Between Dharmic Roots And The Melting Pot: The Indian-American Dilemma

In his recent article in the Indian Express, Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram and former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor bemoans “the silence of the diaspora” amidst the Trump administration’s decisions to significantly roll back the H1-B visa programme and impose unprecedented tariffs on India.

While acknowledging that the Indian diaspora’s stance on key issues need not be in complete lockstep with that of the Indian government, Tharoor calls for Indian-Americans to display “principled solidarity” with their ancestral homeland. In response, Suhag Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation argues in The Print that Tharoor’s criticisms “misrepresent the diaspora” and unfairly transfer the onus onto Indian-Americans to unilaterally manage India’s standing in the United States.

After summarising and considering these opposing perspectives, Pankaj Jain, an academic at FLAME University in Maharashtra, observes in the Times of India that both Tharoor and Shukla neglect to consider the diaspora’s rootedness in Bharatiya culture. Highlighting, for instance, the inability of many Indian-American parents to pass on their mother tongues to their children, Jain underscores that the diaspora should, as a precursor to political activism on behalf of India, “live and feel India even in distant lands.”

As is often the case in debates like these, each of the aforementioned perspectives has something to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the situation at hand, in line with the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Yet, a complete picture of the diaspora’s political and cultural actions (or lack thereof) requires us to make a sober assessment of the diaspora’s future trajectory in the United States.

Any such assessment must be prefaced, of course, with the statement that the Indian-American diaspora, numbering over five million people, is not a monolith. Their religious, regional, and socioeconomic identities are just as varied as their ages, how recently they or their families emigrated from India, and how culturally connected they are. Tharoor’s critique of the diaspora acknowledges this reality, pointing to the more tenuous connection that second-generation Indian-Americans have to their ancestral homeland as compared to their parents.

Jain’s prescriptions for the diaspora are principally directed toward this class of second-generation Indian-Americans. A significant proportion of this group consists of the children of immigrants who came to the United States from India during the IT boom in the 1990s and early 2000s. I am part of this bloc myself; both my parents came to the United States from India as students in the 1990s and subsequently made the nation their home.

Though I am the first to acknowledge that my own lived experience and personal observations do not, in and of themselves, represent the totality of the diaspora experience, I can say that I have had a front-row view of the phenomena that Tharoor, Shukla, and Jain have attempted to explain. As a student of history informed by this vantage point, I wish to offer my views on this important subject.

Critically, Tharoor acknowledges that cultural practice does not automatically translate into political advocacy. He questions whether diasporic identity is “merely a matter of cultural nostalgia, Bollywood films, biryani, and Bharatanatyam.” Indeed, learning a classical Indian art form such as music or dance is a rite of passage for many diaspora youth, myself included. Jain emphasises the importance of imparting elements such as “Carnatic or Hindustani music, Bharatanatyam, Kathak, the ragamala paintings, [and] oral histories.”

Though Jain cautions against “performative gestures,” the reality is that many diasporic youth have engaged significantly and meaningfully with their culture through mediums such as practising an art form.

However, the extent to which these youth have recognised and connected with the dharmic core of these art forms, that is, their significance as paths to worship and attain Isvara, is questionable. In many cases, they are simply a skill or a talent to be cultivated and showcased on college applications. And, as Tharoor correctly points out, most of these youth are not vociferously advocating on behalf of India in the United States.

Alongside this engagement with Bharatiya culture, diaspora youth partake in elements of American culture and life each and every day. Those interactions, in many cases, lead to a degree of assimilation. Jain observes that “each generation further removed from India is more exposed to assimilation.” In my view, this assimilation is near-inevitable. A brief look at American history suffices to illustrate this point.

Various ethnic groups have made America their home since the colonial period, including the Scots-Irish, Italians, Germans, Eastern European Jews, and the Chinese. Yet the overwhelming majority of these groups’ American descendants, such as someone whose ancestors came to New York City on a ship from Italy at the turn of the twentieth century, retain relatively little of their forebears’ culture and language.

This phenomenon does not exclude Indian-Americans, including those of the second generation who are coming of age, falling in love, and getting married in the United States. In many cases, these individuals, my peers that is, are transcending at least some boundaries that they would likely have adhered to if in India.

For instance, a Telugu boy and a Gujarati girl, both of whom are the children of immigrants from their respective states in India, meet in the United States. They fall in love and get married. It is an open question as to whether they can or will pass on their respective languages and traditions to their children, who will be third-generation Americans.

For such transmission to be successful requires two things. Each of the spouses themselves must be well-versed in their respective languages and traditions. This itself, as Jain notes, is a big question mark in many cases. If this first condition is met, the spouses must then resist the temptation to adopt English as the lingua franca in their household and instead must actively make the effort to pass on both languages to their children. Given English’s dominant status in American society, it is not easy to swim against the tide and effectuate this transmission. It requires tremendous will to see it through.

Now, this is the situation with inter-linguistic unions within the larger diaspora where, at the very least, there is some common cultural (and likely religious) identity that can be passed on. What, then, can be said for the second-generation youth who marry outside the diaspora?

Such inter-ethnic, and in many cases interfaith, marriages result in assimilation to an even greater degree than inter-linguistic and inter-regional marriages within the diaspora.

Again, this is not to say that all of my peers will enter into these exogamous unions. Indeed, I have personally witnessed situations where diaspora parents have facilitated marriages for their second-generation children where language and sampradaya have matched.

The bottom line is that assimilation is bound to happen. The Trump administration’s overhaul of the H1-B programme will significantly reduce immigration from India, at least for the immediate future and potentially beyond. In any case, the diaspora will continue to develop an identity of its own that sets it apart from the motherland.

As sub-identities, such as regional and linguistic, become less consequential, a macro-diasporic identity will begin to take shape. Part of this overarching identity may well include, as Shukla puts it, “holding India as a sacred homeland.” Emphasis on the word sacred. Yes, India is a secular state. But it is uniquely sacred for adherents of the dharmic faiths, namely Hinduism and its progeny, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism, who collectively make up the lion’s share of the diaspora.

The best-case scenario, which some of Jain’s prescriptions can foster, is for India to retain spiritual and cultural significance in the diasporic imagination for the second generation and beyond. This is not unprecedented, as evidenced by the history of Judaism in America. Though ethnic distinctions among American Jews have virtually dissolved and secular Judaism has become normative in many quarters, the faith still endures in America. Most American Jews look to Israel as a holy land which is intrinsically intertwined with their faith.

An enduring connection with India will not, and should not, as Tharoor wishes, mean that the diaspora will campaign en masse against policy elements like H1-B restrictions and tariffs on India. What, then, can be reasonably expected of the diaspora in such circumstances? If the diaspora is rooted in dharmic principles at a fundamental level, they will speak out in their adopted homeland for things that are enmeshed in it.

For example, they will lobby for the United States to address the plight of religious minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh who are being persecuted in their homelands. Or, as Shukla notes, “anti-India bills seeking to condemn India over the abrogation of Article 370 failed” due to diaspora involvement. This is an area where Indian policy and dharmic interests converged. So, there are certainly issues where a diaspora driven by dharma can speak out and, as a bloc, make a meaningful difference in the United States. It is crucial to draw the distinction between these two sets of issues.

Any analysis of the Indian diaspora in the United States requires a close examination of other diasporic communities in American history. Such a study can provide a clear-eyed and realistic understanding of the Indian diaspora’s future trajectory: what will remain, and what will change. Assimilation will not happen overnight, yet it is a fundamental reality. Despite the change wrought by assimilation, if the diaspora retains, in Durkheimian terms, its “sacred core,” a meaningful relationship with India driven by dharma can endure.