“Desis,” “Brown,” & South Asia as a Stillborn Diaspora Ideal

Guest Post by Samyak Dixit

Read the Previous Part in the “South Asia” Series Here

Since the term “South Asia” is an invention of the American academy and Security State, it makes sense to continue our examination of the term close to its source. Specifically, we turn our gaze to a fascinating group of people that have been decreed, and have often voluntarily adopted, the moniker “South Asian”.

Let’s talk about the Indian Subcontinent Diaspora in North America.

The roots of this diaspora can be traced back to pre-Partition times. In particular, a prominent wave of migration from the Subcontinent (then-British-India) occurred to the Western coast of North America in the period following World War I.

This wave of migration was seen in places like California (United States) and British Columbia (Canada) and was disproportionately made of individuals who were veterans of the British Indian Army and had fought for the British Empire in World War I. Because of the regional and ethnic makeup of the British Indian Army, there was a disproportionately high number of Jatt (Panjabi) Sikhs and Panjabi Muslims in this wave of migration, a fact that continues to make its presence felt even today in these places and their local politics, as the descendants of many of these migrants, especially in British Columbia in Canada, continue to be the most vociferous advocates of Khalistani separatism in India. I’ve long insisted that Indians should be more mindful of this fact when discussing Khalistani separatism, as many of these diaspora Sikh populations have been living in North America since the 1910s, and have little-to-no connection to the Indian national movement that gained prominence in the decades following the 1910s, and eventually stumbled its way into Independence and Partition.

In the second half of the 20th century, after the passage of the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965, immigration from the Indian Subcontinent into the United States picked up speed again, and a similar trend was observed in Canada. This trend line of immigration has shot up since the 1980s and 1990s, especially with the large-scale migration of highly educated professionals from India (and even other Subcontinent countries) into the United States. This has also been matched by other trends, like the massive migration of Panjabis to Canada that started in the 2000s and really exploded in the 2010s.

In North America, the diaspora from the Indian subcontinent tends to be disproportionately highly educated, and more concentrated in urban areas. They are famous for their high degrees of upward mobility, with the convenience-store-owner-to-college-educated-professional pipeline being a frequent and celebrated one. In more recent years, the Subcontinent diaspora has started displaying its newly acquired financial and educational qualifications in the more visible and congested enclaves of American society – politics, media, cultural production, academia, etc. In this sense, the Subcontinent Diaspora has taken a similar route to prominence in the American elite as the Ellis Islanders (Irish, Italian and Jewish populations) did in the 20th century.

With this increased visibility and participation in the institutions of culture and power, there has obviously emerged a need for political and social organization. And this has created an internal discourse among these communities over their identity – as a successful non-White diaspora in these Western countries – and more importantly for our article, the terminology they should use to describe themselves.

This is where the expression “South Asian” comes into the picture. Despite their increased wealth and educational prominence, Indian Americans continue to face a bottleneck in the political sphere. While they are increasingly playing prominents roles in public positions, the ones who succeed are doing so by becoming a cog in the already existing Blue or Red machines. They are gaining prominence by being eloquent or rich or charismatic proponents of the already existing dialectic in American politics. They have not been able to create a separate niche for themselves within American politics. There are very few “Indian American issues” and politicians of any background rarely have to pander to Indian Americans in the way they do so with other communities like African Americans, or with the Jewish and Muslim Americans as we’ve seen since October 7, 2023.

“South Asianism” offers a fascinating solution to this quagmire. It offers Indian Americans, specifically Hindu Americans, a way to present themselves as a part of a larger coalition. You can claim to “speak for South Asians”, bring up “South Asian” concerns, hold “Desi” conferences, and speak up for “Brown rights”. You can start a popcorn company named “Powerpop” and call yourself a “South Asian snack company”. You can be full of ebullient praise for Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani because he is a “perfect example for South Asian Excellence”. It’s the way to play the political game that needs to be played by minority groups to obtain power and influence in the United States. It’s a way for you to appear to be inclusive, forward-looking (always a funny term because “forward” is a capital-P Political word), and progressive, traits that are handy for a small and ambitious group of people who are heavily concentrated in urban, Blue-State areas.

However, when one unties its many knots, the South Asian/Brown/Desi phenomenon in the Subcontinent diaspora in foreign countries appears in many ways to be a strange reassertion of the Indian civilizational identity. After all, so many of the things that bring “Desi” or “Brown” people together in western countries – music, food, language, etc. – are a restatement of the common thread of national or civilizational identity that runs through the Subcontinent, and has existed for many millennia. These are threads that are far older than the 7th-century CE, and, in a foreign context far away from familiar surroundings, it is natural that they reemerge as unifying elements, especially in the current Western context of a war on specificity of culture, and a push towards deracination and End-of-History homogenization (visible in phenomena like consumerism, social progressivism, etc.) among the various ethnic and religious groups who have to be accommodated into these societies.

In theory, this is the most idealistic, good-future case for Diaspora South Asian idealism. This conversation between Vishal Ganesan (an Indian-American San Francisco-based lawyer, and a friend of mine) and Murtaza Hussain (a Pakistani-Canadian-American journalist most famous for his work with The Intercept) is a good crystallization of this idealism.

Murtaza makes the clear case for South Asian/Brown/Desi idealism, saying in response to another poster, “This is the thing: I don’t want myself or children to have immigrated to a new country only to replicate and continue fighting the moronic ethnic conflicts of the Old World forever. That’s (a) depressing idea and I’d prefer to embrace a new hybrid identity that’s at least creative”.

This post is a call-back to the American “New World” idealism of leaving the old tribal identities and grievances behind, a path that every subgroup of Americans like Germans, Italians, Irishmen, etc. have walked through in their “assimilation” into the American Anglo-Saxon Protestant “mainstream”. It fits the centuries-old American psyche like a glove, and, if at all achievable, is a necessary right of passage for every new immigrant group to go through, if the American project is to have any hope of continuing its existence.

Vishal, in response to Murtaza’s post, finds common ground with the latter’s idea, saying, “I actually am in full agreement with this, and it’s a compelling argument in favor of something like “South Asianism”. What bothers me is the political and ideological dimension of the identity as currently constituted, which simultaneously has this pretense of cultural authenticity, while being totally subordinate to the progressive orthodoxy. I too would prefer a new hybrid identity, but it is precisely the lack of creativity in “South Asianism” that is the issue. But maybe that can be fixed. I had a thread on this a while back you might find interesting”.

The thread Vishal links to is worth reading in full. He goes into a fascinating comparison between the “Southasianism” of certain parts of the Subcontinent Diaspora, and the Negritude Movement that emerged among Francophone African intellectuals in the early-mid 20th century. It is an interesting thought exercise, but like Vishal, I also think that this process is ever going to come to fruition. This is not to say that “Desi” camaraderie cannot exist between Americans of Indian or Pakistani origin on an individual or small-group level.

The problem, inevitably, arises at the level of social and religious organization. First, the gravity of political and tribal problems reasserting themselves is largely inevitable, even in the most liberal and “New World” of societies. One only needs to have observed the fallout over the year-long conflict in the Israel-Palestine region from the events of October 7, 2023. Despite their liberal priors, “New World” citizens of developed countries have pretty neatly sorted themselves into two camps, especially if they are directly tribally involved in the conflict (i.e. if they are of either Jewish or Muslim heritage). A great example is the end of Leftovers, a Leftist political podcast co-hosted by Ethan Klein and Hasan Piker. The podcast ran for over two years and when the times were good – when it was just about bashing the “Chuds” or playing simple culture-war politics against the Amerikaaner class, the relationship between the two hosts was warm and cordial. This all changed on October 7, 2023. Instead of the podcast continuing despite the two hosts’ positions differing (very evidently based on tribal loyalties), the situation quickly became untenable and the podcast was put on hold in November 2023, and eventually canceled. All the supposed ideological agreements, progressive priors and Chud-bashing was not enough to overcome deep-rooted tribal loyalties. Some differences are just too deep-rooted and unresolved to be settled by a temporary liberal ceasefire…

Similarly, the historical events of the Subcontinent cannot be wished away. The Partition of India – primarily of Panjab, Bengal and Kashmir – happened. It happened on religious lines. It led to the displacement of millions of unwitting non-Muslims in these provinces (+Sindh) against their will or choice. They became refugees in their own lands. The breakup of Pakistan into two nations in 1971 also happened, based primarily on the issue of culture and language. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis used to share a common peoplehood as recently as 80 years ago. But they don’t anymore (and this choice was not made by Indians!). History has happened, and it cannot be undone.

One of Murtaza’s points, his desire to embrace “a new hybrid identity that’s at least creative” fails at the altar of this point. Murtaza fails to realize that there was a historical “hybrid identity” that the people of the many modern-nation-states that make up the Subcontinent used to subscribe to – that of being a part of the Indian civilization. It is not the fault of Indians that other countries – Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular – chose to reject this millenia-old identity in favor of creating artificial national identities based on the adoption of a foreign religion by a significant chunk of the populations of these Indian provinces. You don’t get to shatter a glass plate into fine pieces and then gather the dust and glue it back together…

Second, this current age of progressive politics in Western countries, especially since the early 2010s, has abandoned the idealistic, race-blind, liberal universalism of the 1990s-2000s for an increasingly racialized and identity-centric politics. This has led to a hardening of tribal identities (whether based on race, religion, linguistic group, or any other such immutable characteristic) and an increased consciousness of these same identities among people. The Subcontinent Diaspora, primarily living in Blue, urban areas are not going to be immune to these trends, and will most likely follow this trend of identity-essentialism on the Blue side of American politics.

Third, building on the previous two points, this environment also means that the presence of “moronic Old World ethnic conflicts” in Western discourse is also increasing, not decreasing. One only needs to follow the Khalistani activism in North America/U.K., or the religio-ethnic conflicts in places like Leicester in the U.K. that have flared over the last decade. Social media and the internet is allowing people to have easier access to various aspects of history that most education systems have chosen to not emphasize (for the fear of pitting groups against each other). Like all other groups in the world, not just in the U.S., the Subcontinent Diaspora is not going to be immune to these trends.

The socio-political trend-lines are clear, and they have been for many years now. The idealism of “Southasianism”, even if one takes its intentions as pure and genuine, is swimming against the tide of winds of politics across the world.

This “Southasianism” among the diaspora might thrive in pockets, in small friend groups, in cross-national music bands, or even some lucky families. And let me be clear, I would never oppose people who can overcome these winds of history and politics to be friends and family members and contribute to the society around them. I do not wish these people ill or think they are crazy. But as admirable as this could be, it will always be the exception to the rule. It certainly will never acquire the scale and coherence necessary to become a Subcontinent version of “Negritude”. Even if they were to find organic purchase among a more “New World” population of ABCDs, it will hit an inevitable wall of the Old World contradictions at some stage. These “moronic Old World conflicts” cannot really be solved in the backdrop of a leafy suburb of the Commonwealth of Virginia. One single instance of tribal conflict will have the effect of a magnetic current that sorts each South Asian/Brown/Desi individual into their tribal poles. The dead of your tribe will be names, and the dead of the other tribe will be statistics…

One cannot escape Capital-P Politics, no matter the idealism involved. The idealistic “South Asian” who is into “Brown culture” or likes “Desi cuisine” is running up an endless treadmill of history.

This bubbling, largely organic instinct of Diaspora idealism is in stark contrast to the representation and usage of the term “South Asia” in the broader Diaspora and western media universe. While there is at least some degree of organic sentiment for this term in second and third-generation Diaspora from the Subcontinent, the media’s usage of this term can only be described as forced and artificial.

One can also find this exogeneity most startlingly in The Juggernaut – the mothership of “South Asianism”, and the Kings of buying Facebook and Instagram ads.

(As a personal confession, their incessant advertisement on the above platforms and my terrible habit of idle browsing of the same is a major reason for why I so strongly wanted to write this article. If I have to scroll by the article saying “Why Jewish-Hindu Couples Click” one more time…)

I think back to a post on X from The Juggernaut in 2020. I’m sure the social media intern was feeling particularly smug about this one when they posted it, but I don’t think they got what they expected…

What ISN’T South Asian but FEELS South Asian?

A lot of the replies are the obvious surface-level ones we expect from “South Asians” – cricket, chicken tikka masala, chillies, “chai tea”, etc. These replies offer a low-resolution, postcard version of the Subcontinent that the one undergrad student in your political science program at an American university who is interested in India might know about. (At least it’s better than being reduced to the Taj Mahal and Slumdog Millionaire?)

The rest of the replies, however, are the pushback against the very usage of “South Asia” that you’d expect from the loud pro-India contingent on social media platforms. This same battle over “South Asia” is fought in every comment section and the replies to every post…

The Juggernaut, defiant, comes out of their cave one year later:

What is a South Asian tradition you continue to follow?

This time the pushback from the anti-South Asia crowd is even harder.

The feeling one gets from the replies to these posts, and to the American media’s dogmatic, ideological and conscious use of this term in general is that they really, really want “South Asia” to be a thing. It is yet another demonstration for the exogeneity of the term. It does not have a natural existence, and it must therefore be artificially pushed onto people through dogmatic, relentless mass-media propaganda.

We can also consider the story of Ahsun Zafar, a Pakistani-origin Canadian (based in the pind of Brampton no less) running a minor social media Empire talking about “Brown History” on various platforms. In his interview with “Ciaran Thapar”, Zafar conveys platitude after platitude about how a certain generation of “South Asian” is “speaking up” about “where we came from”, with a particular focus on the stories of many families involved in the 1947 Partition of India. In characteristically “South Asian” fashion, the interview is vague and meandering, almost purposefully so.

This is not a criticism of Ahsun. By all means, it seems like the “Brown History” endeavor started as a personal journey, and morphed into something much more than he had expected. I don’t really have an issue with him, or others like him, sharing what they believe to be their history.

As you can guess, my problem is with the terminology involved. “Brown History”, like its sibling terms of “South Asian” and “Desi” is an idealistic, or devious, or both, attempt to whitewash the historical events of the Indian Subcontinent. Sure, “complexities in sentiment” exist in the Subcontinent diaspora. But why do these complexities exist? What were the historical moments and political decisions that led to these tragic stories?

It is, as Naipaul said in a famous interview, “a child’s idea of history”, and it contributes to the artificial nature of the terms “Brown”, “Desi” or “South Asian”.

To conclude, Diaspora “Southasianism”, or its sibling terms “Desi” or “Brown” culture, is a fascinating trend. Out of all of the aspects of the “South Asia” phenomenon that we have covered so far, it might be the most nuanced, especially when we put together these other aspects with the homogenizing machine of mainstream American culture and its push towards deracination and “assimilation”. There are Indian American thinkers like Vishal who are doing fascinating work tracking and exploring this phenomenon. But when contrasted with the exogenous pushing of media products like “Brown History” or “The Juggernaut”, the feeling one is left with when studying South Asia Diaspora Idealism is just the inauthenticity of it all. No usage of “South Asia”, especially by the media, ever comes across as natural. The media, both the Western Institutional media, and diaspora-led media like The Juggernaut, seem like they want to keep spamming the term till it becomes so ubiquitous that no one remembers what the region was called before that. More than anything, I feel that this has contributed to killing any natural or emergent usage of the term among the Diaspora, and leads to Southasianism being nothing more than a shallow, artificial, and stillborn ideal.

This is the fourth part of a multipart series. To follow along & find more of Samyak, follow him at his Twitter & Substack