Expatriate Life

Expatriate life


South Asians have a long and honorable history of migration. Unlike Europeans who were driven out by religious persecution, mass starvation or took to seas for high adventure lured by the fabled riches of India-in their ignorance they called every land and people they come across after the country (East Indies, Indo China, West Indies, American Indians), South Asians left their native land to escape political persecution or to seek better future or higher education or as indentured laborers, so that we find their descendents in South America, Africa, West Indies and in the venerable Indian colonies in California and British Columbia. Indonesian migrated to Holland and Vietnamese to France.
Subject people tend to look up to the rulers and try to ape their norms, mores and traditions. They generally succeed in only becoming a caricature. But one positive feature of this cultural hegemony was that young people went abroad for higher education. Most returned home sometimes bringing white wives, generally though not always of lower social order in their own country. These were the children of the native elite or possessed of high intelligence from genteel and impoverished stock, who would be sponsored for higher education with a view to marrying a daughter of the house. These Students concentrated on law, medicine or literature. The former made up the core of the leadership of Indian Independence movement, Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, Liaquat and most of their associates were London trained Barristers. Professors in Medical schools till nineteen sixties were exclusively UK trained. Much later US and locally trained physician joined the rank.
The academic pilgrims had interesting experiences. Every Indian student was taken to be a scion of a noble house, as few others could afford the expenses. My Professor of Surgery, a man high wit, intellect and learning, went to England in 1929, had heard that English girls were very friendly and provided emotional support to forlorn Indians. In his first evening in London, he went out, roaming the cold wet and dreary streets, returning after a few hours, shivering and crest fallen that no damsel had accosted him.
In those days, British Hospitals didn’t pay any salary to trainees. They were provided only a room. The local bakeries and breweries donated bread, butter, cheese and beer to keep body and soul together. On return post graduate degrees did not necessarily ensure a good job on the staff of a medical school or as civil surgeon (there used to be four luminaries in a district. Deputy commissioner, Sessions judge,
Civil surgeon and Superintendent Police (mostly of British race). Many Doctors joined the army or worked in junior civilian positions.
Post WW II, with the flower of British manhood perished, and advent of labor government in the UK, which introduced National Health Service which British doctors boycotted for a few years, manpower skilled and otherwise was in acute shortage. Laborers from all over India, especially Punjab and Kashmir flocked to the country. Large number of doctors served in the lower cadres of Health service. A senior labor cabinet minister, whose office was next door to the Surgery of a GP I served under for a year, told me that National Health Service wont have survived without Indian/Pakistani doctors. . I had sought an appointment with him on the insistence of one of my patients who lived in a two-bed room apartment with thirteen children. A fourteenth was on the way. She wanted me to request the Minister, who was her member of the parliament, to get her a house. I had gone to his office ready to be snubbed. Instead, the secretary welcomed me with courtesy and gave me an early appointment. I was graciously received by the minister. He put me at my ease by joking that I should have gone to the offices of the “Guinness Book of records” and assured me of his best attention to the matter. A few weeks later my patient, to my utter surprise but not to hers, got a six-bedroom house. She brought a Magnum of high quality Champagne for me.
Most of the early arrivals among the physicians returned home, as post independence, the British Doctors having left, there were plenty of jobs. Later on, with no further expansion of health services in India and Pakistan, many had to stay put, working in junior ranks with nary a hope of a consultant appointment (consultant, top of the heap in medical profession, was the king of the roost with his own ward, medical and nursing staff, clinics etc) Frustrated many Doctors with specialist qualifications joined General practice, earning as much money as consultants, in law actually a bit more important, put on a pedestal by their patients and regretting only why they had wasted so much time in Hospital service.
Unskilled laborers worked in factories and municipal services, airports (sanitary work) or as waiters in Indian restaurants. They lived, sometimes twelve to a room, in four bunk beds, in eight hourly shifts. They cooked highly spiced, pungent curry, driving white neighbors away, and causing real estate values to plummet. They saved every penny they could, built mansions in Mirpur (Pakistani Kashmir) where white Shalwar -Kameez clad women carrying earthen water pots on their heads were to become a common sight. Real state hustlers successfully used the technique to get whole blocks of flats vacated by renting a few apartments and cooking Indian food. British Land Lords finally got wise to the scheme and refused to rent flats to South-Asians, however well dressed. That led to many a race discrimination suit.
The British laborer couldn’t go on strike, as there were plenty of brown workers to replace him. There was a backlash. Gangs of hooligans with shaved heads (called skin-heads) would beat up south-Asians who came to be called collectively Pakis.
Indians resented this sobriquet.
Early sixties saw the trend change from the UK as destination to the USA, Canada, Middle East and Africa. The latter two were, however, more in the nature of transient camps, to make a bit of money before proceeding to higher education. Doctors had to pass ECFMG examination (Educational Council For Foreign Medical Graduates) to be accepted in USA unlike The UK where you just had to buy a ticket (UK imposed restriction on immigration in June 1962 and Canada in December 1973). The USA screened visa applicants, so only the educated or the rich investors could get in. This measure was good fiscal policy, for every Doctor, Scientist and Engineer the country saved $200,000.00, it would have had to spend training one of its own
Investors were mostly Gujratis, a linguistic group with un matched ingenuity, initiative and nerve At one time you only needed $5000.00 to get an investor visa, these gentlemen recycled .the money bringing dozens and their spouses for the initial amount. US government, belatedly wise to the subterfuge, kept on raising the figure till to a million, with out making a dent on the influx .The community bought motels, small stores, news stands and gas stations. Now (2005) these amiable, low profile but shrewd people (both Jinnah and Gandhi were Gujjus, a campus sobriquet) own more than half the country’s small and mid sized motels, have driven Jews out of discount business, dominate Gas station and convenience stores business, and occupy large swathes of high priced real estate in metropolitan NY, Chicago, Detroit. NJ and Florida have been virtually colonized. They have a substantial presence in other states too.
Engineers didn’t do particularly well till the influx of computer techs in the last fifteen years. Accountants, Attorneys, and pharmacists are generally restricted to the Eastern states.
Many like me moved from England to Canada and USA, and had to go through training over again. I escaped the ordeal, thanks to the recommendation of a Consultant well known in the USA .He was the secretary of British Association and later the President of the august body.
US Hospitals made one work very hard, and if you chose a surgical internship, it was literally day and night, but they paid about three times as much as one got in England. They offered a two to four year well balanced training program. The British got their act together only in 1995. Prior to that it was hit or miss, mostly a miss for foreign graduates.
By the time I arrived in the USA in 1974, a substantial number of Doctors were well settled and in private practice, owned homes and had started to organize social life. APPNA (Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America) was founded in mid seventies, AAPI (Association of American Physicians of India) a decade earlier. Now both bodies are formidable lobbies exercising great influence on their communities and governments back home- specially APPNA on Pakistani rulers. They do a lot of charitable and social work, even lobbying for legislation to eradicate gender discrimination, honor killing and dowry murders. They enjoy easy access to congressmen and senators, and actively participate in electoral process, fund raising and even running for office. They send their children to expensive private schools.
Other members of the expatriate community followed suit, organizing cultural and social moots
This brings me to ABCD’S (American Born Confused Desis, another campus nick name). Having put five of my own through college I am eminently qualified on the subject.
South-Asian parents are highly focused (my American friends say obsessed) on educating their children. They forego vacations, some work in two full time jobs to send the young ones to the most expensive schools they can get into, even making them attend prep schools during vacations, (while their native peers are working summer jobs and partying,) and getting them tutored by academies for SAT examinations. I personally know of instances when mothers have grounded kids for days if the school grades were not high. Their only competitors are Jewish mothers of early days.
Results justify all the parental dedications and heartburn. These new Americans are up right citizens, combining the virtues of both the worlds. They are bold, confident, stand up for their rights, not cowed by state apparatus, challenge any slight or discrimination, yet loyal to family, faithful to friends, and considerate of the dispossessed. They are articulate and social, mixing easily with “Old” and “New” Americans alike. They have done well in their careers, reaching executive levels in all professions. They have gone into professions their immigrant parents found difficult to break into, like Law, Finance and Communication
Self-reliance, courage and independence of young girls are particularly gratifying. They assert themselves; take no such nonsense that they are delicate, dainty, helpless and emotionally labile beings, which should have half as much inheritance as their brothers, and half the vote as a witness.
We have come a long way from the portrait of innocents abroad of five decades ago. We have come of age as a community, matured and stabilized into an integrated whole which owes allegiance to the land it lives and works in, to which its future is inextricably attached, yet find time, resources and will to try to bring much needed solace to our kith and kin left behind .We were strong enough to with stand, shaken, but not broken in spirit by the after math of 9/11.
There is, though, always an under current of crisis of identity, leading in substantial number of cases to regression to obscurantism. This is a part of an unfortunate global trend. Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews all are affected, though reasons are somewhat different in each.
In the fifties and sixties liberalism and secularism dominated. As a reaction to neo-imperialist hegemony and inept non representative governments in the third world, unable and un willing to tackle economic, health and educational issues and failure to eradicate social crimes and control population explosion, some have sought shelter in orthodoxy, exclusivity and intolerance. Collapse of international communism gave a tremendous boost to religion. Taliban defeated the Soviet army in Afghanistan with the help and assistance of Americans. Soviets could not with stand the economic strain. But the mullahs gave credit to their faith. That left them free to take on the Americans next.
Extreme poverty, no prospect of a better life, frustration and hopelessness drove the masses in the Muslim world to the intolerant creed that came as a baggage with Saudi largesse.
One can only hope that some day, with empowerment of masses, freedom of expression, diversion of resources from the bottomless pit of war machines to economic development, this phase will pass.