‘Am I a South Asian, really?’ Constructing ‘South Asians’ in Canada and being South Asian in Toronto

Abstract

In 2006, ‘South Asians’ emerged as the single largest visible minority group in Canada. Studies on their settlement experiences have concluded that ‘South Asians’ are a spatially segregated and economically struggling immigrant group. Juxtaposed to these findings however, there exists another image about ‘South Asians’, particularly in Toronto, where a majority of the newcomers have settled. This image is that of a mass culture, imbued with splashed of color, spice, music, dance, and cinema. The over arching aim of this paper is to unravel the construction of ‘South Asian’ identity in Canada both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, I investigate the historical and relational processes of racialisation of a space (South Asia), to argue that ‘South Asian’ is a racialised and externally imposed identity, and empirically, I attempt to understand how ‘South Asians’ in Toronto may variously internalise and use this identity in their everyday life situations.

Keywords:

• South Asia
• South Asian identity
• Toronto

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all the participants who have helped me in this research project. My sincere thanks to Anne Heritis for conducting the pilot survey, and Raymond Garrison for his editorial remarks. Finally, I also thank Margaret Walton-Roberts, the editor of this special issue, and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions to this paper.

Notes

'South Asians’ are currently the largest visible minority group in Canada (Statistics Canada 2006).

In 1967, the removal of the ‘White-only’ immigration policy allowed qualified people from this non-traditional source to arrive in Canada.

See Balakrishnan and Hou (1999), Kazemipur and Halli (2000), Bauder and Sharpe (2002), Darden (2004), Balakrishnan et al. (2005), Preston et al. (2006), Picot et al. (2008), Hiebert (2009), Qadeer et al. (2010).

The diversity of the group is illustrated by their different countries of origin (e.g. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan), mother tongues (e.g. Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam), and religions (e.g. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists). Moreover, although the Punjabi Sikhs from undivided British-India arrived in Canada at the turn of the last century, immigration from other parts of the subcontinent gained momentum only in the past two decades (Sampat-Mehta 1984, Walton-Roberts 1998, 2003, Walton-Roberts and Pratt 2005). During this time, Indians and Pakistanis came primarily as economic migrants, but many Sri Lankan Tamils (Ferdinands 2002) and Bangladeshis (Ahmed 1986, Ghosh 2007) arrived as refugees. A few recent studies have noted some social and economic differences among ‘South Asians’ from specific nation states (Kanungo 1984, Buchignani 1987, Israel 1987, Israel and Wagle 1993, Fernandez 2001, Ferdinands 2002). For instance, among Sri Lankans, the Sinhalese arrived as highly educated economic migrants, whereas the Tamils generally possessed fewer educational and financial resources (Ferdinands 2002).

See Vertovec (2012) for an understanding of the British context. In his discussion under ‘countries of origin’, Vertovec points out, that in the 1950s and 1960s, a large proportion of immigrants to Britain were from ‘South Asia’, and multicultural policies in Britain, for instance, continue to be conceived of mainly in terms of the non-white ex-colonised people – the Caribbeans and the South Asians.

In June 2006, 18 South Asian Muslim men aged 18–42 were arrested by CSIS on terrorist-related charges. Arguably, the accused were members of the Al-Quaida, and training in wooded areas of Southern Ontario plotting attacks on Torontonians. While some of the accused have been acquitted others have been found guilty.

As pointed out by Fernandez (2001), Morning (2001), Palat (2000), Phadnis and Ganguly (2001), Srestha (2002) and Walton-Roberts (1998).

The post-colonial predicament is where ‘students of society and history [question] the role of their academic disciplines in the reproduction of patterns of domination’.

Although I contend that ‘South Asians’ are a spatialised ‘race’ in Toronto, meaning that in addition to being a racialised group (Murdie and Ghosh 2010), ‘South Asian’ identity is variously expressed and muted in certain areas of Toronto, however, due to space constraints this issue will not be discussed in detail in this paper.

‘Unwitted’ racism is defined as the process in which the institutions unconsciously and unintentionally discriminate against people. However, as Goldberg (1993) and Anthias (1999, p. 4) point out ‘racism as forms of discourse come in different guises’.

This argument that ‘India’ is a space with homogenous culture is also another evidence of social construction and perpetuation of a myth, used for nation-building (Lele 1993).

West Bengalis and Bangladeshis speak Bangla, however, while West Bengalis are predominantly Hindus, most Bangladeshis are Muslims. It is based on the logic of religion and the ‘two nation's theory’ that these areas were partitioned at the time of independence from British rule in 1947. West Bengal (with a Hindu majority) became a part of India while East Bengal (with a Muslim majority) became East Pakistan. In the next two decades, East Pakistan (backed by India) fought a war against Pakistan to become an independent state in 1971.

Several studies on ‘South Asians’ in the diaspora reveal how social identities often formulated in the home country variously affect their lives in the migrant city (see Clarke et al. 1990, Coward et al. 2000). Whereas in the US context, Mohammad-Arif (2001, pp. 289–91) points out how religion plays a significant role in creating social distances between ‘South Asians’ in their residential spaces, studies in the British context have demonstrated significant differences among the subgroups with respect to their spatial segregation and integration (at the regional as well as city levels). Not only were Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis segregated from each other in British cities, Bangladeshis were equally segregated from the Caucasian British as well as Indians and the Pakistanis (Robinson 1986, Ballard 1996, Peach 1996, 1998). Similar findings exist for Canadian cities as well (Ghosh 2007, Murdie and Ghosh 2010). More recently, Werbner (2009, pp. 21–2) contends that after the 9/11 and the London Bombings, compared to all other groups, Pakistani Muslims in Britain are particularly in a precarious state.

Little has changed in the USA with respect to the associations between ‘race’ and ‘space’ over time. In the USA, migrant labourers from the Indian subcontinent were categorised previously as ‘Blacks’, and since 1990, people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are grouped as ‘South Asian’, a separate racial category (Koshy 1998).

Despite the removal of the term ‘race’ from academic analyses in the 1940s, and ongoing intellectual debate on the connotations and usages of the term ‘ethnicity’ (Hiebert 2000, Peake and Ray 2001, p. 180), the connotations of ‘race’ still exist unchanged in official discourses of Canada. Statistics Canada for example uses ‘visible minority’ as a category to represent people who are ‘non-white’. Kobayashi and Peake (2002, p. 394) argue that such implicit racism is what constitutes the nature of the ‘White’ majority in Canada. Secondly, by using ‘South Asian’ as an ethnic origin category, the census both ignores and denies any ‘racist indications events and beliefs, giving them legitimacy as a part of a moral system depicted as natural and universal’, and helps the dominant majority to draw the boundaries of ‘us’ and differentiate from ‘them’. Through such discourses, the traditional complexion and culture of the Canadian ‘us’ has been ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ (Peake and Ray 2001).

Since the late 1990s, some researchers (primarily using qualitative methodologies to understand immigrant experiences) have challenged the historical and contemporary homogenised assumptions and claims about ‘South Asians’ in Canada (Walton-Roberts 1998, Ferdinands 2002, Oliveira 2004, Ghosh 2006, 2007, Murdie and Ghosh 2010). Despite these important assertions, broad-stroked findings about ‘South Asian’ continue to be circulated within the academia and outside of it.

One of the earliest books written about ‘South Asians’ is an edited volume by Kanungo (1984). In the mid-1980s, a series of books were published on the migration and social life of ‘South Asians’ in Canada such as Buchignani et al. (1985), and Israel (1987). The contents of these books were often very similar, focusing primarily on the Punjabi Sikh experience in Vancouver, but also, other groups of people including Gujaratis (primarily Kacchi-Muslims) fleeing from Uganda, and the Goans. Other than the brown skin colour (i.e. phenotypical resemblances), these people had very little in common, economically, politically or culturally, albeit their experiences of racialisation in Canada may have been a common factor which socially bound them into a group and later on enabled them to lobby for scarce resources, such as government recognition and funding opportunities.

The Vancouver Sun, National Post and the Ottawa Citizen are also some of the other leading newspapers.

Newspapers reports from this period suggest that there were various cultural exchanges between the then-British India and Canada since the late 1800s. In 1914, for instance, a prominent litterateur of the time and noble laureate, Rabindranath Tagore was invited to speak to a packed Canadian audience in Vancouver. In various newspapers, Tagore, although a Bramho by religion, was designated as a ‘Hindoo’. Although this designation was incorrect, it perhaps ensued from the newly established popularity of ‘Hinduism’ in the West, brought about by Swami Vivekananda. Through his speeches at the World Conference of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and in various countries of Europe thereafter, Vivekananda had established ‘India’ as the land of the spiritual Hindu.

As Canadian census data indicates, over the past two decades, immigrants from ‘South Asia’ to Canada in general and Toronto specifically have been highly educated, middle-class economic migrants (Statistics Canada 2006). While a significant proportion of family class migrants and refugees have also entered during this time, economic migrants comprise the dominant cohort of ‘South Asians’ in Toronto (Statistics Canada 2006, PRDS data 1980–2005).

Similarly explained by one of Ashutosh's (2012, p. 102) respondent as ‘the grand scheme of things’.

Another respondent said: ‘Because I am brown they think I am Indian, and because I am Indian I must be Punjabi’ (Monica).

Some studies have asserted that there are multiple sites of ‘South Asian’ enclaves in Toronto (Qadeer and Kumar 2006, Qadeer et al. 2010). Other studies (on specific South Asian subgroups) however, contend that these are not ‘South Asian’ enclaves, but rather Bangladeshi (Ghosh 2007), Punjabi-Sikh (Oliveira 2004) and Tamil enclaves. The question remains, are these places viewed as spaces of belonging?

Additionally, by choosing the appropriate space for performing identities, they are able to remain loyal to their respective religions and associated practices (i.e. dietary restrictions).