9781422277430

C onnecting C ultures T hrough F ami ly and F oo d

The Indian Family Table

by M a ri R i c h

C onnecting C ultures T hrough F ami ly and F oo d

The African Family Table The Chinese Family Table The Greek Family Table The Indian Family Table The Italian Family Table The Japanese Family Table The Mexican Family Table

The Middle Eastern Family Table The Native American Family Table The SouthAmerican Family Table The Thai Family Table

C onnecting C ultures T hrough F ami ly and F oo d

The Indian Family Table

By Mari Rich

MASON CREST

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D

Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2019 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-4041-0 Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4222-4045-8 EBook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7743-0

Produced by Shoreline Publishing Group LLC Santa Barbara, California Editorial Director: James Buckley Jr. Designer: Tom Carling Production: Patty Kelley www.shorelinepublishing.com Front cover: Asia Images Group/Shutterstock.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rich, Mari, author. Title: The Indian family table / by Mari Rich. Description: Broomall, PA : Mason Crest, 2018. | Series: Connecting cultures through family and food | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017053410| ISBN 9781422240458 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422240410 (series) | ISBN 9781422277430 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Food habits--India--Juvenile literature. | East Indian Americans--Food--Juvenile literature. | India-- Social life and customs--Juvenile literature. | United States--Emigration and immigration--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC GT2853.I4 R53 2018 | DDC 394.1/20954/--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2017053410

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Introduction............................................................................................. 6 1. Getting Here. ............................................8 APPETIZER..............................................................................18 2. Settling In................................................22 FIRST COURSE...................................................................... 32 3. Connecting..............................................36 SECOND COURSE...................................................................46 4. Reaching Back........................................50 DESSERT.................................................................................58 Find Out More......................................................................................62 Series Glossary of Key Terms..........................................................63 Index/Author........................................................................................ 64 Contents

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Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented here. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together addi- tional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text, while building vocabulary skills. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

Introduction

M ore than a billionpeople live in India, a country on the continent of Asia. Thatmakes it one of themost populous nations in the world. OnlyChina hasmore people. About one percent of the people born in India leave there to live in other places. One percentmight not seem like a lot, but one percent of a

billion is pretty big number. Almost 16 million people from India are living in other countries. The United States has become home to about 2.5million Indians in recent decades. America’s current immigration policies favor highly skilledpeople, somanyof thosewho come to the United States work and study in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Like all people from around the worldwhosetouttofindnewhomes— no matter what their level of educa- tionandwealth—Indianpeoplebring with themthe families they love and thetraditionsthatbindthemtogether. Many of those traditions, as we will see, involve eating certain foods and sharing meals.

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Introduction

What’s in a Name?

In earlier decades, it was common for the indigenous people we now call Native Americans to be referred to as Indians, because Christopher Columbus mistakenly believed he had landed in the Indies. When President Harry Truman welcomed Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on a state visit (below), he tried to cast that mistake

in a positive light, saying, “Destiny willed it that our country should have been discovered in the search for a new route to yours.” Not everyone was so willing to give Colum- bus a pass! In 1948 a prosperous entrepreneur and civic leader named J. J. Singh wrote a letter to the editors of the New York Times , complaining that “Columbus had a word for the natives here and it’s a nuisance to visitors from India.”

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Getting Here

Words to Understand diaspora a group of people who live outside the area in which their ancestors lived discriminatory treating some people better than others without any fair or proper reason entrepreneur someone who starts a business first-generation American someone born in the United States whose parents were foreign born immigrants those who enter another country intending to stay permanently A nirudh Dinesh is a graduate student who came to America in 2015 to study computer science and cyber security. “Almost everyone knows that it’s im- portant to keep your software programs safe fromviruses and hackers, but my field is hardware security,” he explains. “That means trying to find ways to keep the computer chips and physical computing devices themselves safe. Because most of the research and development centers related to this very specialized area are in

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Many young Indians have come to the United States to take advantage of advanced educational opportunities, including those in technology.

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

the United States, it made sense to come here to study and work.” Anirudh is part of what has been called the Information Technology Generation of Indian immigrants . Starting in themid-1990s, about 100,000 techexperts ayear begancoming toAmerica fromIndia. They found steady, well-paying work with American companies worried that their computer systems would malfunction on the last day of 1999. (At the time, people worried that when the calendarmoved from1999 to 2000, computerswould stop working because so much of their work is tied to the date. The fear came from the way most computers read the year, as 18 instead of 2018. So suddenly switching from 99 or 00 [which could also be 1900] might have caused problems. The problem turned out to be very minor.)

The British East India Company became the most powerful colonial organization in Southeast Asia in the 1800s.

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Getting Here

Earlier groups of Indian immi- grants also contributed a great deal to American life. A small number of immigrants from India first came to the United States. during the early19thcentury. This group worked mainly as low- skilled laborers at lumber mills, railroads, and farms. Many helped build the mighty Western Pacific Railway in California. They faced hardship and persecution but they persevered, and by 1960, around 12,000 Indian immigrants lived in the United States. That number started to grow

President Lyndon Johnson signed very important legislation that opened up Asian immigration.

in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and NationalityAct into law. That lawgot rid of discriminatory national origin quotas and opened the door to larger numbers of people from India and Asia. Before 1965, America strictly—and,manybelieved, unfairly—limited the number of people who could emigrate from most Asian countries. Although many Indians were urban professionals, not everyone who arrived in the United States right after the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed was as highly skilled or educated as today’s crop of STEM workers. Most were eager and ambitious though, and once they had estab- lished themselves, they invited friends and family members to make the journey too. Starting in the early 1980s, about 30,000 relatives of those who

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

had already settled in began arriving each year. These made up another wave of equally hard-working and hopeful immigrants. Harmanveer Singh, a first-generation American citizen, describes his father, who arrived in the United States in 1989, at the age of 18. “He could barely speak English,” Singh says. “He was very lucky that someone gave hima chance and hired himat a gas station. Because hewas a goodworker, he went from pumping gas to being promoted to manager. He eventually bought a station of his own and now he has several. He pays taxes, is a respected member of his community, and is living the life he dreamed of when he made the hard decision to leave India.”

Indians have found work in every area of American life, such as this Sikh police officer in New York City, wearing the traditional turban.

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Getting Here

Colonial Ties O thercountrieshavealsobecomemajor locales for the Indian diaspora . Great Britain, for example, is now home to some 1.5 million people from India. The two countries share a long and complex history. From 1757 to 1858 India was under the rule of the British East India Company, a private firm made up of English merchants trading in East Asia. The company eventually established its ownarmy and judicial systemand took on government powers. The very first people who emigrated from India to Britain were servants and ayahs (nannies), who worked for company personnel. Indian sailors (called lascars ) sometimes jumped ship when

Sending Money Home

While Indians have flocked to Western countries like America and Britain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become a major destination for even great- er numbers of Indians—as many as 3.5 million. Many of them are low-skilled laborers (right) who have found work in the UAE thanks to a growing economy and building boom. Although a life of manual labor can be hard

or in fact even deadly, people from poor areas of India continue to settle in the UAE to earn money. They often send much of that money back home to family—almost $70 billion a year, by some estimates.

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

company vessels docked inBritain, in searchof betterworking conditions. India came under the direct rule of the British crown from 1858 until 1947, when it won its independence andwas broken up into Pakistan (with a mainly Muslim population) and India (mainly Hindu). Immigration increased during this time as Indians joined family members already in Great Britain, sought educational and economic opportunities not available in their homeland, or tried to escape from the civil unrest that came with the split. An Accomplished Group T oday, Indians are among the most educated, wealthy, and successful ethnic groups inBritain. That is true in almost every location inwhich theysettle. InAmerica, three timesmore Indian-bornresidentshave earned college degrees than the general population. IndianAmericanhouseholds also report income levels twice as high as the general population.

Indians studying in the United Kingdom