South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal

1 | 2007 Migration and Constructions of the Other

Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Christine Moliner (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/195 DOI: 10.4000/samaj.195 ISSN: 1960-6060

Publisher Association pour la recherche sur l'Asie du Sud (ARAS)

Electronic reference Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Christine Moliner (dir.), South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 1 | 2007, « Migration and Constructions of the Other » [Online], Online since 16 October 2007, connection on 06 May 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/195 ; DOI:10.4000/ samaj.195

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Migration and Constructions of the Other: Inter-Communal Relationships amongst South Asian Diasporas Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Christine Moliner

The Volatility of the ‘Other’: Identity Formation and Social Interaction in Diasporic Environments Laurent Gayer

Redefining Boundaries? The Case of South Asian Muslims in Paris’ quartier indien Miniya Chatterji

Frères ennemis? Relations between Panjabi Sikhs and Muslims in the Diaspora Christine Moliner

The Paradox of Religion: The (re)Construction of Hindu and Muslim Identities amongst South Asian Diasporas in the United States Aminah Mohammad-Arif

Working for India or against Islam? Islamophobia in Indian American Lobbies Ingrid Therwath

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Introduction. Migration and Constructions of the Other: Inter- Communal Relationships amongst South Asian Diasporas

Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Christine Moliner

1 Since Independence in 1947 and the creation of two separate nation-states, the Indian Subcontinent has regularly witnessed ethnic violence (several wars of varying intensity opposing India to Pakistan in 1948, 1965, 1971, 1999), partitions (1947 and 1971), bloody riots, in which different communities have been confronting each other along various lines: religious (Hindus vs Sikhs, Hindus vs Muslims), ethnic (Punjabis vs Bengalis, Sindhis vs Muhajirs, and so on), and national (Indians vs Pakistanis, Pakistanis vs Bangladeshis). These episodes of violence have at times reached astonishing levels, as during the 1947 Partition when hundreds of thousands lost their lives while millions had to flee what had been the homeland of their forefathers for centuries. This was nothing less than an ethnic cleansing beforehand. In India, ethnic violence has taken on such an importance that a specific word has even been coined to define the tensions between the major ethnic groups, Hindus and Muslims in particular: communalism.1 In Pakistan, the creation of a separate country along religious lines has not subsumed other identities, as the 1971 Partition between East and West Pakistan (and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh) has shown: ethnic and linguistic identities were successfully mobilized against an authoritarian centre. These periods of violence have however been (fortunately) followed by longer periods of relative peace and stability, and even ‘outright’ reconciliation, when tensions and animosities even appeared as a (quasi)-aberration. This was the prevalent mood when India and Pakistan embarked upon their peace process in 2004.

2 Our interest now lies in the relationships between South Asian2 sub-groups in a diasporic3 context, while keeping in mind the dominant situations in home-societies as well. Through the exploration of the similarities and differences between the diaspora and the countries of origin on the one hand, between different host-societies where South Asians have settled down on the other, we would like to assess whether there is any specificity of

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the diaspora. Does the situation observed in the diaspora reinforce the theories that are put forward to explain ethnic conflicts and ethnic violence? Or does it on the contrary invalidate them? Are there any internal dynamics, and if so, to what extent are they independent from the events and turmoil of the Subcontinent? These are some of the questions that we will try to address here.

3 Three countries have been selected for this study, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. The United Kingdom has long been the paradigmatic country of the migration from the Subcontinent. The United States has become the home of fairly successful and increasingly visible South Asian diasporas4 but it also witnessed an event that reshaped its ethnic landscape and its relation with the Other: September 11. As for France, apart from the fact that all the contributors to the special issue are based in France, this country offers a (relatively, see infra) contrasting example with the Anglo- Saxon model in terms of integration and the place of religion in society.

Migration and identity: diasporic constructions of the Self and the Other

4 Migration is often a very disruptive experience that generates a sense of insecurity, resulting from uprooting and marginality. In their adaptation strategies, immigrants redefine their self-perceptions and their collective identities.

5 Recent scholarship has insisted that collective identities, far from being immutable, are constructed, multiple and flexible. All the contributions to this volume highlight in particular the role of Otherness in fashioning identity. This transactional aspect of identity is reinforced in a context of migration: diasporic constructions of the Other(s) are remarkable for their multiplicity and their instability (see Gayer, Moliner in this volume). In the host country, South Asians interact with other South Asian groups, with different ethnic minorities and with the majority population, who all potentially represent powerful figures of Otherness. And the representations and relationships thus generated are highly instable, as they depend on complex interactions between the global context, the regional (relations between South Asian states), the national (public policies towards ethnic minorities) and even local ones (community relations might not follow the same patterns on the East and the West Coast of the United States or in Bradford and Southall).

6 Migration tends to reinforce antagonist perceptions of ‘us and them’, and to strengthen national/ethnic/religious identifications. Peter van der Veer has offered the most comprehensive analysis of the dialectical link between migration and nationalism (Van der Veer 1995). Although nationalist discourse is opposed to expatriation, and to the mixing of population and the transgression of national boundaries it implies, migration fosters nationalism both among the indigenous population (through defensive, xenophobic forms of nationalism) and among migrants, through exacerbated expressions of national identity, defined along ethno-religious lines. In this process mutually exclusive religious nationalisms are fashioned. They are based on a reinvention of the past, on naturalizing the link between people, culture and territory and on antagonist constructions of the others.

7 In the process of the redefinition of diasporic identities, religion tends to become a major component of ethnic identity. This is due to the disruptive nature of migration that

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propels some migrants to turn to what they perceive as unchanging values and traditions of their past. This also owes to the political framework of the host society where the ethnicity5 of minority groups is mainly defined in religious terms and used as a basis for mobilization and politics of recognition (for the notable exception of France, see infra).

8 Finally the experience of migration often leads to a self-conscious reflection on religious traditions, beliefs and practices. This redefinition of things religious tends towards rationalization, homogenization, drawing of clear-cut boundaries with other religious groups and exclusion of heteropraxy (popular practices for instance). Interactions with others (indigenous populations, South Asians and other minority groups) prove an important component in this process of redefinition: what was taken for granted at home has to be explained, sometimes advocated in a hostile environment and finally transmitted. The issue of religious and cultural transmission to the next generation is indeed perceived as crucial.

The existing literature

9 Most studies have so far focused on the relationships between immigrants, their homelands and host-societies, but very few studies deal with the issue of inter-ethnic relationships amongst South Asian diasporas. Among the major exceptions, is the book edited by Crispin Bates (Bates 2001) where several case-studies of inter-ethnic relationships are examined both in the Subcontinent and in the diaspora: ethnicity and community politics in Fiji (Kelly), Mauritius (Nave), East Africa (Twaddle), Trinidad (Chatterjee), Pakistan (Leonard and Waseem) and India (Hansen), to mention a few. Interestingly, no European country has been chosen as a case-study in this otherwise highly interesting book, not even the UK (owing probably to the lack of researchers who have shown any interest in the topic, though the issue of South Asians in the UK as such has been very thoroughly studied by the best specialists). At any rate, as Crispin Bates has underlined in the introduction of the book, many researchers have tended to neglect this issue as they see it as unproblematic: It is assumed that the identities of migrant communities say Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims, male and female, are largely brought with them, and that they are based upon primordial and age-old forms of identity to be found in the Indian Subcontinent. The conflict between these ‘communities’, and the expression of gender and caste differences, are then often accepted as inevitable or natural, and only their articulation and the choice of methods for their management and amelioration remain a cause for concern. The international activities of militant political and religious organizations such as the VHP6 and the JI 7 are likewise predicated upon the assumption that the interests and identities of Hindus and Muslims everywhere are essentially the same (Bates 2001: 2-3).

10 Apart from Bates, Laurent Gayer, a contributor to this volume (see below), has also addressed the issue of inter-ethnic relationships: in his Masters dissertation (Gayer 1998), he draws a comparison between the patterns of relationships between South Asian populations in London and Paris. He shows how diasporic populations can invent a common identity in opposition to the racism of the host-society as is observed in London for instance, while at the same time they can reinvent (and not simply import) the conflicts affecting their homelands (Hindu/Muslim communalism, Sikh separatism, and so on).

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Inter-ethnic relationships and long-distance nationalism

11 Apart from a couple of studies, not much has been written on this topic. And yet these diasporas are not only increasingly important at the demographic level (20 million Indians, 4 million Pakistanis, 4 million Bangladeshis)8 and more and more diversified, but they are also getting increasingly involved in the politics of both their host-society and their homeland. Besides, as a result of the migration process, many of these immigrants experience a redefinition of their identities (see supra), some identities may become subsumed (like language or caste-based) while others may be given a new salience, and even take precedence over other identities (like religion), which is likely to have implications on inter-ethnic relationships. But such a process can vary from one country of immigration to another, depending on the models of integration prevalent in each country and on other variables, as we shall see below. The fact that the various sub- groups often overlap makes this issue all the more interesting and complex. The cases of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi Muslims on the one hand, and of Sikh/Muslim/Hindu Punjabis on the other illustrate it.

12 Historically, those who have left India have been among the most politicized and defensive of their identities, and have even occasionally indulged in violence. The examples of the Ghadarites in Canada and in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, and of the Indians in South Africa, who were the first ones to mobilize against British rule under the leadership of Gandhi, are a case in point (Bates 2001: 8). As for the contemporary period, Benedict Anderson and others have also highlighted that the diasporic experience may generate long-distance nationalism. This is how Anderson defines it (Anderson 1998: 74): Nonetheless, in general, today’s long-distance nationalism strikes one as a probably menacing portent for the future. First of all, it is the product of capitalism’s remorseless, accelerating transformation of all human societies. Second, it creates a serious politics that is at the same time radically unaccountable. The participant rarely pays taxes in the country in which he does his politics: he is not answerable to its judicial system; he probably does not cast even an absentee ballot in its elections because he is a citizen in a well and safely positioned in the First World, he can send money and guns, circulate propaganda, and build intercontinental computer information circuits, all of which can have incalculable consequences in the zones of their ultimate destinations. Third, his politics, unlike those of activists for global human rights or environmental causes, are neither intermittent nor serendipitous. They are deeply rooted in a consciousness that his exile is self- chosen and that the nationalism he claims on e-mail is also the ground on which an embattled ethnic identity is to be fashioned in the ethnicized nation-state that he remains determined to inhabit. The same metropole that marginalizes and stigmatizes him simultaneously enables him to play in a flash, on the other side of the planet, national hero.

13 Interestingly, the sub-group, quoted by Anderson, which is usually given as a quasi- paradigmatic example, is from South Asia: indeed, expatriates from the Sikh community have played a significant role in the Khalistani movement (which campaigned for a separate Sikh State carved out of the Indian Union). Moreover, some recent reports have shown the important role of migrants, settled in particular in North America and the United Kingdom, in financing religio-political movements in India9 while other studies

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have brought to light that the remittances of Pakistani migrants in the Gulf were partly used to finance religio-political movements in the homeland (Zaman 1998). This implies not only that long-distance nationalism can be observed among all major communities beyond national, ethnic or religious affiliations, but given the heightened sense of nationalism (generated by both endogenous (dislocation leading to insecurity) and exogenous (racism of host-societies) factors) that many migrants experience, it may have implications on inter-ethnic relationships amongst diasporas as well. This also means that in diaspora, along with identities, the inter-ethnic relationships are being redefined, and cannot be simply considered as the replications of the legacy of conflict.

14 The links that are maintained with home-societies also suggest that many expatriates tend to closely follow the developments in the Subcontinent. Hence some events, like wars, partitions, riots, nuclear tests, destruction of sacred sites, and so on, are likely to have an impact on inter-ethnic relationships in the diaspora. But other events that take place outside the Subcontinent, such as September 11, can also affect these relationships (see Mohammad-Arif, Therwath in this volume).

15 But beyond transnationalism, it is important as well to examine—through the historical evolution, the mutual perceptions, the organization patterns, and so on—the points of cleavages and of rapprochement between communities. Spaces and vectors of conflict are also worth studying, all the more so as violence as such in the diaspora is first and foremost symbolic. The media, Internet, the lobbies have all a crucial role to play in the process.

The explanations for ethnic violence

16 Several theories have been put forth to explain ethnic violence. Ashutosh Varshney’s study of the relationships between Hindus and Muslims in India (Varshney 2003) shows that these theories can be classified into five major categories: essentialism, instrumentalism, post-modernism, constructivism, institutionalism. To these, Varshney adds a sixth category, linking ethnic conflict and civil society. He believes that all the former ones are inadequate because they neglect local issues and overlook the importance of civil society.

17 Essentialists explain conflicts by referring to historically deep-rooted animosities based on inherent and irreconcilable differences of race, culture or religion. Hence, ignoring the many instances of cooperation and coexistence between different communities, including Hindus and Muslims who share common conceptions about social life, essentialists argue that their animosities have always existed, and hence that conflicts are inevitable. Essentialism poses a problem not only because of its racialist undertones, but as Varshney underlines, because it also ‘makes it hard to explain why, if animosities are historically deep and so rooted in cultural differences, tensions and violence between groups tend to ebb and flow at different times, or why the same groups live peacefully in some places but violently in others’ (Varshney 2003: 28).

18 The instrumentalist argument focuses on how the respective leaderships strategically manipulate ethnicity for the sake of economic and political power (Brass 1991), even though the leaders themselves may not believe in ethnic identity. It does not however offer, as Varshney pinpoints, a convincing explanation of why ethnicity is mobilized by the leaders at all. By simply claiming that building bridges may be at times in the interest

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of the leadership, and creating cleavages in their interest in other instances, it does not make clear why interests can be perceived in totally different ways or why people should blindly follow the leadership (Varshney 2003).

19 As for post-modernists, they lay the stress on the narratives promoted by the elite, deeply implicated in the formation of knowledge. In the South Asian case, the census is one of the most striking and well-known examples of categorization that has had an incidence on the self-definition of communities (Metcalf 1995). However, its importance in creating separate identities between different communities, mainly Hindus and Muslims, and between castes, should not be over-emphasized as post-modernists have tended to do: categorizations, like census, did not create separate identities as such but certainly helped to crystallize them (Gaborieau 2001).

20 The constructivist view argues that many of the identities that are taken for granted have in fact been elaborated in recent time (Hobsbawm 1983, Anderson 1983). In a society like India, constructivists, such as Gyanendra Pandey, claim that the main contemporary ethnic cleavages were created by the colonial power and, the impact has been such that their divisions have had a long time effect (Pandey 1990). But once again, if the role of the British in widening the gap between communities cannot be denied, it should not be over-emphasized since, to take once again the examples of Hindus and Muslims, the delimitation of identities, as fluctuating as it could be, was a reality even before the British came to India (it could be observed as early as the thirteenth century); the two communities have even been confronting each other from the seventeenth century onwards (Gaborieau 2001, 2003). Hence the pre-colonial period was not the Golden Age where communal harmony was the dominant norm, as post-colonial literature would have it (Pandey 1990). But the fixation of identities and confrontations, that remained fragmentary and localized (Subrahmanyam 1996: 58), did not mean for all that that these communities nurtured a centuries-old hostility that would have prevented any kind of cohabitation, as the essentialists argue.

21 Last but not least, institutionalism connects ethnic conflict or peace, on the one hand, and political institutions, on the other (Varshney 2003: 35). The nature of multiethnic societies, whether they are consensual (or consociational)10 or majoritarian democracies, and have federal or centralized governments, proportional representation or first-past- the post electoral system, will have an incidence on ethnic peace or conflict. For instance, in a multiethnic society in which ethnic groups are geographically concentrated, federalism may be more suitable for ethnic peace than a centralized political system (Varshney 2003: 38). Although institutionalism is one of the most relevant theories, it does not explain variance in ethnic violence or peace at the local or regional level. Reflecting on this, Varshney suggests a sixth theory, which links ethnic conflict and civil society. For him, only such a framework of analysis can account for local or regional variations. Relying on a thorough study of several cities in India where ethnic conflict has been either recurrent or hardly present, he shows that in cities where there are strong associational forms of civic engagement such as integrated business organizations, professional associations, reading clubs or trade unions, polarization along ethnic lines and outbreaks of ethnic violence are less likely to take place. However, his study, based on statistical data, hardly takes into account power struggles between ethnic groups and between social groups and the State.

22 Now it remains to be seen how relevant these theories about ethnic conflict (which may not necessarily be violent) or peace are when applied to the relationships between South

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Asian communities in diaspora. We have already pointed out their shortcomings in explaining ethnic conflict in home-societies. Interestingly, in a diasporic context, though none of these theories can, in a fully comprehensive way, account for ethnic conflict, almost all of them can be, to some extent, usefully mobilized. Essentialism is not helpful as such for the researcher, but its use by the respective leaderships in creating cleavages (and less frequently in building bridges) between the communities arouses his interest (see below). Given the renewed importance of leadership in a diasporic context (see below), instrumentalism becomes a useful analytical tool. Post-modernism and constructivism can also be useful to understand the existing categorizations put in place in some of the host-societies as they may generate feelings of common belonging, and hence promote ethnic peace (like the ‘South Asian’ category in the United States or the ‘Asian’ category in the UK, which ‘forcibly’ lumps together all South Asians, regardless of their national, ethnic or religious affiliations); these are issues above all of self-perception and self-ascription. In other cases, some people try to differentiate themselves as much as possible from the rest of South Asians (for instance, a fraction of Hindus manifested their difference from other ‘Asians’, Pakistanis in particular, especially after the Rushdie affair) or from other ethnic groups in the host-society (like Indians trying to look as different as possible from disadvantaged groups such as Hispanics and African-Americans). Last but not least, institutionalism can be summoned to explain that though political institutions as such may not matter in promoting ethnic conflict or peace between the members of a given ethnic group, the ‘institutionalized’ policy of the host-society towards their minorities (in other words, the models of integration of each country) does have an impact on the inter-ethnic relationships within the group (see below). As for the connection between civil society and ethnic peace, the institutionalist vision is also relevant in that it helps to explain why in countries with strong civil societies, like the United States and the UK, the promoters of ethnic peace can exert an influence on ethnic affairs. But once again, not a single theory can achieve a global and comprehensive explanation. Therefore, we have to rely on a combination of the different models to assess the situation.

The prevalence of local contexts: migration histories, national ideologies and state policies

23 The contributions in this volume insist on the prevalence of the different local contexts in extent patterns of relationship among South Asian diasporic communities. In each of the three countries that are studied, France, the UK and the US, a unique combination of historical processes, political ideologies and state policies regarding immigration has fashioned a specific national context and particular ways of dealing with immigration, immigrants and ethno-religious pluralism. The classic opposition between Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and the French model of republican integration clearly needs to be qualified by taking into account two elements. Firstly, the very different histories of migration in these three countries have been as instrumental as national ideologies in fashioning these two ‘models’. Secondly, a convergence of issues and policies related to immigrants is to be observed: multiculturalism is increasingly questioned in the United Kingdom and quotas and affirmative action are being debated in France.

24 Although South Asian migration to the US is the oldest as it started in the late 1880s, with the arrival of Punjabis on the West Coast, it has become numerically significant much

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more recently, with a second migration wave that started in the mid-1960s, after the US liberalization of immigration policy. This legislation also privileged educated and qualified people and this explains the very high socio-economic profile of South Asians in the US today —which contrasts with that of their counterparts in France or the United Kingdom. With approximately 3 million people, South Asians amount to 1% of the total American population.

25 In the United Kingdom, South Asian migration history owes much to the colonial past: the earliest migrants came as subjects of the British Empire (be they ayah, lascars or princes, see Visram 1986) and so did those who settled en masse in the 1950s, as their status of British subjects was perpetuated within the Commonwealth. A new legislation strictly limiting immigration from 1962 along with a Race Relations policy, which strived at fostering good relations between the different ethnic groups, initiated a second wave of mass migration, mostly made of the wives and children of the 1950s settlers. The majority of them were from unqualified, rural background and they came to the UK as part of a chain migration process. In the 1970s, they were joined by urban, qualified migrants, who mostly arrived from East Africa. Today, with 2.3 million people, South Asians represent the first ethnic group of the country (over 50% of the ethnic minorities population) and 4% of the total population, according to the 2001 census.

26 South Asian migrants settled in France came more recently and in much smaller numbers: they came mostly in the late 1970s and now they amount to no more than 130,000. The Pondicherrians represent a special case: thanks to their French nationality, they came much earlier, in the 1950s, after Pondicherry became part of the newly independent India. Amongst migrants directly coming from South Asia,11 they constitute the only group having a colonial connection with France. Since the French people have no colonial representation or categorization of South Asians—apart from Pondicherrians— South Asians in France have been subjected to lesser levels of racism and discrimination than North Africans in France or Asians in the UK. Because of the French model of individual integration and because of all these aspects pertaining to a specific migration process, the emergence of well structured South Asian communities in France has so far been delayed.

27 The historical phases of migration constitute another important variable. Early migrants tended to have more interactions across ethno-religious boundaries for instance: it was the case with the pioneers of the 1930s and 1950s in the UK, with Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs in California in the early 20th century and interestingly with South Asians migrants in Paris today as Chatterji argues in this volume. The nature of migration, whether it is individual or chain migration, is also an important factor in the extent of interactions with the Other. Chain migration, like in the UK, tends to limit the need and the opportunities to interact outside self-sufficient community networks. In France, South Asian migration is composite: while the majority of migrants arrive as part of a chain migration process, a significant proportion do so on an individual basis. As for the United States, most of the migrants in the 1960s and 1970s migrated on the (individual) basis of their qualifications; in the following decades, however, an increasing number arrived thanks to the family reunification provisions, and hence became part of a chain migration process as well. However, South Asians in the United States do not form major ethnic enclaves (except in some areas like Coney Island, in New York, which is largely dominated by Pakistanis, or Devon Avenue in Chicago, which has a more mixed South Asian

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population) and daily interactions with other South Asians tend to be much more limited than in the UK.

28 The second phase of migration started with the arrival of families, the coming of age of a second generation and the institutionalization of ethnic communities. South Asians in the UK experienced this phase as early as the 1970s. The emergence of a second and now third generation has given rise to a composite and hybrid type of identification as British Asian: as we shall see later, this identity label which transcends the ethno-religious and national boundaries associated with home societies and the parents’ generation has become a category ascribed by the dominant society. It is given shape by racism and discrimination and is reappropriated by the youth through the creation and consumption of a common diasporic culture. This phenomenon is much more recent in the US than in the UK and has been reinforced in the aftermath of September 11. As for France, as we have noted, South Asian migration history is still going through the pioneer phase, despite the emergence of a second generation, especially among Pondicherrians, Sri Lankan Tamils and Pakistanis. Interestingly, in the absence of any valid category (Sud- Asiatique, South Asian, is not used in France and Asiatique, Asian, refers to Chinese and formerly Indochinese people), South Asians tend to be lumped together as Indians or Hindu. Whether this could constitute the nucleus of a common identity remains to be seen.

29 Finally the place of immigration in national ideologies and the related policies has to be assessed. As is well known, immigration has been central in the definition of the American national identity as the ‘nation of all nations’; the country defines itself as a society of immigrants. But very early on, liberal views on immigration coexisted with exclusionist policies. After the Chinese, South Asians were classified as ‘aliens ineligible for citizenship’ in the early 20th century and the introduction of national quotas in 1924 strictly limited their entry to the country. This period of exclusion, discrimination and xenophobia is an important aspect of the history of the South Asian presence in the US and the post-September 11 period also sheds light on this uneasy past.

30 Paralleling immigration legislation, the question of integration of these immigrants has emerged as an early preoccupation. In reaction to the predominance of WASP values and principles in the definition of an American identity (even in the melting-pot model), multiculturalism emerged as a new paradigm in the 1960s in leftist circles, under the influence of the civil rights movement. In the multicultural framework that has been operating since then, ethno-cultural identities are to be defended as distinct and equally valued components of national identity. Ethnicity has hence become the only available basis of collective self-definition and mobilization (Lacorne 1997). As the ethnic group constitutes the basic socio-political unit, individuals are encouraged to identify with communities defined on ethno-religious terms. Although official census categories refer to the national origin of immigrants, religious affiliation is prevalent in the definition of ethnic identity.

31 But this is also to be explained by reference to the specific role of religion in the fashioning of American national identity, its relation to the State and its relevance in socio-political debates till today (Lemarchand 1997). Religion has indeed played a crucial role when the country was founded by dissidents of European Protestant churches who had sought refuge from religious persecution. As a result, the American Constitution has established the separation between the State and the Church in such a way that it also guarantees freedom of religion and religious pluralism. The American conception of this

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principle of separation contrasts with the British system of Church and State (since it is opposed to any established religion) and with the French model of laïcité (as it has not emerged out of confrontation with the Church). It is also rather flexible and permeable. Although officially confined to the private sphere, religion is in fact omnipresent in the public space, in social life and political debates. Finally, the American religious landscape, continuously modified and enriched by immigration, is particularly lively since the US has the highest level of religious practice amongst developed countries. The relationship between the State and religion is very different in the UK: the Church of England is the official Church of the State, according to the Establishment Act of 1701. For a long time, it meant that Catholics and Dissenters were denied freedom of religion and were prevented from holding any public office. British modern history is thus characterized by the interdependence of politics and an established religion (and the subordination of the latter to the former) and by religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants on one side and Anglicans and Dissenters on the other (Baubérot & Mathieu 2002). As stated by Baubérot and Mathieu, religion has remained an integral part of the country’s cultural identity well into the 20th century. Despite an overall low level of religious practice, especially among followers of the Church of England, religion remains important in the public space and in social debates, as exemplified by the compulsory teaching of religious education in State schools. Whereas identities are mainly defined along racial terms for Whites and Afro-Caribbeans, South Asian identities tend to be drawn along religious lines.

32 As compared to the US, immigration occupies a very different position in British history and British collective representations. The debates and policies regarding immigration have been shaped bearing in mind the importance of Commonwealth immigrants. They combine an increasingly restrictive immigration legislation and policies promoting the integration of migrants and the coexistence of the different communities. These policies have been used to legitimize the legislative stance: in other words, to ensure the successful integration of already settled immigrants, further immigration had to be stopped. Immigration became a political issue much earlier than in France, immigrants being confronted to racism and discrimination from the local population and the institutions (Lapeyronnie 1993).

33 If a large consensus was achieved as early as the 1960s on immigration policy, policies of management of the diversity introduced by immigration were—and still are—the subjects of heated debates. The initial policy of assimilation was quickly replaced by an ideal of integration that had to be achieved through the promotion of racial equality. Discrimination based on racism (both institutional and social) was identified as the major threat to the integration of immigrants and to social peace (Crowley 1994). Anti-racism is therefore an important component of the Race Relations legislation: racial discrimination was made illegal, equal opportunity in the access of ethnic minorities to public services and employment was promoted and new resources and powers were allocated to local authorities to enforce this policy. This had several consequences: racial (meaning ethnic) categories were created and one had to belong to pre-defined communities in order to benefit from the legislation. To understand on which basis ethnic categories have been constructed, let us examine the Mandla case. In 1979, the headmaster of a local private school refused to admit a Sikh boy unless he removed his turban to comply with rules about the school uniform. The Sikhs viewed it as indirect racial discrimination as defined by the 1976 Race Relations Act, and referred the case to the newly created Commission for Racial Equality, which then appealed to the House of Lords. Interestingly, the crux of the

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matter lied in establishing whether Sikhs were an ethnic/racial group or not, as only groups defined along ethnic lines and not merely on a religious basis could benefit from the 1976 Act. Ultimately, the Lords stated that Sikhs were indeed an ethnic group and made ethnicity the basis of collective identification and mobilization (Crowley 1994).

34 According to another provision of the Race Relations legislation, local authorities were entrusted with the implementation of this policy. Accordingly, the competition for resources and for recognition amongst ethnic groups occurs mainly at the local level. The local authorities which are in charge of education and social services leave it to voluntary and community organizations to provide adequate service. These organizations entirely depend on annual grants from local authorities and enter thus in a fierce competition. Indeed ‘rights and resources are claimed in the name of communities that must compete with each other’ (Baumann 1996).

35 Since it lies on an opposition to racism, multiculturalism recognizes the right of ethnic communities to maintain separate cultures. Ethnic communities are hence defined by reference to reified cultures, which are in turn characterized by their internal homogeneity and binding. Unlike Whites and West Indians, South Asians have been encouraged to identify and mobilize along religious lines. British multiculturalism has therefore resulted in the politicization and ethnicization of these affiliations, in a way clearly reminiscent of colonial policies (Beckerlegge 1991).

36 As for France, in sharp contrast with the US, immigration holds a marginal role in the national ideology: traditionally, France does not perceive itself as a country of immigration (Schnapper 1991). And in contrast with its early politicization in the UK, from 1945 to the mid-1970s, immigration remained solely linked to economic requirements: it was central to French economic development, but remained very marginal in political debates (Lapeyronnie 1993, Weil 1991). But once labor migration was curbed, again for economic reasons, and the first wave of migrants gave way to the arrival of their family, France was confronted 15 years later with the same issues as in the UK, namely the integration of its migrant population. The French model of integration is usually described as universalistic and egalitarian, based on the ideal of republican individualism that rejects any public expression and recognition of cultural diversity (Lapeyronnie 1993). Cultural assimilation is supposed to be achieved on an individual basis, as the republican model does not acknowledge ethnic communities or any other intermediary social body between the State and individuals. Particular identities, considered as an obstacle to social progress, are to be abandoned. The contemporary rendition of the concept of laïcité, epitomized for instance by the 2004 Act which banned the wearing of religious signs in State-run schools,12 is regarded as the prime instrument of republican integration: religion is to be confined to the private sphere and public expressions of faith (as the wearing of Islamic headscarves or Sikh turbans) are considered as a threat to the entire republican framework.

Ethnic entrepreneurs: key players in the relationship building process

37 If exogenous factors, like local contexts, are important in order to understand the complex intricacies at play in inter-ethnic relationships, so are more endogenous factors. Among them, leadership plays an important role: ethnic entrepreneurs are often crucial

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actors in either building bridges or widening gaps between sub-groups in the larger South Asian communities.

38 Host societies tend to transform the resources of migrants: some identities are devaluated and relegated to the private sphere, new economic opportunities appear, communities regroup along ethnic or religious lines to conform to the expectations of the State. As a result, potential entrepreneurs are offered a new set of resources that vary from one country of migration to the other. And identity becomes one of the resources that can be mobilized by the entrepreneurs.

39 The migration process as such creates the ground for the emergence of ethnic leaders or entrepreneurs. Their emergence can first be seen as an answer to the need of newly arrived migrants. For instance, when Pakistani men first landed in the UK, most were poorly-educated and could hardly speak English. They were therefore at loss in dealing with British institutions and so they turned to community members for help. In this context, anyone who was educated, had a good knowledge of English and was seen as being able to deal with British authorities, could easily achieve a position of influence, and hence be promoted to the status of a ‘leader’ (Shaw 1988: 138). After the phase of settlement was completed, the need for patrons did not subside, as new needs arose in response to the sense of disruption and marginalization due to the migration process. Maintaining ethnic and religious traditions and recreating a ‘Pakistani community’ became very important (Shaw 1988: 141-4). People who were able to ‘organize’ the community and set up institutions that would help perpetuating these traditions were fairly easily invested with authority within the community. As a result, new types of leaders, like imams and Sufi pirs, came to play a decisive entrepreneurial role, as the mobilization against Salman Rushdie revealed (Blom 1999).

40 Beyond ethnicity, religion and place of immigration, a similar phenomenon exists amongst other South Asian communities in the UK and elsewhere, including amongst educated, prosperous and fairly well integrated migrants. Such is the case in the United States or in Canada, where feelings of stigmatization and uprooting are experienced, no matter how successful the migrants are in their host societies. They also express similar needs for desi representatives that will help them maintain their ethnic heritage.

41 However, it is interesting to note that this tendency is particularly acute in countries which promote multiculturalism. It is much less visible in countries where integration at the individual level, like France, is called for. Indeed, multiculturalism encourages the construction of a public ethnic identity instead of a purely private one (Taylor 1992). This publicization can take various forms, like ethnic parades, ethnic awareness weeks, endowed chairs in universities and political lobbies. But, migrants are also submitted to pressures in host-societies to organize into groups that are culturally ‘homogenous’ and to have ethnic leaders as spokespersons for the community. As Kurien rightfully notes, ‘the need to have a distinctive, coherent heritage puts pressure on members of ethnic groups to be ethnic in certain formulaic ways, including constructing a monocultural homeland in order to be part of a multicultural society’ (Kurien 2004: 365). This in return can have serious implications on inter-ethnic relationships amongst South Asians, since leaders re-appropriate the prevalent notions of the host society and tend to promote essentialist and exclusivist conceptions of ethnicity, that do not leave much room for the Other, including the Other South Asian. Beyond the construction of exclusionist identities, another point to be noted is that unity is not only seen as a primordial prerequisite for any kind of influence within the community as well as in the host-society

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but also as a form of ‘moral obligation’ upon the community (as both a reaction to Partition and to the fitna tradition, a major feature of power-relationships in the Subcontinent, marked by constant shift of allegiance and alliances (Jaffrelot 1998: 113-45). However, South Asians have been characterized by a high propensity for internal divisions which decrease the effective impact of any single group whatever be its agenda.

42 The migration process leads some migrants to yearn for positions of leadership, seen as a compensation for the downward mobility that many of them experience. This longing for influence is stronger in multicultural societies where leaders of ethnic groups can become political actors, albeit usually only at a local level. Hence, this logic often encourages potential leaders to adopt positions that will ensure them both a status within the community and acceptance as legitimate representatives from the host society, even if these positions are defined along narrow ethnic or religious lines. For example, Pakistani leaders in the UK tend to seek influence by using the emotional issue of Islamic values (Shaw 1988: 143), whereas Indian Hindu representatives in the United States use redefined versions of Hinduism, (mostly) along Hindutva13 lines, to gain power within the community (Kurien 2004). For many self-styled Pakistani spokespersons, the use of Islamic references is seen as the right way of gaining the support of migrants who mostly look for means of curbing acculturation. For some Indian Hindu activists in the United States or Canada, and particularly for the supporters of Hindutva, a somewhat homogenized version of Hinduism can have a unifying effect in an alien land. Besides, as Jayant Lele notes in reference to the Canadian context, the label ‘Hindu’ has the ‘advantage’ of avoiding to have to deal with the compromising problems of the Sikhs14 and the Muslims (Lele 2003: 94). This may adversely affect the inter-ethnic relationships amongst South Asians, as leaders from all sides, neglecting the huge diversity of their home countries, tend to promote essentialized and exclusionist conceptions of their own cultures, in order to have access to resources in the double system of relations in which they operate: status amongst fellow migrants, political power and recognition from the host-society.

43 As opposed to the United States and the United Kingdom, where the settlement process has already taken place in the past decades and where there is a sizeable elite, most South Asian migrants in France still belong to the first generation and primarily hail from underprivileged social categories, with a fairly low educational background.15 This situation has considerably hampered the leadership formation process as most migrants are still busy settling down and have a low visibility. While this pioneer stage and the profile of South Asian expatriates explain the strength of economic ties over other forms of bonding (see Chatterji in this volume), it does not account alone for this relative lack of leadership. The local context does indeed play a crucial role. The French model of integration does not encourage any type of mobilization at the community level, and hence do not officially recognize community leaders as such. However, in some conflictual cases (like the ‘veil affair’ for young Muslim girls and the turban issue for Sikh schoolboys), the French government has been confronted with the need for ‘ethnic representatives’. Interestingly, in the case of the Sikhs, despite the official policy of laïcité, the representatives they have reached for are hailing from the local gurudwara. As for the Muslims (who are mostly from North and Sub Saharan Africa), the French authorities have lately engaged in a process of looking for ‘legitimate’ leaders in response to various ‘challenges’ (the hijab, and the perceived threat of fundamentalism, for instance). But this process is fraught with hurdles not only because of the internal diversity of Muslims but

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also because there are competing leaderships that are either recognized (or even nominated, as a legacy of the colonial period) by the French government, or by the ‘community’, but hardly ever by both.

44 In other words, depending on their countries of settlement, ethnic entrepreneurs mobilize the resources that are locally available: they form lobbies in the case of the United States (Mohammad-Arif 2000, Therwath in this volume), or opt for racial categorizations in the case of the UK. Accordingly, community leaders define the groups that they can mobilize.

45 The situations described above seem to suggest that a diasporic situation combined with migration to a multicultural society is bound to reinforce the cleavages between South Asians rather than bridge them. However, the picture does not look as grim: ethnic politics can also be promoted in progressive ways as the increasing dynamism of peace- making South Asian organizations in North America and the UK reveals.

Beyond confrontation, the emergence of a diasporic South Asian identity?

46 South Asian diasporic subjectivities are fashioned as much by confrontation, violence or competition as by cooperation, solidarity and peace-making. This second strand of diasporic activism tends to be neglected by social scientists who have usually focused on the first aspect (except for Gayer 1998, Shain 1999), although both are interconnected.

47 The experience of migration has also fostered a common South Asian identity that transcends national, ethnic or religious cleavages. This pan-ethnic, inclusive type of identification emerges at first as an exo-definition by the host society, whose representations, categorizations and policies tended to lump together people from the sub-continent. The experience of racism, discrimination and marginalization has been particularly important, especially in the UK where the colonial legacy has greatly impinged on patterns of integration and inter-ethnic relations of the former colonized communities (see Moliner in this volume). This is also true of the post-9/11 situation in the US, as explained by Mohammad-Arif in this volume. Through censuses for instance, multicultural approaches have also led to the formation of new categories like South Asians in the US or Asians in the UK.

48 These perceptions from the host society are reappropriated by the diasporic communities, mostly by the second or third generation and an ascribed type of identification becomes an asserted one. Here the generation divide is clearly important: the youth, born and/or brought up in the host country, tends not to support the ethno- religious or national divisions that they associate with their parents’ generation, these ‘uncles and aunties’ mentioned by Therwath in this volume (although communal and fundamentalist organizations do recruit among sections of the youth). The trauma of Partition is still very present for the first generation of migrants and influences their representations of and relations to the South Asian Other. As in South Asia itself, the memory (both individual and collective) of these tragic events is transmitted to the second generation, particularly amongst Punjabis, but not to the third generation. If it still means something at all to the youth, Partition operates as a negative point of reference and encourages them to transcend the divisions and promote cooperation both in South Asia and in the diaspora.

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49 This common diasporic identity promoted by the youth is grounded on perceived cultural commonalities: food, movie, music and dress. This South Asian hybrid culture exemplified and produced in the diaspora is also increasingly consumed in the home societies.

50 In fact an important dimension of this diasporic identity is its relation to the homeland, whether with reference to political involvement (and the many instances of long-distance nationalism), economic investments (through remittances) or emotional links. Interestingly, the initiatives and organizations promoting cooperation among South Asians partake not only of those classic patterns of involvement in the homeland but also of new and increasingly diverse ones, like diaspora philanthropy. Development projects, hospitals, schools and colleges, libraries, public infrastructures are thus funded by expatriates. Diasporic philanthropists and actors of reconciliation are motivated by a sense of responsibility towards their home society and have been influenced by the values and modes of action of the host society.

51 With a common sense of belonging forged by the experience of migration and an ethic of responsibility towards the homeland, several progressive organizations have emerged in the diaspora, especially in the US and the UK, in the last twenty years. As detailed by Mohammad-Arif in this volume, these organizations were primarily concerned with the plight of South Asian migrants in their host society and have only recently extended their action to the home societies. She explains the rise of this new kind of activism by the changes in the socio-demographic profile of immigrants (with the youth and women contesting the hegemony of first generation (male) leaders) and the traumatic events such as the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan. It also illustrates the maturation of civil societies both in the diaspora and in the sub-continent (mostly in India and less so elsewhere).

52 Some of these diasporic activists have focused on the fight against communalism (the rise of Hindutva in India and the diaspora being their main target), and the promotion of peace through people to people contact and mobilization against the nuclearization of the sub- continent. Through their cooperation with organizations based in South Asia, to which they give an international platform, they have been instrumental in the emergence of a transnational network of South Asian peacemakers (like the Indo-Pak Forum for Peace), which was very active during the World Social Forum held in Bombay in 2004.

53 But what is the real influence of these diasporic actors? They have achieved important victories, with the banning of Sewa International in the UK16 or with the anti-Modi campaign (see Mohammad-Arif, Therwath in this volume), preventing him to enter the US. However, their real impact within their own communities tends to be rather limited: their following is mostly restricted to intellectual, academic and militant circles and their mobilization potential can in no way compete with their opponents. Their legitimacy to speak for the ‘silent majority’ remains to be established.

The contributors

54 In his contribution, Laurent Gayer reflects on the complexity to investigate on diasporic constructions of otherness (hence the paucity so far of empirical studies), as they are remarkable for their plurality and their volatility, in interaction with multiple contexts, local and transnational ones. Breaking away from reified conceptions of diaspora and their homeland, he stresses the dynamic dimension of diasporic identifications, while

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exploring local patterns of conflict and cooperation amongst South Asians in Southall. He demonstrates in particular how internal and external group boundaries are constantly questioned and challenged, be it towards a diasporic reinvention of communalism or the promotion of commonalities and of a pan-ethnic identity.

55 Miniya Chatterji, in the only article of this volume on France, examines how in Paris’ so- called ‘quartier indien’, an area of intense migrant economic activity, community boundaries are being drawn among South Asian Muslims. She attempts to identify how ‘sub-groups’ are being redefined in migration, by tracing out the nature and depth of bonds and bridges shared by South Asian Muslims. She argues that, at such an early stage of settlement, economic activity seems more prevalent in defining these internal group boundaries than religion, national origin or language.

56 Christine Moliner focuses on Sikh representations of the Muslims and the relationships between those two groups sharing a common regional identity, both in the Sub-continent and in the diaspora. She does so diachronically, arguing that historical constructions of the Muslim as the Other (often, but not always, as the enemy) have been instrumental in Sikh identity formation process, since the 18th century onwards. And synchronically, she traces the reshaping of these representations in the post-colonial UK that is home to important Sikh and Muslim populations and the ways they impact on inter-community relationships.

57 In her article, Aminah Mohammad-Arif examines the inter-ethnic relationships among South Asian diasporas in the United States, focusing more particularly on Hindus and Muslims, both Indians and Pakistanis. She argues that the importance of religion in the redefinition of individual and community identities combined with the settlement in a multicultural society, like the United States, has implications on the relationships between South Asians, as it has tended to (re)create cleavages. However, the proponents of exclusionist identities have been increasingly facing competition from secular forces, whose constructions of identities obey to different logics and repertoires that go beyond religion, and are inclusive of all communities to the extent of calling into question the borders drawn by History.

58 Ingrid Therwath addresses here the issue of Indian-American lobbies in the United States: their growing influence has been widely reported in the (ethnic) media, but even more striking are their internal divisions, giving way to the constant formation of new groups (a phenomenon known among South Asians as the ‘everybody wants to be president syndrome’). In the face of these divisions, Islamophobia has provided a unifying force, whose roots can be found in the articulation between local and transnational factors: on the one hand the support to the Hindu nationalist ideology in the context of the (American) war against terrorism, on the other hand the furthering of the India-Israel-US strategic partnership.

Conclusion

59 While most contributors to this volume agree that the redefinitions of identities in a diasporic setting have had fairly adverse implications on inter-ethnic relationships, a common line of argument between the different contributions is the importance of local contexts in (over)determining the bonding and bridging process amongst South Asians. Conceptions of foreigners, classification patterns, institutional frameworks, as well as

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migration policies and agendas of each country are all crucial elements that need to be taken into account (Massicard 2005: 279). Some countries indeed encourage mobilization (whether along sectarian or progressive lines) on a community basis (namely multicultural societies), while others do not officially recognize communities as such, like France, and hence the issue of inter-ethnic relationships is not endowed with the same importance. But in France too, contradictions may surface as this society has been increasingly facing a tension between principles of assimilation of minorities at the individual level and policies towards more recent migrants that partly call into question these very principles, like affirmative action. At any rate, local dynamics are essential in the understanding of some of the identity investments and positions that are at stake (Massicard 2005: 274), as they influence the bonding or ‘breaking’ process within communities.

60 But not negligible either is the role played by the length of the migration process as well as by the social background of expatriates, as the degree of settlement in the host-society and the presence and visibility of an elite have an impact on the leadership formation, and related to it, on the community formation.

61 At any rate, all these groups, beyond their ideology, also operate in a double framework, articulating transnational interests with local concerns. As a result, though South Asians are far from impervious to events taking place in their home-societies, the inter-ethnic relationship issue in the diaspora obeys to a specific dynamic, related to a whole range of factors that goes well beyond a mere replication of the conflicts taking place in the Subcontinent.

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NOTES

1. Communalism as such is the propaganda or the effective action led by the members of a religious community against the members of another community. 2. With a particular focus on Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. 3. During a meeting of French researchers with Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh and former Minister for External Affairs, Natwar Singh reacted, to a question we asked Manmohan Singh about the Indian diaspora, by saying that according to him, Indians did not represent a diaspora, as they still had a home-country. This certainly provides an interesting insight about the relationship between the Indian government and its expatriates. We will nonetheless use the term ‘diaspora’, despite its increasingly indiscriminate usage to refer from its original meaning of dispersion (of the Jews) to any group of dispersed people, and understand it here as a dynamic process and not as a fixed category (for further elaboration on the concept, see Gayer in this volume). 4. We are using here the plural as South Asians form very heterogeneous communities. 5. Although we understand here ethnicity as a social process, and not as a cultural or biological given, we must keep in mind the predominantly static, primordial understanding of the term in public discourse (particularly among ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ themselves). 6. Vishva Hindu Parishad, see Mohammad-Arif in this volume. 7. Jama’at-i Islami. See Mohammad-Arif in this volume. 8. These are estimates as many of the South Asian migrants, particularly in Western countries, are undocumented. 9. The Hindu nationalists in particular (Sabrang 2002) 10. As in Austria, Belgium or the Netherlands where there is a coalition of ethnic leaders in government, group proportionality in decision-making, mutual veto, and autonomy in such fields as personal laws, education and language. See Lijphart in (Varshney 2003: 37). 11. As there are also migrants coming from the French West Indies, Reunion Island, Mauritius and Madagascar. 12. The original definition of laïcité refers to a legal and ideological framework that guarantees, through the separation of Churches and the State, the independence of religious organizations vis-à-vis political power and secondly freedom of conscience by that same power. This framework was designed at the beginning of the 20th century as an attempt to limit the power of the Catholic Church which, along with the Royalists, was trying to destabilize the young and fragile regime of the third Republic. One should stress that this was done not in a militant spirit

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(there was no intent to crush organized religions) but in a compromising frame of mind. See Jean Baubérot 2004. 13. The doctrine of Hindu nationalists. 14. This is particularly true for Canada, and less so for the United States, as in Canada, there is a more ‘visible’ Sikh community, among which a minority has indulged in violence in its support for the Khalistani movement. 15. The exceptions are migrants from Pondicherry and the tiny minority from Bengal, who include a sizable number, the latter in particular, of fairly successful people. 16. A sister organisation of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (the UK branch of the RSS), Sewa International posed as a charity and collected funds in the UK and elsewhere purportedly to help the Gujarat earthquake victims in 2001. As revealed by an inquiry, the funds were actually used for RSS activities in India (see the report by Awaaz-South Asia Watch Ltd, www.awaazsaw.org/ ibf/index.htm)

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The Volatility of the ‘Other’: Identity Formation and Social Interaction in Diasporic Environments

Laurent Gayer

1 The construction of inimical figures lies at the heart of identity formation processes. This postulate can bring together political scientists and anthropologists alike. The former will discern here the friend/foe dialectics in which nationalism originates (Jaffrelot 2003). The latter will interpret this process in terms of ethnic boundaries formation (Barth 1969). Whatever concept social scientists may use to refer to this construction of the ‘other’, they all agree on its crucial role in the formation of ‘ethnic groups’, this term referring to ‘all the groups of a society characterized by a distinct sense of difference owing to culture and descent’ (Glazer & Moynihan 1975: 4). Therefore, ‘From its beginning, the term ethnicity has been one concerned with opposition, on the nature of difference between antagonistic groups’ (MacClancy 1996: 9). Yet, the specificities of ethnic relations in diasporic environments remain understudied and social scientists are still too inclined to relate diasporic communities to a single ‘other’: their host state and society. This analytical myopia leads to an obliteration of all the other ‘others’ of migrant communities,1 whether in their country of residence or in their home state. The deterritorialization of such communities and their transnational—or rather translocal— networks put them into actual or virtual contact with a wide range of actors, amongst whom several may be eligible for the title of ‘other’. Thus, enlarging the spectrum of analysis has become urgent for social scientists concerned with diasporas, their identities and their mobilizations. It is to that heuristic leap forward that I would like to contribute here, through a theoretical discussion based on my fieldwork in the UK (Gayer 1998).

2 Constructions of the ‘other’, in diasporic environments, have two major attributes: their multiplicity and their volatility. Ethnic entrepreneurs have a wide range of options to propose an ‘enemy’ to their audience, hence their multiplicity. At the same time, social and political evolutions in the migrants’ country of residence or in their home state make

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such constructions of otherness highly contingent. The study of ethnic relations in diasporic environments is thus a difficult task and very little empirical material is presently available on this critical issue. But before looking at social and political relations between ‘diasporic communities’, it is necessary to define this elusive notion which social scientists have become accustomed to use in a rather loose way.

Defining diasporas

3 Among the Jews, the Hebrew term ‘galout’ (exile) evokes the nostalgia of origins, whereas the Greek term ‘diaspora’ is related to a specific and critical event: the dispersion of the Jewish community after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and the annexation of Judea by the Romans. Even if the term ‘diaspora’ appeared for the first time in Thucydides’ War of the Peloponnesus to describe the scattered Greeks (Sheffer 2003: 9), it has remained associated with the Jews until the 16th century. In French, this singularity of the Jewish condition was emphasized by the spelling of the term, which started with a capital letter. However, between the 17th century and the 1960s, this term has become more banal and it was progressively attributed to the Greeks, the Armenians and the Chinese. Throughout this period, the term ‘diaspora’ designated ‘the condition of geographically dispersed people, who were mobilized by different political organizations and who, in spite of their dispersion, retained a form of unity and solidarity’ (Schnapper 2001: 9). But since the end of the 1960s, the semantic field of the term has widened and it has been applied to every group of dispersed people, from expatriates to refugees and from immigrants to activists in exile. This indiscriminate use of the term is particularly pronounced since the 1980s and may be explained by the crisis of assimilation policies and the subsequent rise of the politics of diversity in western host states (Shuval 2003). This semantic confusion, which originates from new perceptions of migrant ethnicities, has made the use of the term highly problematic, because it now refers to extremely diverse processes and because it is often used in a metaphorical way (Marienstras 1989, Safran 1991, Skinner 1993). The historicity of the diasporic condition has also blurred: by looking at diasporas in the longue-durée, geographers and sociologists often fall prey to what Stéphane Dufoix has called a ‘fixing illusion’, which postulates ‘the a-historicity, the permanence of transnational communities through the ages (…) without fundamental changes in their modes of organization, as if their existence was somehow natural’ (Dufoix 1999: 151).

4 The term ‘diaspora’ now implicitly postulates the existence of intangible links between dispersed people and their homeland, although such links, which have to be constructed and nurtured, take a variety of forms in time and space. This dynamic dimension of diasporic identifications had been emphasized by early pioneers of diasporic studies, such as Gabriel Sheffer (1986). However, analysts of diasporas now tend to neglect this dynamics, by taking the existence of Armenian, Chinese or Indian diasporas for granted. Social links between these diasporas and their homelands thus become reified, since every emigrant or political exile is supposed to belong to the diaspora. At the same time, the identifications of these dispersed peoples become a-historical, since diasporic consciousness seems to be unchanging.

5 To break away from such reifications, diasporic studies have to acknowledge present changes in the circulation of people, ideas and funds while questioning the historical trajectories of these evolutions. Beyond this quest for historicity, diasporic studies must

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rely on solid definitions of the term ‘diaspora’ itself. Political sociology and social anthropology can both help us to ground this definition in solid theoretical premises. Informed by historians, political sociologists have shown us that traditions are modernized, sometimes even invented. Social anthropologists, for their part, have taught us to look at culture as a process rather than a substance. By trying to bridge the gaps between these two disciplines which have engaged in a fruitful dialogue in the last decade or so, I will here define diasporas through their patterns of formation, interaction and mobilization, i.e. through their identity politics rather than through their morphological properties. I tend to see diasporas as translocal social groups which, under certain circumstances, fashion a common identity for their members, distinct from that of their host and home societies. This distinct identity is based on memories of a temporally and geographically distant past which are reconstructed to suit the needs of the present. In other words, diasporas are self conscious and politically organized mnemonic communities. Their members are brought together by shared memories of their (even mythical) homeland and they ground their lives in a translocal space which may be partially virtual. Like every other social group, diasporas also ground their identities in constructions of otherness, both internal (fixing the boundary between ‘proper’ and ‘incorrect’ behaviours inside the community) and external (fixing the boundaries between the community and its social partners). These translocal populations have a wider range of options than more territorialized communities in this regard. Moreover, as I have already suggested, diasporic constructions of otherness present a high volatility due to the plurality of factors affecting them, in the translocal space where they evolve.

6 To avoid the reifications which are all too often associated with conceptualizations ‘from above’, I will look at Indian and Pakistani diasporas ‘from below’, through everyday lives of Indian and Pakistan migrants in the UK, particularly in the West London area where I have done most of my fieldwork related to overseas Indians and Pakistanis. This urban space is not a ‘locality’ in the traditional sense but one place of experience among others for the populations which inhabit it. To comprehend such a translocal space, I travelled to various locales, from Indian Punjab to British Columbia. My experience of fieldwork was therefore multi-local and trans-local, in that I tried to clarify the nature of relations between several political localities.2

Volatile identities: constructions of otherness among overseas Indians and Pakistanis in Southall, UK

7 South Asian migrants have not been immune to the popularization of the term ‘diaspora’ during the last two decades. The renewed interest of Indian authorities for their expatriates and their growing political clout, particularly in the US, have recently contributed to a proliferation of publications on the Indian diaspora (Jayaram 2004, Parekh et al. 2003). Some authors prefer to talk of a ‘South Asian diaspora’, even if they rarely precise what they mean by that, making this phrase synonymous with ‘South Asian overseas’ (Vertovec 1991). If some authors inscribe the Indian diaspora in a larger diasporic formation, others undermine these theoretical constructions by talking of a Hindu (Vertovec 2000) or a Sikh diaspora (Barrier & Dusenbery 1989, Tatla 1999). Surprisingly, Pakistani migrants have not received the same attention from analysts of diasporas and only a handful of anthropologists have studied the Pakistani diaspora.3

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8 If I stick to the definition of the term ‘diaspora’ I proposed above, overseas South Asians are clearly not eligible for this title. Overseas Sri-Lankans and overseas Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis do not share a homeland, nor do they have common memories. Moreover, these migrants do not circulate in the same translocal space. On the contrary, the new politics of identity of some Indian overseas communities, particularly in the US, and the renewed interest of the Indian state for its prodigal son have now turned the Indian diaspora into a socio-political reality. The same cannot be said of the Pakistani diaspora, which is yet to turn into an established social fact. However, the specific identifications, modes of socialization and political orientations of overseas Pakistanis and the emergence of a new blend of explicitly Pakistani ethnic entrepreneurs during the last decade or so justify the use of the term. I will therefore refer to Indian and Pakistani diasporas throughout this paper, even if I believe that the term can also be applied to the Sikhs and to the Kashmiris living abroad, at least since the last two decades, during which these minorities in the larger Indian and Pakistani diasporas have developed singular identities and patterns of organization in relation to the political turmoil affecting their homeland. The transformation of overseas Sikh and Kashmiri communities into diasporas illustrates vividly the volatility of constructions of otherness among overseas South Asians. Political turmoil in the homeland or socio-economic conflicts in the country of residence may trigger conflicts between these diasporas; they may also create dissensions within their ranks, by fuelling fissiparous tendencies.

9 These communal tensions can vary greatly from one country to another. Although it is often assumed that identities of South Asian migrant communities are largely ‘brought with them’, and that they are ‘based upon primordial and age-old forms of identity to be found in the Indian subcontinent’, the conflicts between these communities are not inevitable or natural. Indeed, as Crispin Bates (2001: 3) suggests, ‘the boundaries of ‘communities’ and their relations with neighbours of other communities, and the political articulation of these relationships, can vary enormously’. Divergent social and historical circumstances have produced different patterns of community relations in every settlement of overseas South Asians. Such divergences are manifest at the national level but also at the local, neighbourhood level.

10 To illustrate this volatility of the ‘other’ in the Indian and Pakistani diasporas, I have chosen to focus my analysis on a neighborhood of west London: Southall, the ‘capital town of South Asians in Britain’ (Baumann 1998: 38). In the 1920s, this industrial suburb was populated by English and Irish labourers. In the 1950s, this workforce was replaced by Indian and Pakistani emigrants, largely of Punjabi origin. The presence of industrial plants in the area and the proximity of Heathrow Airport provided these migrants with numerous job opportunities and most of them expected to return to their homeland after a few years. Reforms in British laws regulating immigration put an end to this myth of return and led these early migrants to bring their families with them. During the 1970s, the presence of South Asians in the area became even more visible with the arrival of Indian refugees from Kenya (after 1967) and Uganda (1972).

11 The contiguity of Indian and Pakistani migrant ‘communities’ in the neighbourhood makes Southall a place of special interest for studying the relations between these diasporic populations. The ethnic diversity of Southall is exemplified by table 1, which shows ‘Indians’ in a hegemonic position and ‘Pakistanis’ in that of a minority. Among the ‘Indians’, Hindus are a minority: the proportion of Sikhs in the local South Asian

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population varies from 40% across the town as a whole to 60% in the central wards (Baumann 1998: 73).

Table 1 – Ethnic origins of Southallians (1991)

Category %

‘Indians’ 50

‘Pakistanis’ 7

‘Other Asian’ 3

‘White’ 30 (of whom one in ten was born in Ireland)

‘Black Caribbean’ 5

Other categories 5

Source: Baumann 1998: 48

The ties that bind: Southallian attempts at transcending national and religious cleavages

12 At first sight, social harmony seems to prevail in multi-religious Southall. As Gerd Baumann (1998: 46) suggests, ‘Stereotyping and sometimes disdain of neighbours from different communities is by no means rare. Yet there is the strictest censure on declared or open enmity. The make-up of the population is varied enough for everyone, on the surface at least, to pretend to ‘get on well with everyone’. The public tone is polite’.

13 When South Asian migrants started settling down in Southall, this idyllic portrait of community relations was not very far from the truth, even if such representations of the neighbourly relations between South Asian immigrants should be treated as a political and normative discourse which depicts the way these populations should live together rather than their actual neighbourly relations. Such discourses should be taken seriously, though. However normative they may be, these representations are performative: they change the world they claim to represent. And however utopian they may seem to be, these performative declarations are grounded into a certain reality, which should be questioned rather than rejected altogether.

14 In the 1950s and 1960s Indians and Pakistanis did not have any hostility for each other and the memories of Partition did not prevent them from joining the same associations, such as the Indo-Pakistan Cultural Society. Trade unionism was also a strong bind. Although the hegemonic local trade-union was the communist-dominated Indian Workers’ Association (IWA, founded in 1956), it accepted Pakistanis as associate members. Beyond trade-unionism, anti-racism also brought Southallians together throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which saw the rise of the British National Party (BNP) in local councils. During this period, Southall experienced several disturbances that the local media presented as ‘race riots’. The worst of these incidents took place on 23 April 1979, when a demonstration of the National Front led to clashes between skin-heads and left-wing

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activists which resulted in the death of Neo-Zealander teacher named Blair Peach. Left politics was then building bridges between South Asians of all caste and creed. But this rapprochement was also based on a shared popular culture, which has been reinvented in the diasporic context.

15 Most South Asian inhabitants of Southall originate from the Punjab and share the same language. Beyond language, Punjabis of all caste and creed share a common imagination, based on folk tales, poetry and songs. This popular culture fashions common attitudes, assumptions and practices, so that wherever they reside, ‘Punjabis willingly, and indeed proudly, identify themselves as such, regardless of whether they might otherwise be classified as Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, and regardless of whether they hold Indian, Pakistani, British, United States, Canadian or any passport’ (Ballard 1999: 12). Yet, Punjabi identity (Panjabiyat) has been undermined by the communal reconstruction of religious communities in the Punjab during the 19th and 20 th century and even more so by Partition, to such an extent that historian J.S. Grewal (1999: 52) has suggested that ‘the shattered mirror of Punjabi consciousness reflects tiny images, which refuse to coalesce into a portrait’. In the diaspora, the events of the last decades have also contributed to the weakening of pan-Punjabi identifications. During the 1950s and 1960s, Punjabi immigrants found some comfort in the proximity of other Punjabis, regardless of their caste and creed: ‘family connections, or affiliations of region, language, dress, and culture proved to be a comfort in a still deeply stratified and discriminatory London’ (Shukla 2005: 92). However, in the following decades, these supranational linkages became less appealing to ‘Indian’ and ‘Pakistani’ Punjabis. Paradoxically, while they started taking roots in an increasingly multicultural London, these populations were also ‘reclaimed’ by their national homelands, to use the words of one of my (Sikh) informers. This is not to say that they were naturally inclined to ‘go back to their roots’, but rather that they started feeling confident enough in their new diasporic environment to reconstruct their identity by emphasizing their differences, both inwardly (in order to set themselves apart from other ‘Indians’ and ‘Pakistanis’) and outwardly (in order to dissociate themselves from other, less successful, ethnic minorities but also to publicize their difference from an ‘English’ society which was still resenting the presence of its former colonial subjects in the backyard of the metropolis).

16 It is in this context that political turmoil in the homeland came to affect patterns of community relations in the diaspora, external changes being mediated by the transformations of the local context. Therefore, armed conflict in the Indian Punjab did not impulse the communalization of overseas Sikhs but only accelerated an ongoing process of differentiation between Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus, whose interactions became less frequent after operation Bluestar and the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984. This estrangement of Hindu and Sikh populations tends to be undermined by Hindu Southallians, who often denounce the brutality of Operation Bluestar and emphasize the shared culture of all Punjabis in order to bring the Sikhs back into the Indian fold. This (re-)integrative discourse is reminiscent of the attempts made by Hindu nationalists to reclaim the Sikhs as Hindus. However, in multireligious Southall, this discourse does not derive from a project of assimilation by the Hindu majority but, rather, from an attempt to preserve communal harmony and to defend the ‘common world’ bringing together each and every Southallian of Punjabi descent. One of my informers, working as a journalist for the local Desh Pardesh (whose editor was murdered by the Khalistanis) thus told me: ‘The attack on the Golden Temple was a very painful event that History can’t

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forget or forgive. It was a historical blunder. Even Hindus feel the same. No religious place should be attacked by the army. But Hindus and Sikhs are the same, they are still closely related. The moderate Sikhs and Hindus realize that this was a mistake and that it shouldn’t be kept in the minds, otherwise it will vice the atmosphere’.4

17 The end of militancy in the Indian Punjab has opened a new political space for Punjabi nationalists in the diaspora and some Khalistani cadres of the preceding decades have dropped the Khalistan issue to promote ‘Panjabiyat’. This is particularly true of the Sikh nationalists who mobilized the Khalistan Council around Jagjit Singh Chauhan, the main ideologue of the Khalistan movement, who settled in Britain at the beginning of the 1970s. Although Chauhan himself returned to India in 2001, his aides did not disengage from politics and they have recently set-up a lobby called ‘Punjabis in Britain’, patronized by the Labour M.P. for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell.5 One of these former Khalistanis has also launched an NGO, the Panjabi Center, which addresses Punjabis of all caste and creed. It remains to be seen if such initiatives can appeal to Punjabi Hindus and Muslims, who tend to see Punjabi nationalism as a Trojan Horse taking forward the agenda of Sikh nationalists. In any case, the reinvention of former Khalistanis as Punjabi nationalists attests of the volatility of community relations in Southall and reveals the superposition of identifications which characterize its inhabitants, who do share a Punjabi identity but who have seen it undermined by communal conflicts in India, by the Indo-Pakistani inter-state rivalry and by periodic episodes of tension in the diaspora itself.

18 Cultural and political identifications of South Asian Southallians are highly complex and volatile, which makes the characterization of community relations in the area a rather difficult task. One group, in particular, presents extremely ambivalent tendencies regarding the modes of identification and mobilization of its members: the second generation. Contradictory trends have emerged among these youths during the last two decades. Amongst the most privileged sections of this age-group, particularly those with a university degree, a pan-ethnic movement promoting the redefinition of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as ‘Asians’ has met with some success. However, as in the U.S., this pan-ethnicity has been opposed by communal elements, who have also taken roots amongst the youth. In Southall, some of these communal elements turned violent, mixing gang culture with religion to assert their violent masculinities. The political divide between the youths of the second generation is not only class-based, though. Even if the members of the ‘gangs’ of west and northwest London were generally unemployed and came from the most underprivileged strata of the ‘Asian’ community, Islamist associations (such as the Jama’at-i Islami, known in Britain as the Islamic Foundation) and their Hindu and Sikh counterparts tend to recruit their members in the upper strata of this population, particularly in universities. Although this was for very different motives, communalism has therefore appealed to the youths at the two extremes of the social ladder, whereas the pan-ethnic ‘Asian’ movement has primarily found support in the most privileged sections of the second generation. Yet, if the most privileged sections of the second generation have been the backbone of the ‘Asian’ socio-political movement, in a rather abstract and literary way, it is in mixed working-class suburbs such as Southall that the ‘Asian’ culture is lived and consumed with the greatest intensity, through cinema, music, food and sports.

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The diasporic reinvention of communalism: ‘religious’ conflicts in Southall

19 If Southallians, like other inhabitants of South Asian ethnic enclaves in the UK and North America,6 share a common popular culture transcending ethnic and religious boundaries, they are not immune to communal tensions. As in the subcontinent, communal conflicts are both punctual and selective in their appeal: they are activated by symbolic events and only mobilize a small number of actors, mainly suburban unemployed young males.7 These communal tensions are at their highest during religious festivals (Diwali for the Hindus, Baisakhi for the Sikhs and Eid for the Muslims) but also during cricket matches between India and Pakistan. However, as the case of cricket vividly illustrates, religious and sportive events are irreducible to politics, or rather, they are prone to multiple and conflictive political interpretations. As we shall see now, cricket is not inherently a factor of communal tensions between overseas Indians and Pakistanis. If the game has been appropriated by young chauvinistic street fighters, it has also been a source of inspiration for pan-ethnic peace-builders. And although youth ‘gangs’ disrupted communal relations by investing cricket with war-like attributes, they also bridged ethnic boundaries by playing the same game as their ‘other’, having fun in antagonizing him.

20 As Ashis Nandy (2000: xvi) suggests, ‘cricket is a religion in South Asia’. So much so that a well-known humorist once noted about the Indians that ‘For six months in a year they watch cricket and for the next six, they talk about it’ (Krishna 1982). The game arouses the same passions among South Asians living abroad. However, the stakes are higher in the ‘diaspora’, since every important match between South Asian nations has the potential to trigger conflicts between local South Asian communities. Indeed, if the Shiv Sena tried to prevent the Pakistani Team from visiting India in 1999—by threatening the Pakistani players, among other things, to infiltrate cobras in their hotel rooms (Khan 2005: 24)—violent incidents are rather rare during cricket matches in South Asia.8 On the contrary, in the diaspora, the contiguity of Indian and Pakistani communities leads to frequent clashes, particularly between local youth ‘gangs’. For these urban depraved youths, cricket has lost its gentlemanly connection and has become a more plebeian game, through which they may express their long-distance nationalism and their social frustrations, while defending or extending their ‘territory’ and the various unlawful activities which they may control inside it. For these playful and aggrieved youths, cricket has become a new bodily language, infused with politics of identity and economic rationalities. In the words of anthropologist Pnina Werbner (1996: 94-5), it has become ‘an expression of controlled masculine aggression and competitiveness’ and a popular expression of modern nationalism.

21 The ‘communal’ incidents that regularly disturb Southall during important matches between Indian and Pakistani teams epitomize this manly but not so gentle reinvention of cricket. Like in every other South Asian suburb in the UK, these matches are accompanied by public performances, with (mostly male) youngsters waving flags and hooting their horns to make their presence felt in the neighbourhood and to provoke their adversaries. These demonstrations may turn violent when the demonstrators cross ‘hostile territories’ or run into a group of opponents. Anticipating trouble, shopkeepers often prefer to remain closed on the days of important cricket matches. Although these demonstrations are reminiscent of the peripatetic provocations of Indian communal rioters (Jaffrelot

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1992), they are actually less informed by the ‘model’ of the Indian communal riot than by the local practice of ‘cruising’. This practice, which implies driving at a snail’s pace in congested streets with loud speakers blasting fancy tunes, was invented by American teenagers and popularized worldwide by George Lucas’ American Graffiti. In Southall, cruising remained a popular activity amongst the local youth at the time of my fieldwork, neo-Bhangra competing with Gangsta Rap in CD-players. These playful exhibitions mostly took place on the Broadway, Southall’s main artery, which links the suburb with central London (topographically, the Broadway is an extension of Oxford Street). The peculiar marketing techniques of its shopkeepers, who do not hesitate to open their stalls on the sidewalk, are reminiscent of South Asian conventions on the use of urban space and make the Broadway a cruiser’s paradise, since ‘the satisfaction of the cruiser grows with the number of heads that are turned and with the whispers that identify one or the other as a ‘big guy’ in one of Southall’s two well-known ‘gangs’’ (Baumann 1998). The provocations of local youth ‘gangs’, during religious festivals and important cricket matches, were inspired by these leisurely practices of cruising. The communal incidents which have taken place in Southall during these symbolic events are therefore irreducible to politics, the place of fun needing to be acknowledged in these aggressive assertions of a powerful Self.9

22 ‘Gang’ may not be the most appropriate term to define the ‘local, mainly disorganized collective affiliations’ (Bhatt 1997: 269) which appeared among deprived South Asian youths from east, west, northwest and southeast London, but also from the Midlands and the north, during the mid-1980s. Some of these ‘gangs’ were hardly organized and would only become semi-organized for specific events. In west and northwest London, however, these violent youth associations had a more permanent basis. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, the two main ‘gangs’ of the area were the Holy Smokes (which was mainly composed of young Sikh males) and the Tooti Nungs (which was mainly composed of young Hindu males but which acquired some associates from the local Caribbean communities). By the end of the decade, two new ‘gangs’ had emerged in the area: the Sher-e Punjab, exclusively composed of young Sikhs, and the Chalvey Boys, which was composed of Muslims. Although the formation of these ‘gangs’ took place along religious lines, ‘the manifestation of gang activities is far more complex than ethnic or religious identification allows and refers us to syncretic associations between criminal activities, surveillance and sexual harassment of women, ‘antiracist’ formations, renunciation of patriarchal pedagogy and recreation of patriarchal tradition, as well as explicitly religious political identification’ (Bhatt 1997: 269). The rivalry between the ‘Asian gangs’ of west and north-west London had indeed several components in it: geographical, communal and criminal. The conflict between the Holy Smokes and the Tooti Nungs was reminiscent of that between English and Irish labourers settled in Southall during the 1920s: the Holy Smokes came from the ‘Old’ part of Southall, built in the Late Victorian era, whereas the Tooti Nungs came from the ‘New’ part of the town, which grew between the 1920s and 1950s (Baumann 1998: 38). Religion was also used by these gangs to legitimate their violence against the ‘other’, during important cricket matches and religious festivals. In 1997, for instance, 90 people were arrested in Southall for carrying arms and public disorder. Regrettably, this year, Eid and Diwali had been celebrated the same day.

23 For the young racketeers, communal violence was a way to provoke a retaliation which would make their offer of protection more attractive. But Asian youth ‘gangs’ in Southall

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and Slough also fought for the control of ‘atta’, this Punjabi word for ‘flour’ here referring to heroin. It is this implication in drug dealing that brought discredit to these ‘gangs’. By the end of the 1990s, the ‘gangs’ had lost their popularity. Violence did not come to an end but the ‘gangs’ were unsuccessful in their protection racket: people understood that their offer of protection had too high a cost and started seeing them as a menace, threatening communal relations and discrediting South Asians in the eyes of the British public. Indeed, during the 1990s, the ‘Asian gang’ was brought by the British media ‘to the forefront of public concerns over crime, urban decay, poverty and civil unrest’ (Alexander 2000: 229). This re-imagination of the ‘Asian’ community as a troublesome lot greatly upset its elder members, who had been satisfied with previous clichés on their ‘unthreatening, law abiding and unproblematic’ model minority (Alexander 2000: 15). The medias’ constructions of Southall as a land of gangsters were also detrimental to local businesses by driving away potential investors.

24 Women were the most vocal in their opposition to the ‘gangs’, even if a handful of young females did join them to get away from oppressive indoor and poverty-stricken lives. During my fieldwork, women were my only interlocutors to mention the existence of communal tensions in Southall. And although some of my female interviewees saw communal tensions as a natural fact of life, whether in the subcontinent or abroad, most of them made ‘the gangs’ responsible for the deterioration of community relations in the neighbourhood. This critique of gang warfare can be explained by the symbolic violence of gang members towards women of their own community. As James Clifford has suggested, ‘Life for women in diasporic situations can be doubly painful – struggling with the material and spiritual insecurities of exile, with the demands of family and work, and with the demands of old and new patriarchies’ (Clifford 1997: 259). This is precisely what made the life of so many female Southallians a permanent hardship and it helps to explain why they rejected the ‘protection’ that the gangs offered to their ‘sisters’. Through this ‘protection’, gang members were in fact trying to impose a new moral order to these women, who were becoming more emancipated through their work10 and/or through their contacts with British society. The neo-patriarchal project of the gangs, which was enunciated in the politically and culturally correct idiom of ‘protection’ and ‘honour’, was clearly detrimental to women’s interests, as local feminists have suggested (Patel 1990). Yet, it was apparently supported by traditional elites. Religious authorities, in particular, implicitly supported the ‘gangs’, in which they found a natural ally in their own moralization project (Bhatt 1997: 269).

25 If cricket has been appropriated by the ‘gangs’ of west and northwest London, its communalization was never complete and the game has also inspired diasporic peace- builders. Before India and Pakistan developed their ‘cricket diplomacy’ at the end of the 1990s11, a few British ‘Asians’ thought of using cricket as a ‘confidence building measure’ between Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri-Lankans residing in Britain. In the second half of the 1990s, for instance, the owner of the cash and carry network ‘Bestway’ financed cricket teams which recruited their players among Bestway’s employees of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin. The recent attempts at pacifying cricket in South Asia might inspire more initiatives of this kind in the future and the game could thus become a ‘bridge of peace’ in the diaspora. In any case, these conflictive interpretations of the game remind us that ‘a sport is an embodied practice in which meanings are generated, and whose representation and interpretation are open to negotiation and contest’ (MacClancy 1996: 4).

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External events and local divisions: the implosion of the Indian diaspora in Southall

26 If the boundaries between South Asian communities settled in Britain are constantly renegotiated, particularly amongst the youth of the second generation, their internal boundaries are also regularly questioned. In Southall, these fissiparous tendencies were vividly illustrated by the formation of a ‘Sikh diaspora’ during the 1980s, which detached itself from the larger’ Indian diaspora’ after the events of 1984. Until these critical events, the handful of Sikh nationalists exiled in Britain had not received much attention from the Sikh public at large. However, political upheavals in the Punjab provided overseas Khalistanis with a golden opportunity to mobilize their ethnic brethren. Indeed, the attack on the Golden Temple and the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984 produced a ‘moral shock’ (Jasper & Poulsen 1995: 498-9) among overseas Sikhs, by brutally upsetting their political attitudes and leading them to mobilize themselves in favour of their rediscovered homeland.

27 The demand for the creation of a Sikh state in India was first formulated in the 1940s, as a response to the Pakistan movement (Riar 1999). In the Punjab as in the diaspora, this demand was revived after operation Bluestar. It was then brandished as a symbolic weapon defying the Indian state but was also used to comfort a traumatized community. At a more political level, the demand for Khalistan helped the recently settled migrants to gain a political clout in their community, their transnational nationalist protest promoting them to the rank of local ‘community leaders’. This success was only temporary, though. From the beginning, the Khalistan movement suffered from fissiparous tendencies. In India, Khalistani armed groups failed to coordinate their actions through the Panthic Committee, which suffered from internecine strife between the self-proclaimed guerilla commanders. Abroad, a myriad of organizations competed for the support of the Sikh diaspora and for its representation on the international scene. In Britain, for instance, five organizations claimed the status of sole representative of the panth: the Khalistan Council (founded in 1980 in Punjab but led from London by Dr. Jagjit Singh Chauhan); the Dal Khalsa (founded in Punjab in 1978 but divided between an Indian faction and a British one); the Babbar Khalsa (also founded in Punjab in 1978 and divided between a national and an international branch with little intercommunication); the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF, founded in 1984) and the World Sikh Organization (WSO, founded in New York in 1984 and soon operating from the US, Canada and, to a lesser extent, the UK).

28 Whether in the UK or in North America, the movement for Khalistan has always been a fragmented collection of self-styled leaders and opposite factions. Dominated numerically and politically by Jat militants (Gayer 2000), the Khalistan movement has suffered from the main feature of Jat political culture: the fragility of hierarchical ties and, hence, of factional affiliations. Among the Jats, as shown by anthropologist Joyce Pettigrew (1985), alliance to a faction prevails above obedience to a leader, and even the association with a certain faction is a matter subject to swift changes. Whether in the Punjab or in the diaspora, militants committed to the Khalistan movement on a highly subjective and often temporary basis, out of personal convictions or emotions rather than in a sign of devotion to the cause of Sikh sovereignty or in allegiance to a particular leader.

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29 If the symbolic and physical violence of the Indian state has contributed to the formation of a ‘Sikh diaspora’ (Axel 2001), Khalistani ethnic entrepreneurs have reinforced the internal cleavages of the global panth, which existed long before the Indian army launched its assault on the Golden Temple but which came back with a vengeance in the years following these critical events. Indeed, the events of 1984 initiated a moment of solidarity which contributed to the transcendence of caste affiliations. However, this moment of unity was short-lived and the hegemonic position of the Jats in the movement for Khalistan kept other castes at bay. In Britain, this was particularly true of the Ramgarhias, whose specific identity was reinforced by their ‘twice migrants’ status (Bhachu 1985). Most of them had relocated in the UK after their expulsion from East Africa. And since their arrival, they had organized separately from the Jats, building their own temples and forming their own associations. Although Ravidasi ‘untouchables’ did not share this migratory trajectory, they also remained outside the movement for Khalistan and organized on their own terms, around their own religious institutions, known as deras.

30 Far from being consensual, Khalistani attempts at building a Sikh diaspora around a nationalist agenda have thus met with a mitigated success and they ended up reinforcing the pluralism of overseas Sikh ‘communities’. On a larger scale, it seems to me that South Asian communities settled in the UK have been going through a process of implosion which could be compared to the opening of a Russian nesting doll. The Indian diaspora, for instance, has given birth to antagonistic religious diasporas which, in turn, have imploded along caste lines. However, as Gerd Baumann (1998: 115) suggests, ‘this process is not one of simple segmentary fission, of a ‘majority community’ falling apart. Rather, it increases the institutional repertoire while leaving intact the multiplicity of cross-cutting cleavages’. Moreover, as I have already suggested, attempts have been made at rebuilding the stacking doll. Since the return of the Punjab to normalcy, in the second half of the 1990s, some overseas promoters of Khalistan have reinvented themselves as Punjabi nationalists, trying to bridge the gaps between Punjabis of all caste and creed. On a supra- national basis, South Asian youths from the upper classes have also tried to promote a pan-Asian ethnicity transcending linguistic and religious boundaries. Rather than being led by one structural trend, these processes of identity formation remain contested and contradictory, in a permanent dialectics of fission and fusion but also in a continuous arbitration between the various identity markers of nationality, language, caste and religion.

Conclusion

31 Looking at the relations between South Asian communities in a circumscribed area, such as West London, tells us a lot on the structural weaknesses of diasporas. The internal and external boundaries of these translocal ethnic groups are constantly questioned and challenged, often in opposite directions. Ethnic entrepreneurs challenging the dominant forms of identity politics which sustain the diaspora may be inward looking, emphasizing internal cleavages of the group to divide it or to ‘cleanse’ it from unorthodox elements. These challengers may also be outward looking, trying to bridge the gaps with other diasporic ‘communities’. ‘Diaspora is where constructed nationalisms come into contact’ (Shukla 2005: 13) and the dialectics of fission and fusion is at work in every segment of Indian and Pakistani diasporic formations, as well as in their contact zones. It fashions

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the relations between and within these diasporas. It takes specific forms in each political locality, according to local equations of power and to the response of local state authorities. Thus, if an Indian, a Pakistani or even an Indo-Pakistani diaspora does exist, it is not as a stable and unitary ‘transnational community’ but rather as a plural society with flexible internal and external boundaries.

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Barrier, N. Gerald; Dusenbery, Verne (eds.) (1989) The Sikh Diaspora: Migration and the Experience beyond Punjab, Delhi: Chanakya.

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Baumann, Gerd (1998) [1996] Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bhachu, Parminder (1985) Twice Migrants: East African Settlers in Britain, London: Tavistock.

Bhatt, Chetan (1997) Liberation and Purity: Race, New Religious Movements and the Ethics of Postmodernity, London: UCL Press.

Brown, Judith (2007) Global South Asians: Introducing the Modern Diaspora, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Dufoix, Stéphane (1999) ‘L’objet diaspora en questions’, Cultures & Conflits, 33-34, Spring-Summer, pp. 147-63.

Gayer, Laurent (1998) Diaspora indo-pakistanaise et régulation de la conflictualité à Londres et Paris, M.Phil thesis, Paris: Sciences Po.

Gayer, Laurent (2000) ‘The Globalization of Identity Politics: the Sikh Experience’, International Journal of Punjab Studies, 7(2), July-December, pp. 223-62.

Gayer, Laurent (forthcoming) ‘La privatisation de la politique étrangère en Asie du Sud: l’exemple de la ‘diplomatie du cricket’ entre l’Inde et le Pakistan’, Annuaire français de relations internationales 2006, Paris & Bruxelles: La Documentation française & Bruylant.

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Glazer, Nathan & Moynihan, Daniel P. (1975) ‘Introduction’, in Nathan Glazer & Daniel P. Moynihan (eds.), Ethnicity. Theory and Experience, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-26.

Ghosh, Papiya (2007) Partition and the South Asian Diaspora: Extending the Subcontinent, London : Routledge.

Grewal, J.S. (1999) ‘Punjabi Identity: a Historical Perspective’, in Pritam Singh & Shinder Singh Tandhi (eds.), Punjabi Identity in a Global Context, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 41-54.

Hannerz, Ulf (2003) ‘Several Sites in One’, in Thomas Hylland Eriksen (ed.), Globalization: Studies in Anthropology, London: Pluto, pp. 18-38.

Jaffrelot, Christophe (1992) ‘Les émeutes entre hindous et musulmans: essai de hiérarchisation des facteurs culturels, économiques et politiques’, Cultures & Conflits, 5, Spring, pp. 25-54.

Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003) ‘For a Theory of Nationalism’, Questions de recherche, 10, June.

Jasper, M. James; Poulsen, Jane D. (1995) ‘Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social Networks in Animal Rights and Anti-Nuclear Protests’, Social Problems, 42(4), pp. 493-512.

Jayaram, Narayana (ed.) (2004) The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of Migration, Delhi: Sage.

Khan, Shaharyar M. (2005) Cricket, a Bridge of Peace, Karachi: Oxford University Press.

Krishna, R. Gopal (1982) ‘Morons and Oxymorons’, The Times of India, 16 January.

MacClancy, Jermy (1996) ‘Sport, Identity and Ethnicity’, in Jeremy MacClancy (ed.), Sport, Identity and Ethnicity, Oxford: Berg, pp. 1-20.

Malik, Rifat (1997) ‘West Side Story Asian Style’, The Evening Standard, 22 May.

Marienstras, Richard (1989) ‘On the Notion of Diaspora’, in Gérard Chaliand (ed.), Minority Peoples in the Age of Nation-States, London: Pluto Press, pp. 119-25.

Mohammad-Arif, Aminah (2000) ‘A Masala Identity: Young South Asian Muslims in the US’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 20(1-2), pp. 67-87.

Nandy, Ashis (2000) [1989] The Tao of Cricket. On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Parekh, Bhiku et al. (eds.) (2003) Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora, London: Routledge.

Patel, Pragna (1990) ‘Southall Boys’, in Southall Black Sisters (ed.), Against the Grain: A Celebration of Survival and Struggle, London: Southall Black Sisters, pp. 43-54.

Pettigrew, Joyce (1985) Robber Noblemen. A Study of the Political System of the Sikh Jats, London: Kegan Paul.

Riar, Sukhmani (1999) ‘Khalistan: The Origins of the Demand and its Pursuit Prior to Independence’, in Pritam Singh & Shinder Singh Tandhi (eds.), Punjabi Identity in a Global Context, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 233-44.

Safran, William (1991) ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora, 1 (1), Spring, pp. 83-99.

Schnapper, Dominique (2001) ‘De l’Etat-nation au monde transnational: du sens et de l’utilité du concept de diaspora’, Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 17(2), pp. 9-36.

Sheffer, Gabriel (2003) Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sheffer, Gabriel (ed.) (1986) Modern Diasporas in International Politics, London: Croom Helm.

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Shukla, Sandhya (2005) [2003] India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England, Delhi: Orient Longman.

Shuval, Judith T. (2003) ‘The Dynamics of Diaspora: Theoretical Implications of Ambiguous Concepts’, in Rainer Münz & Rainer Ohliger (eds.), Diasporas and Ethnic Migrants: Germany, Israel and Russia in Contemporary Perspective, London: Frank Cass.

Skinner, Elliott P. (1993) ‘The Dialectic between Diasporas and Homelands’, in Joseph E. Harris (ed.), Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, Washington D.C.: Howard University Press, pp. 11-40.

Tatla, Darshan Singh (1999) The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood, London: UCL Press.

Verkaaik, Oskar (2004) Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Vertovec, Steven (2000) The Hindu Diaspora. Comparative Patterns, London: Routledge.

Vertovec, Steven (ed.) (1991) Aspects of the South Asian Diaspora, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Werbner, Pnina (1996) ‘‘Our Blood is Green’: Cricket, Identity and Social Empowerment among British Pakistanis’, in Jeremy MacClancy (ed.), Sport, Identity and Ethnicity, Oxford: Berg, pp. 87-111.

Werbner, Pnina (2002) Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims. The Public Performance of Pakistani Transnational Identity Politics, Oxford: James Currey.

NOTES

1. For a notable exception to this rule, see Bates (2001). 2. On trans-local fieldwork, see Ulf Hannerz (2003: 21). 3. For a notable exception, see Werbner (2002). 4. Interview with Veena Verma, Southall, 19/07/1999. 5. John McDonnell, of Irish origin, became the M.P. for Hayes and Harlington in 1997. 6. On the ‘masala culture’ of South Asians settled in the US, see Mohammad-Arif (2000). 7. In 1997, 10,5 % of the youths were unemployed in the Chalvey borough of Slough, cradle of the dreaded Chalvey Boys. In the Ealing borough where Southall is located, this rate was even higher, approaching 40 %. In Southall itself, 32 % of the ‘Pakistani’ males and 16 % of the ‘Indians’ were unemployed at the beginning of the 1990s (Malik 1997, Baumann 1998: 51). 8. Several incidents of vandalism did affect the 1996 World Cup in India, though. This was the case, in particular, during the match between India and Sri-Lanka which took place in Calcutta's Eden Gardens. But in the weeks which followed the incident, 30 000 Indians sent letters of apologies for the turmoil to the Sri-Lankan government (Nandy 2000: xvii). 9. On the relation between fun, violence and nationalism, see Verkaaik (2004). 10. According to the 1991 Census, 74 % of ‘Pakistani’ women and 87 % of ‘Indian’ women living in Southall were employed (Baumann 1998: 52). 11. On Indo-Pakistani ‘cricket diplomacy’, see Gayer forthcoming.

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ABSTRACTS

The construction of an ‘other’ and the confrontation with this intimate enemy lies at the heart of identity politics. In diasporic environments, these constructions of the ‘other’ have two major attributes: their multiplicity and their volatility. Ethnic entrepreneurs have a wide range of options to propose an ‘enemy’ to their audience, hence their multiplicity. At the same time, social and political evolutions in the migrants’ country of residence or in their home state make such politics of otherness highly contingent. The study of ethnic relations in diasporic environments is thus a difficult task and very little empirical material is presently available on this critical issue. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap, through an exploration of patterns of conflict and cooperation amongst South Asian residents of Southall, in West London.

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Redefining Boundaries? The Case of South Asian Muslims in Paris’ quartier indien

Miniya Chatterji

1 It is an interesting ‘double paradox’: globalization creates free movement of capital in the face of international events increasingly attempting to control movement of labour. Yet the shifts in the demographic patterns in most parts of the world today are clearly more than ever before. Cities like New York, London, Rome, Paris clearly manifest their increasing diversity in the colour, race, language of their migrant population which currently hence comprise of large numbers of illegal entrants making a living out of doing odd jobs. Now, a myopic investigation of the societal effects of this phenomenon reveals changes not just in the host environs but also in the internal structure within these migrant communities. Within the community, there is a change in how members relate to one another, in their criteria for the acceptance of the ‘other’ in their newfound groups, and in this way in their definition of community boundaries. This paper takes the case of the South Asian Muslim quartier in Paris, as a means to illustrate a larger sociological phenomenon of change in the internal structures of small economic migrant groups in multicultural cities today.1

2 The ‘community’ has of course for long been the subject of attention for sociologists and anthropologists alike. A community, for structuralist Talcott Parsons,2 denoted a wide- ranging relationship of solidarity over a rather undefined area of life and interests. For conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet,3 it was a continuation of the concern with loss of community as central to 19th century sociology where there was a fear that these features were disappearing in the transition from a rural-based to an urban-industrial society.

3 This alleged loss of community was in fact much earlier itself central to the work of German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, who often described as the founder of the theory of community, in his book Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tonnies 1957) presented ideal- typical images of forms of social association, contrasting the ‘solidaristic’ nature of social relations in the former, with the large-scale and impersonal relations thought to characterize industrializing societies. The sociological content of community still remains

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a matter of debate. However, it is viewed in this paper simply as a particularly constituted set of social relationships based on a ‘commonality’ shared between its members—this commonality often being a/several particular or overlapping strands of identity composites which run through all members.

4 The present study examines the implications of the transposition of intimate social bonds between Muslims living in South Asia to when these South Asian Muslims migrate to Paris. The arguments in this study would be brought out through the application of Putnam’s conceptual tools of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’. Putnam says that ‘bonds’ are intrusive, inward looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogenous groups. For example ethnic organizations. On the other hand, ‘bridging’ relations are outward looking and encompass people across diverse social cleavages in links between members of the group. Examples of bridging social capital include the civil rights movement, many youth service groups, and ecumenical religious organizations (Putnam 2000: 23). By these definitions, the Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in their host country would group themselves according to a particular or a composite of common ‘bonds’. These common bonds could be that of a same country of origin, language, religion, etc. ‘Sub-groups’ would be formed by migrants sharing the same bonds. These sub-groups would be migrants grouping along national lines (e.g. a ‘Pakistani’ group), linguistic lines (e.g. a group where members all speak the Bengali language), sectarian lines (e.g. a group where all members belong to the Sunni sect), etc.’ Migrants could also internally form group structures based on common ‘bridges’ which they build amongst themselves. For example, Sunnis and Shias from South Asia could ‘bridge’ together and form a group defined by the common religion of Islam as a whole. Else, the migrants might even build new linkages that would bridge them across different existing ‘bonds’.

5 Now going by our definition of ‘community’ earlier, these ‘groups’, formed by either common bonds or bridges, are essentially grouping according to common traits. Then are these groups ‘communities’? Can communities only be defined by traits that bound them together in their country of origin (e.g. language, region of origin, etc)? Within this larger group of Muslim migrants from the Subcontinent, can we then define ‘communities’?

South Asian migration to France and Paris’s quartier indien

6 This paper results from a questionnaire type survey conducted by the author in year 2004, of a sample of 120 migrants in the quartier indien of Paris. This exercise was accompanied by an additional participative approach that covered 30 South Asian Muslim migrants in Paris (in and also out of the quartier indien). The quartier indien located in the northern stretch of Paris’s zone one, mainly comprises of Rue Faubourg Saint Denis, Boulevard Strasbourg, Rue de la Fidélité, Rue Jarry, Passage Prado and Passage Brady. Yet, ironically, it composes of a population holding a majority of non-Indians (Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Mauritians), a large number of non-Hindus, and who are non-Hindi speaking. A large number of Buddhist Sri-Lankans, Pakistani, Bangladeshi (and also Indian) Muslims are found in the quartier, speaking mostly Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil and Singhalese.

7 France has about 60,000 Indians, 50,000 Pakistanis and 16,000 Bangladeshis,4 according to the Indian Embassy in France. Most of this population live in Paris and its outskirts.

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Amongst this group, the first South Asians to come to Paris were from Pondicherry in the 1950s. Gradually the 1970s saw a trickle from the Tamils of South India who joined the Sri Lankans and set up shops in the area stretching from Gare du Nord up till La Chapelle. The 1970s also saw the Pakistanis set up their restaurants at Passage Brady (on Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis). Indians soon joined them there in the restaurant business. The 1980s saw a timid inflow of Indians who opened DVD shops, sari stores and worked alongside the Pakistanis in grocery shops. Towards the end of the 1980s there was an increase in the number of Bangladeshis in the form of refuges or even illegal migrants. In the 1990s, the business of telephone cards, bookshops, cheap hair cutting saloons for men, developed at Rue Jarry and the adjoining lanes of Rue de la Fidélité.

8 The recent years have witnessed an increasing number of illegal migrants and asylum seekers of South Asian origin. There are no official accurate figures, but estimates say up to 20,000 illegal migrants from India are landing in the EU each month. According to an Indian news website which had a special report on ‘Paris teems with Indian illegals’: With the visa regulations for the United States—a migrant’s dream—tightening each year, the migrants are now looking for other pastures... Once inside the EU borders and free from immigration controls, the illegal migrants then look for their ultimate destinations—with Paris and Frankfurt emerging at the top of their list’ (Nayar 2005).

9 Also for example, according to reports at the Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides (OFPRA), the number of Indians in France who demanded asylum, increased by almost 100% in 2004.

10 Illegal migration has consequential social effects that have often been the cause of much concern for French authorities. For example, in the case of Passage Brady restaurant workers there are a large number who marry goris (white women) or at least confess to have no reservations in doing so. This is perhaps explained by the fact that the restaurant business was an early economic activity initiated by the South Asians in Paris. In the 1980s, when the trickle of migrants from South Asia began, a large number were illegal and entered without papers of stay permit or worked without work permit. The restaurant business being one of the early means of South Asian employment to be established in Paris, most of these illegal workers worked here. Soon the French authorities discovered this, and targeted these restaurants for tighter check on the legal status of their workers, conducted frequent surprise raids in these restaurants, and pressed restaurant owners to regularize the situation. Passage Brady at that time, a budding centre point of South Asian cuisine in Paris, and a shelter to a large number of illegal workers, was an area especially targeted by the French authorities. To this day, restaurant workers and especially those in Passage Brady are most pressed to have their working papers right. This pressure also results in a large number of mariages blancs (false marriages), that is marriages primarily for gaining naturalization and hence legal papers to stay in France and permission to work legally. Muzaffar Hussain, doorman at a restaurant at Passage Brady, says, ‘I married a French woman and took divorce a few months after that. Here in Paris, you have to do like this. No, but if I have a daughter, I will get her married to a Muslim from Pakistan.’5 But the trends are also changing: restaurant workers out of pressurizing necessity of having legal papers to work, initially married French women, the trend now shifting towards marrying a woman of a minority community, who has already been granted a French citizenship—Madagascar and Mauritian women (usually of Indian origin) being a current popular choice. Bangladeshi

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women are also a popular choice, the prime reason here being poverty for women who have turned mariage blanc into a business.

11 Further it was found that it was the host society in Paris who attributed the name quartier indien, to that particular zone. This was in the 1980s, when it became a budding zone of commerce run by the pioneering South Asian migrants in Paris. Says Fida Hussain, owner of ‘Fleurist’ at Gare de l’Est, who came to Paris from Pakistan in 1974: When us Pakistanis and Indians started working here, these French said it was the ‘quartier indien’(...) they like calling us like that (...) they have ‘quartier chinois’, ‘quartier latin (sic)’, and now ‘quartier indien’ (...) the Chinese, the Spanish (sic) never named themselves like that, and nor did we from Pakistan, but all Indians even Pakistanis and Bangladeshis want to work now in quartier indien.

12 The host society perhaps played an important role in ‘identity labelling’ at an early stage of settlement of this community? The community at that time being a recent one cashed in on this identity ‘granted’ by the host society. It could be interesting to draw parallels with sociologists Vuddamalay and Khelifa’s work on the Goutte d’Or region in Paris which present an identical situation to the quartier indien (Khelifa 1979, Toubon & Khelifa 1990). ‘In fact, (...) it is through its commercial role (attributed) to the immigrant community of Paris that the Goutte d’Or has achieved its current reputation’ (Vuddamalay 1985: 64).

13 The quartier indien in Paris then even today is the ‘trade zones’ populated by South Asians in Paris—and not where the South Asian Muslims ‘live’ (nor is it the area of cultural, traditional, recreational interaction between them). This observation should also be an indication of the importance of economic activity for the community in question, since work related organizations are the ‘locus of social solidarity, a mechanism for mutual assistance and shared expertise’(Putnam 2000: 151). And even though ‘solidarity is a crucial precondition for economic collaboration’ (Putnam 2000: 151), within this seeming solidarity of a consolidated unique South Asian migrant group in the quartier, there exist in reality various sub-groups within it. This, like the apparent general image of Vuddamalay’s Goutte d’Or, ‘as a North African quarter (that) misrepresents the much more complex intermixture of ethnicities actually present’.

Shifting community boundaries

14 The present paper attempts to identify these ‘sub-groups’ by tracing out the nature as well as the depth of bonds and bridges amongst the members of the South Asian community in Paris’ quartier indien. Essentially the paper would examine to what extent can these sub-groups be defined as ‘communities’. But to do so, it would be necessary to first etch out the factors that determine these bonds and bridges between them. And then what is the composition of factors that place an individual ‘in’ or ‘out’ (or on the fringe) of a particular group? This would essentially mean tracing group boundaries.

15 A migrant’s country of origin is usually a potential bonding factor with his fellow countrymen. In the case of Paris’ quartier indien, Indian Muslims held least bonding between them especially as compared to their Pakistani and Bangladeshi fellow migrants. A significant number of Indians in the quartier in fact shared very close relations with Pakistanis in the area. This could be because of the dichotomy of identity strands of religion vs nationality that reduces the nationalism quotient amongst Indian Muslims. For an Indian Muslim for example, Islam has larger cultural connotations than religious (he often does not feel part of global Islamic networks) or national (Pakistan and

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Bangladesh unlike India are Muslim countries). Indian Muslims therefore find themselves bound to Pakistani Muslims who share the same South Asian ‘cultural’ components of Islam. Nationality then takes a backseat. Pakistanis on the other hand evidently have strong bonds between them as they share religious (even though members might have different sects), national, cultural bonds (even though migrants from different regions in Pakistan would have specific cultural practices) amongst their fellow countrymen in Paris. Bangladeshis on the other hand tend to restrict themselves to relations with only their own countrymen, but the reason for them doing so is more due to linguistic and economic factors rather than nationalism.

16 Obviously enough, the belonging to a given locality can generate a strong bond among migrants, this being particularly true in the case of Pakistanis. (It can therefore be regarded as a bond created by the migrants, in the host country). For example, a Pakistani building painter Mohammad Changez claimed to know the presence of 3,000 to 5,000 Muslims from Rawalpindi. While Mohammad Sayeed admitted to know 250 Muslims from one (his own) district of Rawalpindi—of which 20 lived in the same building. Chain migration clearly seemed to be the principal catalyst of this phenomenon.

17 There is marked language erosion in the mother tongue (or regional/national languages) amongst the South Asian Muslims in the quartier indien. This language erosion was observed to be a deterrent in creation of bonds. It weakens bonds between migrants originating from the same region or city of origin. All members of the sample confessed to speak most in Paris, a language other than their own dialect. This is only evidence of the intermixing of the different ‘sub-groups’, as preservation of language is a sign of ‘pure’ ethnic groups. If Indians were to mix only with Indians, then perhaps only Urdu would prevail amongst members of the group. This does not seem the case amongst South Asians in Paris. The language that most Muslim migrants from all regions of India and Pakistan (not Bangladeshis) have adopted is Punjabi, Urdu and a hybrid language of French, Urdu and Punjabi. It should well be noted that Bangladeshis persevere with Bengali (the erstwhile linguistic nationalism in Bangladesh which transposes itself in Paris? See Murshid 1993), creating a rather closed group with rare outward communication channels.

18 Bonding by a shared religion is often a potential factor of strong communitarian feelings, more so amongst migrants. Firstly, the sample clearly demonstrated a preference of criteria of region of origin over religion. The group did not exhibit any strong bonding with Muslims not originating from South Asia. It was observed that Islam for these South Asians, even in dar-al-harb Paris, did not constitute a principal bonding factor. On the other hand, South Asian Muslims were mostly open to interaction even with South Asians who are not Muslims in Paris, but not surprisingly were far stricter in their relationship with South Asian Hindus over the question of marriage. Marriage, the highest level of bridging frontier, was declared by a significant majority in the sample, to be preferred with only a Muslim—mostly precising a preference for a Muslim from the individual’s country of origin, again a large majority preferring a transnational marriage with someone from their own country. This is where Islam is important for them. Pakistanis, following the tradition of cousin marriage in their country of origin, mostly preferred a partner from their own family. Ali, an 18-year old third generation Pakistani living in Sarcelles, whose only interaction being with Arabs and French in Paris, was engaged a year back to a cousin from the city of origin of his parents in Pakistan—a match arranged by his parents to which he gave his consent.6 The reason given by most was ‘the

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preservation of one’s culture and tradition’. Culture, essentially a component of religion, holds more significance for South Asian Muslims than religion per se. This is most evident in criteria for marriage. Hence, culture and tradition, of which more specifically language and the continuity of knowledge of the correct rites during religious ceremonies is an important criteria for South Asian Muslims in Paris. They would prefer a marriage partner to be Muslim because a Muslim spouse would increase family prestige, fortify family ties and build greater transnational links. They prefer traditional arranged marriage systems and even cousin marriage, not purely due to religious reasons, but to ensure continuity of ‘culture’. Often, the dream of marrying a ‘good Musalman’ with all the virtues that the Quran prescribes, lies only low in their marriage preferences. Thus, it is clearly not religious bonding per se but ‘South Asian Muslim culture’ amongst the South Asians Muslims in Paris which explains their marriage preference with Muslim partners.

19 Now there is another factor of influence to consider: ‘Arab’ Islam. The majority of Muslims in Paris being of Arab or African origin, and France’s historical links with the Arab and African countries from where these Muslim migrants in Paris come from, the host society attributes an image to ‘Islam in France’ (an image of ‘being Muslim’ which is very different to the South Asian Muslim). Hinduism in India has had a strong influence on South Asian Islam, thus popularizing cults like Sufism, song, dance and other cultural forms, affecting ceremonies of marriage and celebration, and finally the attribution of significance to rites and rituals. When faced with a majority of Muslims to which South Asian Muslims cannot relate themselves to, and a host society which has had a history of understanding ‘this Islam’ which South Asian Muslims cannot identify themselves with, the South Asian Muslims tend to downplay their religious sentiment, at least in the public sphere.

20 But perhaps this is a case only in the present early migrant generation, because there are instances where Arab Islam does have its influence on the minority South Asian Muslims. This influence could grow with the coming generations to merge the two together. A clear example of this was Sahera Sayeed, a 13-year old Pakistani third generation school girl, born in Paris, has all Arab and French friends at school, lives in Sarcelles amongst an Arab community. She started wearing a headscarf (in the Arab fashion) whereas her mother does not and never did. Sehera’s mother—Shehnaz Begum, a second generation South Asian Muslim has never stepped out of Sarcelles since her arrival from Rawalpindi to Paris in 1980 after her arranged marriage to a Pakistani cousin originating from Rawalpindi living in Sarcelles. She persists on her daughter’s marriage with a Pakistani Muslim cousin from Rawalpindi, not because of religion but ‘tradition’. But at the same time, she did not mind her daughter wearing the foulard (headscarf) in the Arab fashion as ‘One should wear foulard because it is our own identity’.

21 Now, the only case where religion bridges frontiers between countries of origin is in the case of housing. The South Asian community being a recent one, not many South Asians in Paris are house owners to be able to rent out their houses to newer South Asian migrants. The South Asians in Paris are not in a position to find a solution to the housing problem from within their community. To rent an apartment or studio, a French propriétaire (house owner) asks for legal documents, a carte de séjour (stay permit). The sample unanimously declared that French house owners are skeptical about renting out an apartment to a brown-skinned, uncouth South Asian. Rents are high. Most French landlords do not approve of the common practice amongst South Asians to live together

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in groups ranging from 5 to 20 in a studio or apartment. Out of these 5 to 20 at least one would have legal papers—it is he who signs the lease or contract of the house, while the others live with him: this is clearly not acceptable by most French house owners. French house owners posing problems, the South Asians turn towards Arabs and Africans, minority communities in Paris who are better settled and have a longer history in Paris than the South Asians. Here the South Asian Muslims play the ‘Muslim card’. Says a Pakistani rose seller, ‘They (Africans, Arabs) are also Muslims. They understand us, we are brothers. We tell them that. We tell them to rent their studio to us. They do it. If one Muslim doesn’t help another Muslim, then who else will?’ Contrary to the low affinity of Muslims from South Asia towards Arab and African Muslims, housing used the bonds of religion to bridge the frontier of difference in countries of origin. But this will pass, because it was observed that more and more South Asian Muslims are now overcoming this problem by trying to buy houses on ‘Kreydee’ (credit).

22 Religion not playing a significant role in bonding amongst South Asians, it was also observed that the difference between the sects ‘shia’ and ‘sunni’ was blurred amongst them except in the case for marriage. Both groups interacted with one another and did not discriminate. For example, most were not aware of the sect of their co-workers at work. When asked if they had friends from the opposite sect, most answered enthusiastically in the affirmative. The only South Asians who seemed less enthusiastic (though they all claimed good relations with the opposite sect) were those who have been living in Paris for longer periods of time. It is well known that migrants living outside their country of origin for longer periods of time tend to overemphasize the cultural and religious practices of the country of origin. This is usually due to the fear of losing contact with traditions and not being able to pass them on to future generations. For the rest of the recently arrived South Asian Muslim migrants, faced with the co-existence of this large looming ‘other’ i.e. the Arab Muslim group in such close proximity, many religious differences amongst themselves get blurred.7 The shia-sunni divide here is one such case. However, there still existed some discrimination against Ahmadiyyas being considered as non-Muslims without doubt. On the other hand, a popular response to them being Deobandi or Barelwi, met with an answer either ‘What is that?’ or ‘No, I am Sunni’. A demonstration of the fact that the frontier of difference in religious school of thought is not an issue, as a large majority in the sample seemed ignorant of the mere existence or the difference between the Deobandi and Barelwi school of Islamic thought.8

23 There are, as this paper has so far demonstrated in the case of the South Asian Muslims in Paris, newer forms of relations taking shape between these recently arrived economic migrant groups. There is a change in the definition of group boundaries, due to the changing criteria of acceptance of an individual to a group (each of which are nothing but subsets of the larger South Asian Muslim community). As boundaries shift and move, there is the development of new groups sharing certain commonalities amongst them. Going back to our definition of ‘community’ at the start of this paper, could we then infer that each of these ‘groups’ whose members share these new combination (vis-à-vis the combination of traits that defined ‘communities’ in their country of origin) of bonds and bridges are indeed forming different communities in their host country?

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The prevalence of economic activity in community definition

24 Now, to examine this hypothesis, a study of the bonds and bridges shared by South Asian migrants showed that there was an overlapping of several linkages (both bonds and bridges) in members of the same economic activity. South Asian Muslims in Paris who shared the same economic activity, also shared amongst themselves several other common linkages too. Does this differentiate them as specific small communities within which members share a similar world-view? Would this mean that the definition of community for the group in question in Paris tended to revolve around the sharing of economic activity of its members? Has ‘community’ in Paris’ quartier indien come to be defined not so much by country of origin, nor religion, nor language, but by the profession or economic activity of the migrant?

25 For example painters or other construction workers in buildings mostly confessed to have good relations with individuals originating from all countries. So in this way, yet all except 2 of the 30 cases of painters in the sample happened to be Pakistani, working with Pakistani fellow-painters, their contractor also being Pakistani. Pakistanis newly entering Paris join the painting profession because of the low levels of skills required for the work, non-institutional hence easy entry into the profession, but primarily due to the large number of their countrymen being involved already in this profession which gives them communitarian support. Similarly most Bangladeshis flock together as rose sellers. Most of the telephone card sellers consist of Pakistanis and Indians. Within this group, there is a bridging of relations across Pakistanis and Indians. Employees at restaurants are a mix of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who were bonded together as ‘South Asians’ against the French. This again can be explained through the nature of their profession, where the restaurant team including the restaurant owner, managers, cooks, receptionists, cleaners and even the interior decorators mostly belong either to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, while the clientele is most frequently French.

26 Migrants engaged in each economic activity also share linguistic practices. Telephone card sellers are the most multilingual as they are conversant in different South Asian languages. They also usually speak a spattering of French. According to Qamar who runs a telephone card shop at Gare du Nord: We have all kinds of customers. Indian, Gujarati, Pakistani, Tamil, Bangladeshi, African, Arab, Latin American (...) I speak a few sentences each of all languages here at the counter...Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu, French, English of course and little bit of Spanish (...). But what language do I speak with Africans or Sri Lankans? I speak French with them.

27 Contrary to popular belief, restaurant workers do not speak French. They mostly ‘understand’ key French phrases that clients use; they know the French equivalent words of the menu served and can speak a few classic phrases and responses. Mostly speaking Punjabi at work, as most communication is amongst colleagues and not clients, this unique linguistic pattern of restaurant workers is coupled with a construction of a unique jargon: ‘Koozy’ for cuisine, ‘mito’ for mi-temps, ‘playto’ for plein-temps, and the universal ‘puttroh’ for patron and ‘tranjey’ for étranger, ‘public-city’ for publicité. Rose sellers on the roads are linguistically the most stable. Apart from their select jargon like ‘lizy’ for Champs-Elysées, ‘tuwor’ for the Eiffel Tower, ‘bara gate’ for Arc de Triomphe, they also know

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by rote a few key sentences in several European languages to attract tourists. Secondly, a large number being Bengalis, they continue to speak Bengali else the few who are not Bangladeshi speak in Punjabi or in their own indigenous language of country of origin hence mostly not attempting to learn the French language. At times individual actors play an important role in linguistic bonding. For example there is a bridging between Indian Bengalis (even if Hindu) and Bangladeshis (majority being Muslim) in Paris. The Maison de l’Inde (India House) at Cité Universitaire (University Campus) in Paris has been bringing together since the year B.C. Sanyal, an Indian Hindu Bengali took charge as the Director in January 1, 2000, Indian Bengalis and Bangladeshis together for various cultural programmes. In fact, even ‘Bangladesh Day’ was celebrated at the Maison de l’Inde in the years 2003 and 2004. A strong reason being the caretaker of the India House is a Bangladeshi Muslim (and is a freelance magician).

28 Migrants engaged in the same economic activity also shared similar religious practices (indeed not always synonymous to ‘religious beliefs’). As the following examples show, this is a direct consequence of the particularities of the timings and work environment that each profession demanded. Restaurant work hours are from 10 a.m. to 11.30 p.m., with many giving a break between 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The work hours and the demands of continuous client service, is not compatible with the five daily prayers at the mosque, elsewhere or in the restaurant itself. They do not do so even during the mid-day break, preferring to play cricket instead. Painters and construction workers work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., in an outdoor environment which is not conducive to following the rites preceding the namaz, nor the reading of the namaz in an appropriate manner. Their workplace changes according to the contract and project, which is very rarely located in central Paris, and usually in the banlieue (peripheric zones of Paris). This hampers their chances of visiting the mosque. Telephone card shops in Paris (unlike in London) are built in a counter-window cubicle fashion. The seller sits in his cubicle behind which there is a large room, where there might be other co-workers managing accounts. The client is faced from a small-glassed window with a slit at the bottom to receive money and give the card. This set up and the presence of co-workers makes it convenient for telephone card sellers to either shut the counter or ask his co-worker to replace him for a few minutes, while he reads the namaz. However, visiting the mosque is not always possible, and is restricted to mostly once a week. On the other hand, small grocery shops that are run by the person who owns it usually closes shop for a few minutes during prayer time. Rose sellers on the other hand work only from 6 p.m. to 11.30 p.m. In spite of having substantial amount of time on hand, only a few rose sellers, it was observed, do read the daily prayers, but a large number of rose sellers are the most frequent visitors to the mosque.

29 The structure of the profession also determines the nature of relationship with colleagues. Rose sellers work independently and buy their roses from either Rungis, a wholesale depot near Paris Orly airport which has frequent police raids for legal documents. So those who have an illegal status buy their flowers from discreet flower shops like that at Rue du Faubourg St Martin, owned by Fida Hussain, who came to Paris in 1974 from Pakistan. Rose sellers being independent workers, have a relationship which does not require professional coordination which further leads to an absence of knowledge of each others way of doing things. For example, none of the rose sellers were able to tell where his colleague usually sells his roses. Painters are independently employed by a contractor, yet coordinate amongst themselves to work on projects,

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breaking away in groups to work with different contractors, and are usually familiar with most professional moves of their colleagues of the profession. DVD sellers interact with each other with a sense of competition to bring to Paris the latest Bollywood films, and also share their wares amongst themselves. However the telephone card sellers are organized in a structure akin to that of a corporate. Telephone card enterprises consist of sales outlets (numbers varying from 1 to 20 all over Paris), a network of direct distributors (10 to 100), indirect distributors (100 to 5,000), a head office, administration staff and accounts staff. In this structure, the relationship between employees was found to be professional, diplomatic and which do not ‘mix work with pleasure’—the principle reason for a conscious distance maintained amongst each other. On the contrary, restaurant workers need to co-ordinate and interact with colleagues of their restaurant, and also with other restaurants in that area, and elsewhere: not apparent to the client, most food items on the menu are brought in from other neighbouring restaurants. Restaurants of different names are dispersed all over the city and yet they are owned by the same person.

30 These new definitions of boundaries are significant to the host country as well in forming the socio-political transnational linkages with the country of origin. For example, each of these economic groups manifests a particular political sensibility. Restaurant workers were found to be the most politically mobilized. Bearers of direct impact of employment and legal policies and high levels of interaction with both South Asian and non-Asian people, result in an initiative to learn more about the host country. Their valid legal status encourages them to participate in manifestations and if possible (in the future for those who cannot do so at the moment) cast their vote in French elections. A fairly popular response to their opinion about the French government relations with Muslims in France was that ‘The French government is good. We Muslims create our own problems’.

31 On the contrary, rose sellers due to their often illegal status in Paris do not visit their country of origin. In spite of this, it was found that the knowledge and levels of mobilization amongst the rose sellers towards their home country was very high. Abundance of free time provides time for discussions and exchange of news about South Asian politics. This means that the source of their knowledge of their home country was mostly through word of mouth. Other than this, most rose sellers not being able to speak or read French, few also bought newspapers in their own vernacular language, reading news about their country of origin. These newspapers once again focus on South Asian news. This common source of political knowledge shapes common political notions. The absence of news sources on France result in the fact that rose sellers are not well aware of French political affairs, neither do they know the existence of concepts such as secularism and democracy. When questioned about their perception of French politics, rarely did any rose seller have an opinion to offer. This shows low interest levels towards French politics. In contrast, enthusiastic detailed opinions (and even much criticism) of Bangladesh were common amongst Bangladeshi rose sellers.

32 Painters on the other hand, had the strongest links with their country of origin, and its political and social affairs. This was mostly due to close interaction amongst these South Asian workers during work hours and also after work hours (these construction workers maintain very high levels of social relations with their fellow workers even after work hours). In fact, most of the workers being from Pakistan, the bond of common country of origin becomes stronger for them. Their discussions on Pakistani politics make a large

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chunk of their conversations amongst themselves. The other important aspect is that building painters work on construction sites on the peripheries of the city. This excludes them from much of the local news in Paris. Further, the physical ‘exclusion’ that the profession brings about also excludes them in spirit from French political and social affairs. Paradoxically, all painters however agreed unanimously to react and manifest against a French government policy they would be opposed to. This fact seemed to emanate not so much from their interest in French politics, but from a feeling of being the ‘other’ which exclusion (in mind and body) from French society perhaps brought about.

33 Small shopkeepers however were closer in their definition of secularism to as it is perceived in France. This showed that not only were they aware of political ‘events’ in their host country, but they also understood the social and political framework they were living in here. The reasons for their perceptions seemed to be directly linked to the frequency of contact with their French and multiethnic clients in Paris. Moreover they sell newspapers (local news, French national newspapers, international newspapers in English) and watch television all day in their shops when not entertaining clients. Very little of their knowledge emanates from ‘word of mouth’ and discussions as is in the case of rose sellers or to an extent in the case of construction site painters. Shopkeepers also interact with wholesale suppliers (not always South Asian), middlemen, French customs— this develops their awareness of the ‘French’ way of doing things. They were in fact motivated to participate in French society and politics, at the same time also had good levels of knowledge of current political and social affairs of their country of origin. There were three reasons identified. Firstly, South Asian grocery stores sell newspapers in vernacular South Asian languages which mostly contain news about the country of origin; secondly it is a common practice in most South Asian small shops in Paris to have a television placed for the entertainment of the shopkeeper which once again have only South Asian channels running; thirdly, interaction with a large number and variety of people (as clients and collaborators) opens their minds to participate in the French society—and not remaining restricted to only colleagues at work.

34 Telephone card sellers in the sample were found to be the most disinterested in politics. Economically and professionally driven, these members of the sample restricted their domain of interest to the telephone card industry. These telephone shops receive large numbers of clients (far larger in number that the small shopkeepers). They therefore do not have time to interact much amongst themselves during work hours. The ‘professional’ structure of social relations at the work place does not encourage much interaction amongst employees after work hours. For example, the employees at telephone card shops had very low levels of bonding amongst work colleagues. This has important consequences as these shops have long working hours (usually from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.). So the impact is for long periods of time in the day. The ambience at the telephone card shops develops some common behaviour patterns of mental pre- occupation with work, entrepreneurship, and low levels of social life. This also brought low levels of interest and time to politics of home country and host country.

35 But the South Asian Muslim community in Paris is a case that presents a range of different categories of boundaries—a range which is comparatively far broader than the dominant migrant group of North African Muslims (certainly not undermining heterogeneity within the North African group either) in Paris whose sub-groups at least share race, religion and region. Amongst the South Asians in Paris the boundaries are

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much more varied: boundaries of language, class, caste, sect, regional, ideological, some historically determined, and others locally evolving continuously. Not many of the boundaries coincide with each other, and therefore there is not any kind of mutual boundary reinforcement. The boundaries are mobile. They cut across each other, and sometimes certain boundaries do bundle together (like the case of economic activity bunching together with some other boundaries), but not making the end result strong enough to create a definite rift.

Conclusion

36 However there could be three hypotheses that could mark the future trends of the fate of this recent migrant group of South Asian Muslims in Paris. Firstly, it could be that the present situation is simply a typical case of ‘pioneering bachelor’ phase (Ballard 1996) of recent economic migration. This would mean that this phase would pass in some years, with the arrival of more women and children, the life of this migrant community would begin to revolve around socio-cultural adaptation (or issues of non-adaptation) to its host society, and boundary reinforcement would begin along lines other than mere economic activity. The second hypothesis could be that ‘economic activity’ remains as a characteristic defining boundary of internal group structures for the South Asian Muslim migrants in Paris. Then the ‘economic activity’ could act as an intermediary level thus serving as a cushioning for raw communitarian bonding to reshape themselves before they affect the political domain directly. The bonds in this case need to be kept mobile, juxtaposing and intersecting—but never coinciding. The increase of energy in the local economic quartier will help lessen the emphasis to be laid on the ghettoization of habitation. The third hypothesis is that ‘economic activity’ will cease to be a meeting point of intra-group structurations and political mobilizations. This discontinuation could be due to the fact that the grouping by economic activity is just a ‘phase’ in the migratory trends of this community in Paris. There is high probability that economic activity is of high significance now because of the ‘need’ for this ‘pioneering’ migrant group in Paris to first and foremost settle down. Once they do so, perhaps their attention shall turn to more socio-cultural issues—and finally it would do well to remember that after all it was in Rue Jarry of the quartier indien that the South Asian Muslims of Paris manifested against the Rushdie affaire in London way back in 1989. In contrast, there was no reaction from them against ‘l’affaire du voile’. An indication of a very strong South Asian transnational and diasporic bridging? Is it then a ‘South Asianism’ which even wins over religious bonding? Only time will tell.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ballard, Roger (ed.) (1996) Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain, London: Hurst.

Le guide de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers en France (1995), La Découverte/Guides GISTI, Paris: GISTI.

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Kepel, Gilles (1994) A l’ouest d’Allah, Paris: Seuil.

Khelifa, Messamah (1979) ‘La Goutte d’Or’, in Hommes et Migrations, 970, Paris: ADRI, pp. 19-25.

Murshid, Tazeen (1993) ‘Bangladesh: The Challenge of Democracy—Language, Culture and Political Identity’, Contemporary South Asia, 2(1), Cambridge: Carfax, pp. 67-73.

Nayar, Ranvir (2005) ‘Paris Teems with Indian Illegals’, The Rediff Special, February, www.rediff.com.

Nisbet, Robert (1953) The Quest for Community, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Putnam, Robert (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster.

Tönnies, Ferdinand (1957) Community and Society (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, 1887), translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis, MI: Michigan State University Press.

Toubon, Jean-Claude ; Khelifa, Messamah (1990) Centralité immigrée: le quartier de la Goutte d’Or, Paris: Collection Recherches Universitaires et Migrations.

Vuddamalay, Vasoodevan (1985) La Goutte d’Or: un pôle commercial immigré, Mémoire de 1’Institut d’urbanisme de Créteil.

NOTES

1. This paper is based on some results from a research treating a sample of 150 interviews of Paris’ quartier indien South Asian Muslims, conducted by the author in 2004-2005. 2. One of Parsons' concerns, within his general sociology, was to understand the relationship between social structures (how societies are institutionally organized) and social actions (the range of behavioural choices individuals believe are open to them). His basic argument, in common with all structuralist sociology, is that the former condition the way the latter develop in society. 3. The Quest for Community was a clarion call about the dangers of centralization of power and the threat it posed to American society. Nisbet's predicted the growth of crime, illegitimacy, drug abuse, poverty and illiteracy which would result from the continued marginalization of traditional local associations. This is the strand of thought which later liberal communitarianists like Michael Sandel and Robert Putnam built on. See Robert Nisbet 1953. 4. Indian Embassy in France. 5. France allows the granting of citizenship of migrant by means of naturalization through the marriage of the migrant with a French citizen. For details, see Le guide de l'entrée et du séjour des étrangers en France 1995. 6. Interview with Mohammad Changez and family at the family’s residence, Sarcelles (7 February 2004). During the interview, the video recording of the engagement ceremony in Pakistan was shown with great pride by Ali’s father, with special emphasis on his haveli in Rawalpindi (Pakistan) and the gifts presented to the bride. 7. This is strictly the case for Muslims in the quartier indien zone. It certainly should not be generalized for all South Asian Muslims in Paris. 8. Deobandi and Barelwi Muslims originate from the Deoband and Barelwi school of thought respectively. Both schools of thought had its origins in India, and exert a great influence on Muslims in the entire Indian subcontinent.

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ABSTRACTS

Miniya Chatterji, in the only article of this volume on France, examines how in Paris’ so-called quartier indien, an area of intense migrant economic activity, community boundaries are being drawn among South Asian Muslims. She attempts to identify how ‘sub-groups’ are being redefined in migration, by tracing out the nature and depth of bonds and bridges shared by South Asian Muslims. She argues that, at such an early stage of settlement, economic activity seems more prevalent in defining these internal group boundaries than religion, national origin or language.

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Frères ennemis? Relations between Panjabi Sikhs and Muslims in the Diaspora

Christine Moliner

1 In the expanding academic field of Sikh studies—in particular Sikh Diaspora studies—a topic has been under-researched: the relations between Sikhs and non Sikhs.1 The issue of the formation of a diasporic Sikh identity, as investigated in recent works, has focused on the role of political mobilisation, on the production of visual representations of the Sikhs, the process of cultural and religious transmission, the mediation of religious authorities or the internal diversity of the community along caste or sectarian lines2… But to try to answer the seminal question of W.H. McLeod ‘Who is a Sikh?’ (from the title of his book, 1989), my contention is that one has also to explore Sikh constructions of alterity and representations of the other(s), as essential component of identity.

2 Why study Sikhs’ representations of the Muslims? Following the partition of British India, the partition of the Panjab province, where they originate from, has resulted in 1947 in a huge exchange of population: Sikhs and Hindus fled to East (Indian) Panjab and Muslims to West (Pakistani) Panjab. The starting point of this study is thus to investigate if Panjabis, since they could not ‘meet’ (literally and metaphorically) until recently in partitioned South Asia, have managed to do so in their diasporic homes. Since I have been studying so far Sikh diasporic identity formation, I have chosen to focus only on Sikhs’ representations, but this work should be completed by a reversed study of Muslims’ perceptions about Sikhs. This would definitely help balance a point of view that might otherwise be considered as biased against Sikhs.

3 The conceptual framework of this study revolves around the notion of identity narratives, as defined by D.-C. Martin, particularly the role of otherness in fashioning identity. Indeed, ‘identities implies the other to exist and develop; identity narrative (…) is as much a statement on the other, or the others, as a proclamation of oneself’ (Martin 1995). Moreover, in this volume, Gayer reminds us that diasporic constructions of the other(s) are remarkable for their multiplicity and their instability. As far as diasporic Sikhs are concerned, Muslims, Hindus as well as also other ethnic minorities and the

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majority population, the British, are potentially all powerful figures of otherness. All instable though, as they depend on complex interactions between the global context, national (partition legacy, relations between India and Pakistan, British policy towards ethnic minorities) and even local ones (patterns of community relations differ in Southall, Birmingham or Bradford). My study of Sikh representations of the Muslims will unfold in two parts: how the Muslim has historically been constructed as a powerful symbol of otherness in Sikh identity narratives and how this has impacted on contemporary inter- ethnic relations in the UK.

Figure of the Other in Sikh historic and religious corpus

4 Sikh religious corpus offers an apt starting point to understand how the Muslim has been historically constructed as the Other in Sikh imaginary. Indeed, Sikh religious and historical texts are replete with references to Muslims, Mughals and Afghans but these references convey heterogeneous, equivocal, sometimes contradictory representations, in any case far more complex than implied by later interpretations. Two opposite themes run across this literature: one that insists on the fraternity (bhaichara) between Sikhs and Muslims, the other highlighting a supposed hereditary antagonism between them.

Bhaichara paradigm

5 As shown in H. McLeod’s authoritative translation and study of Sikh textual sources (1984), there are no representations of the Muslim (or the Hindu) as the Other in Sikh major scriptures, such as the Adi Granth or the Dasam Granth. And this very absence upholds McLeod’s contention about there being no fixed religious boundaries in early Sikhism.

6 The references to Hindus and Muslims convey one message: that of the unity of mankind under one God. But this fundamental truth is concealed by meaningless doctrines and rituals, which artificially divide mankind. One of the most forceful expressions of this irenic belief is to be found in a famous passage of the Dasam Granth: Some are called Hindus, others are Muslims, members of sects such as Shia or Sunni. Let it be known that mankind is one, that all men belong to a single humanity. So too with God, whom Hindu and Muslim distinguish with differing names. Let none be misled, for God is but one; he who denies this is duped and deluded. There is no difference between a temple and a mosque, nor between the prayers of a Hindu or a Muslim. Though differences seem to mark and distinguish, all men in reality are the same. Gods and demons, celestial beings, men called Muslims and others called Hindus- such differences are trivial, inconsequential, the outward results of locality and dress. Allah is the same as the God of the Hindus, Puran and Qur’an are one and the same… (Dasam Granth, Akal Ustat, in McLeod’s translation 1987: 57).

7 When Guru Nanak criticises conventional religions, he is targeting the two symbols of religious orthodoxy of his time, the pandit and the maulvi.3 This condemnation of orthodoxy, of a ritualistic and outward observance of religion, is typical of the Sant tradition from which early Sikhism has emerged in the 15th century. Besides this critique

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of external devotion, the motive of ‘Baba Nanak the Unifier’ comes out strongly in the Janam-Sakhi literature4 (hagiographies of Guru Nanak). He is repeatedly represented as a conciliator between Hindus and Muslims, from his birth—solemnised by local Muslims and Hindus—to his death—when his corpse is claimed by both communities, the former asking to bury him, the latter to cremate him. Always accompanied by his two disciples, Bala the Hindu and Mardana the Muslim, Guru Nanak as described in the Janam-Sakhi tradition is mixing symbols, customs and even garments belonging to the two religious affiliations.

8 This irenic representation of Guru Nanak has gained momentum in the course of Sikh history and is today appropriated by those advocating for tolerance and better understanding between Sikhs and Muslims. This interpretation is developed by Yoginder Sikand, in particular in his text ‘Re-imagining Sikh-Muslim relations in the light of the life of Baba Nanak’ or his interview of Makhdoom Syed Chan Pir Qadri on Sikh-Muslim relations, where the Pir emphasizes the close spiritual relationship between some Sikh Gurus and the Sufis (the Pir himself is custodian of the dargah of the famous Qadiri Sufi Mian Mir from Lahore who laid the foundation stone of the Harmandir Sahib at the request of the fifth Sikh Guru).

The antagonist paradigm

9 All these religious and historical elements attesting a non-conflictual co-existence and shared religious practices between Muslims and Sikhs have been completely marginalised from the 18th century onwards, in the process of Sikh identity formation that entailed the construction of rigid boundaries between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus and in particular the elaboration of Sikh representations of the ‘Musulman’ as the dangerous other.

10 These representations are grounded in a specific corpus, both liturgical and historical: the Rahitnamas (‘Books of code’), the Gurbilas (‘Glory of the Guru’) and the martyrologies of the late 19th—early 20th century socio-religious reform movement called the Singh Sabha (‘Society of the Lions’). In this type of literature, the creation of the Khalsa5 in 1699 appears as the rupture point in the history of the Panth. One should here distinguish between the historical event itself and the ways it has later been interpreted: the later only will be of interest for our purpose. Sikh traditional historiography, a product of the Singh Sabha reform movement, sees the creation of the Khalsa order as a response by the 10th Guru to Mughal oppression. According to tradition, Guru Gobind Singh wanted to transform his peaceful disciples into valiant soldiers able to overthrow Mughal power, to transform sheep into lions (Singh). This spectacular transformation was to be achieved through a distinctive initiation ceremony (khande di pahul), to impart them with a martial spirit, a sense of sacrifice for the sake of righteousness and through a rigorous code of conduct (Khalsa Rahit) to fashion a separate and visible identity, and to make it impossible for Singhs to conceal themselves in the face of the oppressor.

11 The Rahitnamas, those manuals recording the Rahit, prescribe ritual practices and social obligations, some of which are illustrative of a growing sense of the Muslim as the other. The Chaupa Singh Rahit Nama, studied and translated by McLeod (1987), illustrates explicitly this anti-muslim theme grounded in the 18th century tense context, through the following list of prohibitions: Never associate with a Muslim nor trust his word. Never drink water from a Muslim’s hands, never eat his food,

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And never sleep in his company. Do not be influenced by anything which a Muslim may say, Never touch a Muslim woman. Never eat meat from animals killed according to Muslim rites (…)

12 Hence the Rahit Maryada (the modern form of the Rahit) strictly prohibits for amritdhari Sikhs (lit. those who took the baptismal nectar called amrit, during the initiation ceremony) four kurahit (lit. ‘bad rules of behaviour’): cutting one’s hair, eating halal meat, having extra marital sexual intercourse, smoking tobacco. While at least two of those practices (halal meat and tobacco) are clearly associated with Muslims, in the case of the third kurahit, it is more covert. If we are to follow McLeod’s analysis, this kurahit is the contemporary rendition of an older one, prohibiting intercourse with Muslim women.

13 The Gurbilas and the Singh Sabha martyrologies also bear the imprint of the confrontation with the Mughals and contributed greatly to the conflictual narrative that permeates, even till today, Sikh collective imaginary, whereas the bhaichara one has remained at the periphery. This rhetoric of confrontation is articulated around what Veena Das calls the ‘Hindu- Sikh-Muslim triad’ (Das 1992), where the Sikh plays the martyr, the Muslim the oppressor and the Hindu a more ambiguous role, either victim or traitor, at best an unreliable ally of the Sikh against the Muslim. The martyrdom of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, exemplifies these complex relations.

14 Before that, the death of the fifth Guru in 1606 under the orders of Emperor Jahangir dramatically initiated a new phase in Sikh history, marked by the hostility of Mughal administration and the ensuing shift of the Sikhs from a quietist community to a martial one. Thirty years later the conflict had become even more acute between the Sikhs and the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who figures prominently in Sikh demonology, depicted as a tyrant, a fanatical Muslim willing to convert to Islam the whole of India. Kashmiri Brahmins, threatened of forced conversion by Aurangzeb, appealed to Guru Teg Bahadur for help. The Guru’s challenge to Aurangzeb, ‘If you manage to convert me, then all non- Muslims will also embrace Islam’, lead to his decapitation in November 1675 in Delhi.

15 Let’s examine the multiple interpretations of this critical event in Sikh history. According to traditional Sikh historiography, the conflict was a religious one, opposing a fanatical Muslim tyrant and the Sikh Guru, ready to sacrifice his life for the sake of religious freedom, in that particular instance of a community other than his own. This last point is important in Sikhs perception of themselves as defenders of the weak and the oppressed. Muslims have a completely different reading of the period: the conflict between Aurangzeb and the Guru was politically motivated, as the Sikhs were posing a threat to Mughal power. The Arya Samaj and Hindu nationalists propose yet another interpretation: the Guru died to protect his own dharma, and that interpretation underscores their reinterpretation of Sikhism as the sword arm of Hinduism against a common enemy, the Muslim.

16 The polysemic aspect of the event should not distract us however from the fact that only the first interpretation is regarded as the accurate one among Sikhs. Sikh traditional understanding of this event is archetypal of the triad mentioned above, Aurangzeb as the oppressor, the Kashmiri Brahmins as the victims (but also as the taunts, in some accounts) and the Guru as the martyr. At the centre stands the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur. Here we touch upon the pre-eminent role of the martyr in Sikh history, what Lou Fenech calls the rhetoric of martyrdom (2003) that is central to our analysis of Sikhs’

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portrayal of their collective self and of the Muslim Other. I will develop this point below when talking about the Singh Sabha.

17 The Gurbilas epitomize this anti-Islamic theme (Fenech 2003: 123-9). They are 18th century hagiographical accounts of the sixth and tenth Sikh Gurus, highlighting their military skills and courage, the martial ethos they wanted to impart on the Sikhs—an approach to the lives of the Gurus very different from the Janam Sakhi literature mentioned above. As we can expect, the Muslim figures prominently, in this literature, as the persecutor: to praise the heroism and self-sacrifice of the Sikhs, one needs a villain as cruel and fiendish as possible. Without a tormentor, there is no martyr: the fiercer the persecutions, the bigger the heroism of the martyr. In a teleological perspective, we can even consider the Muslim as God’s instrument to reveal to the Sikhs their collective destiny—Raj Karega Khalsa, ‘the Khalsa shall rule’. Therefore, in Sikh historiography, the 18th century is a period of great hardship, of persecutions ( the two great holocausts ) in the hands of a cruel enemy, but a golden age too, foretelling triumph and glory for the Panth,6 symbolised by Ranjit Singh’s entry into Lahore in 1799.

18 If we turn now to Singh Sabha literature and its representations of the Muslim, we can at first agree with Fenech’s statement that ‘the anti-Muslim bias characteristic of the 18th century Sikh literature was not as pronounced in the literature of the 19th century’ (Fenech 2003: 10). Indeed some of the crudest components of the anti-Islam theme as present in the Rahitnamas and the Gurbilas have been expurgated by the Singh Sabha reformists. Hence, the Singh Sabha recasting of the Rahit, that was to ultimately lead to the promulgation of the current Rahit Maryada in 1950, illustrates this euphemisation trend. The Rahit Maryada is purged from any overtly anti-Muslim elements, such as the prohibitions quoted above from the Chaupa Singh Rahit Nama (see for instance the prohibition of sexual intercourse with a Muslim woman rephrased as ‘cohabiting with a person other than one’s spouse’, SGPC 1997: chapter 13).

19 How can we explain this shift in Sikh discourse? Fenech refers to Sikh dominance of the Panjab under Ranjit Singh and his displacement of Mughal rule as a possible explanation, H. McLeod to the influence of colonial understanding of communal relations, deligitimizing open expressions of enmity (Fenech 2003, McLeod 1999). But most crucially, the project of the Singh Sabha to redefine Sikh identity created a new figure of Otherness, the Hindu. The Tat Khalsa, the Singh Sabha radical wing that ultimately gained prominence, wanted to demonstrate that the Sikhs are a separate community, distinct from both Hindus and Muslims. Sikhs’ distinctiveness from Muslims didn’t need much elaboration then, as the Muslim has routinely embodied the Other since the 18th century.

20 The Singh Sabha primary concern was thus to demonstrate that Sikhs were not Hindus, as illustrated in a famous pamphlet published in the late 19th century, Ham Hindu Nahin (‘We are not Hindus’). As we can infer from its title, it was first written in Hindi7 and addressed as much to Hindus as to Sikhs and since then it has become a classic proclamation of Sikh identity as reinterpreted by the Singh Sabha of which Bhai Kahn Singh, its author, was an eminent protagonist. It was released in a context of strong antagonism between the Tat Khalsa and the Arya Samaj whom the former identified as the new enemy of the Panth. Indeed, Sikhs resented very much the derogatory statements on the Sikh Gurus made by Swami Dayananda, the leader of the Samaj, and more generally opposed the Samaj’s contention that Sikhism is merely the militant branch of Hinduism (Jones 1973). This antagonism was made all the more acute by the conversion issue. Christian mass

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conversions, mostly of low castes and untouchables, led Hindu, Sikh and Muslim reform movements into an aggressive and competitive proselytism, of which Panjab became the privileged ground from the 1880s. It is noteworthy that the first Singh Sabha was set up in Amritsar, in reaction to the conversion of Sikh students to Christianity in 1873.

21 It is also in the Panjab that the Arya Samaj developed its own ritual of conversion, shuddhi , initially used to readmit Hindus who had converted to Islam or Christianity but then extended to purify Hindu and Sikh untouchables (Jones 1976). Besides the Arya Samaj and the Church, the Ahmeddyia were also prominent in these conversion activities, targeting specifically Sikhs. But Arya activism was increasingly perceived by Sikh reformists as the greatest of all threats, all the more that this perception found an echo in colonial ideology. For instance, a recurring theme of British orientalism, that of Sikhism in danger of re-absorption into Hinduism, was re-appropriated by the Tat Khalsa and fed their antagonism with the Arya Samaj. According to a famous phrase by Macauliffe: Hinduism (…) is like the boa constrictor of the Indian forests. When a petty enemy appears to worry it, it winds round its opponent, crushes it in its folds and finally causes it to disappear (…) in this way it is disposing of the reformed and once hopeful religion of Baba Nanak (…) [that is] making a vigorous struggle for life, but its ultimate destruction is inevitable without State support (Macauliffe 1909).

22 Sikhs hold the weakest position in the triad, since their quest for recognition of the Panth as the third Qaum was opposed not only by both Muslims and more strenuously so Hindus, but also within their own ranks. At par with the Arya Samaj, the Tat Khalsa targeted another enemy, all the more dangerous that it was an insider: the Sikhs’ ‘ignorance’ about their true identity, misconstructed as part of Hinduism by Tat Khalsa opponents, the Sanatan (traditional) Sikhs, prominent in the Amritsar Singh Sabha and very active in the Arya Samaj. Within a complex social fabric characterised, in 19th century Panjab, by the plurality, the flexibility and the interpenetration of communal identities, the Singh Sabha reformers undertook to draw clear-cut boundaries between Sikhs and other Panjabis, and to impose these boundaries on Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike. I shall come now to the Singh Sabha usage of martyrdom, alluded to above, in establishing the limits of this separate identity, as superbly analysed by Fenech (2003). This rhetoric of martyrdom, to use his phrase, appears quite relevant to our present study as it entails a specific construction of the Self as victim and of the Others as inimical figures.

23 What is the correlation between martyrdom and collective identity? Fenech demonstrates how ‘martyrdom also deals with identity, and dramatically so (...) In his horrific death, the Sikh martyr was made to resolutely proclaim the separate identity of the Sikh Panth’ (Fenech 2003: 19). To the point that ‘Sikh community comes together symbolically in the martyr and is substantiated and made public through martyrdom’ (Fenech 2003: 22). To understand this correlation, we have to come back to the heroic period of the Panth, the 18th century, as it is perceived by Sikhs since the Singh Sabha period. Let’s not forget that according to Sikh tradition the Khalsa was created to resist Mughal attempt to annihilate the Panth, it is therefore in a situation of conflict with the Muslims that this major identity shift occurred. Sikhs were persecuted, so the tradition goes, by a tyrannical enemy and resisted till death to uphold their faith. As the Arabic term shahid (widely used by Sikhs since the 19th century to refer to their martyrs) implies, they were witnesses to truth through the sacrifice of their life. It is particularly in defence of the visible symbols of the faith—especially kesh, the hair and the turban—that they were martyred. Their sacrifice became, in the hands of the Singh Sabha, a powerful tool firstly to promote Khalsa identity and deligitimize non-Khalsa ones, and secondly to proclaim the separate

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identity of the Sikhs. Their martyrdom rhetoric therefore consolidated both inner boundaries (between Khalsa and non-Khalsa) and outer ones (between Sikhs and non- Sikhs).

24 Interesting is also the reinterpretation of the past implied here. This is not specific to the Singh Sabha, as their Muslim and Hindu counterparts have engaged in the same task. I have already mentioned how some key events have given way to very different, often contradictory, communal interpretations (see for instance the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur or the reign of Ranjit Singh, hailed by the Sikhs, dreaded by the Muslims). I wish now to underscore firstly how the Singh Sabha has fashioned Sikh history as the history of martyrdom and secondly how it has established continuity, contemporaneity between selected past events and the present.8 And this primacy of martyrdom and the continuity between past and present are bearing, still today, a strong imprint on Sikh collective imaginary.

25 Sikh historiography indeed lies on a systematic forgetting of not-so-heroic incidents, and a contrario, on a selection of events which portray the Panth in the best possible light. Hence, Persian sources referring to Sikhs’ conversion to Islam are conveniently ignored, so too the infighting or the looting characteristic of the misl (warrior bands), in the second half of the 18th century (Fenech 2003:100). Likewise Sikh participation in the communal riots of the 1920s and 1940s and in the carnage of the partition is not acknowledged. As stated by Veena Das (1992), all acts of violence are constructed as the violence of martyrdom, any evil acts being projected on the Other (Hindu or Muslim).

26 As for our second point, the contemporaneity between the past (a reconstructed one) and the present, a correlation is consistently drawn between struggles, threats and enemies of the past and those of the present. It is true at the turn of the 20th century, when the Arya Samaj first and later, during the Gurdwara Reform Movement in the 1920s, the Mahants (Hindu custodians of the Gurdwaras) are equated with the dreaded Afghans and Mughals of the 18th century. It is also true in the 1980s, during the confrontation of Sikh neo- fundamentalists with the central Indian State, perceived as a dominating and aggressive Hindu entity, a confrontation projected as the continuation of a long series of struggles to preserve Sikh identity.

27 The Sikh-Hindu-Muslim triad is therefore constantly renegotiated and submitted to an evolving political context. Hence, the Singh Sabha concern to demonstrate that Sikhs are not Hindus tended to euphemize the anti-Muslim theme and to identify the Hindu as the new enemy. Likewise, Veena Das shows how Muslim/Sikh antagonism has been neutralised in contemporary Sikh militant discourse.

28 But it is my contention that Sikh/Muslim antinomy remains constitutive of Sikh collective imaginary and surfaces therefore very easily. Hence, after a relatively peaceful communal climate following the imposition of the Pax Britannica in Panjab in the second half of the 19th century, the first half of the twentieth was a contrario characterised by an increasingly tense and conflictual context, marked out by the issue of a separate electorate granted to Muslims in 1909, by the heightened competition between communities for a larger share of political representation and power, and by the launching of the Pakistan movement by the Muslim League in the early 1940s. The resulting communal riots of the 1920s and 1940s followed a well known pattern, with Sikhs and Hindus allied against Muslims.

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29 I would like to illustrate this point with two events, of very unequal historical importance: the execution of Lachman Singh in 1909 and, in the few months preceding partition, Sikhs’ reactions (particularly those of the Akalis) to the Pakistan demand. Fenech opens his analysis of the Singh Sabha rhetorical use of martyrdom with the story of Lachman Singh, hanged in June 1909 for the murder of three Muslims, who had converted to Islam a Hindu lambadar (village chief) (Fenech 2003: 178-89). This seemingly anecdotic event is in fact highly revealing. Let’s notice first that it occurred in the wake of the Morley-Minto reforms, granting, as mentioned above, separate electorate for Muslims, but not for Sikhs, despite their repeating demands. Secondly, the issue of conversion appears as central in Lachman Singh’s act. As discussed above, it raised, among community leaders, fear of numerical and therefore political decline and increased communal competition and conflicts. And in the case of Sikhs, one cannot fail to draw a parallel with the spectre of persecutions and forced conversions to Islam of the 18th century. Remarkably, Lachman Singh story follows the same pattern of the martyr- victim-oppressor triangular relationship that I have already mentioned. Indeed, if we are to follow Fenech’s interpretation, Lachman Singh, who considered himself and was regarded by his contemporaries as a shahid, was most probably influenced by Sikh martyrologies describing Sikh suffering under Mughal tyranny and depicting the Khalsa as the protector of the Hindus.

30 The second example I wish to dwell on brings us some 35 years ahead, during the few months preceding the partition of India. A period of great instability and uncertainty for the Sikhs, who greatly objected to the creation of Pakistan then to the idea of partition, and supported various counter-schemes such as Azad Panjab, Sikhistan or Khalistan, opposed by both the Congress and the League.9 When it became clear that Pakistan would finally be conceded by the British, but the shape and substance of it remained very vague, the Akalis raised with an increasing vigour the spectre of a Muslim Raj, imposed on the Sikh minority. In a famous episode, their leader, Master Tara Singh, came out of the Panjab Assembly on 4th March 1947 shouting ‘Pakistan murdabad, Sat Sri Akal’ (death onto Pakistan, followed by the Sikh greeting) and delivering an incensed speech: ‘O, Hindus and Sikhs! Your trials await you. Be ready for self-destruction like the Japs and the Nazis (…). We crushed Mughlistan and we shall trample Pakistan (…)’(Talbot & Singh 1999: 142). Similar speeches were delivered by leaders of the three communities, equally busy in preparing for civil war. The carefully nurtured memory of past conflicts played a major part in the outburst of violence surrounding partition—and this is especially true of Muslim-Sikh antagonism.

31 Among its most gruesome episodes figures the story of Thoa Khalsa,10 a West Panjabi village where 90 Sikh women committed mass suicide not to fall in the hands of thousands of armed Muslims surrounding them. In the accounts of survivors and in the various contemporary accounts, the women are depicted as shahid, faithful to ‘Sikh tradition of courage and self-sacrifice’, hailed as ‘daughters of Guru Arjan’, equated with 18th century martyrs, ready to give their life to safeguard their honour, and by extension that of their community (Butalia 1998, Pandey 2001).

32 In each community, the collective memory of such events has been kept alive, based on the projection of all evil acts on the other side, and sanctified by the nationalist narrative of the two newly created states. This partition of memory was all the easier in the case of Panjab that partition of the territory led to an entire exchange of population, to the extent that there are no Hindus and Sikhs left in West Panjab and hardly any Muslims in

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East Panjab (except for the former principality of Malherkotla and Qadian).11 Therefore, it is only abroad that Sikh, Hindu and Muslim Panjabis have had until recently the opportunity to meet. But did they really meet in the diaspora? Here is the question I wish now to address.

Reinvention of the two paradigms in a diasporic context

33 I wish here to study how these representations of the Muslim ‘Other’, oscillating between bhaichara and hereditary antagonism (the latter paradigm overpowering Sikh collective imaginary), are transposed in a diasporic context; how they influence inter-ethnic relations, without entirely fashioning them, how in particular they interact with the specific socio-political context of the host society.

The British context

34 Let’s first consider the ideological and political context of post-war Britain in relation to the mass-migration of its former colonial subjects. Sociologists have established a linkage between colonial representations and policy vis a vis the various communities the British ruled—in particular their role in fostering sharply defined communal identities—and British policy towards immigrants in post-colonial Britain. This policy, as it culminated in the 1980s, deals with communities, not individuals as in France, defined primarily, in the case of South Asians, in terms of religious affiliation. It has more specifically institutionalized and legitimized the most conservative or orthodox definitions of these identities. This has had several consequences: South Asian community leaders are primarily religious leaders (specially so in the case of Sikhs and Muslims); religious-based organisations have received the greatest share of public support and funding, they have been more successful at mobilising immigrants than pan-Asian or pan-Indian ones and they do so on religious issues (the turban of the Sikhs, the provision of halal meat in school for Muslim children…). In short, communities are encouraged to stress their cultural specificities, while competing for public resources and recognition, and in this process minority identities tend to be reified and institutionalised.

35 In this competition, British Sikhs took the lead in the late 1950s. Their mobilisation for the right to wear the turban (as a bus driver, then on a motorcycle or in school) culminated in a House of Lords ruling of 1982, granting them the status of an ethnic group. This specific recognition allowed them to benefit from the legislation against discrimination (paradoxically defined on ethnic or racial grounds, not religious one) that has been so far denied to Muslims. Emulating the Sikhs, British Muslims have from the early 1990s been prominent in this ‘race’ to specific provisions so much so that other communities, specially after 11 September 2001, sense that Muslims are been ‘pampered’ by British authorities (despite abundant evidence of discrimination against them). British multicultural policy, although officially striving for the opposite, has resulted in stiff competition between communities, defined internally as homogenous and externally by rigid boundaries.

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Muslim/Sikh antagonism reinterpreted in Britain

36 I wish firstly to allude to the methodological aspects of this question: how does one investigate about constructions of otherness? I have encountered in my interviews the same ‘censure on declared or open enmity’ (Baumann 1997: 22) with other communities as noted by other observers (see Baumann 1997, Gayer in this volume). So much so that I quickly decided to avoid direct questioning on the issue of relations with the Muslims. But it popped in by the backdoor, so to say, and in that respect, the most interesting information was definitely drawn from participant observation and informal interviews. Community literature published by various British Sikh organisations and gurdwaras has also been a valuable source.

37 I have identified three recurring themes in my interviews and in community literature: the issue of proselytism, the status of women, and the prohibition of sexual relations across communal boundaries. The first one, particularly prominent among Sikh students, revolves around the proselytism of Muslim fellow students on campuses. Christian proselytism is also resented, and Sikhs perceive themselves as easy prey to the allegedly aggressive conversion activities of those two groups. The issue of conversion, discussed above in the colonial context, is crucial in perceptions of the Self and the Other(s). Sikhs impute proselytism to Christians and Muslims and despite the thousands of Western converts (the Gore Sikhs) claim that Sikhism is a non-proselytising religion. This results in a sense of threat, a perceived weakness vis a vis aggressive and numerically dominant Others.

38 The ensuing tensions to ‘protect’ one’s faith are interpreted as re-enactment of past conflicts- those of the 18th century adding to those of the twentieth like layers of antagonism. More specifically, the issue of forced conversions to Islam either under the Mughals or during partition still weighs on Sikh collective representations of the Muslims —hence I was told several times that ‘if it hadn’t been for the Sikh Gurus, the whole of India would be Muslim now’. Notably, in the diaspora, conflicting memories are not imported as such but reinvented, and in this case, reinforced by the West own perceptions and fears about radical Islam— hence the influence of such external events as the Iranian revolution, the Rushdie affair, the Islamic scarf issue, the 11th September or the 7th July bombing on inter-community relations in Western host countries.

39 Two pamphlets illustrate vividly my point: A Challenge to Sikhism by G.S. Sidhu, published in 1999 for the tricentennary celebrations of the Khalsa and Sikh Religion and Islam, A Comparative Study, by the same author with Gurmukh Singh as co-author, published in 2001. Both these works belong to the expanding genre of educational and religious Sikh literature written for the second and third generations of pardesi (Sikhs settled abroad). In this case written and published in the UK, the two pamphlets strive to alert ‘young educated Sikhs’ to the ‘ill-intentioned attempts to misrepresent Sikh ideology and (…) history’, to teach them how ‘these overt and covert attacks on Sikhism (...) can be repulsed’ (Introduction to A Challenge to Sikhism). Where do these attacks originate from? ‘Extracts from Muslim publications in the last part of this book show the one-sided nature of these attacks of a highly inflammatory nature’ (Idem), whereas the foreword to the second booklet points at the ‘systematic misrepresentation of both Sikhism, and importantly, the high ideals of Islam, by some zealous Muslims, particularly in schools and university campuses’. At the core of these distortions lies the figure of Guru Nanak,

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whose ‘indisputable position as a socio-religious revolutionary’ (Introduction to Challenge) and founder of a world religion is constantly denied by some Muslims quarters. So at stake is the demonstration of the true nature of Sikhism as a separate religion.

40 The arguments are not new—these works and the genre as the whole owe much to Singh Sabha rhetoric—and they draw on earlier controversies. But interestingly, they are also the product of international migration, of the encounter of Sikhs and Muslims in the West and are fashioned by British multicultural context, more specifically by the well established practice of interfaith dialogue, in which Sikhs (mainly through the Sikh Missionary Society, based in Southall) have been quite active. The foreword to Sikh Religion and Islam highlights the importance of interfaith dialogue in such a pluralist society as contemporary Britain, and its difficulties too, as ‘some religions, notably, Christianity and Islam, have missionary zeal’. As a compilation of the correspondence exchanged over several months between the author, a member of the Sikh Missionary Society, and a Panjabi Muslim he had sympathised with at inter-faith meetings in the South of England, A Challenge to Sikhism appears as a failed attempt at interfaith dialogue. Letters from the Muslim correspondent to G.S. Sidhu are indeed very offending, his repeated attempts to prove the superiority of Islam over Sikhism understandably upset the author, and fall rather short of a true spirit of dialogue. G.S. Sidhu’s stand appears as an interesting mixture of traditional Sikh scholarship (in the line of the Singh Sabha) with a genuine attempt at dialogue and the usual representations of the Muslim as the dangerous Other, framed in a diasporic context.

41 The second topic I have come across relates to the comparative status of women in Sikhism and Islam. Sikhs endo-definitions being antonymous with their perceptions of the Muslims, Sikhism is defined as an egalitarian religion, encouraging the participation of women in the religious and social domains, banning discrimination against women, discouraging the practice of purdah. Their understanding of the status of women in Islam revolves around a cluster of practices seen as emblematic: polygamy, veiling of women, divorce by triple talaq, two women being equal to one man as witness. A brochure edited by the Sikh Woman’s Awareness Network Islam and Sikhism: a Comparative View on Women (published by the Akaal Purkh KI Fauj UK, in 1998) develops in a moderate form this theme, under the following headings: salvation; education; hereditary rights; gender equality; importance of woman’s view; opportunity to pray; restrictions on clothes; menstruation; marriage. The text deals with this topic exclusively through lengthy quotations from the Quran and the Guru Granth Sahib. This purely textual and normative approach allows for a maximum of differentiation between the two religious traditions. It also conveniently leaves aside the question of actual religious and social practices, shared by Sikhs and Muslims, and in fact by all Panjabis.

42 Thirdly, the issue of exogamous relationships is potentially the most conflictual one. It evinces in both communities a complex array of collective emotions, fantasies and representations, fed by traumatic past events and reconfigured in Britain. Endogamous marriage remains the norm among South Asians in Britain, and exogamy difficult to accept, particularly by the girl’s family and community. In South Asia, women are the repository of the community’s izzat (honour), hence potentially the instrument of its defilement. Their male relatives have therefore the responsibility to enforce community norms, and impose ‘appropriate’ behaviour. This patriarchal control of women, of their body and their sexuality, usually understood with reference to ‘traditional values’, is in fact a by-product of transnational migration and fits in a complex set of relations

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between ethnicity, gender and class and in particular relates to social constructs of masculinities of marginalised groups.12

43 The prohibition of relationships outside one’s community is therefore not specific to Sikhs, but it takes on a specific shape when involving Muslims. The issue of ‘our girls’ being taken away by Muslims’, a regular feature in my informal interviews and in various forums and chats on the net, is sensitive and potentially conflictual because of its close relation to the first point of my argument, the fear of (forced) conversion, and indirectly to the second, the status of women. In this kind of narratives, Sikh girls are considered as easy prey for Muslim boys: because of the equal status granted to them by Sikhism, they are allowed to mix much more freely with men; some Muslim men, finding it too difficult and dangerous to engage in a relation with a girl from their own community, will therefore ‘target’ Sikh girls, who incidentally happen to be particularly beautiful (so the contention goes...). These boys are supposedly motivated by religious extremism and their will to convert the Sikhs to Islam. In South Asia, conversion of a woman, following her marriage, leads to that of her children, who then belong to the father’s family and community. As in the case of exogamous relationships, the community of the girl feels its integrity, its izzat threatened.

44 These social constructs conjure up the spectre of partition, of the mass-rapes, abductions and forced conversions of women, perceived as a national shame (on the South Asian notion of sharam, see S. Rushdie‘s Shame). To illustrate my point, I shall refer to the protest that met the proposed release of a Pakistani film in the UK in November 2003. Larki Panjaaban (a Panjabi girl) tells the story of a Sikh girl from India who while in Pakistan with her family to visit Sikh shrines falls in love with a Pakistani boy. Her family when discovering this relationship sends her to Malaysia, where her Pakistani lover manages to meet her and finally marry her. In the original script, she converts to Islam, and soon after it is found that after all she was originally a Muslim who had been brought up by Sikhs. The film was widely publicized as the first Lollywood (from the Lahore-based film industry) ‘cross-border love story’ and symbolically was due to be released at the same time in India, Pakistan and England. Interestingly, some British Sikhs (mostly from the Muslim-Sikh Federation) greatly objected to the conversion bit of the story and successfully put pressure on the film director, based in Bradford, to alter the script so that the girl remained Sikh.

Commonalities and transcending of religious and national cleavages: between South Asian identity and Panjabyat

45 However, British Sikhs and Muslims share a common migration experience. They migrated predominantly from rural areas to post-industrial Britain as a replacement workforce, much needed in a post-war reconstruction economy. They belong to dominant rural castes (the Jats), and originate from delimited areas, mainly from the Doaba (the central districts of East Panjab) in the case of Sikhs, from Mirpur (in Azad Kashmir), Faisalabad and Jhelum districts (in West Panjab) in that of Muslims.

46 Their migration history and patterns of settlement are also quite similar. Involved in a process of chain migration, the pioneers relied on the biradari (clan) to settle down. Concentrated in the same regions, mostly Greater London and the Midlands, in the same inner cities areas, they were at first engaged in the same occupations. But after the pioneering phase of migration, a process of differentiation started in the early 1970s:

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Sikhs called their family earlier; with the arrival of East African Sikhs, they also moved away from industrial, non-qualified employment into self-employment and the professions. This shift explains why they suffered much less than Pakistanis from the acute industrial crisis of the 1970s. This differentiation has resulted in a much better socio-economic profile for Indians as a whole as compared to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. According to the 2001 census, Sikhs in Britain amount to 450,000 (out of a total of 1 million Indians) and Pakistanis to 750,000.

47 Among the second and third generation, a South Asian identity has emerged forcefully, that transcends religious, ethnic or national boundaries. As is the case with most minority identity constructions, the South Asian (or Asian) label is in Britain as much an ascribed as an asserted one. Indeed, British Asian ‘identity’, as experienced especially by the youth, is a product of racism, and of their reactions to it. But besides this reactive aspect, there is a positive identification to this category among the second and third generation, based on the socio-economic commonalities alluded to above, on the rejection of the cleavages of the parent generation, seen as irrelevant in Britain and on the perception of cultural similarities. These cultural similarities (food, dress, social norms...) are given a new transnational dimension by the commoditisation and diffusion of a diasporic culture, through the media of cinema, television and music.

48 Within this large South Asian category there co-exist several narrower types of identification that nonetheless cut across the national/religious divide. One of the most powerful ones is Panjabyat. This term of recent coinage, roughly translated as Panjabi identity, refers to the cultural heritage, the social practices, the values shared by all Panjabis, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, Indians, Pakistanis, and increasingly the diaspora. It is heavily loaded with nostalgia for pre-partition undivided Panjab, idealized as a unique space of communal harmony. Its usage tends to be restricted to intellectual, literary, academic or media circles, and although these valorize popular culture in their definition of Panjabyat, the term is not much used by the people.

49 It has broadly two acceptations: the loosest one, the most widespread too, especially in the media, refers to its cultural components; the other one has a political content. The issue of language serves as a bridge between cultural and political definitions. In both senses, partition is the critical event, an incomprehensible aberration, a terrible blow to Panjabis and Panjabyat struck variably by the British, the Muslim League or the Congress. Let’s examine first the political definition of Panjabyat. For its proponents on both sides of the border, India and Pakistan were created at the cost of a united Panjab, and since then the two nation-states have suppressed Panjabi cultural and political identity, within a centralised political framework. Beyond these common roots and their antagonist relations to the Nation-State, Panjabi nationalist movements have taken very different shapes on each side, reflecting in a way the different position occupied by West Panjab in Pakistan and East Panjab in India. In Pakistan, the overall domination of Panjabis in the army, the bureaucracy and the economy elicits, since the creation of the country, the hostility of the three other Provinces, and their accusation of a ‘Panjabisation’ of Pakistan. But this domination has been achieved at the cost of Panjabyat, subsumed into Pakistani national identity, through in particular the imposition of Urdu as national language. Hence, (West) Panjabi nationalists’ agenda focuses on the issue of language, as their main demand is the use of Panjabi in schools, administration and in the local parliament of West Panjab.13 In India, Panjabis are a tiny minority of the overall population (although their share in the economic sector and the army far exceeds their

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demographic weight) and Indian Panjab lies at the periphery of decision making process, both political and economic. Secondly, in India, Panjabyat, in the political and cultural sense, has been the preserve of one religious community, the Sikhs, Panjabi nationalism meaning in fact Sikh nationalism, Panjabyat equating with Sikh identity. And Sikh ethno- nationalism has been fashioned since independence by its opposition with the central government, by a sense of alienation, of being discriminated as a minority. Although this confrontation with Delhi has been a long-standing component of Panjabyat (much before independence), it has taken a new form with the rise of Sikh separatism (the demand for Khalistan), and the equation of the central government with the Hindu majority. Besides, in their conflict with the Indian State, it is notorious that Khalistanis have secured some kind of support from Pakistan, thus reconfiguring in a new way the Hindu-Muslim-Sikh triad that we have discussed above.

50 The most current use of Panjabyat refers to its cultural components. Panjabi language is clearly the most important binding element. Within patterns of code switching, characteristic of most migrants and reinforced by the specific relations of Panjabi to Urdu and Hindi (see below), Panjabi is preferred to convey intimate matters, emotions and jokes. Panjabi is also the medium of a literature, a vernacular corpus of epic poems, folk tales, ballads and songs that has fashioned a common imaginary, spiritual values and social practices and whose most popular figures are Waris Shah and Baba Farid.

51 Promotion of the language and of the literature has been the focus of diasporic Panjabi circles, composed of writers, intellectuals, teachers, some of whom were educated in pre- partition Panjab, others, among the youngest partaking of this common British Asian identity that I have mentioned. The World Panjabi Congress, created by Fakhar Zhaman in Lahore, with most of its members in the diaspora, has been the herald of Panjabyat for the past 20 years, and remarkably one where Panjabi Muslims are significantly represented, which is not the case in most organisations. The Association of Panjab Studies, former editor of the International Journal of Punjab Studies, is a rare example in the academic field that provided research on the ‘three Panjab’, pre-partition, East/West Panjab and the diaspora- although the Sikh / East Panjab component was dominant. The Panjabi Bulletin, edited by a young Sikh from Birmingham, focused on the promotion and preservation of Panjabi folk music, in danger of disappearing both in Panjab and in the diaspora, with the success of commercial music (bhangra).

52 Let’s return to the other cultural components of Panjabyat, to what I have called a Panjabi ethos. To avoid any essentialist slip in my argument, I wish to stress that if there is such a thing as a Panjabi ethos, it is of course not a fixed, objective category, but partly a product of representations and stereotypes fashioned by others. Hence Panjabis’ Epicureanism (their unrestricted love for food, drink and festivities), their open- mindedness, their sense of hospitality, their romanticism and their anti-intellectualism, as is conspicuous in sardar jokes (jokes about Sikhs) already appear as inscribed, ‘inbred’ characteristics in colonial literature (see the enduring legacy of the martial races theory). This aspect of Panjabyat has been widely popularised and given an ‘hype touch’ by commercial music (bhangra, specially) and movie (the archetype being the Bollywood film, Veer Zara, herald of a marketed Panjabyat).

53 However, major ambiguities weaken also Panjabyat as a potential pan-ethnic type of identification in the diaspora. Firstly, the issue of language is not as consensual as it seems. I have termed it as the strongest bond, it is also a divisive one, through the differentiation between spoken and written language along religious lines. Panjabi has

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three scripts: Persian, Devanagari and Gurmukhi, the sacred language of the Sikhs, the only script specific to Panjabi, whereas the others are used by Urdu for Persian script and Hindi for Devanagari script. Historically the high language, the language of culture and power of North India, including Panjab, was Persian, then Urdu. In the pre-partition period, Urdu and English would be taught at school and Panjabi spoken at home, so that only Sikhs would learn written Panjabi in Gurmukhi script in the gurdwara. These language patterns have consolidated religious boundaries (Rahman 2003). After partition, the cleavage between scripts and oral language along religious affiliation has been reinforced by the national divide, Urdu becoming the national language of Pakistan and Hindi that of India.

54 These linguistic patterns have been replicated in the diaspora, so that although spoken at home by all Panjabis, Panjabi is written, read and studied only by Sikhs. Hence, they alone demanded in the late 1990s a better share for Panjabi on BBC radio programs on the basis that Panjabi was the mother-tongue of the majority of British South Asians. This situation is reminiscent of the pre-partition period and of the Panjabi Suba campaign in the 1950s, when Panjabi Hindus declared Hindi, instead of Panjabi, as their mother tongue. As a result, Panjabi language and Panjabyat tend to equate in the diaspora as in India with Sikhs, and very little space is left for, or as a matter of fact claimed by Hindus and Muslims.

55 Another weakness lies in the way the Hindu-Muslim-Sikh triad is been reconfigured within the framework of Panjabyat. Most non-Panjabi Indians resent Panjabyat as anti- Indian and anti-Hindu. Indeed they rightly point at the involvement of former Khalistanis, with well established links with the Pakistan government, in Panjabi organisations (such as the World Muslim Sikh Federation, founded in the UK). Beyond these political underpinnings, it seems the triad, as an unstable and unequal set of relations, can only operate at the advantage of a pair and at the cost of a third party. And in the current definition of Panjabyat, Hindus are the third party.

56 But despite these ambiguities, Panjabyat is been given a new vigour by the improvement of relations between India and Pakistan, of which East and West Panjabi civil societies, through people to people contact, have become major actors. The reopening of borders since 2004 has resulted in a spectacular increase and diversification of exchanges across Wagah border (peace marches, theatre and music tours, cricket tours, and pilgrimages...) to an extent unknown since partition (Blom & Moliner 2005). It will be interesting to follow their influence on community relations within the diaspora, and in particular in improving relations between Muslims and Sikhs.

Conclusion

57 Relationships between minority groups in a migration context are fashioned by a complex combination of variables. In the case of Sikhs and Muslims, representations borrowed from a partly reconstructed past are certainly predominant. The process through which the Muslim came to stand as the dangerous Other for Sikhs started as early as the 18th century, but what weigh the most on relations between the two groups are the events of partition and their crystallisation in each community’s memory and narrative. But neither ‘hereditary’ enmity nor collective memory are immutable. The legacy of partition is being reassessed in South Asia: first by scholars and social activists, now with the relative improvement of Indo-Pakistan relations, by civil society at large,

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even by the film industry (see the recent adaptation of Amrita Pritam’s novel Pinjar). In the diaspora, particularly for the youth, the borders and cleavages inherited from partition are increasingly meaningless, and are being superseded by a common South Asian identity, produced by migration, or more regional ones (such as Panjabyat).

58 But a second variable, the British context and particularly its multicultural framework, tend to rehabilitate these cleavages. While reifying and institutionalizing cultural differences, it encourages minority groups to be internally homogenous (at the expense of plural, overlapping or heterodox definitions of identity) and externally divided by tight boundaries. Besides, Indians as a whole, be they Sikhs or Hindus, have for long been adamant to differentiate themselves from Pakistanis and Bangladeshis: firstly, as part of their process of social mobility, they want to appear as a model minority, with little in common with deprived and marginalized migrant groups; secondly within a context of rising islamophobia in British society, the case of Sikhs in that respect is peculiar as the outward symbols of their faith (their turban and long beard) make the minority of those who wear them in the diaspora14 look like radical Muslims.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Axel, Brian Keith (2001) The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation and the Formation of a Sikh ‘Diaspora’, London & Durham: Duke University Press.

Banga, Indu (1988) ‘Crisis of Sikh Politics’, in Joseph O’Connell, Milton Israel & Willard G. Oxtoby (eds.), Sikh History and Religion in the 20th Century, Delhi: Manohar, pp. 233-55.

Baumann, Gerd (1996) Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-ethnic London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Blom, Amélie; Moliner, Christine (2005) ‘Le Pakistan: entre guerre et paix avec l’Inde’, Questions Internationales,15, La Documentation Française, pp. 70-81.

Butalia, Urvashi (1998) The Other Side of Silence, Delhi: Penguin.

Das, Veena (1992) ‘Time, Self, and Community: Features of the Sikh Militant Discourse’ Contributions to Indian Sociology, 26(2), pp. 245-59.

Fenech, Louis E. (2003) Martyrdom and the Sikh Tradition, Playing the ‘Game of Love’, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grewal, J.S. (1997) Historical Perspectives on Sikh Identity, Patiala: Punjab University.

Jones, Kenneth W. (1973) ‘Ham Hindu Nahin: Arya-Sikh Relations, 1877-1905’, Journal of Asian Studies, 23(3), pp. 457-75.

Jones, Kenneth W. (1976) Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th century Punjab, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Macauliffe, M.A (1909) The Sikh Religion, Delhi: Low Price Publications.

McLeod, W. Hew (1980) Early Sikh Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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McLeod, W. Hew (1987) The Chaupa Singh Rahit-nama, Otago: University Press.

McLeod, W. Hew (1989) Who is a Sikh?, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McLeod, W. Hew (1990) [1984] Sources for the Study of Sikhism, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

McLeod, W. Hew (1999) ‘Sikhs and Muslims in the Punjab’, South Asia, 22, pp. 155-65.

McLeod, W. Hew (2002) Historical Dictionary of Sikhism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martin, D-C (1995) ‘The Choices of Identity’, Social Identities, 1(1), pp. 5-20.

Pandey, Gyanendra (2001) Remembering Partition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rahman, Tariq (2003) [1996] Language and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press.

Rushdie, Salman (1995) [1983] Shame, London: Vintage.

Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (1997) Sikh Rahit Maryada, Amritsar.

Sidhu, G.S. (1998) A Challenge to Sikhism, Birmingham: Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham.

Sidhu, G.S; Singh, Gurmukh (2001) Sikh Religion and Islam: A Comparative Study, London: Gurdwara Dasmesh Darbar.

Sikh Woman’s Awareness Network (1998) Islam and Sikhism: a Comparative View on Women, Akaal Purkh Ki Fauj UK.

Singh, Anita Inder (1987) The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936-1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Singh, Pashaura & Barrier, N. Gerald (1999) Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change, Delhi: Manohar.

Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (eds.) (1999) Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tan, Tai Yong; Kudaisya, Gyanesh (2000) The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, London: Routledge.

Tatla, Darshan Singh (1999) The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood, London: University College Press.

Westwood, Sallie (1995) ‘Gendering Diaspora: Space, Politics and South Asian Masculinities in Britain’, in Peter Van der Veer (ed.), Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 197-219.

Sikand, Yoginder (2004), ‘Re-imagining Sikh-Muslim Relations in the Light of the Life of Baba Nanak’, Qalandar.

NOTES

1. I wish to thank W. Hew McLeod, Denis Matringe, Asif Khan and Aminah Mohammad-Arif for their very helpful comments. The usual disclaimers apply. 2. See among other works: Singh & Barrier (1999); Tatla (1999); Axel (2001). 3. His favourite target being the Nath Yogis, see McLeod (1980). 4. This subsequent development is borrowed from H. McLeod’s unsurpassed study of the Janam- Sakhi, in Early Sikh Tradition, op.cit.

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5. A religious and militant order created in 1699 by the 10 th Guru, whose membership is restricted to those who undergo baptism (armit sanskar) and wear the panj kakkar, the fives Ks, the kirpan, kara, kesh, kanga, khacha. 6. This sanskrit word (literally ‘path’) ‘is used in India to designate groups following particular teachers or doctrines’ (McLeod 2002). Written with a capital letter, it refers to the Sikh community alone. 7. Published in Panjabi in 1898, it has since then been augmented, reprinted several times and widely disseminated, but its original title in Hindi has been retained. See a review of this work by Grewal (1997). 8. This analysis draws from Fenech (2003) and Das (1992). 9. See on this period: Banga (1988); Singh (1987); Talbot & Singh (1999); Tan & Kudaisya (2000). 10. As recovered by Butalia (1998). See also Pandey (2001). 11. This small town north of Batala is a holy town for the Ahmadiyahs. I thank Prof. McLeod for this information. 12. See on the issue of ethnicity and gender, Westwood (1995). 13. See the most comprehensive study of the Panjabi movement in Rahman (1997). 14. A majority of Sikhs, the mona Sikhs, cut their hair and do not wear a turban though.

ABSTRACTS

This paper focuses on Sikh representations of the Muslims and the relationships between those two groups sharing a common regional identity, both in the Sub-continent and in the diaspora. It does so diachronically, arguing that historical constructions of the Muslim as the Other (often, but not always, as the enemy) have been instrumental in Sikh identity formation process, since the 18th century onwards. And synchronically, it traces the reshaping of these representations in post-colonial Britain that is home to important Sikh and Muslim populations and the ways they impact on inter-community relationships.

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The Paradox of Religion: The (re)Construction of Hindu and Muslim Identities amongst South Asian Diasporas in the United States

Aminah Mohammad-Arif

1 This paper1 explores issues of identity reconstruction and community formation among South Asians in a given diasporic context, the United States. It focuses more specifically on the relationships between Hindus and Muslims, as this issue is of particular interest for several reasons. First, their numbers have dramatically increased over the years ever since they first migrated in the wake of the liberalization of American immigration policies in the 1960s: according to the 2000 census, Indians are estimated to be around 1.7 million in the US, of which about 65% were Hindus, hence a lower proportion than that in India,2 and 10% to 15% were Muslims. For Pakistanis, the figures vary between 400, 000 to 600, 000. South Asian migrants in the United States thus consist of a population which may not be as visible as that of Great-Britain, but which indeed represents a sizable minority.

2 Second, at the socio-economic level, Indians and Pakistanis have so far been known for being highly educated, successful and prosperous, as a result of the American policy of the 1960s and 1970s, which promoted the immigration of educated and qualified populations.3 They are hence counted amongst the most educated and affluent migrants in comparison both with other ethnic minorities in the United States, and with other South Asian diasporas.

3 Third, the South Asian population is characterized by a remarkable overlapping of identities; yet, there are perceptible trends of homogenization along religious lines, Hindus vs Muslims, generating a polarization within the group caught by the tension and contradictions between its internal diversity and the appeals made by respective leaderships in favour of greater homogeneity amongst the Hindus on the one hand, and the Muslims on the other.

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4 Last but not least, the case of the United States is also particularly interesting given its specific definition of multiculturalism and the implications this has on inter-ethnic relationships. It should be first borne in mind that as compared to France where the migrant is expected to individually assimilate into the host-society, the United States is a country which has been promoting a policy of so-called multiculturalism (Lacorne 1997, Sabbagh 2004, Taylor 1992) since the early 1990s. This policy is officially meant to celebrate ethnic diversity, of those, in particular, who had been so far marginalized. But the insistence on ethno-cultural differences, instead of building bridges between ‘people of colour’, has had the effect of exacerbating ethnic differences, as the policy of multiculturalism incites individuals to organize into groups on the basis of cultural similarity and encourages ethnic leaders to speak for the entire community; it has primarily brought about a reinforcing of group boundaries not only between migrant groups but between migrant groups and non-migrant minority groups as well, like African-Americans. Besides, multiculturalism is to be understood in the general framework of American ethnic policy based on racial identification. Hence, this policy is such that individual members of ethnic groups are encouraged to identify themselves as part of ‘pre-defined’ communities by the official classifications already in place. This is best illustrated by the way the census categories have been set up: along racial lines.

5 The strengthening and deepening of boundaries, which tend to create cleavages between ethnic groups, occasionally lead to violence as in the case of the infamous Los Angeles riots of 1992, which primarily opposed African-Americans to Korean shopkeepers.4 As far as South Asians are concerned, they had been targeted as a community in 1993 in New Jersey by Hispanic gangs known as the Dotbusters (in reference to the red bindi worn by Hindu women on their foreheads). Most of these tensions and violence take place in a context of economic and political competition but tend in many cases, like in Great- Britain, to oppose ‘communities’ rather than ‘individuals’. As rightfully underlined by Denis Lacorne: ‘the basic unit of the democratic nation is not the individual but the ethnic community’ (Lacorne 1997).

6 Another significant related feature governing relationships between communities in the US is discrimination. A salient characteristic of the American ethnic landscape, discrimination plays a major role in the formation of group-boundaries. Apart from occasional incidents (usually opposing them to other ‘communities of colour’ rather than to whites) as in the examples seen above, South Asians as an ethnic group have not been the major targets of racist attacks, especially if we compare the case to that of Britain. They nonetheless suffer from a feeling of discrimination as ‘people of colour’ (see below).

7 But can this reinforcing of group boundaries caused by the rhetoric of multiculturalism and discrimination lead to a greater cohesion within a given ethnic group? Not necessarily as shown by the case of South Asians whose biggest internal dividing line, as we shall see, seems to be religion.

8 Except for a very interesting article by Prema Kurien (2001) on the relationships between Hindu and Muslim Indians in Southern California (written before September 11), this subject has been largely understudied. Moreover, Prema Kurien has restricted her study to the case of Indian migrants without addressing Pakistani migrant population here, at all.

9 In this paper, I first examine how Hindus and Muslims (the latter including Indians as well as Pakistanis, even if distinctions between both groups will be made, whenever

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needed) have reconstructed their respective identities in the United States, in the New York region in particular, and during this process the importance they give to religion. Keeping in mind the specificity of the American context, I then study the implications of such a reformulation on their relationships, and finally the movements supporting the bridging of borders in favour of the emergence of a South Asian identity in the diaspora.

Religion, a salient factor in identity reconstruction

10 Several reasons can be cited to explain the salience of religion in the identity reconstruction of Hindus and Muslims in the United States. First of all, the diasporic experience to some extent creates the conditions for an exacerbation of the religious sentiment, such that many immigrants ‘discover’ themselves as Hindus or Muslims when living in the United States. An identity which was ‘taken for granted’ in the home-country is renegotiated, reconstructed, reinterpreted in a somewhat more self-conscious way in the United States. Immigrants are hence engaged in a complex process of ‘rationalizing’ their religious practices, this implying a shift in understanding fundamental beliefs as much more emphasis is put on individual initiatives and formal rules than has been the case for most people in the Subcontinent.5

11 In an alien environment, religion can also be endorsed with a cathartic role: it may help individuals who have been socially and culturally marginalized and psychologically destabilized by the diasporic experience to exorcize their fears and frustrations and to find landmarks. In such a context, mosques and temples are no longer mere spaces of prayer; they become major spaces of socialization, in the same way as were churches and synagogues for earlier immigrants (and as they still are for recent ones) of other origins, and play a crucial role in community formation. Hence, it is estimated that there are more than one thousand mosques in the United States,6 more than 200 Hindu temples already built and about one thousand new temples under construction. There is hence a ‘frenetic’ building of religious edifices, which, as a matter of fact, is also a way for immigrants to make their marks on the American ethnic landscape. This has resulted into a ‘confessionnalization’ of space. Most immigrant groups have gone through this process, regardless of their religious, national or ethnic affiliations. Hence, Irish, Greeks or Jews have all seen religion as a salient vector in the formation of communities and the reshaping of ethnic identities both at the individual and collective level.7

12 The arrival of children and especially their maturation also plays a major role in the process. It causes serious anxiety amongst the parents who fear that their offspring will acculturate and hence call into question their authority. They worry about the fact that an ‘excessive’ Americanization might engender a rupture between the youths and their families and/or urge them to enter into exogamous marriages. As a palliative measure, parents devote all their energies to ensure that their cultural and religious heritage will be properly transmitted to their children. In the process, religion is perceived by many parents as the most efficient means to curb the effects of acculturation (Mohammad-Arif 2006).

13 Last but not least, a number of transnational movements have taken advantage of these feelings of discrimination, disruption, and identity quest to exert on immigrants a certain influence and to impose on them homogenous and exclusionist versions of Hinduism and Islam. On the Muslim side, one organization that has been particularly instrumental in this is the Jama’at-i Islami (JI), or Islamic Party. Founded by Abul Ala Maududi in 1941, it

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is a fundamentalist organization par excellence in the sense that it advocates the return to the ‘original’ Islamic doctrine, and promotes the idea that Islam should regulate every aspect of social life. The aim of the Party is to infiltrate the political and social spheres, the ultimate objective being the establishment of an Islamic State. The JI has indeed played a crucial role in the Islamization of the State in Pakistan. On the Hindu side, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or the Universal Hindu Association, created in 1964 in India to promote Hindu religion, has been particularly active in promoting the Hindutva (Hinduness) agenda in the US. It views India as an exclusively Hindu society and militates in favour of a Hindu State. It propagates the idea of a Vedic Golden Age that ended with the presumed oppression of Muslim rule, followed by British colonization. Hence, a major dimension of its rhetoric is based on the hostility to the Other, Muslims but also (Indian) Christians seen as resident aliens.

14 South Asian Muslims migrated to the United States at a time when Islamic ‘revivalism’ was on the rise throughout the world. Students in particular were under the influence of major fundamentalist thinkers like Maududi. Some of them migrated to the US from the 1960s onwards and played a significant role in setting up Islamic institutions in the United States. As early as 1963, they created the Muslim Student Association (MSA), which was to become the largest organization of Muslim students in the US. Established as a well organized network, the MSA spread its activities to all the major American campuses. In the continuation of the activities of the MSA, another organization was created, targeting not only students but migrants as well: the Islamic Circle of North America, which is the actual branch of the Jama’at-i Islami in the US. ICNA was formally established in 1971 by a group of Pakistani students who wanted to launch an Islamic movement in North America that would ‘help’ migrants to lead their lives as Muslims.

15 In India, the RSS, the ideological matrix of the Hindu nationalist movement and its affiliates are, through the Vidhyarthi Parishad (the student wing), equally active in Indian universities, including in the most famous ones.8 Several degree-holders of these universities migrated to the US during the last three decades.9 The VHP(A) was created in 1970, one year before ICNA, and has established branches all over North America. It is part of a network which includes the Overseas Friends of BJP, the Hindu Swayam Sewak Sangh (HSS) which is the American equivalent of the RSS, and the Hindu Student Council (HSC) which is represented in several American universities.

16 The BJP and VHP have established themselves in most countries where significant numbers of Indians have settled; however, as Hindus in the US enjoy a particularly high level of economic success, they have always been prime targets. The Sangh Parivar (network of nationalist Hindu organizations) has apparently reached its aim since it is now a well-known fact that Indian Americans extensively donate funds to Hindutva causes both in India and in the US (Prashad 2000: 146, Mathew & Prashad 2000), this goes well in the logic of long-distance nationalism as defined by Benedict Anderson (1998: 74). A report documented in much detail by South Asia Citizens Web based in France and Sabrang Communications based in India showed the close links between the India Development and Relief Fund and the Sangh Parivar, though IDRF had always pretended to be non-sectarian and independent. The report hence revealed that much of the IDRF’s money was used to support Hindutva organizations and sectarian Hindu charities that may or may not have a direct connection with the Sangh Parivar.

17 Interestingly, there are striking resemblances in the policies promoted by the JI and the VHP, though they do not seem to be influencing each other but rather have parallel

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trajectories. First, in addition to the initial role played by the students on both sides and the fact that both take advantage of the disruption caused by the diasporic experience, the VHP and the JI target more particularly the second generation, who as Americanized as they may be, often go through periods of identity quests; this ‘search for roots’ may make them even more vulnerable than their parents, all the more so as some of them have been exposed since their childhood to the discourses of the VHP and the JI without necessarily having the means for a critical distance. Hence, most of the summer camps, which can welcome very young children, are controlled by the VHP on the one side and (to a lesser extent, as we will see below) by the JI and its avatars on the other, while youth-oriented programmes (like essay competitions on the life of Vivekananda for young Hindus and the life of the Prophet for young Muslims) constitute a major part of the activities designed for children.

18 Second, both the JI and the VHP use the language of minority rights, plurality and multiculturalism to plead for integration into the American mainstream. And interestingly, they both try in the process to show the similarities of Islam and Hinduism with Judaism and Christianity.

19 The other major common point between these two movements is the respectable image that both have managed to project: the JI as well as the VHP have been successful in transforming their image of a fundamentalist movement into that of a respectable organization whose sole objective is supposedly to offer immigrants the means to keep their cultural and religious identity in non-Hindu and non-Muslim lands.

20 There are however significant differences between both organizations. First, it is not the JI as such which has managed to portray itself as a ‘decent’ organization, but it is ICNA, since many immigrants are not aware of the fact that ICNA is a branch of the JI; the mention of the JI itself usually generates sentiments of rejection among immigrants. Yet ICNA’s organization is almost exactly modelled on the lines of the JI,10 and it continues to propagate the same ultra-conservative message (the kind of messages that Christian fundamentalists would easily identify with, like the denunciation of adultery, homosexuality, abortion, and so on). As for the VHP, it has simply become the VHP-A, and hence there is no room for doubt about its identity. However, it should be noted that many Hindu immigrants, and more particularly their children, are hardly aware of the true nature of the VHP and other affiliate organizations in India (Prashad 2000); they have hardly heard about their extremist drifts. This precisely is one of the major achievements of the VHP, as compared to the JI whose reputation as a fundamentalist organization is known by a larger number of people. This has been however been less true since the Gujarat riots, as the direct role of the Hindu nationalists had been highly exposed on that occasion, including in the American media; but the infiltration of the VHP in major Indian organizations, including in secular ones (Mazumdar 2003), is such that its influence may remain strong for a while in the diaspora. Besides, we may wonder whether now that the Hindu nationalists have been relatively on the decline in India (at least at the national level), they may see expatriates as their ultimate source of large support. At any rate, as we will see later, their unabated activism in the United States has been recently illustrated by a controversy over textbooks in California.

21 Another major distinction between the VHP and ICNA as such in the United States is that while the VHP has somewhat managed to exert a monopoly on the diasporic scene, ICNA is faced with a larger competition, as other organizations and movements (that may be or may not be influenced by the ideals of the JI) are equally if not more active (like ISNA, the

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Islamic Society of North America, which was partly founded by people influenced by the ideology of the JI, but which cannot be considered as a direct branch of Maududi’s movement, or like AMC, the American Muslim Council, a religio-political organization, or even like CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, predominantly led by Arabs and devoted to fighting discrimination against Muslims in the United States). Besides, many South Asians see ICNA as primarily a Pakistani organization and not as a ‘globally’ Islamic one, or not even as a truly South Asian one, even though some Indians and Bangladeshis are counted amongst its most active members. ICNA’s relative failure to effectively transcend national boundaries hampers to some extent its impact on immigrants (particularly on non-Pakistani ones) but even more so on the youths who, especially those who go through a process of re-Islamization, are particularly keen to transcend ethno-national barriers.

22 Last but not least, let us bear in mind that since Hinduism is primarily an Indian religion this makes the monopoly exerted by the VHP on the diasporic scene easier, as religion and ethnicity more or less merge into one (even if not all Indians are Hindu, Hindus are usually Indian11). This conflation of religion and ethnicity can also be useful on the American public scene as, regardless of the salience of religion seen as an acceptable vector for community formation, the officially recognized category for (political) mobilization in the United States is the national one, hence the merging of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Indian’ into one will be all the more eagerly promoted by Hindutva-oriented leaders. Besides, in order to gain better visibility in the host-society, Hindus need to put forward a unified image of the community in the public sphere, and for this they need to overcome their regional diversity and homogenize their different traditions. Though Hindus remain highly divided along various fault-lines (see below), one of the major aims of the VHP’s agenda is precisely to try to homogenize and unify the community. And they may have been more successful in doing so in the diaspora than in India. The attempts at homogenizing are also observed among Muslims. Immigration to the United States and the contact with Muslims from different regions of the world has called into question the legitimacy of South Asian Islamic traditions, as other groups view their own customs as equally Islamic. Besides, the extreme diversity of the Muslim community is perceived as a handicap to the cohesion of the group, while unity is viewed as vital to gain representation and have access to resources in the American society. Hence, appeals of the leadership to the believers to abandon their cultural baggage and focus only on text- based rituals, as the Text is the ultimate reference that is likely to bind them beyond cultural particularities. However, as compared to Hinduism, Islam is a highly transnational religion, and as compared to UK where most Muslims are from the Indian Subcontinent, South Asians in the United States are far from representing the dominant group amongst Muslims.12 Hence, a (quasi)-exclusive control by any single organization becomes much more difficult, even though, once again, the influence of the ideology of the JI and its avatars over Muslims from the Subcontinent cannot be neglected or denied. This is shown by the kind of religious revival (support in particular for a more scripturalist form of Islam,) many South Asians, irrespective of their national origin, experience after migrating to the US.13 Interestingly, as underlined by Prema Kurien, at a strictly organizational level, Indian Muslims, as compared to Indian Hindus, prefer to be represented in secular organizations like AFMI, American Federation of Muslims from India: in support of this thesis, one of the main arguments given by Kurien is that emphasizing the fact that India is not exclusively Hindu but multireligious and hence

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should have a secular government is the only way to counter communally-oriented organizations for groups like the Muslims (Kurien 2001: 283).

23 At any rate, it seems that in the United States the expression of a political Hinduism14 is more developed than that of a political Islam (among South Asian immigrants at least).15 Beside the more efficient strategies of mobilization of the Sangh Parivar and the arguments given above, the explanation probably lies also in the local context: political Islam is more likely to foster fear and hostility among Americans, and hence Muslim immigrants, who are first and foremost anxious to integrate and be well accepted by American society, will be more reluctant to claim their support to this particular expression of Islam (even before 9/11), whereas political Hinduism does not look as threatening to the Americans, and hence supporting it is not deemed as a potential hindrance to the process of integration of Hindu immigrants in the United States.

24 In addition to the endogenous factors cited above, more exogenous reasons also explain why religion, rather than other ethnic markers, gets prominence: the local context plays indeed a major role in the process, as religion occupies a significant place in the United States. The First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, guarantees religious freedom in a way which can remind one more of Indian secularism, since it implies that the State can show favour neither to the religious over the non-religious, nor to one particular religious tradition over another. This is different from French laïcité, defined as a strict separation between State and Church (though in both the American and French cases religion is relegated to the private sphere). At any rate, Americans have the highest rate of religious practice among industrialized countries, as shown by the high proportion of the population professing to a religion and being actively involved in it. Moreover, despite the fact that religion is officially relegated to the private sphere, the relationship between religion and State can be very ambiguous, as religion is seen as an ‘element of the nationalist paradigm’ (Marienstras 1997), and this relationship has essentially been defined in Christian and to some extent Jewish terms (Herberg 1960). The US has nonetheless been characterized by a tradition of relative religious freedom which has enabled ‘new’ religious minorities, like Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists to ‘transplant’ their faiths and establish organizations (that parallel those of other ‘recognized’ religions).

25 At any rate, despite the freedom enjoyed by religious minorities, South Asians do suffer from discrimination as mentioned above. But it is worth noting that Muslims and Hindus experience it in different ways: many Muslims suffer from it at a two-fold level: as an ethnic and as a religious minority. Hence the paradox of the situation: on the one hand, American relative tolerance in religious matters enables Muslims to practise their religion more or less freely and openly (at least till September 11). On the other hand, anti-Islamic prejudice in the American population, which is fed by the media and reinforced by international events, exacerbates the religious sentiment of some segments amongst the Muslims, and in reaction— ‘reactive ethnicity’ (Barth 1969)—, they show a stronger commitment to Islam. As for Hindus, even though some negative stereotypes can be associated with Hinduism (often seen as a strange and primitive religion) as well, they mostly experience discrimination as well as a sentiment of ostracism as an ethnic minority. Some find solace in reconstructing their identity not only along religious lines but also by stressing the superiority of Hinduism over other religions, this giving them a sentiment of pride and dignity. On university campuses, it can even look ‘cool’ for students to claim that they are Hindus (which is not the case for Muslims) because of a

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fairly romantic image associated with yoga, spirituality, ‘oriental’ religions, and so on (Mazumdar 2003). Interestingly, this insistence on the Hindu identity was observed as early as the beginning of the 20th century when a handful of Indians who were then living in the US were fighting to obtain American citizenship: proving that one was white was the main condition required at that time to qualify for citizenship. Indians argued that as high-caste Hindus they belonged to the Aryan race, and by extension were Caucasians, and therefore Whites. As a matter of fact, Sikhs, Muslims and Parsis did the same, as they also tried to prove that they belonged to the Aryan race. At any rate, this shows how much the local context of a given period can influence the self-definition of individuals and groups. It should be also noted that in a country like Great-Britain the insistence on the Hindu identity has been a way of distinguishing oneself from Muslims and from Pakistanis in particular, especially after the Rushdie affair, and even more so since the July 7th bomb attacks in London.16 But in the US, to put forward one’s Hindu identity, by wearing the bindi for instance, is a way for some to differentiate themselves not only from Muslims (as, at any rate, Americans can hardly distinguish between South Asians along religious lines), but also from American Indians (because of a possible confusion over the common terminology ‘Indian’) and Hispanics (with whom South Asians are frequently confused because of physical resemblance) for questions not only pertaining to race but to social class as well. Similarly, in the 1910s and 1920s, Indians (across religious affiliations) would wear turbans so as not to be identified with African-Americans (Mazumdar 2003). Hence, beyond issues of religion, race and class can be equally important in the self-definition and the image people want to project of themselves in the host-society.

The implications on inter-ethnic relations: between separation and polarization

26 The consequence of the key role in community-building accorded to religion by a substantial number of immigrants has been, not so surprisingly, the separation and/or polarization between Hindus and Muslims. Given the importance taken by mosques and temples as major places of socialization, Hindus and (Indian) Muslims have much fewer opportunities to meet than in the Subcontinent. The lack of a common space of worship is therefore a primary reason for the relative lack of contact between both groups: there are no dargahs (shrines) ‘not the kind where a South Asian Muslim and a South Asian Hindu would go together to obtain that special pleasure of communion or that equally special comfort of a personal intercession with God.’ (Naim 1995: 4).

27 As for ‘cultural’ organizations, their formation has also been growingly symptomatic of the separation and polarization between Indians and Pakistanis and especially between Hindu Indians and Muslim Indians (as at any rate Pakistanis tended to form separate organizations from the outset). In the 1960s and 1970s when the contemporary migration process started, Indians, regardless of their religious affiliation, were still few in numbers and tended to belong to the same associations. But from the 1980s onwards, as the South Asian population grew larger, religious minorities progressively left these original organizations, as they increasingly perceived them as too ‘Hindu-dominated’ and not truly pan-Indian, and set up their own organizations. While Sikhs primarily left for political reasons (in the wake of the 1984 riots and the Khalistani movement in favour of an independent Punjab), Muslims and Christians rather left for religious reasons, since

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Hinduism increasingly became an important feature in the lives of Indian cultural associations (where sessions and events would start with a puja, for instance). The impact of the VHP on Hindu expatriates reinforced this trend, urging non-Hindus to leave organizations labelled ‘Indian’. While a minority joined with Pakistani cultural associations, most Indian Muslims decided to set up their own organizations, like the already mentioned AFMI created in 1990.

28 Beyond mere separation, polarization as such has been triggered by particular events taking place in the Subcontinent. The first such event, which represents a watershed in the relationships between Hindus and South Asian, but more particularly Indian, Muslims is the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya. Hindu nationalists claim that Ayodhya, a town in Uttar Pradesh, is the birthplace of Ram, and that the mosque, built by the first Mughal Emperor, Babur (1526-30) was erected over the ruins of a temple dedicated to Ram. From 1989 onwards, the Hindu nationalists led a virulent campaign to reclaim the site, and on 6 December, 1992, they destroyed the mosque. It is a well- documented fact that the worldwide Hindu diaspora took part in this campaign from its inception. Some of the bricks that were carried as symbols in a procession in Ayodhya early in the movement, had been sent to India from the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and from South Africa. After the demolition of the Babri mosque, a segment of Hindu immigrants in the United States rejoiced over the event and indulged in the apology of the Hindu nationalists. The following letter sent by an immigrant from New York City to India Today is particularly enlightening: Your issue on the Ayodhya aftermath (‘Smelling blood’ January 15) has upset me immensely. For the past 45 years, Hindus have been pushed to the wall by the deadly combination of Islamic fundamentalists, communists and pseudo-secularist Hindus whose proclivity to belittle their heritage and damage the Hindu cause is mind-boggling. Now Hindus are in no mood to take anything lying down? The penchant for absurd exaggeration, cynical disregard for truth, vituperative attacks on Hindu leaders, grossly libellous articles designed to vilify and discredit the BJP and entire Hindu samaj smack of yellow journalism (India Today 1993: 6).

29 The founders of the Federation of Hindu Associations (FHA), one of the major Hindu umbrella organizations, even claimed that they were inspired by the event when they created their association in 1993 (Kurien 2001: 268).

30 As for Indian Muslims, the event and the widening of the gap between the two communities caused them to be more pessimistic about the situation of their coreligionists in India. This pessimism often exaggerated well beyond reality is not only the direct result of the Ayodhya affair, but is also an aftermath of a reinforced ethno- religious sentiment exacerbated by the diasporic condition: those who have migrated do not necessarily experience a weakening of their feeling of belonging to India, but may become hypersensitive in their perception of the vulnerability of the minority community they left behind. This hypersensitivity could already be observed in the country of origin with a fairly marked propensity amongst Indian Muslims to victimization. Their status as a vulnerable minority in India, accused of being responsible for Partition and whose loyalties are often suspect (they are regularly accused, at times of crises in particular, of being a fifth column of Pakistan) are the two main reasons for the sentiment of alienation felt by many Muslims in India. But as said before, the diasporic condition may reinforce the hypersensitivity, this being another facet of the so-called long-distance nationalism. Muslims in India in the past have kept a low profile, but they no longer feel the need to do so after migrating. They are likely to become more

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vociferous in their denunciation of the violations of minority rights in India, regardless of the actual size of the problem on the ground.

31 As for the reactions of Pakistanis to the Ayodhya affair and to the situation of Muslims in India, many feel vindicated in their belief in an age-old hostility between Hindus and Muslims, and as a corollary that Partition was more than justified. At any rate, the memory of Partition is still very alive among immigrant South Asians regardless of their religious affiliation, but in particular among the Punjabis. It is worth noting that in spite of their own very critical assessment of the condition of Muslims in India, Indian Muslims in the diaspora express sometimes feelings of embarrassment over what they perceive as the ‘over-solicitude’ of the Pakistanis in the way the latter react to events affecting Indian Muslims. Interestingly, Muslims in India express similar sentiments when the Pakistani government ‘interferes’ in their matters. The following comment was made in England, but could apply to the US as well: While the sympathy expressed by the Pakistanis is genuine no doubt, it is hard to listen to such lamentations over and over again. The concern they have for their religious brethren makes them believe that anyone who is not a Muslim is a Muslim basher (Kalam circa 1993).

32 The second very important event which has led to a polarization between communities (this time on national lines, i.e. Indians vs Pakistanis, regardless of religious affiliations) is the nuclear tests conducted by both India and Pakistan in 1998. Though they aroused mixed feelings in both communities at large, they were nonetheless hailed with an unrestrained jubilation by a segment amongst them: the tests became the occasion for an outburst of nationalist passions on the respective sides, of which the inevitable corollary was an exacerbation of ethnic tensions. This polarization reached its peak the following year during the Kargil war when Indian expatriates from the Silicon Valley sent a deluge of e-mails against Pakistan’s infiltration into Indian territory, which literally flooded Congressional offices. Interestingly, most Indian Muslims reacted either by celebrating the Indian nuclear tests or by taking a pacifist stand and denouncing the tests conducted by both countries. This epitomizes the fact that no matter the mixed feelings they may nurture towards their home-country, in particular when they are in a diasporic situation, those feelings do not translate into any significant kind of support for Pakistan as a nation.17 This is, in our view, a good illustration of the overlapping of belongings and the complex (re)negotiations of the different facets of identity Indian Muslim expatriates are engaged in: they can adopt a ‘united’ stand with non-Muslim Indians, when their own coreligionists are not adversely affected as witnessed in the case of the nuclear tests or the Kargil war, else express annoyance over Pakistanis’ ‘ostensible’ concern as in the example of the Ayodhya crisis. In other instances however, Indian Muslims and Pakistanis, who usually go to the same mosques and hence share a major space of socialization and common identity formation, can mobilize for common political causes when ‘neutral’ grounds are involved (like the war in Bosnia for instance).

33 At any rate, it is worth noting that the spaces of confrontation are different in the United States from what they were in the Subcontinent, or even from what they are in the UK: streets are no longer the preferential places where communal passions are unleashed; they have been replaced by other spheres. The importance of temples and mosques in (separate) community formation has been already mentioned; in addition, media, new technologies (the Internet in particular), as shown by the dramatic increase in communal newspapers and websites over the years and the extensive use of e-mails during the

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Kargil crisis for instance, as well as political lobbies18 are invested in the United States with a new (and exclusive) importance, and have become the major arenas of confrontation. This corroborates Benedict Anderson’s theory of long-distance nationalism, whereby the actors who indulge in transnational politics are not directly affected by the consequences, as inter-ethnic conflicts in the United States remain fairly relegated to the domain of the rhetoric and the discourse, while repercussions on the ground (leading in particular to direct confrontations between communities) can be felt in home countries, as in the Gujarat riots (see below).

34 This is not to suggest however that streets in the US, as a public sphere where communal sentiments would be expressed, have lost any significance. Much to the contrary, streets can become ‘confessionalized’ spaces as shown not only by the frenetic construction of religious edifices, already mentioned, but also by the increasing number of ethnic parades, Indian, Pakistani, Sikh, Muslim (as if Sikhs and Muslims were forming an ethnic group), and processions during religious festivals, etc. But interestingly, in the few areas where there is a relative concentration of South Asians (as compared to UK, South Asians do not however live as much in ethnic enclaves), the relationships between South Asians are not particularly strained; besides, their frictions, when they do exist, do not usually degenerate into street-fights. In addition to the daily interaction that may dilute the conflictual logic, this situation can also be explained by the fact that these populations tend to be socially homogeneous: those who live in ethnic enclaves usually belong to underprivileged segments of the population. Such is the case for instance in Queens (New York), where a fairly high number of South Asians hailing from diverse ethno-national backgrounds live but sharing usually similar social conditions (Khandelwal 2002). For those populations, class issues tend to be endorsed with a greater importance than ethno- national or ethno-religious considerations.19 As mentioned previously, competition and conflicts, when they do take place, usually oppose South Asians to Hispanics or African- Americans. Hence, the situation is fairly different from the UK. This perhaps is explained by the fact that in the United States, South Asians form only a minority among other migrants while in the UK they are one of the dominant minorities and are much more involved than they are in the US, in competing to place demands and negotiate with the British authorities for obtaining subsidies and other types of material gains.

35 The most vociferous promoters of the reassertion of an Indian identity, defined as necessarily and exclusively Hindu, usually live in residential suburbs that are mostly inhabited by White people, and their opportunities for daily interaction with other South Asians are fairly limited (Khandelwal 2002). Or, they can be petit-bourgeois who are in a process of or strongly willing to climb the social ladder, as are the newsstands’ owners of Manhattan and motel owners. Interestingly, many of them are Gujaratis, who at any rate form the largest regional group of Indians in the United States. This may be significant to the extent to which the transformation of the State of Gujarat into a laboratory of the Hindutva (Hinduness) forces had repercussions far beyond India. With this backlash, these very Gujarati expatriates have contributed to the Hindutvaization of Gujarat by massively financing Hindu nationalists, as was revealed during the Gujarat riots (see below). Regarding the aggressive promoters of a Pakistani or of a Muslim identity (defined in opposition to the Other, and the Other still being for many Hindu), they also tend to live in areas where there is a low concentration of South Asians. Such is the case, for instance, of Pakistani lobbyists (whose main activities are focussed on anti-Indian discourses) living in the New York region.20

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36 But needless to say, Hindus as well as Muslims are far from forming two internally homogeneous communities, and are highly fragmented along different fault-lines: sectarian, regional, linguistic, socio-economic, and so on. Though there have been an increasing number of pan-Indian associations, many organizations have been formed on a regional basis: Gujarati, Punjabi, Hyderabadi, Bengali (interestingly but not so surprisingly, Bangladeshis have formed separate organizations from the Bengalis and from other South Asian Muslims as well). Besides, the overlapping of identities and belongings is such that borders can be easily blurred. Some vectors that may usually be dividing among immigrant groups can at times play a significant bridging role, like language: if not at the organizational level, language can indeed be endorsed with this function at a more individual level: Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs (regardless of their religion but usually belonging to older generations) can share their love of Urdu and take part in the same musha’ira or ghazal sessions.

37 Beyond this precise example, there are larger bridging vectors, like music, (qawwali is particularly popular in the first generation) and bhangra, or neo-bhangra (traditional bhangra mixed with reggae or rap, extremely popular across generations, and particularly appreciated by the youths). As for Bollywood, it still plays its role of bridging borders in the diaspora, as it already does in the Subcontinent,21 regardless of age, sex, class, region, language, religion, caste and so on.

Beyond religion: the actors of pacification

38 In reaction to this polarization and growing confrontational attitude, there has been an increasing counter-activism enacted by a(nother) segment of South Asians, the ‘self- conscious’ actors of reconciliation in the diaspora. During the recent years, these actors have come to play a fairly significant role in the United States. Admittedly, their circle remains rather narrow: progressive activists are mostly found on university campuses (both students and faculty members) and are concentrated in a limited number of regions, namely New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco (Misir 1996), while supporters of communal politics are more widespread and either hail from conservative (fairly well) established immigrant communities (professionals and businessmen in particular), or from groups of recent immigrants who experience economic, social and psychological difficulties.

39 It does remain however that the number of progressive organizations has dramatically increased in a span of few years; some of them explicitly militate in favour of harmony and rapprochement between the different South Asian communities and for peace in the Subcontinent, in particular between India and Pakistan. In the 1990s, there were already a number of progressive organizations but for most their main objective was to defend the interests of South Asians in the United States itself, across religious, national or regional barriers. Some were focusing on particular segments of the population such as women (organizations against domestic violence like Sakhi, Manavi, Apna Ghar, and so on), Dalits (like ambedkar.org, New Republic India, Dalit Freedom Network), homosexuals (like South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association), taxi drivers (like Licensed Drivers Coalition), and so on. Others, like the team of SAMAR magazine (South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection), had a wider scope and deal with issues across gender or professional lines. Gradually these organizations, while still being concerned with local issues, have extended their activities toward the Subcontinent, hence giving a more transnational

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dimension to their concerns. But what is even more noteworthy is that the sheer number of these organizations has significantly increased in a few years. Most or almost all of them mix local concerns with transnational ones. Among them, we can mention: FOSA (Friends of South Asia, created in 2001-2002 in the San Francisco Bay area), SALA (South Asian Literature and Art Archive created in 2001), SAPAC (South Asia Progressive Action Collective, based in Chicago), ASATA (Alliance of South Asians Taking Action) created in 2000 in the San Francisco Bay area, and so on. One of them deserves to be specially mentioned: APSA, Action of Physicians of South Asia, created in July 2003. The creation of this organization is indeed particularly interesting because Indian and Pakistani doctors had formed separate professional organizations (like AAPI, American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, and APPNA, the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America), and many members of these organizations have been actively involved in lobbying campaigns focused on the hostility to the Other (Mohammad-Arif 2000).

40 There are several reasons for the rise of these alternative organizations, some take their roots in the change of the sociological profile of the diaspora, while others are more related to recent ‘traumatic’ events that have acted as ‘moral shocks’ (Jasper & Poulson 1995) for many diasporic South Asians. Regarding the change of sociological profile, between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the following decade, there has been a maturation of the second generation, which has come along with a questioning by the youths but also by women, who had been so far marginalized, of the quasi-exclusive supremacy exerted by men of the first generation over Indian and Pakistani organizations. These men, who acted as self-proclaimed community leaders and had so far monopolized the whole community space, tended to (and still do) insist on a singular identity, that of a Hindu, or a Muslim, or that of an Indian (but understood as necessarily Hindu) or a Pakistani. Hence for the past few years, alternative community spaces have emerged under the impulsion of women and youths (even though a significant fraction of women and youths are also engaged in movements of hindutvaization and re- Islamization). These alternative spaces attract not only ‘true’ progressive militants who defend particular causes but also other South Asians who are not necessarily politicized but who are in search of spaces of entertainment (as remarkably described by Pnina Werbner (2002) in the UK context) or of forums for artists of South Asian descent like Voices of Resistance (‘an annual exploration and affirmation of South Asian Diasporic identity through art’):22 these progressive South Asian organizations represent public forums of celebration (through music and cinema in particular) not only of communal harmony but of South Asian culture as well, beyond the narrow national or religious identity. Hence the whole fun and/or art dimension of the events, organized by these associations, plays a significant role in attracting South Asians onto common public forums regardless of their regional, religious and other affiliations.

41 This calling into question of the hegemony of males of the first generation over South Asian communities has coincided with ‘spectacular’ events which took place both in the Subcontinent and in the United States: the nuclear tests and the threats of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan; September 11 and the subsequent and unparalleled discrimination against South Asians; finally the ghastly riots in Gujarat. Hence it is this conjunction between the rise of new actors on the diasporic public sphere and dramatic events in both home-societies and the host-society, which explains the more aggressive activism, as well as the growing legitimacy, of secular and progressive organizations over the recent years. Some of these movements, like FOSA, founded in the wake of the nuclear

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tests, were specifically created in reaction to these ‘dramatic’ events. Yet, this competition between different actors of conflictuality on the one hand, of actors of reconciliation on the other is nothing new: it echoes a situation already observed in the Subcontinent as well where radical Hindus and radical Muslims compete with feminists, modernists and secularists for a control of the public space.

42 Two of the events mentioned above deserve special attention: September 11 and its aftermath, and the riots in Gujarat. Before September 11, as compared to the Arabs, the Pakistanis and Indian Muslims had the ‘advantage’ of being mistaken for Hindus, who overall enjoy a positive image in the United States. Since September 11, the situation is such that all the people who hail from the Subcontinent, regardless of their actual religious background, including in highly cosmopolitan cities like New York, tend to be regarded with suspicion because they are mistaken for Muslims even when they are Hindu or Sikh. This situation has generated different kinds of reactions: the first one, which probably includes the majority of the population, has been to try as much as possible to differentiate oneself from Muslims: just after September 11, some Sikhs for instance could be seen on TV showing photographs on CNN and explaining the difference between the turban of the Sikhs and the turban of bin Laden; more generally speaking, many have tried through various means to show that Hindus and Sikhs had nothing to do with Muslims. But other people on the contrary have seen this situation as an opportunity to build bridges beyond religious cleavages and to try to find common platforms to face a situation of crisis together. Hence leaders of Sikh, Hindu and Muslim organizations held several common meetings with American representatives in Washington DC, and expressed together their concerns over the growing discrimination against South Asians in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Besides these efforts at the political level, other people also tried to ‘educate’ their coreligionists about how to fight discrimination, with a rhetoric about the importance of not being themselves in return discriminatory. I thus attended a meeting in November 2001 organized by two Sikh lawyers who were explaining to the audience which was exclusively composed of Sikhs, how to defend themselves against racist attacks, profiling in airports and so on; they were strongly insisting on the importance of explaining ‘positively’ the Sikh religion to the ‘attacker’ (‘I am a Sikh and this is what Sikhism is about’) instead of just shouting ‘I am not a Muslim’ (this implying ‘hence you are not targeting the right person’). More broadly speaking, September 11 has engendered an awareness amongst some people, generated by the perception of the Other, the ‘Other’ being here the host-society, of a common identity, that of ‘South Asian’. The following statement of a young man just after 9/11 is thus revealing: ‘We should be united among ourselves’, said Malik (interestingly, ‘Malik’ is a name that can be given by Muslims, Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis alike). ‘We all look the same to them, so let’s unite as one.’ It should be noted that if this (self)-definition of ‘South Asian’ or ‘Asian’ generated by the perception of the host-society has been existing in the UK for a long time, this phenomenon is much more recent in the United States, and seems to have been endorsed with significant importance since September 11. And this goes well beyond the circle of progressive activists.

43 The other major event of the recent years is the riots in Gujarat in February 2002, which caused the death of 2000 people, mostly Muslims. The direct responsibility of the local State in the riots was soon established. This event, reminiscent of the horrors of Partition, engendered a fairly important mobilization in the United States, on the initiative of both progressive organizations and Indian Muslim associations. In 2005, these organizations

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achieved what has probably been one of their greatest successes. They were able to prevent the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, from coming to the United States. Modi, who has been accused of being involved in the Gujarat riots, had been invited in March 2005 at the annual convention of the Asian American Hotel Owners’ Association. The AAHOA is largely dominated by the Gujaratis, and represents particularly small hotel and motel owners. This invitation triggered off an important mobilization of about thirty organizations who were backed by a dozen more based in the United States, and representing both Indian Muslims, civil rights groups, and intellectuals. They formed a coalition called Coalition Against Genocide. Following this mobilization, the US government refused to grant Modi both a diplomatic visa and a business visa. Regarding the diplomatic visa, it put forward the argument that Modi had been invited by an Indo- American organization and not by the American government. As for the business visa, the American authorities invoked a clause of the US Immigration and Nationality Act which ‘prohibits any government official who was responsible for any directly carried out at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom’. The rejection of the visa was followed by a resolution on the initiative of a Democrat representative, asking the Congress to condemn ‘the conduct of Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his actions to incite religious persecution and urging the United States to condemn all violations of religious freedom in India’. We can of course wonder about the real motivations of the US government and whether the latter would have adopted the same attitude had the BJP still been in power; yet, the whole affair represents as symbolic as it may be a nonetheless significant victory for progressive movements in America.23

44 South Asian secular forces in the US have very recently achieved another victory. This regards a controversy over textbooks in California. The monitoring of the presentation of Hinduism and Indian history in American school textbooks is an important goal of the American Hindutva movement. In early 2005, two groups closely connected to the Sangh Parivar, the Vedic Foundation and the Hindu Educational Foundation, submitted recommendations to the California Curriculum Commission for revisions of textbooks and their treatment of ancient Indian history. In addition to removing stereotypes and factual errors, the groups also inserted highly contentious changes, like removing anything suggesting that caste still determines the status of people in Indian society, portraying Hinduism as very similar to Judaism and Christianity, making all non-Hindu Indians foreigners, and so on. Initially, the Curriculum Commission came under so much pressure from Hindutva forces who wrapped these changes in the vocabulary of minority rights and equality, that the Commission accepted many of those changes.24 But those controversial changes stirred such an opposition by academics and secular groups from all over the US and other countries that the California State Board of Education overturned the changes.25 This is an interesting case of both the unabated activism of Hindutva militants in the United States, even when the BJP has been on the decline in India, at the national level, and the increasingly successful counter-activism of South Asian secular forces.

45 All this said, it does remain that in terms of mobilization, nationalists and fundamentalists of all kinds still overshadow progressive and secular groups. It would be sufficient to compare the number of people who came to the AAHOA meeting held in New York that Narendra Modi could not physically attend (but his speech was retransmitted by satellite), with the number of people who were demonstrating outside the building against this meeting: 4000 vs 250.

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Conclusion

46 South Asians in the United States have witnessed a polarization and an exacerbation of their internal conflicts, particularly opposing Hindus to Muslims for a series of reasons explored in this article. First, so-called American multiculturalism tends to create or reinforce internal group-boundaries. Second, the very process of migration, across countries, calls into question any type of identity that had been so far ‘taken for granted’, and in the process religious lives are re-constructed while religion plays a crucial role in ethnic formation. Migration also involves socio-economic and social mobility issues, and even though these populations are not in direct competition with each other the same way as they can be in the Subcontinent, they do share a common experience of marginalization and stigmatization generated by dislocation, whose outcome is for some immigrants a tendency to find solace in narrow and parochial identities. Equally important is the role played by the respective leaderships, who, involved as they are in power struggles, competition for resources and bids for (personal) recognition (both by the host-society and by the ethnic community), will not hesitate to only lay the stress on the respective differences and specificities and not on the common history that binds these communities. These ethnic entrepreneurs will do so all the more willingly because they are encouraged by the host-society to exhibit a homogenous culture. Neither is the role played by openly communal organizations negligible in increasing the gap between religious groups. Finally, the demonization of Muslims in the United States, since September 11, by the American government and by the American media urges the non- Muslims to differentiate themselves from Muslims, and hence has not really contributed to improve the relationships between the two groups, less so since the anti-Muslim feelings prevalent in the United States fits the anti-Muslim agenda of the Hindutva supporters (see Ingrid Therwath in this issue).

47 This does not prevent immigrants from being engaged in a complex web of identity (re)negotiations and labyrinthine alliances (along age, gender, professional, linguistic, religious … lines). In spite of the tendencies towards homogenization in the two major religious groups in particular, the overlapping of identities, strongly observed in the Subcontinent is not lost in migration: while ‘traditional’ bridging factors like Bollywood, remain alive after migration, others like neo-bhangra are even created in the diaspora.

48 Last but not least, a redefinition of the concept of South Asian seems to make its way in the United States, partly unwillingly as well as deliberately. This notion had been vague for a long time and still is for many people, including the directly involved ones, particularly the second generation. Interestingly, some of the latter ‘discovered’ that they were South Asian only after going through the American college application process (the category ‘South Asian’ approximately appeared in the middle of the 1990s); hence, it is the perception and the definition of host-society which can generate a sentiment and self-awareness of a common belonging. But this concept of ‘South Asian’ has also gradually taken on a more self-conscious, deliberate meaning, as shown by the increasing number of organizations which have named themselves ‘South Asian’. These movements and actors explicitly strive to erase the borders inherited from Partition, both in the diaspora, as they exhort South Asian immigrants to bridge their differences (and for this they use in particular the entertainment and the ‘art’ arena), and in home-societies

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where their activities attempt at a reconciliation between India and Pakistan. But as said before, they are still overshadowed by the actors of conflictuality.

49 At any rate, as this paper has attempted to show, the perpetuation, or even creation, of differences, generated by the American policy of multiculturalism, can not only affect ‘broad’ ethnic groups (like Koreans vs. African-Americans or Hispanics vs. South Asians) but, given the crucial role of religion in mainstream public space as well as in ethnic identity formation, it can also have an impact on the self-perception and self-definition of sub-groups within larger communities, and create internal group boundaries. The self- conscious blurring of these boundaries, as enacted by a (small) progressive segment of the South Asian population, which gives a new meaning to what is primarily a geographical concept in the Subcontinent, partakes of the same logic: identity construction along community lines and not along individual lines as is (still) strongly advocated in France, albeit with a reverse effect. This tells us of the importance of the local context, in (over)determining the processes of identity (re)construction of ethnic groups in a diasporic context.

50 This study raises another issue, that of religious groups tending to function as ethnic groups, because despite the recognition of religion as an ‘acceptable’ identity marker in the United States (as opposed to France for instance), only ethnicity is officially considered as a valid group categorization (as seen in the census, in lobbying games, and so on). Hence, under the impulse of their respective leaderships, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ have now come to operate almost like ethnic groups, hence endorsing in some ways, reshaping in others the categorizations put in place by the Americans.

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NOTES

1. I thank Jackie Assayag and Christophe Jaffrelot for their highly useful comments on earlier drafts of this article. 2. It seems that Sikhs and Christians are over-represented as compared to their proportion in India. Sikhs are estimated to include 10% of the total Indian population (as against hardly 2% in India) and Christians 5% (as against slightly more than 2% in India) (Fenton 1988: 28). 3. The following figures illustrate the degree of success of Indians in the US: according to the 1990 census, Indian-Americans had an average household income of 60,903 US dollars as against the national median income of 38,885 US dollars. More than 87% of Indians had completed high school and 58% had at least a bachelor degree. Over 5,000 Indians work as faculty members in universities. There are no such figures available for Pakistanis. This is because, as opposed to Indians they do not have a separate classification in the US census (they are listed as ‘others’ in the larger Asian subgroup) but they also have been successful in different fields, in particular medicine, business, and information and technology, albeit less noticeably than Indians. It should however be kept in mind that the number of less privileged Indians and Pakistanis has been growing steadily since the 1980s. 4. In addition to the immediate trigger of the Rodney King verdict (on April 29, 1992, a mostly white jury acquitted four police officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King), there were many other factors cited as reasons for the unrest, including: the extremely high unemployment among residents of South Los Angeles, which had been hit very hard by the nation-wide recession; a long-standing perception that the Los Angeles police engaged in racial profiling and used excessive force, and specific anger over the light sentence given to a Korean shop-owner for the shooting of a young African-American woman. 5. This is in line with movements of revitalization of the religion like the Deobandi movement (Metcalf 1982) on the Muslim side and the VHP on the Hindu side (Jaffrelot 1993). 6. The figure includes mosques built by non-South Asians. 7. I will define ethnic identity as a process of construction or invention which incorporates, adapts and amplifies historical memories, cultural attributes and pre-existing solidarities, in order to create an internal cohesion, and to mark out distinctive cultural territory. This definition is a synthesis of those offered by Brass (1991: 19) and Bodnar (1985: xvi). 8. Indian universities lack facilities for extra-curricular activities and counselling services. This void as been efficiently fulfilled by the RSS, which in turn exerts an influence on students (Mazumdar 2003). 9. It should be noted that the first transnational Hindu institutions in the US were the Vedanta societies, established after Vivekananda participated in the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 (Mazumdar 2003).

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10. It should be however noted that whereas the JI in Pakistan strongly advocates the establishment of an Islamic State, ICNA has eliminated this major point from its agenda. 11. This includes those who may not identify themselves as Indians, like migrants from the Caribbean and from East Africa, but they are nonetheless of Indian origin. At any rate, the VHP uses Hinduism as a bridge to link the immigrants from Britain, Africa, Guyana, Fiji and so on. 12. According to Carol Stone, immigrants from Asia make up 11.5% of the total number of Muslims living in the US as opposed to 30.2% of African-Americans and 28.4% of Arabs (Stone 1991: 28). However, according to the American Muslim Council, a political organization based in Washington, immigrants from South Asia alone make up 24.4% of the total Muslim population, as against 42% of African-Americans and only 12.4% of Arabs (Numan 1992: 16). 13. For more details, see Mohammad-Arif (2002a). 14. As a tax-exempt religio-cultural organization, the VHP-A is officially not supposed to pursue a political agenda; but it does so either indirectly, or through the medium of some officially political organizations, like the FHA for instance (Federation of Hindu Associations) (Kurien 2001). 15. That is not true of African-Americans. 16. Hindus and their temples had been indeed targeted after the bomb attacks. 17. Fieldwork conducted in May 1999 in New York. 18. See Ingrid Therwath in this issue and Mohammad-Arif (2000). 19. However, other studies point out that the Hindutva ideology also has its supporters among recent immigrants who experience economic, social and psychological difficulties (Kurien 2004, Mazumdar 2003). 20. Fieldwork conducted in May 1999 in New York. 21. Despite the fact that in the early 2000s, there had been a tendency to make Hindi films that were ostensibly hostile to Pakistan, like Gadar (2001) and Maa Tujhe Salaam (2001). With the current peace process between India and Pakistan, Indian film directors have stopped making this kind of movies. 22. See http://www.sapac.org/sapacwebpage_files/Page466.htm 23. There was an ‘interesting’ clash between two Indian American expatriates at the latest Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (January 2006), when a representative of the ‘Coalition against Genocide’, Satyanath Chowdary, protested against the presentation of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award to the President of the Federation of Indian Associations, Sudhir Parikh. Chowdary’s contention was that the FIA had planned a procession in honour of Narendra Modi (a Gujarat Gaurav rath yatra) on the streets of New York City if Modi was granted a visa to the US, and hence, as a ‘communally-oriented’ person, Sudhir Parikh did not deserve the award. 24. Tehelka. 2006. in Harsh Kapoor (South Asia Citizen Web), 4 February. 25. More than a hundred of South Asian scholars from across the United States and more than fifty American and international Indologists, as well as secular community organizations and private individuals, wrote to the Board of California, protesting the changes proposed by the Hindutva groups, Harsh Kapoor, 9 March 2006 (South Asia Citizen Web).

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ABSTRACTS

In the process of (re)constructing their identities in an alien society, South Asians have tended to give to religion a significant importance. This salience of religion owes as much to the dislocation and the stigmatization engendered by the migration experience as to the local context, the United States, who, while promoting a policy of multiculturalism, sees religion as an ‘acceptable’ identity marker. Drawing on this process, this article examines the implications on the inter- ethnic relationships, in particular between Hindus and Muslims (both Indian and Pakistani), as two opposite and competing trends are underway: on the one hand, separate, if not confrontational, Hindu and Muslim identities are arising, while on the other hand, a South Asian identity, ignoring the borders of Partition, is shaping up.

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Working for India or against Islam? Islamophobia in Indian American Lobbies

Ingrid Therwath

1 An increasing number of articles on the Indian lobby in Washington have been published in the past 15 years, by the Indian, the American and the Pakistani press. This period coincides with two major events, one at the domestic level and the other at the international level. According to the 1990 US Census, 857,000 Indian Americans resided in the Unites States, more than twice the number a decade before (they were 350,000 in 1980). They were the fifth ethnic community in the US and were already established in the country. Besides, the end of the Cold War and that of a bipolar vision of international relations coincided with the rise of transnational groups and ethnic lobbies as political actors (Ambrosio 2002).1 The Indian lobby developed itself in this context, while India at the same time was witnessing the rise of Hindu nationalism. Now, with the post 9/11 American emphasis on the axis of evil and on the dangers of Islam, it seems the Indian lobby is using Islamophobia as a political strategy. Hence the question: is the Indian American lobby in Washington working for India or against Islam?

2 Of course, this question is deliberately provocative as it could be argued that both positions, pro-India activism and Islamophobia, can be reconciled. Further on the other end Indian American lobbyists claim to focus only on their community in the US and on domestic issues, far from any imported communal agenda. However, fieldwork conducted in New York and in Washington in July and August 2004 revealed virulent streaks of Islamophobia and hostility towards Pakistan amongst professional Indian American lobbyists. While not absolutely systematic, this anti-Muslim sentiment has been prominent in most of the interviews that I conducted. Constituting a population of slightly more than 1 million Hindus (approximately 52.6% of the total population of Indian Americans), the 2000 U.S. Census show that Hindus outnumber Muslims here, although their numerical superiority is not as overwhelming as it is in India. One would therefore expect this repartition to be mirrored in the membership of Indian American lobbies, but none of these pressure groups claiming to work for a multicultural homeland

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in a multicultural environment had Muslim representatives. The fact that South Asian Muslim minorities are said to identify more with coreligionists than with people hailing from the same region of the world further emphasizes a largely anti-Muslim trend among Indian American lobbies. The post-9/11 environment in the US also seems to encourage this antagonism, but on the contrary, the Indo-Pakistani peace process, with its Confidence-Building Measures and ‘hands of friendship’, goes against this rhetoric. The hostility of the Indian American lobbies towards Islam and Pakistan can actually be construed as the result of two separate but complementary processes: the space occupied by ethno-religious minorities in American politics on the one hand, and long-distance nationalism on the other hand. In short, Islamophobia in Indian American lobbies stems from a combination of both contingent and structural factors as well as external and internal causes.

The American factors

3 By no means does globalization negate the local dimension of modern life and a new word, ‘glocalization’, has even been coined to highlight the mingling of the global and the local (Robertson 1992: 173). The same concern over local factors should also be at the core of any reflection on transnational communities. I shall therefore try to root the Islamophobia I encountered in the Indian American lobby to the American context itself.

Indian Americans: Divided we stand?

4 Today, 1,9 million Indian Americans live in the United States. The latest Census data convey a very positive image of a prosperous, young, urban and educated community with an average income higher than that of the national average (Reeves & Bennett 2004). 2 Hence Indian Americans are often presented as a ‘model minority’, a conservative myth opposed by scholars like Daniel Sabbagh, or community activists like Christopher Dumm of the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA) (Sabbagh 2003, Dumm & Jain 2004: 7). However, in spite of residual problems of poverty in the Indian American population, it had long been ‘a minority in making’, ‘seen, rich, but unheard’ and ‘a silent Asian minority’, to borrow titles of scholarly work written in the late 1980s and in the 1990s (Babu 1989, Khagram et al. 2001, Gosine 1990, Segal 1999). Of course, a variety of Indian American associations based on occupation, language, or religion exists. The website www.garamchai.com, designed as an Indian American portal, listed 333 of them spread throughout the American territory, but none of the associations mentioned are overtly political.3 Many explanations have been sought to account for this lack of political visibility: Indian Americans were either more concerned by the accumulation of capital or too divided along religious, caste, linguistic or regional lines. But, although particularly segmented, the Indian American community had not always stayed clear of political involvement.

5 At the beginning of the twentieth century Indians in the U.S. got organized for two causes: the independence of India and the suppression of racial discrimination in America. The pro-independence Ghadar party was formed in San Francisco in 1913, while individual Indians were taking legal action to be considered as Caucasians and claimed thus the American citizenship from 1910 onwards with the United States vs the Bulsara ruling in 1910 and later the Thind case in 1923. Others contested propriety laws excluding

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non-whites from land-ownership. The expulsion by American authorities of 375 Indians on the Japanese ship Komagatu Maru in 1914 gave an additional incentive for political mobilization to the Indian population in the U.S. Finally, India gained independence in 1947 and the McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act) put an end to institutionalized discrimination in 1952. Four years later, the India-born American citizen Dilip Singh Saund became a member of Congress as a representative for the State of California. In the subsequent years and especially after the 1965 immigration wave from India, the number of Indians residing in the US rose significantly. However, despite the growing diversity of Indian associations in the U.S., political lobbying was almost non- existent till the 1970s-1980s, when the Indian government started to instrumentalize its U.S.-based diaspora more aggressively and to hire private lobbyists to air its views in Washington (Guthikonda et al. 1979: 198).4

6 There are now several Indian American organizations involved in lobbying, either at the local community level, or at the national level or to influence foreign policy like the Association of Indians in America (AIA, founded in the mid-1960s), the National Federation of Indian Associations (NFIA, founded in 1971 under a different name), the National Association of Americans of Asian Indian Descent (NAAAID), the Indian American Forum for Political Education (IAFPE, also called the Forum), and the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA, 1993). Two major professional associations, the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origins (AAPI) and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), also devote considerable energy, time and financial resources to political lobbying. The latest addition in this mosaic of pressure groups is the US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC, created in 2001). For the media as well as for lobbyists belonging to other communities, USINPAC has now become the most important organization in terms of membership size (the paid membership amounts to 13,500 persons while another 27,000 are non-paying active members) and access to power centres (with gala events at the Capitol Hill and joint conferences with other influential groups). It even heralds itself as ‘the first and only Indian American political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission’5 and wished to project itself as the legitimate representative of Indian interests in the U.S., as the uncontested voice of a unified community. This, however, could not be further away from the truth.

7 The division of the Indian American community has become almost proverbial over the years. During a visit to the U.S. as Prime minister of India in 2001, Atal Bihari Vajpayee has fustigated the lack of unity in the community and had deplored the fragmentation of associations whose primary goals seemed to have more to do with personal promotion than social work or political lobbying. Professional activists working directly with the India lobby also draw a sorry picture of the constant internal strife. For instance, a young 32-year-old Indian Jewish migrant working for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the most powerful ethnic lobbies in the U.S., is very harsh toward Indian Americans. This deeply patriotic senior fellow in charge of international affairs and Indian-Jewish American relations is extremely critical and says that ‘Indians suck you. You should never work for Indian Americans because they exploit you. They are very individualistic and very poor as a community. There is little close cooperation. Where there is success, there is ego and this is a problem’.6 Fieldwork conducted in New York and Washington reveals two main sources of division among Indian American lobbyists: personal conflicts and generational conflicts. Most of the times, the interviewees have devoted the first half an

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hour of our discussion to condemn other lobbyists and their organization. USINPAC in particular was heavily criticized. It is only after these introductory words of advice against colleagues and competitors that they started to describe their own work. The legislative affairs counsel of USINPAC, a professional lobbyist in her mid-fifties, illustrates the personal conflicts pervading throughout the community organizations and goes as far as evoking a conspiracy theory to explain the criticism faced by USINPAC amongst Indian Americans. According to her, a few of her fellow Indian American lobbyists condemn her work because she was given preference over them in 1993 when Congressman Brown gathered a delegation to visit India. She recalls that: It’s like the ‘usual suspects’. I met all of them on this trip, all the ‘suspects’ and they come back years later to haunt you. I’m speaking about 20 people, who come from the business community—actually from the IT and technology business and no other business—and doctors. They were present during White House events hosted by Hilary Clinton. Now the doctors have gone Republican but not the others. All of them are now heading Indian American associations like IAFPA, NFIA, AIFIA. These organizations were created in the late 1970s-early 1980s as social clubs. Later they took on some political activity. These people have a clout among their own circle because they know some Congressmen. It is an issue of prestige. They donated money just to get pictures, to get the photo-op to increase their business and rise in the Indian American community. They don’t have anything to ask from the politicians, they only claim clout for themselves. So when they look at USINPAC, there is a curiosity and jealousy factor. They can’t or don’t want to connect the money with the issue. It’s just personal promotion.7

8 The second divisive factor is age, now that two generations of Indian Americans are professionally and politically active. Significantly, virulent critics of USINPAC include the 39-year-old President of the Indian American Leadership Initiative (IALI), the 29-year-old Executive Director of the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA) and the 29-year-old founding President of the now defunct South Asians for Kerry (SAKI). They have repeatedly pointed out the generation gap between themselves, born and raised in America, and the ‘uncle and aunties [who] don’t believe in this South Asian thing’8 and who cannot see beyond the India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim communal conflicts. Although the younger generation is now entering the political arena, as Bobby Jindal’s 2004 election to the Congress has revealed, the older Indian Americans are still leading forefront organizations like USINPAC and claim to represent the community as a whole. The older generation of activists seems more influenced by subcontinental conflicts while the younger ones see the advantage of pan-Asianism or at least of South Asian unity and tend to form South Asian organizations in order to address a wider audience. When asked about the founding of SAKI, its President remembered the opposition she encountered in the first generation of immigrants because of ‘a generational gap’. According to her, ‘the Indian community was fascinated by the Kashmir issue. The first generation still carries the memory of Partition’ and ‘the core of their message [talking about USINPAC in particular] is very anti-Muslim’.9 When asked about their Muslim membership, USINPAC leaders seem embarrassed as they did not know the figure. In the end, they come up with a 10-15% estimate, a proportion that corresponds to the general proportion of Muslims in India and they think would hence enhance their representativity. They could not however mention one active Muslim member and none of them was Muslim either. Moreover, none of the 125 private donations made to USINPAC, since its creation, was registered in a Muslim name.10 The USINPAC members I met said they wish to defend India’s positions, oppose Pakistan and told traumatic tales of Islamic fundamentalism. Although a few of them directly experienced Partition, they all seemed to carry its stigma

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and have an Indo-centric approach, by contrast with the younger America-bred activists who focused on South Asian cooperation and local community issues. The generation gap, aggravated by the fact that only 22.7% of Indian Americans were born in the U.S., all in the younger age group of course, provides a potent explanation about the pervading defiance against Islam encountered in USINPAC and other leading organizations. This observation suggests that the former generation of Indian American activists is more prone to long-distance nationalism, and generally to what has been termed ‘Yankee hindtuva’ than the younger lobbyists (Mathew & Prashad 2000). But it can be argued that the American political system provided a safe haven for this long-distance religious nationalism

Ethnicity and religion in the American context

9 Since the end of the Cold War, American policy-makers have been paying unprecedented attention to ethnic minorities and diasporas in the US territory. In December 2000, a report entitled Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts and commissioned by the CIA emphasized this point by stating that ‘increasing migration will create influential diasporas, affecting policies, politics and even national identity in many countries’ and that ‘US foreign priorities will be more transnational’.11 It is not surprising in this context that the Non Resident Indians and People of Indian Origins in the US wished to organize themselves into a lobby and that control over identity definition became a crucial issue. Actually, the ethnic dimension of American foreign policy is not a new phenomenon and Yossi Shain dates ethnic lobbying back to the beginning of Irish immigration after the 1840 famine, while others view 1908 as the landmark for lobbying in the United States (Shain 1999: 12, Mohammad-Arif 2000).12 But, this phenomenon acquired a new momentum after the 1960s and especially after the end of the Cold War, which was regarded as a ‘catalyst’ (Ambrosio 2002). In 1975, more than fifteen years before the fall of the USSR, Glazer and Moynihan had already identified this growing trend in American politics when they wrote that ‘the ethnic composition is the single most important determinant of American foreign history’ (Glazer & Moynihan 1975: 23-24). The abrogation of previous anti-lobbyist regulations in 1976 through the adoption of the Muskie-Conable Bill, which enabled registered charities to devote 1 million dollars every year to political lobbying activities, enabled many affluent groups, including ethnic minorities, to enter the political game (Abélès 2002: 107) and since then this phenomenon amplified. Indeed, in the past twenty years, multiculturalism has encouraged the creation of new ethnic lobbies that have contributed to the conflation of domestic and international issues in America (Ambrosio 2002: 10).13

10 Ethnic lobbies in the U.S. have been widely criticized for introducing external concerns in American domestic politics. Some scholars, like Tony Smith for example, are extremely critical of these groups which are regarded as a foreign hand (Smith 2000). Others, like Yossi Shain, have emphasized their positive contribution to the introduction of democracy and of American values in their countries of origin as they have to adopt the dominant American ideology. Some ethnic lobbyists, worried about accusations of dual allegiance, will even go as far as to deny any sympathies abroad. The Senior Legislative Counsel of USINPAC insists for example that ‘we’re American first. For us, the important issues are domestic issues that have nothing to do with India (…) we do not raise money from India and do not advocate for India’, a statement in sharp contrast with USINPAC’s

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professed mission of bettering the U.S.-India relationship and defending India’s views in the U.S. In any case, whether ethnic lobbies are their home countries’ ambassadors or only domestic actors spreading American values worldwide, both parties agree that ethnic lobbies can be of interest for their home countries as they (sometimes but not always) endorse the views of their home country governments. However much they wish to appear embedded in the American concern, they also ‘often see themselves as representatives of their old country abroad’. In short, they have to accommodate both the American system in which they function and the homeland they wish to defend. After the fall of communism and especially under the Republican administration after the 9/11 attacks, Islam and the values of its most extremist representatives have been constructed as the new enemy of America (Shain 1999: 40). For the Indian American community, endorsing such a view, whether explicitly or implicitly meant acceptance in the American mainstream, while the secular and multi-confessional nature of their home-country demanded a softer approach of Islam. Indeed, the presentation of the Muslim as the absolute Other is at odds with the values of the Indian Constitution and the unease of many Indian American lobbyists about Islam can bee rooted down to this fundamental tension, inherent to the American system.

11 Eventually, another factor has led to an anti-Muslim sentiment amongst the Indian ethnic lobby. Indeed, the American political system favours ethno-religious definitions of identity and religious affiliation. The hostility between the South Asian Muslim and the Hindu communities in the U.S. are generally seen as the backlash of communal tension in India. Unrest in the diaspora after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya seemed to confirm this analysis. However, work conducted in South California, where an important number of Indian Americans reside, by Prema Kurien has emphasized the local nature of this animosity. According to her, the American system implicitly favours a religious definition of identity and which in this particular case influences the construction of ‘Indianness’ along religious lines (Kurien 1997: 2).14 This context enabled hindutva, the extremist Hindu nationalist ideology instigated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its subsidiaries, to become the dominant ideology behind Hindu associations in the U.S, who gave voice to the idea of India as a Hindu Rashtra (a Hindu state). At the same time, Muslim Indians differentiated themselves by defending the secular nature of the Indian state and heralding the values of tolerance propelled by the Indian Constitution. The Indian American lobby in Washington does not endorse the Hindu-Muslim cleavage and should therefore be devoid of this religious dimension. Most groups do not indeed demonize Indian Muslims as it would fragilize their ambitions to speak for the entire community and choose instead to target Pakistan in particular or Islamism at large. The religious polarity in the wider community and the presence of a Hindu nationalist government in India (from 1998 to 2004) during the formative years of this lobby contributed to its anti-Muslim undercurrents. A third element reinforced this tendency: the Indo-Jewish alliance in the United States and the presence of long-distant nationalists in the two communities.

Islamophobia and transnational mobilization

12 As Western host-countries realized that an ever increasing number of foreign refugees or migrants come to their shores, ethnicity gradually became a fundamental factor in differentiating between migrant communities and allocating national resources, through

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positive discrimination for example. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan had already noted it in 1975. Critics and protectionists still currently fear that these migrants bring with them the ethnic strife that often rendered life in their home country difficult. This fear is supported by evidence of communal conflict imported from the homeland (Sheffer 2003: 201). To some extent, the India-Pakistan hostility and the Hindu-Muslim cleavages among South Asian Americans illustrate this. It stems from the nature of migration and from long-distance nationalism fostered by the experience of uprooting.

Long-distance nationalism

13 Many theorists of nationalism have observed the ‘internationalization of nationalism’ to borrow A. D. Smith’s description (Smith 1999: 98). Ernest Gellner for instance devoted a chapter of his book Nations and Nationalism to ‘the nationalism of diaspora’, which he identifies as ‘the third variant of nationalism’ concerning a minority group, whether ethnic or not, in a host country (Gellner 1989). But Benedict Anderson’s definition of long-distance nationalism really constitutes a landmark in theoretical thinking. He uses this concept as a counter-argument to the idea that the rise of transnational groups had made nationalism obsolete (Anderson 1992: 4). On the contrary, he argues that this peculiar kind of nationalism breeds upon migration, mass communication and ethnicity: The vast migrations produced over the past 150 years by the market, as well as war and political oppression, have profoundly disrupted a once seemingly ‘natural’ coincidence of national sentiment with lifelong residence in fatherland or motherland. In this process ‘ethnicities’ have been engendered which follow nationalisms in complex and often explosive ways (…). It may well be that we are faced here with a new type of nationalist: the ‘long-distance nationalist’ one might perhaps call him. For while mechanically a citizen of the state in which he comfortably lives, but to which he may feel little attachment, he finds it tempting to play identity politics by participating (via propaganda, money, weapons, any way but voting) in the conflicts of his imagined Heimat—now only fax-time away. But these citizenshipless participation is inevitably non-responsible—our hero will not have to answer for, or pay the price of, the long-distance politics he undertakes. He is also easy prey for shrewd political manipulators in his Heimat (Anderson 1992: 10, emphasis added)

14 In the last twenty years, South Asian communities in diaspora have been particularly prone to long-distance nationalism and one can easily recall the Sikh diaspora’s support to the Khalistani project and the Tamil diaspora’s support to the LTTE rebellion. In a way, the Ghadar Party partook of the same logic. Several factors contribute to the assumption that the first generation of Indian Americans, who became involved in politics in the 1980s and 1990s, do so as long-distance nationalists and tenets of foreign hindutva, either because of the psychological trauma caused by migration or by the necessity to define themselves in migration by opposition with an essentialized Other. Ashis Nandy favours the first explanation and links long-distance nationalism amonsgt NRIs and PIOs to the insecuriy resulting from uprootedness, cultural alienation and a minority position. Endorsing the cause of India and identifying with Hindu nationalism for instance and its demonization of Islam could then be interpreted as ‘a symbolic redress of cultural defeat’ (Nandy 2000: 127-50, 164-170) and ‘compensatory gratification’ (Rajagopal 2001: 47). Most specialists of diasporas or of Indian Americans in particular, like Walker Conner, Paramatama Saran, Philip J. Leonhard-Spark and Monisha Das Gupta, follow this

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psychological explanation and emphasize the migrant’s emotional need for a national sentiment (Conner 1986: 16, Saran & Eames 1980: 170, Das Gupta 1997).

15 However, post-1965 Indian migrants to the U.S. have now secured a comfortable position in the American middle to upper class and are widely acknowledged as a successful and hardworking group. Many of them have sought to assimilate in the American mainstream and have acquired U.S citizenship. Their defiance towards Islam and their leaning towards the Sangh Parivar and its overseas network cannot therefore be attributed solely to an emotional instability. According to Frederic Barth’s interactionist theory of ‘ethnicity boundaries’, developed in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: the Social Organization of Cultural Difference, an ethnic group is not primarily defined by its primordial characteristics but by what differentiates it from other groups. Differences with other social groups matter more than similarities among the members of an ethnicity and the identification of an Other serves as an identity marker (Barth 1969). Hindutva, with its distancing of the Muslim community as foreign invaders, provided a potent ideology for Indian Americans in search of a separate identity since the late 1970s. Indeed, they lobbied for the creation of a separate entry in the Census and were listed as ‘Asian Indians’ for the first time in 1980, before being officially labeled ‘Indian Americans’ in the 1990s (Sabbagh 2003). Moreover the constitution of the Indian American lobbies coincided with the rise of hindutva in India. The frequent visits of Indian dignitaries in the U.S. and the rapid rise of the instrumentalization of the Internet towards this end, with the creation of websites like www.hinduunity.org, a pro-hindutva and Muslim-bashing umbrella site based in Queens and Long Island, further fuelled ‘Yankee hindutva’.

16 The scandal about the funds of the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) in September 2003 brought to light the Sangh Parivar’s international networks and the participation of the Indian diaspora, and mostly of Indian Americans, in the Hindu nationalist project. Indeed, a report showed with ample evidence that the IDRF, a tax- exempt charity based in Maryland, had channelled money to projects headed by the RSS or its subsidiaries in India.15 While many donors, whether individuals or corporate had unwittingly participated in this extremist project, the IDRF scandal however revealed the extent of pro-hindutva sympathies among Indian Americans. After all, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (Hindu World Council, the religious branch of the Sangh Parivar) had opened its branch in the U.S. in as early as 1970, while the IDRF had been created in 1989 two years before the Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party (OBJP). In the 1990s, Sangh subsidiaries flourished on American university campuses and numerous websites based in America broadcasted the hindutva ideology. Of course, the younger generation of ABCD (American-Born Confused Desis) has been particularly targeted by nationalist student organizations who adopted a very didactic approach with summer camps and Hindi classes for beginners, while ‘many of the uncles and aunties belong or have sympathies for the OBJP’ as remarked the President of IALI, who wished to differentiate himself from long-distance nationalism. Anyhow, the fact that the Legislative Assistants of Congressman Joseph Crowley and Congressman Joe Wilson (the two co-chairs of the India Caucus) never mention and never work with Indian Muslims, while they maintain frequent contacts with the Indian American lobbies, further hints at the penetration of a largely Hindu-bias in the Indian American political representation. However, the fear of the Muslim projected as the irredeemable Other could not have crept into the rhetoric of leading Indian American lobbyists had it not been supported by the American system,

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which increasingly considers ethno-religious affiliations as potent modes of political representations.

From Kashmir to Palestine: the Indo-Jewish nexus

17 It was only natural for the Indian American lobby to look at the Jewish lobby for guidance as a model of political action. Indian Americans wished to emulate the strength of the American Jewish lobby and Kumar P. Barve, the first Indian American holding office since Dalip Singh Saund’s election to the Congress 1956, sums this interest up by stating that ‘Indian Americans see the American Jewish community as a yardstick against which to compare themselves. It’s seen as a gold standard in terms of political activism.’16 However, in spite of the Jewish lobby’s position as the most prominent ethnic lobby in the U.S., this rapprochement is a recent phenomenon very much linked to long-distance nationalism in the two communities and to the rise of hindutva in India.

18 The Sangh Parivar itself encouraged such an alliance and hoped it would become an anti- Muslim front. According to Vijay Prashad, a leftist academic settled in the U.S., the Indo- Jewish friendship in America is very much linked to the rise of right-wing nationalists, personified by Sharon and Advani, in Israel and in India. He attributes it to the ‘Global Right’ and to ‘the entente between India and Israel, between Hindutva and Sharonism in the shadow of US imperialism’ (Prashad 2003: 4-5, 7). Of course, K.B. Hedgewar, the founding father of the RSS, and Veer Savarkar, the author of the 1923 pamphlet Hindutva. Who is a Hindu?, professed their admiration for Nazism and Fascism and wished to import the idea of a Final Solution to the Muslim Indian community. However, the Sangh Parivar soon distanced itself with this embarrassing position and sought on the contrary to embrace the Jewish community, seen as a model of financial strength and nation- building. The New Jew, a strong and young man, fighting for an independent nation surrounded by hostile Muslim countries was an attractive image for the Sangh, an organization aspiring at the moral, physical and religious rejuvenation of a Hindu India. Besides, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Palestinian terrorism provided a tempting parallel for the Hindu-Muslim communal tension and Kashmiri militancy in the eyes of Sangh activists. Many BJP and Bajrang Dal leaders have thus spoken highly of Jews and Israel. The Indo-Israel friendship was subsequently supported by the BJP government. This new friendship was of course encouraged by the Indian government seeking to ally itself with Israel, for strategic and military purposes. An influential Jewish American defense lobbyist and the director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) works frequently with the Indian American community and was one of the first professional lobbyist to be interested in India. He recalls his first visit there in 1997 and says that ‘General J. F. R Jacob [an Indian Jewish general famous for his victory over Pakistani forces in the 1971 war and for having been the BJP’s security adviser] hosted a party at his house, where we met BJP officials including Jaswant Singh [Minister of External Affairs and then of Finance during the second term of the BJP]. Here the State Department only said ‘Congress’ and the Congress said that the BJP were extremists. But Jacob said they were important and had a chance in the elections. They actually helped increase the relationship with Israel (…) Also, Madhav (Monu) Nalapat [an academic who has been directly involved in the India-China and the India-Us-Israel talks] helped. He is Muslim but he is also a friend of Murli Manohar Joshi [a prominent BJP and RSS leader].’17 The involvement of the BJP in India and of the Sangh Parivar abroad in the Indo-Jewish

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diasporic friendship led to the creation of what was perceived as an anti-Muslim front in the U.S.

19 The Internet proved to be a potent instrument of long-distance nationalism, which, as Benedict Anderson pointed out, feeds upon mass communications. In June 2001, the New York Times journalist Dean E. Murphy could therefore write that ‘Two Unlikely Allies Come Together in Fight Against Muslims’. Indeed, the site www.hinduunity.org was supported by the extremist U.S. followers of the late Rabbi David Kahane, who wanted to throw the Arabs out of Israel (Prashad 2003: 73).18 When the website of the Bajrang Dal featuring a hitlist was closed down by the American authorities, the Hatvika Jewish Identity Center came to its rescue and put it back on the Internet. Now that it is back online, the pro-hindutva website has posted links to several extremist Jewish organizations under the subtitle ‘Israel Forever’. Recently another Hindu nationalist site posted by an Indian resident and entitled Israel Storm (this site no longer exists) exposed Muslim atrocities in Israel and Kashmir and extolled Indian citizens to elect anti-Muslim leaders.19 Indeed, this alliance thrives on Islamophobia as a linking factor between the two communities and the hindtuva sites often compare Kashmir to Palestine. For instance, Rohit Vyasmaan, an activist involved in maintaining the Hindu Unity website, was quoted in the New York Times saying ‘We are fighting the same war (…) Whether you call them Palestinians, Afghans or Pakistanis, the root of the problem for Hindus and Jews is Islam’. 20 Moreover, the hindutva ideology rose in India at the time when the Indian American lobbies were getting organized and certainly permeated its way through its opinion about Islam. All the more so that the BJP government encouraged the Indo-Jewish official and diasporic entente.

20 The 9/11 attacks provided another pretext for the reactivation of long-distance nationalism in Indian American lobbies and for anti-Muslim ravings. Not surprisingly, the Kashmir-Palestinian parallel is being invoked again, in a way reminiscent of the hindutva websites, while the Internet is acknowledged as a political media. The following conversation among USINPAC members exemplifies this anti-Muslim hindutva penchant: Senor Legislative Counsel (SLC): ‘I joined USINPAC because I was blown away by 9/11. I could have been there. After that, I saw the US-India relationship from the point of view of strategic affairs and defence issue. But I have no personal gains in this. A unique perspective and voice that has to be brought to bear. My father worked at 33, Liberty Plaza and I had so many meetings at the World Trade Center. It changed everything for me. I knew people in the Pentagon who could have died.’ Director Media and Communications (DMC): ‘I know five people who had really close calls. And one of my close friends suffered severe burns.’ SLC: ‘The World Trade Center is where we used to hang out, there was a Barnes & Nobles and we spent a lot of time there. There are many people like that at USINPAC. For this reason, terrorism is one of our highest issues, even for the second generation.’ DMC: ‘I am a Gujarati from Bombay and I came to the US nine years ago. Because of all this, NRIs, Indians and PIOs are scared to travel. There are jihadi websites that target us. It’s impossible to go anywhere!’ SLC: ‘At the same time, India-Israel ties made sense after 9/11. After that, we see the connections. They (the terrorists) got to work together!’ DMC: ‘I have a friend who did a PhD in Israel, at the Wiseman Institute. There are actually many Indians in Israel.’ SLC: ‘Sanjay’s [Sanjay Puri, the director and founder of USINPAC] family came from Lahore originally but they were thrown out during Partition. Half of his family died. It was a bloodbath. They finally settled in Ahmedabad. With 9/11, the same thing happened here. His personal bond with the AJC [American Jewish Committee] and

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AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is because of that. He really reached out to create a coalition for that one issue - terrorism. Hence the importance of educating people of this issue. One of the reasons USINPAC came together is because of 9/11 not because it is an instrument for their members’ ego or agenda. They joined out of fear and helplessness.’ Intern: ‘For the second generation, that (…) 9/11 (…) created a link between the World Trade Center and Kashmir. It’s the same kind of people who did it, the same kind of ideology.’

21 These three interviewees belong to different generations of Indian Americans and have a very different degree of familiarity with the lobbying game. The Senior Legislative Counsel of USINPAC is a middle-aged professional lobbyist, while the Director of Media and Communications is a younger civil servant with less experience and the intern a twenty-something graduate belonging to the second generation of Indian Americans. None of them have been directly exposed to Islamic terrorism and yet they link Partition, friendship with the Jewish lobby, the 9/11 attacks and the Kashmiri insurgency to Islamic terrorism, which henceforth becomes the absolute evil against which different communities have to unite. President Bush’s idea of an ‘axis of evil’ once again gave some legitimacy to this analogical thinking three years after the 9/11 attacks. Thus fighting terrorism, more than working for development, has become the core issue for the vast majority of Indian American lobbies. Even AAPI has turned to terrorism as one of its main concerns and addressed it along with healthcare issues, philanthropy and the India-U.S. relationship at its 20th annual convention held in Chicago in June 2002. A report prepared by AAPI in March 2002 and entitled India-U.S. Relations in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001, also put Kashmir and Palestine at the same level as instances of communal conflict with remarks such as ‘the thinking goes that if U.S. can bomb Afghanistan, Israel can bomb Palestinian hideouts, why can’t India bomb the terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir or in Pakistan!’.21 The Kashmir-Palestinian equivalence is certainly not derived from an official Indian position. On the contrary, the similarity between the two regions is being used by the Muslim Hurriyat Conference to pressurize the Indian government to evacuate Kashmir in the way Israel evacuated Gaza.22 The parallel between Palestine and Kashmir is therefore not essentially anti-Muslim and can on the contrary be instrumentalized to further the Muslim Kashmiri cause. The Islamophobia among Indian Americans, their focus on terrorism and their conflation of Palestine and Kashmir has to be understood as a by-product of the American dominant political rhetoric and of Jewish and Hindu long-distance nationalisms.

Conclusion

22 Several questions arise from the observation that the Indian American lobbies have a tendency to identify Islam as the irredeemable Other. To begin with, what is the influence of this hostility on inter-communal relations in the U.S.? Moreover, do the Indian American lobbies really influence the American foreign policy towards Muslim countries and Pakistan in particular? The answers to both interrogations go beyond the scope of this article. However, the Indo-Jewish nexus in Washington, the Congressional Caucus on India and the Indian Americans do target Pakistan as a primary concern of U.S. foreign policy. This anti-Muslim streak has also permeated the political position of many Congressmen, who tend to lump together Israel and India’s concerns. The space devoted to the Indian American lobby in the press tends to give it undue importance in the

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process of political decision-making. Of course, the actual power of this lobby needs to be carefully accessed but measuring influence is an elusive task. Islamophobia amongst Indian American lobbyists indicates that they try to gain influence by aligning themselves with what they perceive as the mainstream American discourse. On the other hand, one can wonder if this strategy will prove fruitful in a country that is increasingly critical of overly sectarian positions. Indeed, the recent sales of F-16 planes to Pakistan and the Pakistan-U.S. friendship since 2001 clearly indicate the limited influence of the Indian American Islamophobia and the Indian American lobbies. Eventually, the Indian American lobbies in Washington and the pro-hindutva expatriates tell only one side of the Indian diaspora story in the U.S. There are many groups and publications, like Promise of India or Samar, which are fighting communalism. The recent scandal about the controversial Indian Chief Minister Narendra Modi reveals the oppositions and the diversity of the Indian American community. Narendra Modi, often exposed as the instigator of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, had been denied his visa to the U.S. where he had been invited by the AAHOA-New York. The American authorities had refused the India official the right to set foot on its territory thanks to the action taken by several groups, including Indian Americans fighting for secularism. A three-fold conclusion can be drawn from this episode: firstly, Islamophobia is far from being a consensual view among Indian Americans, secondly academically-oriented secular activists both on the West and on the East coast can sometimes counter the work of New York or Washington-based ethnic lobbies, and finally the idea of India is still fiercely debated among the diaspora.

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Shain, Yossi (1999) Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the U.S. and Their Homelands, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sheffer, Gabriel (2003) Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Smith, Anthony David (2001) Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Smith, Tony (2000) Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy, Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press.

USINPAC: http://www.usinpac.com

PRIMARY SOURCES

Reports

Embassy of the United States of America (2004) ‘People, Progress, Partnership: the Transformation of US-India Relations’, in People, Progress, Partnership: the Transformation of US- India Relations, New Delhi.

Federal Election Commission, ‘Individuals Who Gave to this Committee’, http:// query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_ind/C00381699

Bothra, Raj (ed.) (2002) ‘India-U.S. Relations in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001’, American Associations of Physicians from India, www.ccsindia.org/indous.pdf

National Foreign Intelligence Board (National Intelligence Council/ Central Intelligence Agency) (2000) Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts, http:// www.cia.gov/cia/reports/globaltrends2015.

Sabrang Communications Private Limited (Mumbai) and The South Asia Citizens Web (France) (2002), The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Founding of Hindutva, www.stopfundinghate.com

Newspaper articles

‘Geelani Compares Kashmir with Palestine Dispute’, The Kashmir Times, 20 August 2005, http:// www.kashmirtimes.com/

Cooperman, Alan ‘India, Israel Interests Team Up’, The Washington Post, 19 July 2003, http:// www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13526-2003Jul18?language=printer.

Murphy, Dean E., ‘Unlikely Allies Come Together in Fight Against Muslims’, New York Times, 2 June 2001, p. 1.

Interviews

President of South Asians for Kerry (SAKI) (2004). Interview by author, 3 August, New York.

Senior Fellow—International Affairs & Indian-Jewish American Relations (2004). Interview by author, 6 August, Washington.

Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) (2004). Interview by author, 6 August, Washington.

Executive Director of the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA) (2004). Interview by author, 9 August, Washington.

Legislative affairs counsel of USINPAC (2004). Interview by author, 10 August, Washington.

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NOTES

1. I wish to adopt Thomas Ambrosio’s definition of ethnic lobbies as political organizations established along cultural, ethnic, religious, or racial lines that seek to directly and indirectly influence U.S. foreign policy in support of their homeland and/or ethnic kin abroad. 2. 63,25% of Indian Americans are 35 year old or under, while only 51,12% of the total U.S. population is under 35. 83,37% of Indian Americans hold a university degree, compared to only 33,24% of the total population. 97,70% of Indian Americans live in urban areas, whereas it is only the case for 79% of Americans. Besides the median income among Indian American families is more than 20 000$ higher than the median income in non-Hispanic White families. 3. http://www.garamchai.com/desiassc.htm and http://www.garamchai.com/ indassc.htm#Arkansas. The total number of association is however supposedly much higher and this listing only mentions associations using the electronic media. 4. According to a directory published in 1979, there were 200 Indian American associations in the country. 5. From the home page of USINPAC: http://www.usinpac.com. 6. Senior Fellow – International Affairs & Indian-Jewish American Relations, interview with the author, 6 August 2004, Washington. 7. Legislative affairs counsel of USINPAC, interview with the author, 10 August 2004, Washington. 8. Executive Director of the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA), interview with the author, 9 August 2004, Washington. 9. President of South Asians for Kerry (SAKI), interview with the author, 3 August 2004, New York. 10. ‘Individuals Who Gave to this Committee’, Federal Election Commission, http:// query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_ind/C00381699 11. National Foreign Intelligence Board (National Intelligence Council/ Central Intelligence Agency), Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts, December 2000, pp. 1-85, 11, 18, http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/globaltrends2015. Besides, the importance of the Indian American community in particular is highlighted in: Embassy of the United States of America People, Progress, Partnership: the Transformation of US-India Relations, New Delhi, India, 2004, 127p. 12. ‘The genealogy of ethnic involvement in U.S. foreign policy should be traced back to the first time this British orientation resulting from the glorification of the Anglo-Saxon race was confronted and challenged.’ 13. Thomas Ambrosio uses the term ‘intermestic’. 14. ‘Religion in this country comes to sustain immigrant ethnicity’. 15. Sabrang Communications Private Limited (Mumbai) and The South Asia Citizens Web (France), The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Founding of Hindutva, 20 November 2002, 87p., www.stopfundinghate.com 16. Alan Cooperman, ‘India, Israel Interests Team Up’, The Washington Post, 19 July 2003, http:// www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13526-2003Jul18?language=printer. Interestingly, the integral text of this article features on the website of the Hindu Vivek Kendra, a Sangh Parivar outlet: http://www.hvk.org 17. Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), interview with the author, 6 August 2004, Washington. 18. Dean E. Murphy, ‘Two Unlikely Allies Come Together in Fight Against Muslims’, New York Times, 2 June 2001, p. 1.

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19. In a private electronic correspondence, the webmaster, who remained anonymous, wrote that ‘This site was inspired by the www.masada2000.org website. Yes, truth hurts but that’s the way it is. I have never met a Jew in all my life sitting in India. But I am hugely interested in their culture and customs. Would love to go to the holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel sometime’ [sic]. Anonymous, hello. [electronic message], to: Ingrid Therwath, 14 August 2004 [personal message]. 20. Dean E. Murphy, op. cit. 21. Raj Bothra (ed.), India-U.S. Relations in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001, American Associations of Physicians from India, 22 March 2002. Available on www.ccsindia.org/indous.pd 22. ‘Geelani Compares Kashmir with Palestine Dispute’, The Kashmir Times, 20 August 2005, http://www.kashmirtimes.com/

ABSTRACTS

In the past few years, the Indian American community has gained an unprecedented visibility in the international arena. It is indeed often projected as a model community and now constitutes growing and influential ethnic lobbies in Washington. But, in the face of its sheer division, Islamophobia did provide a unifying force sometimes bigger than the interest of Indian Americans or of their country of origin. Other factors can also be summoned. Among them, a leniency of many post-1965 migrants towards Hindu nationalist ideology and the wish to align with Jewish pressure groups in the context of the war against terrorism and to further the India- Israel-US strategic partnership play a major role in explaining Islamophobic overtones in the Indian American lobbies.

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