Organizer and Chair: Kathryn Hansen, National Endowment for the Humanities
Discussant: Frank Korom, Museum of International Folk Art, New Mexico
The arrival of South Asians in the United States accelerated after changes to immigration policy in 1965, with preference for well educated professionals contributing to the growth of one of the most economically successful immigrant groups on American soil. Migration flows to Canada in the same decade were stimulated by global politics, such as the exclusion of Asian Indians from East Africa, and more recently, civil conflict in Punjab and Sri Lanka. Although Britain's population of South Asians is older, less affluent, and higher in its proportion of Muslims, new immigration continues through family sponsorship. In parts of the former British Commonwealth, populations with origins in South Asia date to the nineteenth century and the colonial practice of indenture. The "South Asian diaspora" is thus a multilayered, still evolving network of groups whose identities are negotiated with reference to characteristics and histories derived from the "homeland" and in relation to the societies and nation states in which they are now located. While debate about the propriety of the term "diaspora" continues, little doubt remains that South Asians resident outside the subcontinent demand our attention as Asianists, and in the last several years scholarly interest in South Asian diaspora issues has peaked. Processes of transnationality, religious fundamentalism, ethnic politics, globalization of culture, and multiculturalism have immediate relevance not only for scholars but for all those concerned with the new face of the world around us.
This back to back panel focuses on the ways in which South Asians particularly privilege performance as a mode of establishing their presence in diaspora space. Our understanding of "performance" embraces the rich artistic heritage of music and dance as well as public celebrations of ritual, enactments of political drama, and the articulation of a public through the print media. The two parts of the panel cover complementary terrains, provisionally designated as "inreach" and "outreach." The first panel examines the construction of self and collectivity through performances organized within specific diaspora communities, such as the major annual festivals of Muharram and Deepavali, as well as through English and Urdu language community journals. The second panel focuses on the external projection of constructed identities via presentations of South Asian arts, primarily music and dance, to the rest of the society. In this set of papers, we attempt to analyze ethnic identity as emerging from and shaped by interaction with local and national political contexts and state policies such as multiculturalism. The papers encompass South Asian groups currently resident in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Singapore, Trinidad, and Guyana, and "originating" in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and East Africa. The paper presenters and discussants bring to the session a mix of disciplines, perspectives, and approaches that should yield a provocative diversity of opinion.
Vernon J. Schubel, Kenyon College
South Asians Shi'i Muslims living in North America maintain a number of interrelated identities. While identifying themselves in many situations with the larger community of Muslims, an identity seen by many other North Americans as "other"-they also identify themselves specifically as Shi'i Muslims. These Muslim identities link them with other Muslims from a vast variety of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. While their Muslim identity is crucial, they are also members of a larger South Asian community with whom they share many cultural characteristics including language, food, and an appreciation of Indian popular culture-including films and music. They are also North Americans participating in the national and political life of the United States and Canada. Like other immigrant groups, religious and cultural festivals provide opportunities for reflecting on the complex nature of these identities. This paper, which is based on field work in Canada and Pakistan, focuses on the annual religious performances commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Husayn which take place in the lunar month of Muharram. This ten day period of mourning for Imam Husayn is arguably the most important communal religious activity of the South Asian Shi'i community. It provides what Victor Turner refers to as a "liminal arena"-a sacred environment which allows the members of the community to confront the underlying and multi vocal "root paradigms" of their religion. It also provides a time when the community recreates rituals and customs specific to its South Asian origins. This presentation will examine the role of these Muharram performances in the negotiation of the multiple identities of South Asian Shi'i Muslims.
Sunita S. Mukhi, New York University
What kind of Indian identity is performed at the Deepavali festival in South Street Seaport and in the Jackson Heights celebration in New York City? Is the 'Indianness' expressed a celebration of ethnic difference in a community of differences; an assertion of nationalistic allegiance to the Indian nation state; a display of cultural heritage and familiarity within and without the Indian community; an opportunity to reconstruct, enjoy and be admired for this complex and problematic concept of 'Indianness?' The South Street Seaport celebration is well publicized, whereas the Queens celebration in Jackson Heights is known only to the community. How do the differences affect Indian identity? In this presentation, I wish to describe and discuss the very problematic and multi faceted Indian identity as it manifests itself in U.S. society via the South Street Seaport Deepavali Festival and Jackson Heights celebration.
My initial impressions are that in this annual Deepavali Festival produced by the Association of Indians in America there seems to be an insistence on presenting our 'original' non American, non Western selves; an insistence on presenting ourselves as Indian nationals with a unified, homogenized tradition to the public at large, a public that consists of non Indians as well as those of Asian Indian origin. This identity performed is a mimesis of the reconstructed folk dances, revived folk arts and crafts that occurred in India during her independence days. In India, this revival was a way of asserting nationalism against the British Raj. Now here in the U.S., is this performance event used to assert the exoticism, the difference of 'Indianness' against Euro American hegemony? If this is so, consequently, India as a modernizing technological democracy is neglected. Indian life in America and its pains and pleasures are not represented, though the performers/participants and the audience are mostly first and second generation Indian Americans. As much as possible, the non western, peasant, pre industrial arts are depicted as authentic 'Indianness'.
The audience for the Jackson Heights celebration are primarily Asian Indian immigrants living in the area. It gets no media coverage, and information about it is passed on by word of mouth. If one is not in the community or in the neighborhood, one does not know about it. I have, unfortunately, missed the celebration, but know of its existence by the remnants. I surmise that the performances in this celebration include reinterpretations of Hindi film song and dance sequences, and other more popular entertainments. There is possibly a clear demarcation of what is privately Indian as performed in Jackson Heights and publicly displayed in Manhattan. In this paper I will suggest that these different identities are political strategies of the community to wield power within the Euro American dominated New York environs, choosing very deliberately what of 'Indianness' to reveal and enjoy. I will be using slides and video clips to enrich this discussion.
Carla Petievich, Montclair State University
This paper looks at some of the various communities "imagined" in South Asian diaspora publications, and discusses how, like the media of music or religious festivals, these journals also construct identity. In addition to reading these publications as texts, sense must be made of the context in which they are produced. The politics of language and the state's relationship to artistic patronage play important roles in the interplay between "culture" and identity; and in how "culture" itself is articulated. For there are neither monolithic "South Asian" communities, nor are there monolithic South Asian Canadians, or Britons, or Americans.
Discussion will center in part around two Canadian arts and culture magazines-the Vancouver based Rangh and Montreal Serai-both identifiable as "South Asian-Canadian" community publications in a country with an official state policy on (and Ministry of) Multiculturalism. While the editorial collectives of both publications identify themselves as politically progressive within the Canadian public sphere, their different audience "communities" reflect the politics of language and of patronage at a regional vs. national level.
In the U.S., by contrast, the absence of state patronage creates a different set of circumstances which are explored in the context of India Currents, an eight year old, independently published magazine in California's Silicon Valley. Begun as an arts calendar, it has developed into a journal focusing on South Asian arts performances in and around the San Francisco Bay area which also seeks, by its editorial stance, to shape the views of its public into a responsible community within the multicultural realities of the United States.
Discussion will turn finally to Awaaz, a bilingual (Urdu and English) British daily newspaper, published since 1993 from Southall. The layout and publishing strategies of this paper make explicit appeal to a generationally and linguistically divergent "community" of British Asians. The option for children and parents within a single family to read the news in either English or Urdu reflects an attempt to keep everyone reading the same news, and therefore thinking about the same world.
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