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One of the pieces of folklore that affectionately circulates in the imagination of the Indian community in New York city is that entire villages from Panjab state in India have re-established themselves in Queens, N. Y. In part, this is because Indian immigrant families are not exclusively nuclear in form. It is not uncommon for parents or parents-in-law to arrive for lengthy stays, or for nieces, nephews or the children of cousins to be informally adopted into U.S. households for the duration of their college-going years, as they are in India. The open expansiveness of the Indian family may not be its most unique feature, but it is one of the most enduring and admirable features. The children of the Indian diaspora can expect their parents to be involved in their lives, to contribute to college tuition and living expenses, to help them find marriage partners, help them set up new homes and assist them with new babies.

The belief that close contact with relatives should be cultivated is shared by most Indian families, where the definition of a relative is broad, and includes not only immediate and distant blood relatives, but friends from the same town/village/city and so on. When contact with immediate relatives is not possible to maintain, surrogate familial relations are assiduously developed. New arrivals to the circle are often offered material and emotional support; at celebratory or other events like deaths, it is this circle that serves as the immediate family.

Yet the trauma and tension that accompanies life in a new country often centers around issues of the family (1), especially with the coming of age of a second generation in U.S. society. Raised, for the most part, in India, where "home" and "family" figure significantly in the general social consciousness, it is important for the first generation of Indian immigrants that their children grow up with an awareness of "Indian values" and "Indian culture". Often, there is great variation, debate and conflict regarding what might constitute these values, and how they can be transmitted or emulated. The avenues chosen for cultivating "Indian Culture" include traditional music and dance, religious and ceremonial practice, regional foodways, ethnic clothing or ornamentation, popular culture (through the media of modern film) and special summer camps (some of which, unfortunately, promote narrow-minded religious or ethnic chauvinism).

Despite the strengths of the Indian extended family, it is also under pressure to assimilate to dominant norms, like the nuclear family. As several writers have noted, this pressure often results in the tendency of the Indian diaspora to enact a partitioning between work life and home life. That is, they accept the values of the larger host society in the workplace but maintain "Indian" values at home. Such a partitioning may, however, cause high levels of stress, especially for women, upon whom the burden of maintaining family and religious tradition often falls (1,2). Women in the Indian diaspora play a central role in constructing and maintaining extended family structures, and in the socialization of their U.S.-born offspring.

The public/private split in Indian diasporic communities has resulted in a version of Indian (often Hindu) culture being maintained that is static and rigid. As Shamita Das Dasgupta has argued, the attitudes of Indians long settled in the U.S. have frozen in time, even as India has changed. They tend to stick to the older picture of India. They are developing "Hindi Cinema Hinduism"; for example their notion of women's sexuality is embodied in the ultra-modest, chaste "pativrata" woman who may not be reality-based at all. Ginu Kamani (5) says of cultures like the South Asian, that " The (overt or covert) group ownership of any given woman's sexuality is still the most pressing subject for a large number for Indian women." This concern over women's sexuality also extends to men who depart from the heterosexual norm. Gay and bisexual Indian men who have remained unmarried over a period of time often face concerted pressure from their families to agree to an arranged marriage. Some go through with the marriage but then wind up leading double-lives because they know their families will never accept their sexual orientation. Others recount a gradual process of acceptance by their parents.

What Sayantani and Shamita Dasgupta term "female exogamy" in the Indian community refers to the fact that "more and more young women complain that they are unable to find a partner within the community who is supportive and encouraging of their independence, assertiveness, activism and ambition". They note also that "many more of their male counterparts are voluntarily returning to their parents' natal lands to find brides, producing what they call a "no-confidence vote being cast between the genders in the second generation" (6). Among second generation Indians there does seem to be increasing desire for arranged marriages, or at least a willingness to explore the initial stages of the process. The newspapers of the diasporic community are filled with marital ads. Parents who might themselves have had love-marriages in India have been surprised at their U.S. born children asking for help in arranging marriages. (7).

While on the one hand, the Indian family can be considered a structure of support and nurturance, on the other, it is also a site for debate and contest about marriage, sexuality, child-rearing and attitudes about aging. And it is in this context that we can ask how the community treats its own dissidents: those women who are battered or abused; those divorced or widowed; lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women; all of whom are stigmatized. These members of our communities are harshly judged for their departures from a heterosexual nuclear family norm. Physical and emotional abuse, marital rape (3) and incest are growing issues in the Indian immigrant community, challenging the stereotype of the Indian family as the ideal, model family.

In 1985, Manavi, the first group addressing domestic violence in the South Asian community was founded. There are now approximately 18-20 South Asian women's groups in the U.S. According to one estimate the incidence of domestic violence in the South Asian community is about 20-25%, although some analysts feel this percentage is low given the rate of unreported incidents (4). Interestingly, the many strategies used by feminist organizations to address domestic violence in the community include activism that (as in the case of SNEHA, Connecticut) "draws on the model of the extended family... comprised of relatives, close friends and neighbors.... In times of family crises, it is often a relative or a friend who serves as an empathetic listener." When family support is unavailable, domestic violence organizations in the South Asian community work to fill this gap.

References:

(1) Rayaprol, Aparna, 1997. Negotiating Identities: Women in the Indian Diaspora. Delhi, Oxford U.Press
(2) Roland, Alan, 1996. Cultural Pluralism and Psychoanalysis: The Asian and North American Experience. N.Y.: Routledge. Also Kar, Snehendu B., et. al, 1995. "Invisible Americans: An Exploration of the Indo-American Quality of Life". Amerasia Journal, Winter 1995/96, 21(3).
(3) Mazumdar, Rinita, 1998. "Marital Rape: Some Considerations", in A Patchwork Quilt, Shamita Das Dasgupta (ed.), Temple.
(4) Krishnan, Satya, et al.,1998. "Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Domestic Violence Among South Asian Women in the U.S.", in A Patchwork Quilt, Shamita Das Dasgupta (ed.), Temple.
(5) Kamani, Ginu, 1996. "Just After 'Just Between Indians'" in Contours of the Heart.
(6) Dasgupta, Shamita Das and Sayantani, 1996. "Women in Exile: Gender Relations in the Asian Indian Community in the U.S. in Contours of the Heart.
(7) Lessinger, Johanna, 1995. From the Ganges to the Hudson: Indian Immigrants in New York City. Boston, Allen and Bacon

Footnote:
This article was published in the Saheli Newsletter in November 1999. It is an extract from a longer paper by the author.

Saheli is an all-volunteer non-profit support and advocacy organization for Asian families in Austin, Texas. Saheli's mission is to help victims and survivors of domestic violence to heal, and empower them to make choices for a life free of abuse. We spread awareness of various forms of oppression against women and children through community outreach and education. We form a bridge between the Asian community and local services to cross the culture gap. Saheli's vision is to work toward preventing abuse in family relationships, to break the cycle of violence and pursue a cycle of peace. For more information about Saheli, visit www.main.org/saheli
To contact us call (512) 703-8745
or send e-mail to: saheli@usa.net

Opinions expressed in this column are those of the authors alone.

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