Leaving India

by Minal Hajratwala

  The representative from Dahomey: Adams, The Brain Drain, pp. 7–12.

  [>] A 1967 bibliography: McKnight, Scientists Abroad, p. 50.

  over 90 percent: Adams, The Brain Drain, pp. 1–8.

  "While with one hand": Quoted in ibid., p. 608.

  "There is the gravest ground": McKnight, Scientists Abroad, p. 22.

  "seemed more concerned": Adams, The Brain Drain, pp. 234–35.

  [>] A survey of Indian students: Niland, The Asian Engineering Brain Drain.

  [>] That semester, nearly five thousand: From July to December 1967, 4,729 dependents of foreign students were admitted to the United States. I&N Reporter 17, no. 4 (April 1969): 59.

  [>] Located in a cluster: For the history of the Finkbine Park barracks, see Bob Hibbs, "Saturday Postcard 212: The Fine Arts at Iowa," Iowa City Press Citizen, September 20, 2003.

  [>] "friendship and cooperation": I&N Reporter 19, no. 1 (July 1970): 3.

  [>] Within the year, so many: I&N Reporter 17, no. 1 (July 1968): 1–3, and I&N Reporter 17, no. 3 (January 1969): 38.

  "We are in the international market": U.S. House subcommittee, Brain Drain: A Study of the Persistent Issue, p. 36.

  India had just: I&N Reporter 17, no. 1 (July 1968): 2.

  [>] he fit the typical profile: Figures in this paragraph are from National Science Foundation, Scientists, Engineers, pp. vi, 6–7.

  This eightfold increase: I&N Reporter 19, no. 4 (April 1971): 52.

  one in four "aliens": I&N Reporter 19, no. 2 (October 1970): 23.

  [>] California was not one of the eight: I&N Reporter 16, no. 2 (October 1967): 37–40.

  [>] By long policy and practice, New Zealand: See source notes for Chapter 5.

  [>] SPICE IS THE VARIETY: Otago Daily Times, June 20, 1978, p. 15.

  [>] "In India, cars are not": V. M. Dandekar, "India," in Adams, The Brain Drain.

  "If the neighbours": Nem Kumar Jain, Science and Scientists in India (Vedic to Modern) (Delhi: Indian Book Gallery, 1982), p. 65.

  "lack of appreciation of their work": New York Times, July 24, 1966. Quoted in Adams, The Brain Drain.

  600,000 graduates: Adams, The Brain Drain, p. 90.

  median pay of about 300 rupees: Census of India, 1961, Monograph No. 1.

  [>] "cumulative inertia": Mathematical model developed by Dr. Robert McGinnis of Cornell, cited in Mobility of PhD's Before and After the Doctorate, with Associated Economic and Educational Characteristics of States, Career Patterns Report No. 3 prepared for the National Institutes of Health by the Research Division, Office of Scientific Personnel, National Research Council (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1971), p. 197.

  [>] Indian doctors in Michigan: The American Association of Physicians from India, subsequently renamed the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, formed "after a fireside discussion in Detroit Michigan in 1982," according to its official history.

  [>] Indian community in Michigan: The migration of Indian engineers to the auto industry was not accidental; in 1923, Henry Ford began recruiting engineering students from India who were attending the University of California to work in his factories at a daily wage of $5. Ford's offer was strategic, offering the students a solution to the higher nonresident tuition fees they suddenly had to pay because of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that year making Indians ineligible for citizenship on the grounds that they were not "white." Within three years, more than a hundred Indian students had entered the Ford training program, according to reports filed by British consulate staff who tracked the activities of British Indians in the United States. "Indians Overseas. Ford Motor Works, Detroit, U.S.A. Training of British Indians" (correspondence file, Economic and Overseas Department, India Office, British Library IOR/L/E/7/1459).

  "almost 80 percent": Portes and Rumbaut, Immigrant America, p. 19.

  PAGE 7. SHELTER

  [>] During the ritual: Bhanu and Bhupendra Hajratwala, Our Kshatriya Samskaras: 1. Simant (California: North American Hindu Association, 2007).

  [>] "She was always attentive": Prabhati Mukherjee, Hindu Women: Narrative Models, revised edition (Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1994), pp. 13–14.

  [>] "the first person to get up": Ibid., p. 28.

  Daughter, wife, widow: See, for example, the Laws of Manu 5:149, "In her childhood [a girl] should be under the will of her father; in [her] youth, of [her] husband; her husband being dead, of her sons; a woman should never enjoy her own will." Translated by Thadani, in Sakhiyani, p. 54.

  [>] high proportion of Indian wives: See, for example, R. Aaron et al., "Suicides in Young People in Rural Southern India," Lancet 363, no. 9415: 1117–18.

  [>] The Modern Combined: Shantilal Sarabhai Oza and Ramanbhai G. Bhatt (Mumbai: R. R. Sheth, 2001).

  [>] by 1996: Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics, 1996 Fiji Census of Population and Housing Analytical Report: Part 1, Demographic Characteristics, 1998.

  [>] 55,000 lucky winners: The number of winners and other regulations governing the lottery have changed since its inception in 1986. The provisions governing Madhukant's application were contained in Section 131, Diversity Immigrants, of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Public Law 649, passed by the 101st Congress, 2nd session, on November 29, 1990). For important context, I drew on news accounts in various periodicals including the Boston Irish Reporter and the New York Amsterdam News, both of which tracked developments regularly for their readers. The following articles (listed chronologically) provided details included here: Karlyn Barker, "U.S. Lottery Will Award 20,000 Visas in 1989–90," Washington Post, March 2, 1989; Mae M. Cheng, "The New New Yorkers: The Luck of the Draw," Newsday, January 15, 1997; "Diversity Lottery Program to Give 55,000 Green Cards," New York Amsterdam News, January 24, 1997; "Stakes Are High in U.S. Visa Lottery," Boston Irish Reporter, March 1, 1997; Richard Springer, "Indians Jump to Third Place in Immigration to U.S.," India-West, May 2, 1997, front page; and William Branigin, "House Republican Wants Immigration Policy to Favor the Educated," Washington Post, April 22, 1998.

  [>] In West Africa: Sierra Leone News Archives, February 1997 (www.sierra-leone.org/Archives/slnews0297.pdf).

  Ireland's ambassador was reportedly: Mark Krikorian, "Lucky Visas," Washington Post, March 14, 1996.

  [>] They had twenty thousand hotels: Turkel, "From Ragas to Riches," part 1.

  [>] By 1963, a social scientist: Jain, The Gujaratis of San Francisco.

  [>] President Eisenhower signed: David A. Pfeiffer, "Ike's Interstates at 50: Anniversary of the Highway System Recalls Eisenhower's Role as Catalyst," Prologue, quarterly journal of the National Archives and Records Administration, 38, no. 2 (Summer 2006).

  [>] Half a dozen motel property brokers told: Scott, "Indians Snap Up Small Motels" self-insuring and loaning funds to one another: Turkel, "From Ragas to Riches," part 2.

  Justice Department launched: Scott, "Indians Snap Up Small Motels."

  Days Inn conducted: Interview with Ramesh Gokal, 2001.

  [>] "nearly every exit": "Indian Immigrants Prosper as Owners of Motels," Associated Press, June 22, 1985.

  [>] Saalo gaando chhe: Saalo literally means "brother-in-law"—that is, your sister's husband—and is a curse word because it implies that the speaker has slept with your sister. As there is no English equivalent, I have approximated the word as "bastard" Gaando: Crazy. Chhe: Is.

  PAGE 8. BODY

  [>] "To assimilate means": Adrienne Rich, "Resisting Amnesia: History and Personal Life (1983)," in Blood, Bread, and Poetry (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), p. 142.

  [>] most segregated: U.S. Census Bureau, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980–2000, Series CENSR-3, 2002 (www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/housing_patterns/papertoc.html).

  [>] A canal had opened: Township of Canton, Canton Sesquicentennial Commemorative Book, 1834–1984, June 1984.

  In 1834 this particular stop was named: "Historic Canton," Canton Historical Society, last updated September 9, 2007 (www.canto
nhistoricalsociety.org).

  As the "Sweet Corn Capital": Roy R. Schultz, Canton Area, the Sweet Corn Capi tol of Michigan: An Era in Cantons History [sic], undated pamphlet published by the Canton Historical Society.

  [>] The region had lost 87,500 jobs: SEMCOG, Economic Development, p. 4. 311 the Census Bureau counted: Susan Koshy, "Category Crisis: South Asian Americans and the Questions of Race and Ethnicity," Diaspora 7, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 294.

  "inconspicuous" and "rapidly assimilated": Portes and Rumbaut, Immigrant America, p. 19.

  Rarely did the researchers find: Of the 27,803 Indians who immigrated in 1987, 10 percent went to New York, 8 percent to Chicago, and 4 percent to Los Angeles, with the remaining 78 percent settling in other destinations. This was the complete opposite of many other immigrant communities at the time; 77 percent of Cubans, for example, went to Miami. Ibid., p. 38.

  most educated, most professional According to an analysis of 1980 census data on immigrants, those from India had the highest level of educational attainment (66.2 percent had four years or more of college, versus 6.2 percent of the U.S. population as a whole) and were the most likely to be working in professions (48.8 percent of adults over age twenty-five, versus 12.3 percent of U.S. adults). Ibid., pp. 60–70.

  [>] Before 1808, Native Americans: "The Treaties," Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority (www.1836cora.org/treaties.html).

  [>] "into several numbered townships": Diane Follmer Wilson, Cornerstones: A History of Canton Township Families (Canton, Mich.: Canton Historical Society, 1988).

  A few years later, the NAACP: Riddle, "Race and Reaction."

  [>] A map published: Reproduced in ibid.

  "Residential construction": Charter Township of Canton, Future Land Use Plan.

  At the same time, Detroit: Ray Suarez, The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966–1999 (New York: Free Press, 1999), p. 248.

  The Census Bureau ordered: Charter Township of Canton, Future Land Use Plan.

  Our white brick house: Ibid.

  Our elementary schools: Ching-li Wang, Population Change in Michigan: 1980–1984, State of Michigan, Department of Management and Budget, November 1985.

  [>] "It's because of motherfuckers": Zia, Asian American Dreams, chap. 3.

  In southeastern Michigan: SEMCOG, Community Profiles in Southeast Michigan, 1980 Census.

  [>] "Feminism is the theory": This phrase is traditionally attributed to author and activist Ti-Grace Atkinson, although its provenance and accuracy are debated.

  [>] the split self: In employing this metaphor to describe my response to the traumas of my migration(s), I do not mean to co-opt or minimize the suffering of those who experience clinical split-personality and/or schizophrenic conditions. For a treatment of migration trauma's possible causal relationship to such conditions, see Elizabeth Cantor-Graae and Jean-Paul Selten, "Schizophrenia and Migration: A Meta-Analysis and Review," American Journal of Psychiatry, no. 162 (2005): 12–24; and for schizophrenia among South Asian women migrants in particular, the work of Dr. Dinesh Bhugra, dean of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and professor of mental health and cultural diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. Additionally, the theorist Vijay Prashad makes an interesting connection between such split thinking among U.S. Indians (the split being, in his conception, a moral home life versus an immoral external engagement with capitalism) and the girmit experience, in The Karma of Brown Folk (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 104–5.

  [>] Exiting the movie theater: I am grateful to the editors of Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America (New York: Asian American Writers Workshop, 1996) for publishing an early poem from which this passage is drawn.

  [>] unearthing millennia of evidence: See, for example, Thadani, Sakhiyani; and Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, eds., Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (London: St. Martin's, 2000). I first learned of these and other resources via Trikone magazine (www.trikone.org). For a critical view of the limits of such history, as well as a brief survey of queer South Asian organizing in the 1980s and mid-1990s, see Nayan Shah, "Sexuality, Identity, and the Uses of History," in Q&A: Queer in Asian America, edited by D. Eng and A. Home (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).

  PAGE PART FOUR: DESTINY

  [>] bringing together the stories: My thinking on this challenge was informed by these words by the scholar Eleni Coundouriotis: "A diaspora becomes intelligible at the moment when a communal identity re-emerges from fragmentation. The narrative of diaspora is always working against the etymology of the word 'diaspora,' which signifies dispersion." Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 37.

  [>] It is this capitalist drive: See, for example, Joel Kotkin, Tribes: How Race, Religion, and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy (New York: Random House, 1993), chap. 7, "The Greater India"

  [>] The Indians were a tiny: White, Turbans and Traders.

  [>] Middlesex County, New Jersey: For a book-length treatment of the Middlesex County phenomenon, see Kalita, Suburban Sahibs.

  [>] Studies of voluntary migration: See, for example, Portes and Rumbaut, Immigrant America, pp. 10–13.

  [>] largest single immigrant group: SEMCOG, Patterns of Diversity.

  [>] The 2000 U.S. Census counted: Nicholas A. Jones and Amy Symens Smith, "The Two or More Races Population: 2000," Census 2000 Brief, November 2001 (www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01–6.pdf).

  * * *

  Selected Bibliography

  Of the rich body of work on the diaspora that is now available, I list below those sources from which I drew directly, sorted so that readers seeking further information about particular countries can easily find the relevant works. Titles listed in the "General" category cover more than one country or address some aspect of the diaspora as a whole. Sources listed below are generally those to which I refer multiple times. Sources cited only once appear in full in the Notes section. HMSO, below, stands for His/Her Majesty's Stationery Office, the primary publisher of British government documents.

  In addition, the following newspapers provided valuable contemporary accounts: in Fiji, the Fiji Times and the Fiji Times and Herald; in India, Navajivan; and in South Africa, the Indian Opinion, the Natal Witness, and the Natal Mercury. Specific editions are cited in the Notes.

  GENERAL

  Adams, Walter, ed. The Brain Drain. Papers presented at international conference on the "brain drain" at Lausanne, Switzerland, August 1967. New York: Macmillan, 1968.

  Chaudhuri, K. N. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

  Christopher, A. J. The British Empire at Its Zenith. New York: Croom Helm, 1988.

  Colombo Plan Bureau. Special Topic, Brain Drain: Country Papers, the Working Paper and the Report of the SpeciaL Topic Committee. Prepared for annual meeting of committee implementing the 1962 Colombo Plan for Co-operative Economic Development in South and South-east Asia, held October-November 1972, New Delhi. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Colombo Plan Bureau, 1971.

  Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand. An Autobiography; or, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Translated by Mahadev Desai. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927.

  ———. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 98 volumes. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1970. Abbreviated as CWMG in the Notes. Although I consulted paper volumes, this resource is now available online (www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html).

  Gish, Oscar. Doctor Migration and Brain Drain: The Impact of the International Demand for Doctors on Health Services in Developing Countries. Occasional Papers on Social Administration, Number 43. London: Social Administration Research Trust, 1971.

  Gupta, Anirudha, ed. Indians Abroad, Asia and Africa: Report of an International Seminar. Proceedings of an April 1969 seminar held in New Delhi by the Indian Council for Africa and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. N
ew Delhi: Indian Council for Africa, 1971.

  Guy, John. Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.

  India. Ministry of External Affairs. Non Resident Indians & Persons of Indian Origin Division. Report of the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora. New Delhi: Government of India, January 8, 2002 (www.indiandiaspora.nic.in/diasporapdf/part1-est.pdf).

  Jain, Ravindra K. Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature. New Delhi: Manohar, 1993.

  McKnight, Allan D. Scientists Abroad: A Study of the International Movement of Persons in Science and Technology. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1971.

  Muthanna, I. M. People of India in North America (United States, Canada, W. Indies and Fiji). Bangalore: Lotus Printers, 1982.

  Newland, Kathleen. International Migration: The Search for Work. Worldwatch Paper 33. Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, November 1979.

  Tinker, Hugh. The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  ———. A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.

  ———. Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British Commonwealth, 1920–1950. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976.

  United Kingdom, Colonial Office. Report of the Committee on Emigration from India to the Crown Colonies and Protectorates. London: HMSO, 1910.

  ———. Restrictions upon British Indian Subjects in British Colonies and Dependencies. Includes census. London: HMSO, December 7, 1900.

  United Kingdom, India Office. "Colonies Committee. Main file." 1922–25. British Library IOR/L/E/7/1319.

  ———. "Indians Overseas: A Guide to Source Materials in the India Office Records, for the Study of Indian Emigration, 1830–1950." By Timothy N. Thomas, 1985.

  ———. "Review of Important Events Relating to or Affecting Indians in Different Parts of the British Empire." Series of annual reports, 1936–46. British Library IOR/L/PJ/8/184.