South Asian Americans
South Asia extends southward from the "Roof of the World"—the great mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram, and the Himalayas—separating the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia and China. South Asians are a diverse lot practicing different religions, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, and Sikhism. Like many immigrants, South Asians came to the U.S. in search of better opportunities, faced hardships, and have ongoing challenges today. For some, the U.S. was a secondary or tertiar y migration point that began in Africa, the Caribbean, or Britain.
Immigration Waves
Although, the first South Asians came in the 1790s, there were only 523 South Asians in North America in 1898. Between 1899-1913 the first immigration wave brought nearly 7,000 South Asians. These early pioneers were primarily Sikh farmers from the Punjab region who came to California and the Pacific Northwest to work the fields when white nativist hysteria excluded immigration from China, Japan, and Korea. South Asians, however, soon faced significant opposition from organized labor who petitioned to stop immigration from Asia altogether. Under such hostility, many left and by 1940 the number of South Asians decreased significantly, with approximately 2,400 remaining in the U.S.
World War II marked a second immigration wave and public support for South Asians increased as the prospect of India’s independence came closer to reality. In 1946, the Luce-Celler bill lifted the ban on South Asian immigration. By 1947, Mahatma Gandhi and the people of South Asia put an end to British colonialism, and many students came to the U.S. to study.
The third and largest wave came after the 1965 Immigration Act. Before 1965, approximately 12,000 South Asians lived in the U.S. By 1990, the South Asian American population was 919,626 or a 7,600% increase. Differences in physical featuresand archaic designation of brown-complexioned South Asians are "Caucasoid" while yellow-toned East Asians are "Mongoloid" contributed to an ambivalence by South Asians to be included in the widening diversity of Asian Americans.
According to the 1990 Census, nearly 90% of South Asians in the U.S. are from India, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Maldive. While South Asians make up the sixth largest Asian Pacific American (APA) group in Washington State today, Census 2000 projections expect South Asian Americans (1.2 million) to surpass Korean Americans (1 million) as the fourth largest APA group in the nation.
Biethnic Cultural, Religion, and Achievements
Most South Asian American pioneers were members of biethnic communities. In 1930, the men to women ratio for South Asians were 1,572 men to 100 women. This disproportionate sex ratio, combined with California’s laws that prohibited marriage across racial lines and landownership by "aliens," made it difficult to establish families. South Asians who decided to settle down in the U.S. sought women whom they could legally marry, the Mexicans and Mexican Americans—who were allowed to own land. Their wives and children became known as "Mexican Hindus," despite the fact that many of the early South Asian men were Sikhs.
In the area of religion, South Asian men who married non-South Asian women encouraged their wives to teach the women’s own religious beliefs and practices, while inculcating respect for Sikhism, Hinduism or Islam. This was in keeping with a South Asian expectation that women teach religion and culture to children and in the spirit of Indian tradition of tolerance. Also, not only did their children practice another religion—mainly Catholic—and took on Spanish names, they also spoke Spanish. Mexican-American socialization marked their early years.
Early South Asians and their children soon lost the external signs differentiating Sikh, Muslim, and Hindus. In outward appearance, Sikhs were traditionally distinguished by the beard, long hair and turban required by orthodox Sikhism. American prejudice soon pressured many Sikhs to blend in. Nevertheless, Punjabi men were very political, passionately fighting for U.S. citizenship and freedom for India. They often took their families to political rallies that sought Indian independence from Britain. The children saw themselves and their families as part of the nationalist movement. The right to become U.S. citizens in 1946 and the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 were highpoints for the first- and second-generation South Asian Americans.
Among other highpoints for the South Asian American community is in 1952, when one of its members, Dalip Singh Saund became the first APA elected to Congress; and in 1998, when Kalpana Chawla became the first Asian woman in space.
Exclusionary Laws
Like many Asians, South Asian Americans faced considerable hardships. For example, in 1907, the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League of San Francisco changed its name to the Asian Exclusion League (AEL), to include South Asians. Later that year, the AEL played a key role in attacks on the South Asians in Bellingham and Everett, Washington. In 1923, the Supreme Court ruled that a "white person" is defined by a common man’s notion of the term, which resulted in the denaturalization of and the prohibition of citizenship to South Asians.
Current Issues
Most of the South Asians who immigrated to the U.S. between 1965 and 1980s were from the educated elite and middle class of India. By the 1980s, a working class migration began, particularly by farmers from the Punjab and Bengal regions of India and Pakistan where social, political and religious turmoil displaced populations. By the 1990s, it was not unusual to see South Asians working in newsstands, in gas stations, and as cabdrivers. Such educational and economic disparities have implications around labor laws, and anti-discrimination, workforce development and access to health care policies, for example.
Today, among the most difficult and controversial issues facing South Asian Americans are around hate crimes, discrimination, and domestic violence. In 1999, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium reported a dramatic increase in hate crimes directed at South Asian Americans. Also, discrimination is a regular topic in the South Asian American ethnic press, where reports about individual discrimination and the "glass ceiling" are frequent. Another difficult issue to discuss is domestic violence—a pattern of assault and coercion that takes the form of physical, emotional, verbal, sexual and economic abuse. Since the joint-family system is often the norm in the South Asian community, the abuser(s) may include the in-laws, making it very difficult for victims to find support.
Such issues, however, galvanize the South Asian American community. There are now support organizations for South Asian domestic violence victims. There are also several political South Asian American national federations, the oldest of which is the Association of Asian Indians in America (AAIA), which was formed in the mid-1960s. AAIA along with the National Association of Americans of Asian Indian Descent (NAAAID) successfully fought to establish Asian Indians as a separate category in the 1980 census.
With its increasing numbers, South Asian Americans will undoubtedly become more politically visible.
Sources: The India Abroad Center for Political Awareness, www.iacfpa.org; Leonard, Karen Isaksen. "The South Asian Americans,"1997; Zia, Helen. "Asian American Dreams," 2000; National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, 1998 Audit of Anti-Asian Violence; Indian American Political Advocacy Council, www.iapac.com; Sakhi, "For South Asian Women," www.sakhi.com; Nash, Phil Tajitsu. "AsianWeek, Dalip Singh Saund: An Asian Indian American Pioneer," September 16, 1999.
