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Tushar Unadkat
Part 2 / Part 2
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Home Away
from Homeland
By Tushar Unadkat
Indians in Canada
According to Statistics Canada,
in 2006 there were 962,665 people who classified themselves as
being of Indian origin. The term "East Indian" or Indo-Canadian
is most commonly associated with people of Indian origin, since
the term Indian in Canada has commonly been used to refer to
the Aboriginal Canadians and still continues to be used to describe
them, causing much confusion. In addition, the term Indian is
also occasionally applied to people from the Caribbean (West
Indians), also called Indo-Caribbean. Out of this population,
42 per cent are Hindu, 39 per cent are Sikh, and the remainder
are Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, or no religious affiliation.
The main Indian ethnic communities are Punjabis (who account
for more than half the population) as well Gujaratis, Tamils
(Indian as opposed to Sri Lankan), Indo-Caribbean (numbering
approximately 200,000), Keralites, Bengalis, Sindhis and others.
The first known
Indian settlers in Canada were Indian army soldiers who had passed
through Canada in 1897 on their way back home from attending
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebration in London, England.
Some are believed to have remained in British Columbia and others
returned there later, along with other Punjabi Indians who were
attracted to the possibilities for farming and forestry. They
were mainly male Sikhs who were seeking work opportunities. Indo-Caribbean
descendants of the Indian indentured workers who had gone to
the Caribbean since 1838, made an early appearance in Canada
with the arrival of the Trinidadian medical student Kenneth Mahabir
and the Demerara (now Guyana) clerk M.N. Santoo, both in 1908.
The first immigrants in British
Columbia allegedly faced widespread racism from the local White
Canadians. There were race riots that targeted these immigrants,
as well as new Chinese immigrants. Most decided to return to
India, while a few stayed behind. The Canadian government prevented
these men from bringing their wives and children until 1919,
another reason why many of them chose to leave. Quotas were established
to prevent many Indians from moving to Canada in the early 20th
century. These quotas allowed fewer than 100 people from India
a year until 1957, when the number was increased to 300. In 1967,
all quotas were scrapped, and immigration was based on a point
system, thus allowing many more Indians to enter. Since this
open door policy was adopted, Indians continue to come in large
numbers, and roughly 25,000-30,000 arrive each year (which now
makes Indians the second highest group immigrating to Canada
each year, after the Chinese).
Most Indians choose to immigrate
to larger urban centers like Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver,
where more than 70 per cent live. Smaller communities are also
growing in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Indians in Vancouver
are from diverse locations in India such as Punjab, Gujarat,
Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. Indians in Vancouver mainly
live in the suburb of Surrey, but can also be found in other
parts of Vancouver. The vast majority of Vancouver Indians are
of Sikh origin and have taken significant roles in politics and
other professions, with several Supreme Court justices, three
Attorneys Generals and one provincial premier hailing from the
community.
Indians in the United States
Indian immigration to North
America started as early as 1890s. A Sikh-Canadians community
has existed in Abbotsford, B.C. in Canada for over 100 years.
The Hindus from India started to settle after the government
built the first Mandir (Hindu temple). Many of the Sikhs that
were living in the United States would often visit their homes
in India and share their experiences. The stories would encourage
the Hindus to move to the United States and live there. In 1889,
the first Hindu family arrived in America, the government built
a Mandir for the family, which attracted more Hindus immigrants
and soon after there were many Mandirs to be found around the
country.
Sikhs were not allowed to build
a temple as the government believed that Sikhism was created
from Hinduism and hence the Sikhs would have to either pray at
the Mandirs or not pray at all. The real reason was the Government
did not want to use any more money on places of worship. More
that 75 per cent of the Sikhs prayed at the Mandirs, but about
100 refused as they wanted to retain their own religion within
the Gurdwara (Sikh temple) so they protested for almost 22 years.
Finally, in 1911, the first Gurdwara was built not in America
but in Canada, because the American government were occupied
by the war in Japan and Europe. Today there are very few Gurdwaras
in America and many in Canada.
The first Gurdwara on South
Fraser Way in Abbotsford is the oldest Sikh temple in North America
(1911). Emigration to the United States also started in the late
19th and early 20th century, when Sikhs arriving in Vancouver
found that the fact that they were subjects of the British Empire
did not mean anything in the Empire (Canada) itself, and they
faced blatant discrimination.
Some of these pioneers entered
the United States or landed in Seattle and San Francisco as the
ships that carried them from Asia often stopped at these ports.
Most of these immigrants were Sikhs from the Punjab region. They
were referred to in the United States as Hindus (due to a common
American misconception that all Indians are Hindus and also the
fact that this term distinguished immigrants from Native Americans
who were also called Indians).
A restriction on immigration
of Indian women, banned under the racially prejudiced immigration
laws passed by the United States government in 1917 at the behest
of California and other States in the West, meant a large influx
of Chinese, Japanese and Punjabi immigrants during and after
the gold rush.
As a result, a large number
of these men married Mexican women in California. A fair number
of these families settled down in the Central Valley in California
as farmers, who continue farming until today. These early immigrants
were deprived of voting rights, family re-unification and citizenship.
In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court
in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ruled that people from
India (at the time, British India, e.g. South Asians) are aliens
ineligible for citizenship became a citizen a few years later
in New York. Bhagat Singh Thind was a Sikh from India settled
in Oregon, he had earlier applied and been rejected in Oregon.
After the Second World War, family re-unification was allowed
again for people of non-white origin after being banned for almost
half a century and they were given the right to vote. A large
number of the men that arrived before 1940s were finally able
to bring their families to the United States, most of them settled
in California and other West coast states.
Another wave entered the United
States in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. A large percentage
of them were Sikhs joining their family members under the new
colour-blind immigration laws and professionals or students that
came from all over India. The Cold War created a need for engineers
in the defence and aerospace industries, many of whom came from
India. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gujarati and South
Indian immigrants outnumbered Sikhs or Punjabis as new arrivals,
though all communities had pretty much even representation in
overall Indian-American numbers.
The most recent and probably
the largest wave of immigration to date occurred in the late
1990s and early 2000 during the Internet boom. As a result, Indians
in the United States are now one of the largest among the groups
of Indian Diaspora, numbering about three million. In contrast
to the previous sets of Indians who entered the United States
workforce as taxi drivers, labourers, farmers or small business
owners, the latest set went on to be very successful financially,
thanks to the hi-tech industry, and are thus probably the most
well-off community of immigrants. They are well represented in
all walks of life, but particularly so in academia, information
technology and medicine. There were over 4,000 PIO professors
and 84,000 Indian-born students in American universities in 2007-2008.
The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin boasts
a membership of 35,000. In 2000, Fortune magazine estimated the
wealth generated by Indian Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at around
$250 billion.
Though the Indian Diaspora
in the United States is largely concentrated in metropolitan
areas such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles,
New York, San Francisco, Detroit and Houston, almost every state
in the US has a community of Indians.
Reference material:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/census/index.html
http://www.census.gov/
http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm
http://indiandiaspora.nic.in
http://en.wikipedia.org
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