Gatekeeping "the Subaltern"? A Response to Frank Korom's Review of the Exhibition Live Like the Banyan Tree: Images of the Indian American Experience

I write in response to Frank J. Korom's review (this issue) of Live like the Banyan Tree: Images of the Indian American Experience, an exhibition I guest curated at the Balch Institute of Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia. The exhibition, from its conceptual framework to the personal items borrowed for display, grew out of nearly two years of ethnographic research that I conducted in the greater Philadelphia area, in a community of which I was a part. In addition to the fieldwork and overall conceptualization, I was responsible for editing the catalog and codirecting the ethnographic video that accompanies the exhibition. I respond here to those aspects of Korom's review that directly relate to my responsibilities.

Korom's critique relies on categorizations that have in fact troubled the understanding of the Indian American experience. His lament that the exhibition tends to be "celebratory" and that it consequently "muffles the voices of subaltern members of the community" is particularly troublesome because it unproblematically assumes that profession indicates "subalternity." Without questioning the association of subaltern status with nonelite classes, Korom lists "taxi drivers, auto mechanics, roadside vendors, factory workers, peons, and agricultural laborers" as members of "the subaltern." My fieldwork, and my conversations with newspaper sellers, gas station workers, motel owners, taxicab drivers, and grocery store clerks compellingly argued that immigration profoundly transforms and complicates class statuses so that class is hardly a transparent category. An individual who has been an engineer before immigrating could be a gas station owner in the new context, a teacher a newspaper seller, a chemist a restaurant owner, or a farmworker a motel owner. Often, individuals have multiple professions and further confound the notion of subalternity indexed by profession. For instance, a heart surgeon worked with his wife in a convenience store, a cabdriver thought of himself as a poet and newspaper publisher, and a librarian ran a catering service. These redefined statuses do not naturally indicate subaltern identities.

Subalternity constructed analytically needs to be carefully located in subalternity that arises from the experience of marginalization both within and outside diasporic contexts. The negligence of old age, the racism within the community and that directed toward it, the agony of a misunderstood second generation, the isolation of the first, the nonrecognition of gays and lesbians, and the abuse of women in my fieldwork revealed that these marked the "subaltern" in Indian American life, and the exhibition was not shy about displaying these aspects. Wall panels did not exclusively address each of these issues because we viewed them as part of larger realms of experience that were represented in the exhibition. For example, the wall panel on "community" included items loaned by community organizations that identified themselves by ethnic, religious, professional, or artistic interests. In no understated way, however, the same panel included items from South Asian women's support groups, a gay and lesbian group, and revisionary youth camps. These draw attention to the newer formulations of "community" prevalent among Indian Americans. I might add here that I was truly sorry to note that Korom had overlooked a detailed wall panel, complete with pictures, pages from a senior citizens journal, quotations, and framing text addressing the issue of aging, retirement, and death in the community. The "closure" Korom wished had been there was in fact one of the major focuses of the display.

Korom's criticism that religious differences were obscured perhaps ironically underscores the ethnographic adage of how one's lens shapes one's observations: a major section was devoted exclusively to the varied religious practices of Indian Americans. The display included, for instance, a photograph of a Jain worshipping at his Jain alter, several items used in Zoroastrian rites of passage ceremonies such as a 14 year old's Navjot ceremony, several photographs from Jewish celebrations like the Simcha Torah, an Islamic prayer book and a photograph of a young Muslim couple performing a ritual for their firstborn, and photographs of a religious procession of Sikhs in Philadelphia dressed in their traditional...