Migration and Adaptation
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Bald’s Bengali Harlem covers various periods in which South Asians navigated a global network. While a large portion of the work covers their arrival to the US, he initially mentions their journeys to areas such as South Africa and Britain. These Bengali Muslims typically travelled, selling silks and fabrics as peddlers, but also had a remarkable “ability to adapt to their deportation and operate within a much larger field of possibilities.” For men who were turned away from the US, rather than immediately attempt entry again, they would take on various labour positions, such as miners, and eventually transition back to their original trade. This adaptability was critical in allowing them to succeed in multiple markets year-round.
A key aspect of their migration to the US hinges on a topic that underscores the majority of the discussions in our class — Orientalism. We have talked many times about fetishizing and viewing the Orient as “exotic,” and Bald provides insight into how the Bengalis were able to make good out of this. Using the upper- and middle-class fantasies as a backbone to their business, these peddlers took complete advantage of the Indian craze that Bald contextualizes as follows:
“For Americans of the era, ‘India’ was presented as part of a mysterious and exotic ‘Orient’ that took in the entire swath of North Africa, the Middle East, India, and Ceylon. This ‘Orient,’ in turn, was a blur of images, stories, references, and fantasies.”
While this “blur” created difficulties regarding individuals and their identity, it was a tool that the peddlers used to sell these items to the American market as “oriental goods.” To an extent, these goods became status symbols for those “middle-class consumers…in the midst of a fin de siècle fashion for the exotic ideas.”
The Daily Herald article that Bald references exemplifies the perception of these Bengalis in Atlanta. As Bald highlights, the article outlines a clear set of expectations on how these people should behave, playing into the narrative of the “other.” It’s interesting to see that from the other perspective, coming to these Western countries was not necessarily a way to try something better but rather the seizing of opportunity. Bald’s reference to Hooghly’s peddlers puts it in a way that contrasts the expectations with the results. The full quote is very long and at the bottom half of page 46 if you would like to reference it, but for context, it characterizes these Bengalis as opportunists moving from place to place without the intention of giving up their lives and homes. Later on in Chapter 5, we learn about those who do end up building lives in places such as Harlem and even New Orleans, but it is important to point out that this was not the case for all individuals, especially during times when Indophilia and xenophobia were on the rise. A lot of the history when it comes to melancholic migrants that we cover is about the people who have stayed in the West, but these folks who were essentially nomads played a significant role in how the West perceives people of South Asian backgrounds, and so it is essential to consider them as well.
For those that did stay, however, another interesting factor that played into their adaptability was the peddlers not viewing these busy tourist summers as their end all be all. Rather than staying stationary, they operated as nomads spending their summers in popular tourist hubs more north in the US. As the cold enveloped the north in the winter, they migrated to cities such as New Orleans, placing themselves in areas that offered them year-round opportunities.
Moving towards a more permanent stay, Bald also speaks about the influx of immigrants in areas such as Harlem in the 20th century. I found this chapter quite compelling as it speaks of the dynamic between these South Asians with official records. Mentions of avoiding census polls and officials make it difficult to accurately estimate the amount of Indians in Harlem at the time, which is unsurprising, but what I found much more interesting was how Indian and Bengali men particularly were portrayed in official records. While African American women were labelled as coloured, Indian grooms received identification at all ends of the spectrum ranging from “white” to “Indian” to “Negro”. While Bald mentions in passing that this was related to Indian grooms seeming to “confound the city marriage clerks’ understandings of race,” I would like to understand better what would prompt a marriage clerk to see someone as white versus brown, and whether that was typically a clerical error or misleading on behalf of the groom. Still, these interracial marriages were strategic in that they were able to create a community that spanned beyond just the likeness of one kind of person.