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Asian Indians in Indiana
M. GAIL HICKEY
| Asian Indians are among the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States today. Eighty-two percent of Asian Indian immigrants now living in the U.S. arrived between 1980 and 2000, and their population more than doubled in the 1990s. Currently, the U.S. Asian Indian population totals nearly 2 million. In 2004 nearly 17,000 Asian Indians lived in Indiana—up more than 2,000 since 1999 and more than double the Asian Indian population recorded in the state ten years earlier.1 |
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In spite of this numerical presence, the American media often present the Asian Indian community and its individual members in stereotypic ways, portraying students as antisocial intellectuals, men as dependable employees who nevertheless lack initiative, and women as silent and subservient spouses. Unfortunately, research that might counter the stereotypes is extremely sparse, and few firsthand accounts document the everyday lives of Asian Indian immigrants in the Midwest.2 The growing presence of Asian Indians here and elsewhere in the U.S., and the diversity of their experiences, calls for new study and interpretive techniques that can suitably capture their memories and preserve their experiences. |
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Traditionally, scholars studied immigration history through the use of ships' passenger lists, federal statistics and, where available, documents, diaries, letters, and other memoirs. During the lifetimes of contemporary immigrants, however, the ready availability of telephones, fax machines, and e-mail has made letter writing and the keeping of diaries almost a lost art. Fortunately, oral history provides a way to access contemporary immigrants' narratives about their experience. Such primary sources represent nothing less than history in the making—firsthand accounts captured at a distinct moment in the acculturation process—that may prove vital to historians and other researchers later attempting to understand the larger picture of American immigration and assimilation. Allesandro Portelli commends oral-history research for its firsthand insights into people's interpretations of their personal and historical experiences. Donald Ritchie says oral history may well be the modern substitute for the written memoir. Numerous scholars address oral history's capacity to document vital information about memory, culture, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and power. In brief, today's social research is tomorrow's historical documentation.3 |
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This article presents and analyzes a summary of oral-history interviews with ninety Asian Indian immigrants who reside in Indiana. Conducted between 1994 and 2002 among Asian Indians from northern, central, and southern Indiana, the interviews in this project provide information about immigrants' daily life in the U.S., marriage customs, family life, religious traditions, and methods for defining ethnic identity.4 Participants present some views clearly attributable to generational difference—first-generation adult immigrants shared certain obvious traits when compared to second-generation individuals who were born and/or raised in Indiana—but as a rule, their views of Indian and American cultural practices vary greatly from each other. Taken as a whole, the interviews demonstrate significant intergroup diversity among Asian Indians in Indiana. This article explores their accounts of cultural encounter, their conceptions of India, their lives in Indiana, and their reflections on the interaction of identity and tradition. |
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