Recommendation: India in the West: South Asians in America by Ronald Takaki

 

I remember attending an Asian Students Association meeting at the University of Virginia to hear from the guest lecturer Ronald Takaki, whom I had known about because of his book condemning the United States's use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The students' excitement was as if a diety had entered the room, and it was really the first time I remember considering ethnicity and identity to be important. Professor Takaki was a leading figure in the movement for multiculturalism in education. India in the West: South Asians in America was published in 1995 as part of a series of books designed for young adult readers. It is adapted and reprinted from his 1989 classic Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans.

I didn't realize that Asian Indian Americans were initially not caught up in the anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese immigration policies of California and the United States. In the bizarre world of race theory prevailing in the United States of the early 20th century, South Asians were classified as Caucasian. In the 1923 case of Bhagat Singh Thind vs USA, the Supreme Court ruled that Asian Indians could not become U.S. citizens.

Some momentum for relief from this discrimination occurred in an effort to persuade Indians to aid the Allies in World War II against the Japanese. Indians questioned why they should fight to support the British who colonized them and the Americans who discriminated against them. This is another data point for those who claim that nearly all progress against white supremacy in the United States has come during times when it needed international assistance to advance its imperial ambitions against other powers, such as Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union.

During the halcyon days of enthusiasm for political Islam (لا شرقية لا غربية دولة دولة إسلامية) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, advocates used to say that Islamism, not communism, was the solution to the problems of Western liberalism. While the response in liberal industrialized nations to communism was often some limited, positive internal reform, the response to Islamism has been regressive, atavistic nationalism. In that regard at least, Soviet communism, whatever its flaws, was better than Islamism. 

Note: The book I linked to was published in 1995, years after I graduated. But I don't know why I would have attended the meeting, as I am not Asian. Perhaps he gave a lecture on the subject of the bombings and I wanted to hear more from him.

P.S. Read my review of troubles white supremacy caused Indian migrants to Canada.