Desi Divas: Political Activism in South Asian American Cultural Performances

Chapter Two: Performing South Asian American Histories

43 Performing South Asian American Histories Stay in the harness and work for justice and the betterment of your country, the maintenance of its flag and the protection of its white people, and let it not be said of us that there is a streak of yellow or brown in the American flag. —Delegate C. O.Young, Representative of the American Federation of Labor, February 1908 We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison for Minnesota. Those are changes and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. The principles that this country was built on, that have made it great over these centuries, were Christian principles derived from Scripture. You know the Lord can make the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike. —Representative Bill Sali, Republican congressman from Idaho, July 2007 One hundred years separate these evocations of flags and founding fathers in the name of minority exclusion.1 Taken together, however, they reveal a good deal about the central dilemmas facing South Asian American community members today. In both moments, South Asian Americans have found themselves characterized as perpetual strangers at the door of American democracy. By raising the specter of the Other and promising protection from their fearsome “foreignness,” these appeals to the majority do not recognize the legitimacy of South Asians as citizens or neighbors. This long history of discrimination against South Asian Americans, firmly rooted in colonialism and global economic movements, goes relatively unacknowledged in the public sphere.2 Even less familiar to most is the history Chapter Two " “ “ " “ “ 44 Performing South Asian American Histories of political activism by South Asian Americans who use performance to address issues related to citizenship, social justice concerns, and human rights issues (Dasgupta 2006). In this chapter, I draw from archival research at the University of California Berkeley’s South Asian Library, the British Library, the University of IowaLibrary’sChautauquaArchives,andtheMinnesotaandWisconsinState Historical Societies, as well as fieldwork with progressive activist groups like SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together) to unearth a range of such performances directed at and produced by South Asian Americans— both men and women. These case studies explore South Asian Americans’ histories, the tensions and ties that characterize them, and the identitydriven struggles that continue to dominate their discourse and practices. This chapter is about the fundamental problems and concerns that motivate South Asian American individuals to take action in their communities, creating spaces for discussion, debate, and education. Given that less attention has been devoted to the rhetorical work of those whose messages take the form of artistic cultural performances, the first task is to provide a historical overview of such performances and political practices by South Asian Americans, focusing on 1850 to the present. These historical case studies will do the work of foregrounding the issues at stake (i.e., citizenship or justice) and the concepts at hand (i.e., intersectionality or hybridity) that will guide the analysis of performances in later chapters. A truly diverse array of performances and practices have been employed by South Asians—including speeches, parades, songs, storytelling, and theater events, all of which are considered here. Many people, even those within the South Asian American community, are unaware of this rich legacy . Indeed, few American histories mention the political performance traditions of South Asians in the United States. A vast majority of current South Asian immigrants to this country arrived after 1950, during the so-called brain-drain period, when large numbers of highly educated South Asians relocated to the United States. Even today, the majority of South Asians (75 percent) who live in the United States are foreign born. This earlier history is not their history, per se, as many of the original South Asian immigrants to North America returned to their natal home after a term of labor or education . As a consequence, unlike immigrants of many other nationalities, it is not the direct ancestors of most South Asian Americans who engaged in the first fights for immigrant rights. Moreover, it should be noted that these early efforts often met with unsuccessful ends, which may be one reason this history has remained largely unwritten and misunderstood. Yet, we know that the social violence of today is linked to that of the past. Consequently, Performing South Asian American Histories 45 the tracing...