Most immigration from India to Canada took place in the late 1960s after the points system was put in place in the 1967 Regulations and all discriminatory provisions based on race and nationality were removed. Over thirty years have since passed and a new generation of Indo-Canadians has now come up – those who were little children when their parents moved to Canada and those who were born and raised in Canada. Little work seems to have been done on this second generation but this is the critical generation for both Canada and India. It is the generation for whose heart there is a tug of war. The adopted country puts into place structures to create loyalty, a sense of nationalism. The country of origin exercises its pull through first generation loyalties, visits to family and friends, and now, easy access through phones and internet. In this ‘half beast half divine’ situation, where does the second generation individual stand ?
One of the pivotal issues pertaining to ethnic identity is articulated by Joanne Van Dijk in “Ethnic Persistence Among Dutch Canadian Catholics and Calvinists”. Ethnicity as she points out,”is a fluid concept which changes over time. It means and means different things to different generations. For the first generation, it means strong feelings about the country of their origin. For the second generation, ties with the homeland are gradually replaced by ties with adopted country because for them the country they live in is not ‘adopted’ – it is their country. 1 Yet not quite. Cultural differences remain and they have to be bridged. In USA, whole literature is growing around second generation South Asians, or more specifically, Indo Americans. Joanne Van Dijk also makes an important distinction between immigrant culture and ethnic identity but does not elaborate upon it2. Rasesh Thakar indirectly elaborate upon it in “Transfer of Culture through Arts — The South Asian Experience in North America3.”
The underlying hypothesis in Rasesh Thakar’s article is that a group of immigrants from a particular country are not a monolithic block and, therefore, what takes place is not a retention or preservation of the culture of the home country but a ‘transfer’. Transfer can take place in several different ways among several different groups of people. For Thakar transfer includes not only movement from one generation to another and also from one “sub-cultural group” to another4. For example, Indo-Canadians from Punjab or Bihar are not retaining Bharatnatyam, a classical dance from South India in Canada, the way Indo Canadian of South India origin are. Therefore, diversity in sub-cultural identities of different regions of India makes it more a case of transfer of culture than retention within the Indo – Canadians themselves. Then, there is transfer or ‘propagation’ of culture from one ethnic groups to other ethnic groups and in the process the transferring group is also ‘impacted’ by the culture of other ethnic groups giving rise to a new syncretic culture5. Further, transfer also means from another time to our time, a process which is simultaneously taking place in India too. Rasesh Thakar points out, that the two thousand year old traditions of classical dance are not just waiting in their final form, intact, to be transferred6. In the home country itself they are being created or recreated, discovered, being transferred from another time and in the process, their exponents are grappling with issues of reform, change, adaptation and innovation. For example Bharatnatyam was systematized, reformed and re-established during the 1930s by Rukmani Devi Arundale. Odissi was recreated in post independence India and a similar process is going on with Mayurbhanj Chbau.
The contact between India and the West is also not new. Rukmani Devi Arundale trained in ballet for a brief while and it was Anna Pavlova who inspired her to look into her own culture7. The western contacts of Uday Shankar and Ram Gopal, two other outstanding figures in the renaissance of classical dance, are also well known.Ravi Shankar mad sitar made a household name in the west. The number of examples can be multiplied Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, more recently, won the Grammys and made Mohan Veena his own invention not only known in the west but also in India. Hence the east-west encounter is not new to India. ‘Tradition’ and modernity’, too, are fluid terms8.Traditions are revived, created and modernized and, often, modernity means a cutting away of the overlay of times and going back to the pristine purity of the original roots for example, to the Richas of Rg Veda. All these influence the immigrant cultural activity and what emerges is an immigrant culture as distinct from ethnic identity.
This distinction between ethnic identity and immigrant culture is also borne out by Evelyn Nodwell’s study of dance activity in Vancouver in the Indo-Canadian community9. Dance serves a wide range of functions. Parents find it the easiest and the most acceptable way of exposing the second generation to its heritage, ‘learning’ about India and being Indian. Dance becomes a means of social interaction among Indo-Canadians. It is a binding force between family members sharing in Indian cultural activities who may have otherwise several issues of disagreement. Nodwell further points out that dance has become a means of acquiring status in the community, of communicating with outsiders, and of defining and constructing Indian culture. It is a medium through which identity is represented, interpreted, transformed and lived. It becomes a link between the older and the younger generations and between Indians and others. Hence it is an important part of the social organization of the Indo- Canadian community10.
Social organization of an immigrant community, its institutionalization, its completeness or the lack of it is an important factor in ethnic identity retention. According to Breton, the greater the institutional completeness the greater the integration in the ethnic community and the level of ethnic persistence in the immigrant. According to Herberg, formal organizations provide the means by which ethnic culture can be practiced in public situations and it is public practice that is essential for ethnic culture to survive11. It particularly helps in the socialization of younger generations. The representation changes over time and what emerges in the second and third generations appears a more syncretic culture borrowing and giving freely from other cultures while retaining some essential elements of the initial culture.
The retention/transference of culture is also linked to factors relating to religious affiliation, economic status, language retention and others. O’Bryan, Reitz and Kulplowska have found that among the Dutch the highest rates of church attendance is in the first generation12. It declines only slightly in the second and third generations. This is a surprising finding because one would have expected the decline to be sharper. The more expected pattern is seen in language retention. Levels of ethnic language use were moderate or strong in first generation but declined sharply in each succeeding generation13. This would be a fair assessment in respect of other immigrant cultures Indo-Canadians.
In this respect the results of Joanne Van Dijk’s analysis are interesting. Relatively few elderly parents spoke Dutch to their children although more spoke Dutch to their spouses, their siblings and their friends14. First generation men and women had better knowledge of Dutch and spoke it wore frequently. Those with more education and higher incomes used it less and less. The longer a person resided in Canada, the less frequently he or she used Dutch15. Ethnic identification was a strong factor in ingroup interactions, residence in ethnic neighborhood. The first generation found ethnicity to be an important criterion in the use of professionals services like doctors, insurance agents and services like laundry, cleaning and others. So much so that an economy within an economy grows. Endogamy was important to the first generation and less so to the second generation.
All this shows that within the same ethnic group acculturation is leading to a difference between the first and second generation, where the second generation is combining both its heritage and the cultural influences in the country of adoption to create a syncretic culture. At this point, it might be useful to look at Dhooleka Sarhadi’s point about acculturation16. He sees acculturation as the transference of cultural elements from a dominant culture to a minority culture and in this he differs from Thomae, according to whom a “migrant population would start identical with its original culture and move through intermediate degrees, closer and closer to the new culture17.” This definition, however, as Sarhadi points out, is limited because it then essentially sees the cultural exchange between parents and children as one of confrontation18. The second generation, however, socializes in a space occupied by both the parental and mainstream cultures simultaneously. As one young man stated in Sarhadi’s study: “I think it’s easier for our parents to be able to take what they want from the west but still keep their roots and leave out what they don’t want. But when you are raised here, this is (all) we’ve been exposed to from day one19.” It is not, therefore, simply a question of becoming more like one’s Canadian peers in school and less like one’s parents. It is to juggle commitments to both and define oneself simultaneously as South Asian and Canadian. Therefore, the young create culture in a new context. As another person said in Sarhadi’s study, “I want to rediscover my heritage. 1 have romantic notions of being Indian and being an immigrant and what 1 do here (at the university) is reconstruction”20.
According to Stuart Hall, ” identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within the narrative of the past”. This is borne out in Sarhadi’s study by another voice: “I know the traditions that come with it (being South Asian ), I am not accepting all of them, but the ones I am, I will partake in .” 21It confirms with Hall’s sense of identity which” is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well of ‘being’ far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power”22 Hence the South Asian youths are redefining what it means to be a South Asian and not rejecting their heritage. Where this is accepted by the first generation the parents are not repressive but active players in the socialization of the child while undergoing change themselves.
The process of ‘becoming’ of being “positioned by and positioning” oneself is corroborated by Nodwell’s analysis that has been referred to earlier, of the popularity of the dance activities in South Asian community. She cites a young South Asian dance teacher as saying “I think it’s just become a lot more popular to really know your roots. It’s wonderful. I just see a lot of people asking me now that I would never have thought were interested. A lot of guys that just never cared before, or didn’t think they cared, they all of a sudden seem to be waking up. ‘There’s a whole different culture out here guys, let’s go to grab some’… so 1 think the younger kids are much more conscientiously trying. When we did it we sort of had it fed to us. These kids are trying to come out to it .I just noticed it lately, a lot of girls I know that have been asking me they want to take dance lessons, Indian dance, there are a lot of the girls that when we were growing up just, they were not into at all, they just were not interested in that. And all of a sudden they seem to be regretting that.”23
While classical and semi-classical dances are reasonably popular, they are by their very nature confined to the select few. It is the participatory dances like Garba, Bhangra and Gidda that have become a means of bringing parents and youth together. “In our culture about two years ago, there would never be any dancing at our receptions, or anything. But now, it seems like all of us people our age, younger older – can’t live without Bhangra. Like everywhere we go we get together with our friends, you put on the music and you start dancing or whatever. Like even our parents, our parents, our aunts and uncles-everyone just loves to dance now, no matter where you are, what you’re doing.”24 And it is not an activity confined to Punjabi Indo-Canadians. It transcends the boundaries of all the sub cultural groups that go into the make up of the Indo-Canadian Diaspora. Thus dance becomes a way of celebrating Indian culture, of being with other Indians and for many an important aspect of what it means to be an Indo-Canadian.
The assertion of identity by immigrant groups is one of the important factors in the acceptance of diversity and in the creation of multi-dimensional societies as Canada. Multi-dimensional or multi cultural societies which began with being pre dominantly English and French however have implications with regard to the formation of national identity. The Canadian government, faced with the post- modern situation where citizenship is not merely a matter of socializing young people into an existing social order and teaching them the intricacies of governance25 felt compelled to venture into the realm of citizenship education in order to create national identity while accommodating diversity. Several political scientists have tried to explain how pluralism and nationalism can be simultaneously accommodated. According to Kymlicka “Liberal democracies have a long history of seeking to accommodate ethno-cultural differences. With respect to national minorities, liberal democracies have typically accorded these groups some degree of regional political autonomy, so that they can maintain themselves as a separate and self-governing, culturally and linguistically distinct, societies. With respect to immigrants, liberal democracies have typically expected that these groups will integrate into mainstream institutions, but have become more tolerant of the expression of immigrant identities and practices within these institutions.”26
But the issue of the acceptance of place for diversity is both a political and a moral one. For Carens, “it is morally illegitimate for states to impose highly restrictive conditions on naturalization. I think it is permissible for states to offer to grant naturalization more quickly to those who acquire a modest competence in the dominant language of the society and a modest familiarity with its history and institutions. But, in my view, it would be wrong to require or even expect a more extensive cultural assimilation as a condition of naturalization”.27
This suggests that as long as an individual values liberal democracy and has respect for individual liberties in civil and civic exchanges, his freedom to practice his own culture in the private domain is unimpeded. Does the commitment to pluralism then also mean respecting a group’s practices in the public sphere of that which would otherwise be unacceptable like patriarchy or gender biases. The answer would be that there are some in fundamental characteristics linked to citizenship in a liberal democratic state such as equality of individuals that justify laws having a universal significance even if they run counter to specific cultural norms of groups. Hence political and moral theorists would concede that people have a right to live a differentiated identity up to the point that it is compatible with responsible citizenship.28
The danger in the above proposition is that acceptance of difference can be used to lock a minority person into a restricted space where he can neither be a threat to the established social order nor can be in any way influence29 the overall running of the democratic institutions. However, democracies can only become true democracies through active participation of its citizens. Such a ghettoization can only be prevented when the majority’s established order is also made subject to deliberation in all spheres except the ‘grundnorm’ which makes such a deliberation possible in the first place. Mouffe’s central thesis is that such deliberation is a fundamental requirement and must be accepted even while knowing that it would necessarily lead to conflict which according to him is an essential part of democracy : “The existence of pluralism implies the permanence of conflict and antagonism…. leading to the necessity of recognizing the constituent role of division and conflict .. one may… consider that it is precisely the existence of this tension between the rationale of identity and rationale of difference which makes of pluralistic democracy a system particularly adopted to the indeterminate and the indeterminable nature of modern politics … Between the goal of complete equivalence and that of pure difference, the experience of modern democracy resides in a recognition of the contradictory rationales as we’ll as in the necessarily of their articulation. This articulation must be constantly re-created and re-negotiated, since there is no balancing fulcrum to be located where a definitive harmony can be finally achieved.”30 This implies that. citizenship is not – as in liberalism – simply a legal status and the citizen is not just a passive recipient of rights which he exercises against the state and which the state is bound to protect. A citizen is defined by his activity which must be in consonance with rules and regulations which in turn need to be compatible with the requirements of pluralistic democracy. When inevitable conflicts arise and are not taken up in the political debate, a political deficit is created in which the common citizen identity yields to other forms of identification forming around ethnic, religious, nationalistic or other identities Therefore, such a debate is required to maintain civil society with democratic citizenship. In creating this equilibrium between diversity and acceptance of common values of citizenship in liberal democratic society education is seen as the key because it is through education and educational ideology that concepts are propagated and diffused.
Pluralism and individual liberty tend to be heady for individuals in which the commonality may be lost in the specific. The Citizenship Branch was created by the Government of Canada after the Second World War to create an overarching national identity and convince Canadians to adhere to it. Education in Canada being a provincial subject, the federal government has had to tread carefully in trying to implement its agenda of citizen education through out Canada. In the early 1980s the secretary of state Francis Fox wrote that the federal interest in the field of education lay in developing ” a sense of belonging” to Canada31. Around the same time, addressing the Special Parliamentary Committee on Federal, Provincial, Fiscal Arrangements, he detailed a number of national objectives in education, one of which was the “citizenship, language and cultural identity, objective.” 32Through this the state wished :
“to promote, through educational system, a sense of Canadian citizenship and identity with particular emphasis on the nations bilingual nature and to increase access by members of the official language minorities to a full range of educational opportunities in their own language33.”
As early as 1968, a memo to the Cabinet acknowledged that many of the activities of the citizenship Branch were in the realm of education and culture which were technically in the constitutional areas of provincial concerns, but made the case that a national role was vital. “In relation to those activities,” the document stated,
“the Government of Canada cannot be replaced by an aggregate of the ten provinces What is sought is not a mathematical addition but a social symbiosis in which new units (i.e. the nation the national organization, the national goal or activity) have a life of their own that must find a point of reference and a unit of service in the Government of Canada if Canadian citizenship is to have any meaning”34. In the view of the federal government, Canadian citizenship could not adequately be fostered by provincial or regional institutions and, therefore, it was vital for the nation state to intervene. This it did through funding and programmes like language immersion, second language teaching, multicultural educational and travel and youth exchange programmes.
The question arises whether the country of origin i.e. India in this case, also needs to put into place some programmes to retain the loyalty of the second generation. In India this loyalty has been presumed and encouraged only in the form of incentives for NRI investment whether direct or as deposits. No mercenary relationship lasts and is at best cynical. The battle has to be for emotional involvement for that is what at the bottom loyalty, nationalism and even effective citizenship are all about. India has, probably, not yet fully understood the pivotal role that educational institutions can play and the potency of culture in this area. Further, if the concerns of the vast and varied Indian diaspora have inevitably to infringe upon and influence key areas like foreign policy and investment then India must necessarily put into place a clearly defined policy together with an effective implementational machinery that ensures her national interest and concerns are articulated by this Diaspora.
The emotional factor plays an important role in the attitude of the first generation immigrants from India as they have a natural desire to remain in touch with their member of their family, childhood friends and alma-mater. They have the urge to do some thing for India but how far this translates into action differs from person to person. They have grown up with Indian cultural traditions. The professional and academics are particularly aware of the fact they were educated at minimal cost by the people of India. They often lead dual lives, Americans at work place and Indian at home. The challenge is to ensure that the next generation has similar emotional attachment for the country of their ancestry. Why this challenge is not fully understood is because there is no clear cut demarcation between the first and second generation. While there is a huge second generation, continuous migration ensures that there will always be a huge first generation also. It becomes difficult to distinctly define the separate needs of the two.
The attitudes currently witnessed are very complex. In school a number of India origin children try to underplay their Indian identity. However, in universities, a number of them suddenly want to know more about their heritage. Almost every university has at least one Indian Students Association mainly comprising of second generation person of Indian origin. In bigger universities, students coming from India and students of Indian origin are active in separate organization reflecting the culture of first generation and the immigrant culture of the second generation. This resource of the second generation can be used by India but special measures must be taken to acquaint them with their heritage and develop in them the emotional attachment to their mother country through that route.
This can be done in several ways. The existing cultural centres in the host countries need to be strengthened and, wherever possible, their scope of their activities widened. Additional cultural centres can be opened with the help of the Diaspora itself. Schools can be established in India with affiliations to examining boards that are globally accepted like the International Baccalaureat. Student exchange programmes need to be put in place at the university level. India study programmes can be designed for undergraduates studying in N. American universities to fit in with their provisions of study abroad programme. Language immersion programmes and cultural tourism will increase understanding of India. Also, study of Indian philosophy and heritage must once again become part of mainstream academia to acquaint both ourselves and the diaspora with the rich cultural tapestry that we are heirs to. Such activities can build a pool of second generation persons of Indian origin who have an understanding of contemporary India and love for its culture which then has the potential of translating into economic and political goodwill for India.
Endnotes:
1. Joanne Van Dijk, “Ethnic Persistence Among Dutch-Canadians Catholics and Calvinists,” 30(2),p.24.
2. Ibid.,p.24
3. Rasesh Thakkar, “Transfer of Culture through Arts – The South Asian Experience in North America, ” Ethnicity, Identity, Migration : The South Asian Context, et. Milton Israel and N.K.Wagle, pp.217-237.
4. Ibid.,p.217
5. Ibid.,p.218
6. Ibid.,p.219
7. Ibid.,
8. Ibid.,pp.219-220.
9. Evelyn Nodwell, ” The Inadequacy of “Folk” or “Ethnic” as Categories of Indian Dance in Canada, ” South Asian Horizons: Enriched by South Asia Celebrating Twenty Five Years of South Asian Studies in Canada, Vol.2: Social Sciences, Elliot L.Tepper and John R. Wood, ed. Pp.330-358.
10. Ibid.,p.330
11. Breton, Raymond, “Institutional Completeness of Ethnic Communities and the Personal Relations of Immigrants, ” American Journal of Sociology, 70 (1964), pp.193-205. Cited by Evelyn Nodwell, p.352. See also, Joanne van Dijk, “Ethnic Persistence Among Dutch-Canadian Catholics and Calvinists,” pp.25-26.
12. Cited by Joanne Can Dijk, p.27
13. Ibid.,p.27; p.30
14. Ibid.,p.30
15. Ibid.,p.32.
16. Dhooleka Sarhadi, “Intergenerational Culture Conflict in Migrant South Asian Families,” South Asian Horizons:Enriched by South Asia Celebrating Twenty Five Years of South Asian Studies in Canada, Vol.2: Social Sciences, Elliot L.Tepper and John R.Wood, ed.,pp.397-422
17. Thomae,”Personality Development in Two Cultures,”Human Development, Vol.22.,p.307, cited by Sarhadi,p.397.
18. Ibid.,pp.398-399
19. Ibid.,p.406
20. Ibid.,p.407
21. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, J. Rutherford ed.,(London: Lawrence Wishart), p.237, cited by Sarhadi, p.407.
22. Ibid., cited by Sarhadi,p.407
23. Evelyn Nodwell, “The Inadequacy of “Folk” or “Ethinic” as Categories of Indian Dance in Canada,” South Asian Horizons :Enriched by South Asia Celebrating Twenty Five Years of South Asian Studies in Canada, vol.2 Social Sciences, Elliot L.Tepper and John R.Wood.,ed. Pp.340-341.
24. Ibid.,p.344
25. Yvonne Hebert, “Citizenship Education “Towards a Pedagogy of Social Participation and Identity Formation,”Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol.29, No.2,pp.82-84.
26. W.Kymlicka, “Democratic Liberale at droits des cultures minoritaires, “Pluralisme, citoyennete’ at education, Gaguon F., Mc Andrew M.,Montreal: Harmattan, 1996. Cited by Michel Page, ” Pluralistic Citizenship: A Reference for Citizenship Education, “Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol.29,No.2, 1997, p.23.
27. Michel page’,”Pluralistic Citizenship : A Reference for citizenship Education,”p.25
28. Ibid.,p.26.
29. Ibid.
30. Cited by Page’,p.27.
31. F.Fox,”The Federal Interest,”Federal Provincial Relations: Education Canada J.W.G. Ivamy and Manley – Cassimir, ed.(Toronto : OISE Press), 1981, cited by alan Sears, “Instruments of Policy : How the National State Influences Citizenship Education in Canada, ” Canadian Ethnic Studies, Vol.29, No.2, 1997, p.3
32. Alan Sears, “Instruments of Policy : How the National State Influences Citizenship Education in Canada,” pp.3-4
33. Ibid.,p.4
34. Memorandum to Cabinet, “Confirmation of the Citizenship Branch Role Draft, “February 1968, p.2 PAC, Records of the Department of the Secretary of State, RG 6 ACC 86-87/319, vol.29. file 2-14. Cited by Alan Sears, p.4.