Thursday, March 1, 2001
In the early 80s I recall a term used often by the first generation to describe the few second-generation children that were growing into their teens or young adulthood: 'ABCDs' or American Born Confused Desis.
Well, today there are hundreds of thousands of ABCDs growing up who have to tussle with who they are in a fairly isolated way. I offer a brief personal glimpse from my life - how my son dealt with this and came to terms with his identity.
Here is what my son Ajay Vashee has to say: "My parents immigrated to this country prepared to accept the American lifestyle, but unprepared to release their hold on traditional Indian beliefs. They raised us as Indians in America. We usually ate Indian food, practiced our Hindu customs and spoke in Gujarati, our native tongue. Yet, we simultaneously participated in neighborhood barbecues, little league baseball and school dances. Like many Indo-Americans, I faced an identity crisis; part of me wanted to discover more of my Indian side while the other part wanted to become American. Home, family and tradition pointed me towards Indian values and ideals, while school, friends and social life pointed me towards American attitudes and ethics."
Ajay continues, "My experiences at Camp Bharat were the first that pointed both ways. At camp, I discovered a balance. The activities, lessons, and discussions I participated in helped mold my Indian side, but it was the people I met and interacted with who ultimately transformed me into a true Indo-American: An individual who could reconcile both the Indian and American ways of life. My contentment at camp was derived from this newfound ability to embrace my culture, my peers and myself."
America is tough and competitive enough and yet we saddle our children with an additional burden of this dual existence without helping them to deal with it. We have a tremendous opportunity to help the next generation scale even higher. The first step is to treat them as Indo-Americans and not as Indians. Second is to understand that the community that we live in treats both generations as Indians or Indo-Americans anyway. Therefore, we need to be united and not separate. Finally our sons and daughters will be more Indo-American than they will be Punjabi, Keralite, South Indian, Marathi, Bengali or whatever regional part of India their ancestors are from. As it turns out, this is the biggest asset we have.
We will have taken a major step towards a stronger unified Indo-American community because the regional differences do not exist in the second generation. Think about it - how much more powerful we can be as a united Indo-American community.
Vijay Vashee is a general manager at Microsoft. Write to him at: vijay@corp.siliconindia.com.
