The NYT says many Caribbean desis, who originally came to Trinidad, Tobago and Guyana to work on sugar plantations, don’t feel accepted by South Asians in the U.S.:
“They believe our grandparents quit India, so we are like strangers to them…” Mr. Pooran knows Indians, he said, who always speak to him with the expression, “You Guyanese people.” “When I speak I say, ‘We Indians,’ ” he said… Marriages with Indian immigrants from India, though not unheard of, are far less common…Some Guyanese talk with hurt about not quite being accepted as Indian. Mr. Budhai recalled how in 1978, his wife, Serojini, won an Indian beauty pageant but was never awarded the top prize, a trip to India, after the organizers learned she was Guyanese.
They do feel some bonhomie…
When she walks into a classroom, the first people she notices are those of Indian descent, whether from India or Guyana. “We call it the Indian Connection,” she said. “I glance over at them and they glance over at me, and we exchange a smile.”… When a Sikh spiritual leader was pummeled into unconsciousness in July by a group of people who ridiculed his turban, Guyanese joined in the protests.
… despite the cultural differences:
Guyanese music, while Indian influenced, is marked by a faster West Indian style that has come to be known as chutney soca… Guyanese names are distinguishing, with common Indian first names serving as their last names because of how British planters addressed them… their English [has] a singsong lilt and Creole dialect. Guyanese curries are less spicy, and a shop that serves the flat roti bread with various stews is a distinctly Caribbean conception.
The lack of mingling has some precedent:
[S]ome German Jews, a comfortable generation removed from Europe, kept less-polished Jewish arrivals from Eastern Europe at a condescending arm’s length… Similarly, Cubans who fled the island in 1959 when Fidel Castro took power were sometimes less than welcoming to the refugees of the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
But everywhere in the diaspora, Bollystan seems to reign:
Liberty Avenue’s video stores are stocked mostly with romantic musicals from India’s Bollywood industry, and Ms. Warikoo said that teenage Guyanese girls particularly look “to an Indian culture based in India rather than the Caribbean for ‘authentic’ Indian-ness.”
