Redefining the Immigrant South by Uzma Quraishi

Redefining the Immigrant South by Uzma Quraishi

Author:Uzma Quraishi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00


The Limits of Interethnicity

Houston’s Indians and Pakistanis formed a single community in many ways, through film, music, language, and food, yet they also remained nationally separate and distinct. Uma Krishnan offered that the interactions among South Asian groups were “seamless” but also not “extensive.”148 Interviews suggest that since Pakistanis were relatively few in number, they more keenly embraced socialization with Indians, while the much larger, more institutionally developed Indian community had less imperative to attend Pakistani-sponsored events. Pakistani immigrants Yasmin and Jamal Iqbal frequently socialized with Indian families in their neighborhood and occasionally attended larger Indian community events. Yasmin explained that “there was a larger community in Houston—Indian community—than compared to the Pakistani community. This, I found out sometimes when we went to the University of Houston and we saw the students over there, if they had some function over there. So definitely that was the largest community at that time.”149 Almost every Indian and Pakistani interviewee with whom I interacted recalled attending the ISA-sponsored movie screenings. These films served as a bridge between the two national groupings in that they revealed the porousness of national boundaries. Immigrants interpreted the damaged relations between Pakistan and India by separating the politics of nationalism from the people of these nations. But Indian and Pakistani immigrants also worked hard to maintain group boundaries, especially evident in the celebration of national independence days and some religious observances.

Despite acknowledging a shared history, immigrants located several disjunctures, especially at the organizational level. Sara Waheed spoke of “students at the University of Houston [who] used to arrange some programs and gatherings and they had India and Pakistan—two different nations—but their activities are kind of similar.”150 She suggested that their activities were “similar” but not the same and that the respective student groups, the Indian Students Association and the Pakistan Students Association, represented, perpetuated, and reified those dissimilarities. Nagaraj Shekhar struggled to clearly articulate what the relationship between Indian and Pakistani immigrants had meant to him. He said, “It is very, very nice actually. There is really not a whole lot of … of … I mean, there are definitely differences but when it comes to shows and this and that and everybody is … I don’t know, I think it is some cultural thing or something like that.”151 Shekhar began by wishing to highlight the solidarity felt by all South Asians, and although he wanted to say that there was not much difference, he could not. He stopped himself and noted that, actually, he perceived definite “differences.” He then attempted to neutralize the degree of difference by highlighting the solidarity, underscoring the attendance of ethnic shows. Finally, he admitted that he really did not know how to make sense of the differences or relationships between groups, and attributed it to “some cultural thing.”152



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