India Moving by Chinmay Tumbe

Author:Chinmay Tumbe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353051631
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2018-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

Model Minorities: North America

In 1833, residents of Calcutta received a pleasant 100-ton surprise from a ship that had sailed for four months all the way from Boston. White and cold, packaged ice soon made waves among the Indian elite and transformed the idea of a dessert. This cool idea was the brainchild of Frederic Tudor (1783–1864), known as the Boston Ice King and founder of the Tudor Ice Company, whose mission was to ship manufactured ice from New England to the Tropics. He belonged to the ‘Boston Brahmins’, a term coined to describe the wealthy aristocracy of the New England area in the 19th century which emphasized core values of education, hard work, culture and thrift. In America, it was a time when the word ‘Indians’ referred to the native American Indians and not the residents of India. A century and a half later, it would be the Indian-Americans and the Brahmins in Boston that would make waves among the American elite.

Dubbed as ‘the other 1 per cent’ by political scientist Devesh Kapur and others, Indian migration to the United States in recent decades appears to be the most selective migration in human history, on account of ‘triple selection’.33 On the supply side, higher education in India was historically accessible only to the top-end of the social and economic hierarchy, while financing emigration for studies or work was feasible only for a few. On the demand side, the American immigration rules favoured workers in particular high-skilled sectors. As a consequence, Indian-Americans outperform every other sub-group in America in terms of income and education.

Migrant links between the USA and India were first fostered in the 19th century when missionaries and traders moved from the USA to India, and sailors or lascars landed on American soil. Some of the lascars settled in New York City’s Harlem and other cities, starting families with women of different nationalities and races.34 A more systematic migration stream developed in the early 20th century when the Punjabi Sikhs, serving in the British Indian army in East Asia, began to migrate to the west coast of America in the early 20th century, to work on the railway lines and lumber in the north and agriculture in the south. This was the migration that led to the growth of successful peach grower Didar Singh Bains in California, as noted in the previous chapter.

Student migration began in the late 19th century and attracted Anandibai Joshee, the first known Indian woman to receive an educational degree in the US, as early as in the 1880s. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the East Coast grew in prominence as a destination for science and engineering students from India, while Stanford and other universities on the west coast also began admitting Indian students. Even then, the total number of India-born immigrants in the US was less than 5000 in 1920.

The appearance of Indians as students and workers, all labelled Hindus irrespective of religion, was not well appreciated in early 20th century America. The

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