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Rakshabandhan: East Indian Sister-Brother Bonds
| Article
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14216 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
3,229 Words |
| Author
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Sheila K. Webster-Jain
Folklorist Sheila K. Webster-Jain teaches in the Department of
English Language and Literature at the University of Maryland,
College Park. |
Sisters and brothers are thought in most cultures to be linked to one another by unique bonds, and for most people, to love a friend as a sister or brother is to bestow special affection. Each year, the peoples of northern and central India affirm the sister-brother relationship, whether established through blood or friendship, in a festival known as Rakshabandhan, or Rakhri. And Americans whose roots lie in those parts of India perpetuate the custom in this nation, maintaining links not only between siblings, but between continents, between ways of life, and between new and old.
The East Indian community in the United States currently numbers around half a million, including both foreign-born immigrants and native-born Americans of East Indian descent. The majority of immigrants have arrived since 1965, when U.S. immigration law was altered to eliminate national quotas. Before 1965, only about seventeen thousand East Indians had entered the country, and the history of East Indian immigration from 1820 until 1965 shows fluctuations reflecting official policies as well as social attitudes in the United States.
During the nineteenth century, approximately seven hundred East Indians, most from northern India, entered the United States. Unlike later immigrants to the United States who left their Indian homeland as refugees or for greater employment opportunities, this first group was a mélange of adventurers, merchants, monks, and professionals. The vast majority of early immigrants were male, as immigration restrictions barred men from bringing over their wives and children. In fact, by 1915 fewer than thirty East Indian women had arrived in the United States.
The early decades of the present century were particularly turbulent for East Indian immigration. From the turn of the century until 1923, nearly seven thousand immigrants arrived from India, most of them coming from the Punjab region of present-day India and Pakistan to work in agriculture or railroad construction. During that period, hostility toward Asian immigrants grew more and more virulent. Pressure applied by anti-Asian groups such as the Asiatic Exclusion League, which feared a "Hindoo invasion," led to a series of laws to control or end immigration from India.
Nearly two decades of legal teeter-tottering followed. In 1906, a naturalization law dating from 1790, which stipulated that only "free-white" people could become citizens, was interpreted as making Asian groups ineligible for American citizenship. However, in 1910, on the grounds that East
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