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CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH ON PEOPLE OF INDIAN ORIGIN IN CANADA Norman Buchignani Department of Anthropology University of Lethbridge Lethbridge, Atlanta, Canada The year 1988 marks the eighty-fourth year of Indian settlement in Canada. Once a small, isolated community in British Columbia, Indo-Canadians and their descendants now number at least 200,000, and may be as many as 250,000.1 Indians are the largest component of peoples of South Asian origin in Canada, whose population at present is about 380,000.2 They are presently one of Canada's most rapidly growing ethnocultural populations.3 I would like to take this opportunity to review the present status of academic research on Indians in Canada.4 The discussion is divided into six parts. In the first, I briefly outline the historical development of research on Indians in Canada. The second part is devoted to research on the history of Indo-Canadians. Parts three and four focus on the analysis of immigration and contemporary Indo-Canadian life, respectively. Part five covers research done on social issues and inter-group relations. Part six deals briefly with Indo-Canadian and South Asian studies in Canada. These sections are followed by a concluding assessment of the future prospects for research on Indians in Canada. The Historical Development of Studies on Indians in Canada Roughly 5,200 Indian immigrants arrived in British Columbia, Canada from 1904 to 1908.5 Approximately 80-85% were Sikhs, who had come either from Hong Kong or Punjab. Most of the rest were Muslim and Hindu Punjabis. In response to local anti-Asian feelings and the British government's concerns about the possible rise of 'seditious' activities among overseas Indians, the Canadian government banned Indian immigration in 1908. There was little academic concern with this small Pacific Coast community during the time when it was becoming established. The result is that whatever early literature we have on Indians is broadly of three kinds: folk discussions in newspapers and magazines, government reports, and written commentaries by Indian immigrants SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 38 (1), March 1989 72 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN about their plight in Canada. This literature is quite extensive6, but primarily useful as historical data rather than as studied analysis. Indian immigration was virtually banned from 1908 to 19477. After World War I, community life consequently stabilized, local ra cial hostility toward Sikhs decreased precipitously, and Indians vanished from the public spotlight. As a result, even secondary literature from the period 1919-47 is very sketchy. However, this period does mark the rise of some formal research—a handful of studies of immigrant adaptation (Das 1923; Ch'eng 1931; Smith 1944) and of Indian immigration and Canadian politics (Morse 1935, 1936; Reid 1941). Work produced from 1947 to 1970 is not very substantial. During this period, Canadian racial immigration barriers were systematically dismantled, with the result that the Indian population of Canada increased from a few thousand to 67,000 in 1971. Early immigrants had been almost all Sikhs, but people arriving in the 1950's and 1960's came from an increasingly diverse range of ethnic and religious backgrounds. They soon began to establish new communities across the country. Most of these developments were completely ignored by the research community of the time. From this period we have only several studies of Sikh settlements in British Columbia (Mayer 1959; Button 1964; Lowes 1952; Munday 1953) and a few others on Indian settlements elsewhere (Pannu 1970; Pereira 1971; Chawla 1971). In truth, there was nothing approaching an academic literature on Indians in Canada until the past decade. Since 1970, though, several factors have exponentially increased research activity in this area. One is the rise of public consciousness of Indian immigrants and issues concerning them. The overall Indo-Canadian population increased by more than four times between 1971 and 1981. This led to the rapid rise of Indian communities across the country where none had existed before and to dramatic increases in the size of those communities that were established earlier. Sikhs remained by far the largest Indian group (representing 120-130,000, or over one-half of all Indians in Canada today), and by 1980 substantial Sikh communities were established in virtually every city from British Columbia to Quebec.8 Nevertheless, many new communities were formed by comparatively new immigrant groups such as Hindi-speaking (25,000) and Punjabi-speaking (6,000) North Indians, Gujaratis (20,000), Bengalis (5,000), Tamils (5,000) and Malayalees (3,000). Other communities were formed by immigrants with ultimate origins in India who came from Fiji (15,000), East Africa (30,000, chiefly Ismailis and Sikhs), South Africa (2,000), Guyana PEOPLE OF INDIAN ORIGIN IN CANADA 73 (25,000), and Trinidad (25,000). At present, small numbers of people in Canada represent every state and large ethnocultural or religious group in India, and virtually every outpost of the Indian diaspora. Indian immigrants' settlement has generally proceeded very smoothly, due in no small part to the highly selective nature of this immigrant flow: about three-quarters of all post-World War II Indian immigrants have been highly educated and skilled. However, one immediate result of large scale Indian immigration in the 1970's and 1980's was the short-term rise of anti-Indian prejudice and dis - crimination, and the perception of Indian settlement in social problem terms.9 Both were a significant impetus to research. So also was the rise of the Canadian policy of multiculturalism (established in 1971), programmes of which have thereafter continuously supported research, academic conferences, and the like on Indians in Canada. A third factor was a dramatic increase in the number of Indo-Canadian social scientists and graduate students; I would estimate that well over half of the recent literature has been generated by such people. Today, there are about five hundred articles and books which in part or whole represent serious research on South Asians in Canada; of these, roughly 80% concern Indians specifically. It is a literature which is now comparable in size with that on much larger Canadian ethnocultural populations such as Italians and Germans. At the same time, it is a body of research that suffers the obvious limitations and lack of unity of a new field. It is an amalgam of a wide variety of interests and disciplinary orientations, as illustrated in subsequent sections. Historical Research on Indians in Canada The historical literature on Indians in Canada is by far the most coherent and well-developed body of research dealing with this eth- nocultural population. This is particularly true of formal chronological history involving Indians. Such historical work began with Morse's (1935, 1936) attempt to sort out the political and international consequences of early Sikh settlement. His work was greatly limited by his inability to reach sealed archival material in Canada, Britain and India. This deficiency was not rectified until the last fifteen years, when more extensive research of the same sort was carried out by Andracki (1958), Ward (1973), Dodd (1972), Ferguson (1975), Bhatti (1974), Lal (1976), Johnson (1979, 1987) and Buchignani and Indra (1981a; ;1985).10 Much of this work deals with 74 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN Canadian, British and Indian government reactions to Indians as immigrants, or with Sikh protests against the immigration restric tions imposed in 1908. The early rise of the Ghadar revolutionary movement among Sikhs in British Columbia (1912-1914) had significant international political consequences in India, the United States and Southeast Asia. Recent research on Ghadar based on Canadian, American and Indian archival materials has greatly augmented our knowledge of this movement, as well as of relations between Canada, Britain and the British Indian government concerning Indians in Canada (Singh and Singh 1966; Deol 1969; Bose 1965; Buchignani and Indra 1981a; Mathur 1970; Josh 1970, 1977-8; Hil-liker 1980). The social history of Indians in Canada is considerably less developed. While it is now possible to piece together the minute se- quence of events concerning, say, the 1908 ban on immigration, we know comparatively little about Indian family and community life in Canada during 1904-45. The key exception has been the work co-authored by Buchignani and Indra (1985), which developed a historical picture of the small, mostly male British Columbia community based on oral history. In addition, Johnson (1987) has recently made a careful analysis of the demographic make up of the early Sikh community, which shows clearly the effects of a high rate of chain migration: virtually all were adult men, some 80% of immigrants were from Doaba (mostly from Jullunder and Hoshiarpur), 85% were Sikhs and over 80% were Jats. There are several other historical avenues which have not been well explored. One is the application of comparative sociological race relations theory to the situation of Indians during this historical era.11 Moreover, Indians were then establishing themselves all around the world, where they always faced some form of racial prejudice and discrimination. There has been almost no integration of Canadian findings into worldwide historical Indian migration.12 Also, Sikhs of that era showed a remarkable capacity for maintaining their ethnic and religious heritage, but rather little is known about how these people combatted acculturation (Dhami 1969). Immigration and Migration Most Indo-Canadians are immigrants who have come to Canada since 1972. Immigration and settlement are consequently key phenomena in the Indo-Canadian experience. A number of studies have tried to describe the complex process of immigration, PEOPLE OF INDIAN ORIGIN IN CANADA 75 settlement and consequent community-building (Buchignani 1977b; Chadney 1984; Adams 1977; Pereira 1971; Morah 1974; Nasser-Bush 1973; Moudgill 1977; Dossa ;1985).

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