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A Passage from India .-\s a sm:di child I was fascinated l)y the folklore and facts about departing and returning emigrants in the village world of Western India. My earliest memory is of my father's departure for an u n k n o w n land when t was about t w o - i n 1920, to be exact. I do not remember -though t have since heen told--that he wore new clothes and had a kzemkeem ti/~Ic (auspicious mark) on his forehead, a garland around his neck anti held a cocoanut over mango leaves in his palms, and that our house was filled with relatives and villagers wishing him good fortune. But I do remember that he fondled me for a while and then handed me to my uncle who carried me through the backyard along the row of HaIpati mud huts to the outskirts of the village. (The Halpatis are a lower peasant caste in Gujarat who assist the Patidars, the dominant group, in agricultural work.} There a bullock cart loaded with bags was waiting. Father arrived, followed by a procession, got onto the cart and rode away, leaving my sobbing mother behind, while the throng of people waved farewell. I did n o t see him again for 11 years, What forces urge men to leave their homes and make the long and often frightening j o u r n e y to another country, to

April 1972

Narsi Patel

live and work there under alien conditions? Political and religious persecution, banishment, population pressure and poverty have traditionally been the underlying reasons for world migrations. Recently, however, the pressure to expand through colonization has been replaced by the need to decolonize erstwhile colonial territories. Those migrants who were forced to leave their native land originally or those who have sufficient political leverage to establish successful colonies usually make the host societies their terminal resting place. But there are others who are torn between the desire to eradicate the condition of chronic poverty which originally drew them abroad and the natural yearning to return to their native land and its ways, and who suffer additionally from a powerlessness- half-imagined, half-real-to found permanent settlements. These migrants form minority groups of a quite different kind, and the Gujarati Indian communities abroad are a typical example. There are a great m a n y of them scattered across the world; they have been described as commuter communities across the Indian Ocean, as unassimilable, as mercantile in their orientation.

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A temple and water tower built by emigrant donors on the outskirts o f a n Indian village

A beach party of" Indians in Fiji includes members oj'a caste and linguistic community and a lone Fijian

Apparently their ability and urge to participate fully in the national life of their host societies are compromised by their close family and community links in India as well as by political o r p h a n h o o d - t h e unfortunate legacy of the British Raj. To understand the life style of Gujarati emigrants and make any valid assessment of the costs and rewards of emigration, several important factors must be taken into account: 1) the nature of emigration from Gujarat 2) the roles of the joint family and the village community in providing an impetus for emigration 3) the stages of mobility that culminate in emigration in terms of individual, part-family or complete-family migration, economic investment at home and abroad, the continuation or termination of home contacts and so on 4) the impact of emigration on the individual, the family and the village community and 5) the rehabilitation of returning emigrants. I have deliberately chosen to relate the story of my own village community and its experiences from a participant's perspective because I feel that the specific problems and their attempted solutions can be better appreciated if the reader can visualize a particular group of emigrants in their original social milieu. Emigration is something that happens to people, so we must sense the very stuff they are made of. In rural Gujarat emigration does not mean any more than going abroad. In fact, the Gujarati language uses two words synonymously to indicate a foreign country: p a r d e s b and bahargam. The first term means just that; the second term literally means out-of-village. Whereas the expression par-garn denotes a visit to another village nearby, babar-garn 26

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A sentimental celebration f o r the departure o f a family from India.

A ranch of 1,500 acres in New Zealand owned by a second-generation Sikb from Punjab

invariably stands for a prolonged departure from the small but self-contained village. It is only recently that educated young men have left their villages to seek city jobs in their own state or another. And the number of men, irrespective of education, leaving their villages to migrate to East and South Africa or America has always exceeded those moving elsewhere in India. Going bahargam gives a geographical mobility to a land far away from one's village; it also conveys its social consequences: privation from kinship and community. In the terminology of the tillers of the soil, those who go abroad to earn, not to travel, are referred to as babargarnna k b e d v a y a - c u l t i v a t o r s abroad.

GoingBahargam Economic betterment is the prime motivation for going bahargam. The Gujarati pioneer seems to have been goaded to go abroad by economic circumstances so that on return he could pay off his family debts, buy more land, build a new house or renovate an old one, and maintain a slipping social position. For it was rarely the poorest who could muster enough money for passage or make arrangements for the care of his family in his absence. In keeping with selectivity factors in free world migrations, the Gujarati pioneer was male, young and single. His single status did not, however, mean that he was unmarried. Usually, he would leave his wife and children in the care of his parents or brothers. Because he was neither a criminal nor a social outcast, he had every reason to return home after making good abroad. In the foreign land he remained suspended between the push of economic scarcity and the pull of

Society

Houses built by emigrants residing abroad dwarf the older residences of a small Indian village

Holiday family visitors in an English factory town

A mosque in Nairobi built by Muslim immigrants from Gujarat

A Passage from India

The friends and relatives of the Patel family are scattered around the world. On a recent trip the Patels found that Indian communities abroad modeled their lives essentially on the motherland society they knew best in spite of being rooted in new lands. These photographs were taken by Dipak Patel, son of the author. A Gularati trader in Johannesburg, South Africa

social solidarity groups in his own country. Thus his part-family temporary migration without the necessary inclination to relocate cannot be strictly defined as emigration. This migration with the intention of earning and returning has been much misunderstood. To explain the transience of the early familyless Gujarati migrant in terms of his own needs alone is to deny other equally important societal factors. Indians who lived abroad during the period when the British ruled India were rarely treated with respect either as British citizens or as Indian citizens. They were tolerated when needed in such colony-building activities as working on plantations or the railroads and despised when the need was over. It is difficult, if not impossible, for individuals or groups to relocate successfully in a country which does not produce a socioeconomic environment c o n d u c i v e to settlement. In the absence of either protection or sponsorship from their own government Indians abroad were helpless victims of political indifference. But the Gujaratis are traditionally frugal, enduring and determined to overcome hardships. Deprived of free competition with the Europeans in certain areas of business, industry and land ownership, they adapted to marginal occupations. Having paid their debts, built homes, bought land in India, they began recycling their savings in the economy of the host society. When working conditions improved or when they achieved a measure of success in their limited undertakings, they considered it safe for their families in India to join them, thus transforming their earn-and-return migratory status into a true settler role. In my own village of 25 Patidar families, there were six

April 1972

I f intercaste marriage is unusual, interracial marriage is even less frequent (an interracial family in Malawi)

from which men had gone abroad. My father's long absence was spent first in Brazil and later in Panama; another man was in South Africa, two were in East Africa, the remaining two in Panama. All six had left their wives and children in India. All but one had brothers able and willing to take care of their parents, families and land in their absence. I remember when the man who had gone to Africa returned for a short visit. He was handsome and had a gold tooth which gleamed whenever he smiled. He wore garters on his silk shirtsleeves. Most distinctive of all, he would play his tavdi v a j o o (frying pan o r g a n ) - a p h o n o g r a p h - t o an admiring audience from the village late in the wintry nights. As a child I used to wonder who sang the song and where the music came from. Years later another villager from South Africa casually mentioned that the man nicknamed Gopi in Johannesburg was a fruit hawker. On festive occasions he would entertain at private parties by impersonating a female dancer. Many people in Gujarat were aware that life abroad was not easy. Work that at home would be defined as below a Patidar farmer's dignity-such as street hawking, selling leather goods, driving a horse carriage, working as a domestic servant-was exempt from criticism if on his return home the pioneer impressed his community members by his conspicuous consumption. Unpleasant treatment by Europeans, restricted work opportunities and other disadvantages of pioneering were rarely discussed openly. All that mattered were rewards that going bahargam yielded on return. None of the six emigrants got fabulously rich according to village standards, but they introduced certain innova-

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tions that had a lasting influence on the village. Except for one whose stay abroad was short, they renovated their homes with emphasis on ventilation, light, separate kitchen, bathroom, outdoor toilet, detached barn-facilities which were unknown in farmhouses in that part of the world three decades ago. The members of their families dressed well, ate well, even bought fruits and vegetables from Navsari, a town ten miles away. And they took an active interest in the education of their children, especially the girls, who customarily received little education beyond ten years of age. Their contribution to village life was colorful, conspicuous and contagious to the extent of spreading a striving for sabebi (Europeanlike etiquette), particularly among those who were relitively better off to begin with. In the years that have passed since then, five of them have died, and the shades of difference between the cultivators abroad and indigenous cultivators have long blurred. Rich Fund-raising Lode A visitor to the villages of southern Gujarat will come across many fine buildings, looking completely out of context in the dusty fields. In a subsistence-farming region the conspicuous presence of water towers, new school and library buildings, temples, community centers and shelters on cremation grounds provides impressive evidence of emigrant resources. One can, in fact, correlate the "have" and "have-not" villages with whether or n o t they have any cultivators abroad. But this harvest was the outcome of long endurance and hard work, not of "paisana jbad indholva'" (shaking the money tree), because these monuments to the glory o f emigrants were not erected until an entire generation had passed. Regional leaders have since tapped a rich fund-raising lode among emigrants in Africa and elsewhere for centrally located high schools, colleges and hospitals. In such cases a wing may bear the name of an emigrant donor from Johannesburg or Salisbury or Auckland; some individual donors have even been known to underwrite entire projects. But such regional, consolidated donations follow rather than precede donations for villagebased works. There seems to be a pattern in these economic improvements. It invariably starts with the emigrant's own family, reaches o u t into his Own village community and eventually extends to his own caste or multi-caste region. This progression of emigration payoff is obviously correlated to the particular emigrant's success and the duration of his stay abroad. Somewhere along the line, probably near the end, emigrants also attend to the needs of their adopted home and immediate community abroad in terms of building houses, Gujarati schools, Hindu temples and even Patidar halls. My father and uncle lived in a j o i n t family and maintained its solidarity at all costs. When father went abroad he left my mother, sister, brother and me in my uncle's care. My uncle would do nothing to jeopardize the joint family structure. He even sold a prized piece o f land to pay m y brother's high-school tuition fees, and after he lost his wife, he did not remarry. For the first few years we had no news at all from father. Mother could neither read nor write, but my uncle would read a letter aloud to everyone if there ever was one. I remember mother huddling some visitor from abroad in a corner to find out if 28

he by chance had met father. 1 can still picture the pathos, helplessness and patience furrowed in her face. Finally, after eight years a letter came in which father conveyed that he had been successful in Panama and that in two or three more years he would have enough savings to visit us. He came in 1937. He handed his entire "fortune" over to uncle to such an extent that he had to ask him for bus fare to Navsari for himself or for my pocket expenses. He renovated the house and employed carpenters to build chairs and other furniture, most of which are in use to this day. He introduced new health and hygiene practices. Every cot in our house was equipped with a mosquito net. He brought a clock from Bombay that still keeps accurate time. He introduced me to my first cloak-and-dagger mystery novel. He was a voracious reader of novels and for years the family took pride in lending his books to people in the village. Then my brother turned our family library over to the school. Father had gone through a self-purification ceremony which symbolically purged him of the defiling influences of foreign culture. Yet I remember him doing three things that would offend the sensibilities of any puritan Patidar of the day. He was a nonvegetarian, an imbiber and a rebel against untouchability. He used to send mother and aunt out of the kitchen and cook chicken curry for himself in a separate pot. Then he would eat it and wash the dishes, for no one else would be prepared to. And one night when everyone was in bed mother opened his bag and offered him a bottle out of it. At the time I did not understand the suspense and secrecy associated with this. One day two visitors from Bombay arrived. They wore immaculate white clothes, sat with father on the swing and really impressed father's contemporaries in the village by their urban sophistication. A t suppertime, however, the front doors were barred, for folkways permit droppers-by to open doors without prior knocking. The visitors were seated and served food. Later I was told that untouchables-which these men w e r e - h a d never before been entertained in a Patidar home and that to do so violated the canons of the caste system. But l admired father for proving himself larger than the community dimensions. Yet m y uncle commanded greater respect than father among villagers and relatives, for he was always there in their midst in an endless exchange of favors and obligations; father was aware of this consequence of emigration, and it hurt his pride. While he liked the way uncle had managed everything in his absence, he could not forget that his role as an elder brother and as a member of the kinship, caste and village community was compromised. His self-chosen exile for 11 years was a matchless sacrifice for the joint family. But he quickly became reconciled to the idea that he could best serve it by going abroad once more. He said his first trip was for his own generation, his second trip would be for the next. In 1938 he went back to Panama, taking me and my cousin along with him. Mother was once again awash with tears. She had gone through a decade of distress and of self-denial, and now her son was going with her husband. A t the time all I could think of was the sea voyage, for I had never seen the sea. My brother had already gone to Panama some three years before, leaving his bride of a year behind in India. Relatives always made sure that a young man

Society

married before going abroad so that he would not prove a deserter. The practice of attaching marital strings to the emigrant has dwindled in recent times, but it has taken its toll. On his return after six years, for instance, my brother found his wife incompatible and after two years divorced her. An interesting aside to the story is that while we were in Panama m y brother made me promise not to tell his girl friend(s) that he was married. Several Gujarati businessmen owned department stores in Panama, and there were a few hawkers too. Father stayed in Panama while m y brother established himself in Colon. Both supplied fruits and vegetables to the United States troops in the Canal Zone. My cousin and I stayed with m y brother and attended fourth grade in St. Joseph's .College in Colon. Only one Gujarati had his wife with him. Unlike the average Gujarati wife she was educated, wore Western dress and was able and willing to help her husband in managing the store. The almost universal illiteracy among women was probably an additional reason most early emigrants did not take their wives with them. Combined with their own limited schooling and difficulty with English, their wives' illiteracy and inability to adapt to the Western way of life would be ~ hindrance rather than a help.

Ventures Fail The Gujaratis in Panama worked hard, helped each other out on occasions and filled their lonely lives with informal get-togethers, beer and private escapades. A n y sexual liaison with a Spanish woman of more than a casual or temporary nature was looked down upon. A t about this time m y uncle was brought to Panama to reinforce the family finances, but the venture failed. Although a virile force in his home community, m y uncle could not learn English nor deal with people in the market place. He became meek and helpless and withdrawn. Then came a cablegram from India. My aunt had died in childbirth. My uncle was utterly defeated. He was sent to Jamaica, but his spirit for bahargam had reached an all-time low. My father's funds were depleted, and he could n o t send me and m y cousin to the United States for education. Subsequently, m y uncle, m y cousin and I sailed back to India. The m o m e n t we arrived in Bombay uncle bounced right back to his old self. My brother came back during the Second World War on a permit for three years. But war dragged on, he could not go back and felt stranded. Uncle would not give him the money that would have been needed to obtain either a false or a renewed permit. Instead, he managed to persuade my brother to stay on and help him cultivate the added land. Father too returned during the war for health reasons. He died in 1945 while I was in college at Santiniketan, the highly regarded institution founded by Tagore. A second wave of migration began in my village about 15 years ago. Success stories about emigrants from other villages had continued to come in. First they were about South Africa, then New Zealand, later on East Africa, particularly Rhodesia and Kenya. But as soon as conditions of guaranteed prosperity evolved, immigration to these countries was closed to Indians. There was even talk about a new b a r o o (gateway), referring to Zambia, opening up for migrants. Yet no one from our village took the plunge.

April 1972

One reason for this cautiousness in risktaking could be the absence of a really commanding performance by any of the early emigrants. One of the six, in fact, had spent all his life abroad, reneged his responsibility to his family and had neglected to correspond. He came back in his old age, only to see his wife die. Some people tried to make good in the city, but most of the efforts foundered. At different times four families moved to town to run a dairy. They had milked cows and buffalos at home, but they did not know how to run a dairy, and so they each had to close. Three people opened bicycle stores. My brother was one of them. When he could not go back to Panama, he needed a justification to stay in town. Living abroad for six years had made him equally a misfit for farming, for living in the village and for trading in the town. He lost credibility with m y uncle who refused to risk any further investment. He later went to Bombay to work for a company that shipped fish. But he did not like the smell, and our relatives thought the work unworthy of a Patidar. So he returned to farming, and although not quite reconciled he realizes that it is now too late in life to expect a break. The second bicycle store owner made good and then went bankrupt before anyone realized what was happening and left for England. The third still operates his store but with side business ventures. Although quite old, his parents still farm in the village. They say his mother sneaks him an annual supply of farm produce while the old man turns a blind eye. The most dramatic example of failure to settle in town is that of the lone survivor of the six early emigrants. After spending four to five years in Africa in his youth he tried half a dozen trades and half a dozen jobs, all in towns and cities. The most memorable one was when he pioneered a bus service between Navsari and Bardoli, a 20-mile run, in the early thirties. He has gradually made peace with God over a 20-year stretch in the village. But talk with him for a few minutes and you will find he is a refugee in his birthplace, a cosmopolitan in hiding, an elitist deposed by the rustic masses. Success in England These attempts at urban relocation and emigration to foreign lands have certain similarities, especially in their problems. But it would be inaccurate to blame these individuals, their personality traits or their respective social circumstances for the lack of adjustment. A more fruitful line of inquiry might be to seek explanation at the societal and intergroup levels. After the Second World War Great Britain embarked on a massive reconstruction of industries and needed manpower in her mines and factories. But this was not how the news came to m y village. They heard that England's baroo had just opened and that some young men from the region had already left for London. They had long wished that some of them had gone to Durban or Nairobi or Dar-esSalaam when immigration was still open so that they would be reaping the harvest now. They were determined not to be left out this time. The emigration of men in their twenties began with a trickle, but in a matter of three years the tide had carried more than half the eligible young Patidars to the shores of v i l a y a t (England). The success of this massive airlift was attributed Continued on page 60

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Was Engels Right? THE O R I G I N O F THE FAMILY PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE

By FREDERICKENGELS With Introduction and Notes by ELEANOR BURKE LEACOCK Professor of Anthropology, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn

Dr. Leacock weighs Engels' major conclusions on primitive society, subsequent social stages, and the role of the family at each stage against the results of research since Morgan's Ancient Society. The issues raised by Morgan's and then Engels' work remain the subject of lively debate among anthropologists, as well as Marxist scholars, and the critical introduction and notes to the text bring the controversy to a sharp focus. For this new edition of the classic work, the editor has supplied a full bibliography of pertinent writings and a glossary. $7.50

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j o b is, by most indices, a good j o b and because the work is not sufficiently disturbing to cause them to leave. What is apparent to me n o w - a n d it is at the heart of the tragedy of the Ellsbergs and all the other whiz kids and men who ever went to Washington from RAND or anywl~ere e l s e - i s that defense think tanks engender habits of thought which are amoral because they appear to separate analysis and responsibility. When minds that are morally relaxed grapple with problems that are loaded with moral freight, they are likely to come up with immoral policies. Only the burden of responsibility can be depended on to make people face the implications of their work. It is easier for the bomber pilot to unleash death on thousands of civilians than for the rifleman to do the same to dozens. Moreover, RAND has not simply generated such solutions within its own walls and by means o f its alumni in Washington. It has been emulated in a wide variety of ways. There are, first of all, a number of other defense think tanks which were and are patterned after RAND, but because it was the first and the most successful it is still the most influential. Secondly, whenever a proposal is made for an institute to be set up which will use highly trained technical skill to deal in a detached abstract way with any of a wide range of nonmilitary problems or tasks of society, the image of RAND is invoked as a reference image, frequently as a goal. Thirdly, RAND was for many years and may still be a large influence on university campuses. It has spent significant sums of money for work done on those campuses and, even more important, it brings many university faculty members and dozens of graduate students to its quarters for extended stays each year. RAND money buys their time and services and may well affect them, although probably less intensively, in ways which are similar to the ways in which ! have suggested it affects its own full-time peopM. Hence RAND and the other defense think tanks may be a source of moral infection which ought to be taken seriously. Ought we to continue to operate research institutes and research-funding institutes which purport to conduct or support value-neutral analyses of important value-laden policy questions? Should we continue to place brilliant minds in positions where they can influence or bring about important decisions without responsibly facing their implications and without the restraint of fundamental moral commitments? The price has been very high and not all the bills are in yet. [] INDIA...

Continued from page 29 to a financier son-in-law of one of the villagers. In 1959 1 found 18 young men living in and around Birmingham, of whom only one had his wife and child with him. Two of them had gone there after years of toil in Trinidad at the behest ofxheir village compatriots. A dozen more joined them in the next ten years. In 1970 1 found that most of the married men now had their families with them. And I also noted that this second wave of emigrants included most of the offspring of the first pioneer wave. There are also those who choose higher education as a channel of social mobility. Two families monopolize this area. One, a joint family very recently split, has three brothers. The eldest was the first science graduate in the Society