather orthodox abroad. Even those Indians who couldn’t care less for their culture in India become quite observant of it in foreign lands.

Why do Indians get so faithful to their culture in foreign lands while at home they seem to favour western culture? Several explanations come to mind. One, that they find in their culture a defence mechanism against a sense of insecurity in alien settings. Two, that they might be banking on their culture as a compensatory mechanism for the loss of status in foreign lands.

Three, maybe there is something in the Indian culture — perhaps its adhesive quality — that accounts for it. Four, maybe it is a sense of pride of belonging to one of the oldest cultures of the world that makes them so reverent to it. Fifth, it may well be so because the immigrants get stuck to their conception of Indian culture of the time when they had left India and remain blissfully unaware of the changes it has undergone since then.

As important as it is, the question of cultural identity of overseas Indians needs careful scrutiny. It involves several issues. The first is the issue of how Indians abroad perceive their self-identity. Do they view themselves as Indians or as Punjabis, Gujaratis, etc? In other words, do they identify themselves in terms of pan-Indian identity or in terms of a parochial ethnic category.

According to Fisher, Indians have difficulty in organizing as Indians. More often than not they tend to identify themselves in terms of narrow ethnic categories. By and large Fisher is right. The only thing I may add is that perhaps it is the context that determines their self-identity. It seems that while dealing with the non-Indians they tend to take on a pan-Indian identity. But when it comes to interacting among themselves their regional, linguistic or religious identities take precedence.

A second issue is how others look upon Indians. Are they viewed as Indians or as Asians? That depends on several things including their relative numerical strength in the host country. Wherever Indians form a substantial group, they are viewed as Indians having a distinctive identity. In the countries where their number is small and the ethnic groups of other nationalities are also present they tend to be bracketed with the other Asians.

Even at the risk of sounding outrageous, it may be remarked that perhaps too much is made in the existing literature of the instinct of cultural preservation and identity of Indians in foreign settings. For one thing, perhaps every ethnic group tends to stick to its culture in strange surroundings about as fastidiously as do the Indians. Are Chinese immigrants any different from Indians? It requires a comparative study of various immigrant communities, including Indians, to maintain that the Indians stand out among others. For another, there is no dearth of contradictory evidence to show that any number of Indians have abandoned their culture in favour of the cultures of their adopted lands. Third, there is a generational context to it. While the first generation immigrants tend to stick to Indian culture with vigour, the second and subsequent generations give evidence of distancing from it. This, however, depends on a host of other factors also. There is, of course, no denying the fact that it causes a great deal of agonizing inter-generational cultural conflict.

This brings us to the third theme, that is, the question of the course or modes of adaptation. A scholar like Greeley, for instance, has sketched a six-stage process, which the immigrant communities are believed to go through in their course of adaptation. These six stages are: cultural shock, organization and emergent self-consciousness, assimilation of the elite, militancy, self-hatred and anti-militancy, and emerging adjustment. In my view, it seems remote that there is such a thing as one uniform course of adaptation. The course of adaptation is likely to vary from community to community depending on many factors. In any case the hypothesis of a uniform course does not strike a unanimous chord among the scholars.

It is apparently wrong to speak of a uniform mode of adaptation followed by Indian immigrants. There are at least three identifiable modes: (a) assimilation, (b) cultural preservation with economic integration and (c) ethnic politicization for power cultivation. These refer to three processes, namely, merger, adjustment and striving for dominance. In some countries Indian immigrants give evidence of the first mode, namely assimilation. From my personal knowledge I can speak of it for Jamaica. Grenada may be cited as another example.

The second mode of adaptation seems to be more widespread. Indian immigrants in Southeast Asia, in East Africa, in Britain, and in the USA and Canada give ample evidence of it. Some of the recent studies of Indian immigrants in the USA have the following to observe: that in the cultural domain Indians tend to preserve their identity while in the economic domain they are quick to integrate; that they remain Indian in their primary groups but act Americanized in their secondary groups. Similar observations have been made for Indians in Burma (now, Myanmar) and Malaysia.

Evidence of the third mode of adaptation comes from countries like Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Fiji and Sri Lanka where Indians have carved out a place for themselves in the power politics of the place. While in Mauritius they have been lucky to have smooth sailing, in other countries they have run into rough weather on account of their being locked in a power game with the natives or other dominant ethnic communities.

How to account for the varying modes of adaptation? One of the ways to do so is to identify the factors responsible for it. No systematic attempt has been made so far to catalogue such factors. At best we come across only passing references to some of them, such as demographic, generational, religious, cultural, etc. Note that all of these belong in the category of the sociocultural factors. There is another set of factors, namely, politicoeconomic, such as colonialism, state, class and level of development which has received little, if any, attention. This only substantiates my earlier observation that the study of Indians abroad is dominated by the sociocultural perspective.

It will be useful to prepare an inventory of the factors, which are likely to impinge on the mode of adaptation of an immigrant community

In the first set are included the following factors: time and conditions of emigration; motives behind emigration; sponsoring agencies and arrangements; racial, religious, caste, class and community backgrounds of the emigrants, their regional and rural-urban backgrounds, their level of education, occupational skills and professional status; and their command of the language of the country of immigration.

Notable among the factors of the second set are: number and proportion of the natives, Indian immigrants and other immigrant communities in the total population of the host country; majority/minority status of the Indian immigrants, their concentration and dispersion, their rural-urban distribution, their generational composition, their homogeneity and heterogeneity, their ethnic associations and religious organizations, and their cultural exclusivism and inclusivism.

The third set comprises the following factors: proportions of immigrants in the various sectors of the host economy; proportions of Indian immigrants therein, their employment status vis-a-vis natives, their economic performance, their income levels, their status as achiever or non-achiever, their class alliances, their contribution to the development of the host economy as perceived by them and by the natives, their hold over the host economy; their involvement in the power sector, the degree and form of their participation in domestic politics, their hold over the host polity; their proportions in legislatures, administration and judiciary; the threats that they pose to the natives in the fields of employment, professional attainment, income levels and power.

The fourth set entails the following: the generalized attitude of the natives towards immigrants in general and Indian immigrants in particular, their sense of racial and cultural superiority or inferiority, their perception of the status of the immigrant culture, their openness to or tolerance of the immigrant culture, their perceived images of the immigrants along with stereotypes and stigmas attached to them, their ethnic prejudices and cultural hostility against the immigrants and their attempts at religious conversion of the immigrants.

The level of economic development of the host country and its manpower needs are the crucial factors, which make the fifth set. Covered in the sixth and final set are the factors pertaining to state policy — a variable of supreme importance. These include: immigration laws, civic status of immigrants, their rights and obligations; contracts and agreements, decrees and disabilities, restrictions on their property rights and on access to positions of power; the cultural policy of the host state in respect of immigrants; the state of relations of the host state with the home state of immigrants; and the policy of the home state in respect of its people abroad.

 

Excerpted with permission from

The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of Immigration

Edited by N. Jayaram

Sage Publications, B-42, Panchsheel Enclave, Post Box 4109, New Delhi-110017, India. Tel: 91-11-2649 1290-7

Email: marketing@indiasage.com Website: www.indiasage.com

ISBN 0-7619-3219-4

255pp. Indian Rs340

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