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UNiVERSIT'r'OF HAWXff LIBRARY--,~ -_. __ - MISS INDIA USA 2001: FLEXffiLE PRACTICES, CREATNE CONSUMPTION, AND TRANSNATIONALITY IN INDIAN AMERICA A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DNISION OF THE UNNERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ANTHROPOLOGY DECEMBER 2002 By Kalindi Vora Thesis Committee: Christine Yano, Chairperson Geoffrey White Sankaran Krishna © Copyright 2002 by Kalindi Vora III Acknowledgments I thank Dhannatma Saran of the Indian Festival Committee for welcoming me to observe the Miss India USA pageant and to speak with contestants. Laura Clawson graciously offered her assistance during my fieldwork, for which I am grateful. I also thank those who had constructive input into this project: Nathan Camp, Heather Diamond, and Himanee Gupta. My gratitude also to Mary Gale and Nisheeth Vora, who assisted with editing. iv Abstract In Miss India USA, an event that represents Indian ethnicity as imagined by the mainstream Indian community, we can find a representation of the true dynamic processes of self-definition that are occurring in Indian America. By looking for evidence that the 'ideal' of Miss India USA is a construction based on the interests of what turns out to be only one voice among many in the community, we can start to look for evidence of other voices in the pageant. These are revealed in the ways that contestants fail to meet the ideal of 'Miss India USA' and instead perform other versions ofIndian identity on stage. This thesis argues that discussions of the transnational Indian community as a diaspora homogenize it in a way that hides alternate forms of Indian identity that themselves share transnational affiliations besides those of the mainstream community highlighted by the notion of 'diaspora.' Miss India USA reveals that individuals in diaspora utilize transnational affiliations to create a multiplicity of identities that can only be understood in the context ofboth these particular affiliations and the locality of the individual. New enunciations of race and ethnicity in the context ofAmerica are found in Miss India USA, as are practices of flexible citizenship by contestants who wish to use their cultural capital of 'Indian-ness' to access transnational career opportunities. This thesis argues that by recognizing diaspora as constituted by multiple practices of creativity and flexibility with both ideological and material capital, the nature of events like Miss India USA 2001 as sites of multiple Indian identities and the transnational ties that constitute them can be acknowledged as part of a diaspora. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments...... IV Abstract........ V Chapter 1: Introduction.............. 1 Miss India USA and Diaspora Membership........................................... 7 Methods.................................................................................... 13 'Place' That is Both Transnational and Local......................................... 16 Chapter 2: Who Are Indians in America?: Immigration, the Second Generation, and American's 'Common Sense' of Race.............................. 24 South Asians in America................................................................. 26 Post-1965 South Asian Immigration and Identity... 29 Multiculturalism and Fundamentalism................................................. 31 Racial Formation & South Asians in a Fluctuating 'Asian America' 36 Self-definitions ofRace and Ethnicity in the Indian Community...... 44 Chapter 3: Staging the Community: Miss India USA.............................. 50 Miss India USA........................................................................... 52 Reading the Community Behind Miss India USA.................................... 59 Contestations............................................................................... 65 Citizenship and Transnational Capital(s)........................... 71 Chapter 4: Transnationality and the Discourse of Indian Femininity. .. ....... ... 77 Miss India USA and the Discourse of the Indian Woman........ 79 Women and the Discourse ofIndian-ness............................................. 80 Indian-ness and Western-ness............................................... 84 VI Bollywood and the Discourse of the 'Indian Woman'............................... 86 Miss World in India.................................................................... 88 Miss India USA 2001.................................................................. 92 Transnational Affiliation and Dislocating the 'Indian Woman'................. 95 Chapter 5: New Cultural Forms, Affiliations, and the Materials of Diaspora... 100 Cultural Production Amongst the Second Generation: The 'Desi Party' Scene.. 102 The Desi Party Scene..................................................................... 104 The Persistence of Gender and Class.. .. ..... ... .. ... .. ..... .. ......... ..... .. ... ..... 110 Material Diaspora: The Creativity of Production and Consumption............... 115 American Consumption oflndo-Chic.................. 118 Chapter 6: Conclusion....................................................................... 124 Flexible and Creative Practices with the Materials of Diaspora..................... 130 References Cited............................................................................... 134 VII Chapter 1 Introduction The Miss India USA pageant is an event that invokes two nations in its otherwise standard pageant title. 'India' and 'America' are used to name this event in a way that presents it as the face of America's Indian diaspora community, while implying that the pageant is a combination of two otherwise distinct and individually pure entities. The title "Miss India USA" foregrounds India, the "USA" attached as the pageant's location, suggesting that there may be other Miss Indias in other places. Each year this pageant is held in the vicinity of one of the nation's large Indian communities; for example, past events have taken place in New York City, Edison, New Jersey, Miami, and San Jose, California. As venues of popular culture, beauty pageants like Miss India USA are not an area of traditional academic interest, even in anthropology, where cultural performances are a favored site of ethnographic research. However, because a pageant stages a community, it puts that community's ideals on display. Ethnic beauty pageants in particular provide a rich source for cultural anthropology, as they add material to current discussions of how to approach ethnicity and nationalisms outside the limits of the nation-state model. All of this makes beauty pageants a particularly productive point from which to enter into discussion of the politics of community identity, as well as transnational identities, and how these are represented on a public stage. In addition to producing an ideal, as performances, pageants like Miss India USA reveal spontaneous and often unconscious contestations to the imagined community ideal. These self- 1 conscious and unselfconscious contestations, together with what can be identified as absent from the stage, help to reveal the ideals behind the production of a pageant. Miss India USA, as an event produced by diasporic Indians in dialogue with transnational Indian cultures, must be examined in the context of its connections and affiliations both within and outside of the physical diaspora community. For all ofthese reasons, Miss India USA provides a touchstone not only for discussion of local politics in the Indian American diaspora, but also for examination of the complications oftransnational affiliations and counter-narratives of identity within the transnational community as they relate to the community producing Miss India USA. I expected the Miss India USA pageant to represent the mainstream I Indian community, that which adheres to the model minority image, and fuels the complaints of its children to each other in college about being pressured into careers as doctors, lawyers, and engineers. The pageant's publicity describes it as a "family event" oriented towards a "conservative" and "traditional" Indian culture.2 I did find many elements of the public cultural events favored by the Indian American mainstream in the pageant, including Indian nationalistic sentiments, an emphasis on American middle-class ideals, a notion ofcommunity purity that relied on the strict definition of Indian femininity, and a discourse of Indian-ness that more or less complied with the 'domesticated difference' demanded by American multiculturalism. 1 I use 'mainstream' throughout this thesis to denote a particular interest group within the Indian American community, primarily first generation, middle- to upper middle-class, high caste immigrants who embrace their status as a 'model minority.' 2 See www.worldwidepageants.com [Websitel (Pathik Patel, April 2002 [cited 2001-2002]); available from http://www.worldwidepageants.coml. 2 However, the pageant's stage also revealed a visual and discursive association between the pageant and the vibrant New York area South Asian youth culture. The discursive links between the pageant and this subculture highlighted generational differences within cultural practices found in the pageant. Another unexpected element of the pageant was its clear portrayal of Miss India USA, and the three levels (including state and international) of 'Miss India' pageants, as being a part of the relationship between beauty pageants and the Indian entertainment industry in India. The implication