It was interesting to study the Indian response to what
happened to Devyani Khobragade, an Indian diplomat, who was arrested on charges
of paying her maid less than (much less than) the minimum wages and lying about it
on her visa application. To an American, there was nothing unusual about the
incidence---there are laws that apply to everyone, no matter what your status
in the society, and if you break the law you are arrested. An arrest frequently
involves handcuffing and if you are jailed after that, there is strip search.
To someone in India, this was outrageous. The crime was
insignificant from an Indian perspective and the punishment was unusually
harsh. In India one cannot imagine that a person of high standing in the
society can be arrested in this manner and thrown in jail with other criminals.
That is just not done.
Another point of outrage was a sense of betrayal---why would
America do such thing to harm the relationship between two countries. This reaction
was puzzling to Americans because in their black and white world of crime and
punishment, such soft spots do not exist.
This was clearly a case
of an incidence causing two totally different reactions based on an individual's culture and
biases. That by itself was interesting but not as much as how the Indians living in US reacted to the incidence.
There were clearly two camps--- one that aligned itself to
the Indian interpretation, the other to the American one. To me this brought to
sharp relief that fact that the immigrant community is divided into two groups,
each with its own values and culture. I would call them “Indians living in
America” vs. “Americans with Indian heritage”.
The Indians living in America firmly believe that they are
the custodians of their native identity. They are proud of their motherland and
have a strong respect for its traditions. To them the Americans with Indian
heritage have sold out to the West and are ashamed of being Indians.
On the other hand, the Americans with Indian heritage
believe that they have assimilated well in their new land. They are able to
look at things objectively without the emotional attachment to the past, and
are willing to criticize and praise America in a balanced way. They think that
by clinging on to the past, the Indians living in America have remained misfits,
are ungrateful, and are missing out on opportunities (besides financial)
offered by the West.
Of course, neither characterization of the other group by a
member of one group is entirely true and can be insulting.
A great topic to investigate further is to study who amongst us belongs to which group. As
one would expect, those who have been living in the US only for few years
generally consider themselves as former--- Indians living in America. What is unexpected is that many who have
lived here for decades also consider themselves being a member of the same group.
I am struggling to understand what causes some immigrants to
maintain their native land identity, even after living here for decades, while
some others to change and join the mainstream Americans, or Americanize, as they like to say. This
is clearly not based on success one has achieved in the US; many wealthy people
still consider themselves Indians living in America. Nor is it based on level
of education or profession. In fact, one finds that two persons with identical
background and success history in US can belong to these two different groups.
One of my friends, an American of Indian heritage, experienced this at an
alumni reunion in which those on the Indian side of the above incidence, a
majority, hounded and berated him as a “self-hating Indian.”
So, what makes some
continue being Indians living in America and what prompted some of us to become
Americans with Indian heritage?
I do not have the answer, but suspect that the following
factors have played a role in how you identify yourself:
- The importance of the place you were born as a key component of your self-identity,
- The relative contribution of “heart vs. mind” in your decision making,
- The environment you encountered after immigration---who you hung out with,
- The place where you currently live, and
- Your cohort group.
I am assuming that this will become a moot point, as the
next generation takes over. They are almost certainly going to be Americans
with Indian heritage.
Or are they?
