I. Y. KOTIN (Saint Petersburg)

Doctor of Historical Sciences

indo-Canadians India, Canada, Keywords:, multiculturalism

Canada and India have long been dependent territories on Great Britain, and even now they retain membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. The first group of Indians appeared in Canada precisely in connection with the special relations of these countries with the mother country.

Initially, the Indians settled in western Canada1, but later they appeared in Eastern Canada, in particular, in the Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

South Asian immigration to Canada was initiated by Sikhs and Hindus who built the Canadian Pacific Railway's branch line to Vancouver in 1881-1889. After the work was completed, many Indians remained as workers in the sawmills of Vancouver and its suburbs. By the beginning of 1908, more than 5,000 Indians had arrived in Canada.

Canada was not spared the economic downturn of 1906-1907, which resulted, in particular, in the growing dissatisfaction of trade unions with new arrivals. In September 1907, the so-called "Vancouver riot" began-demonstrations and pogroms in the "Asian" quarters in connection with the report of the alleged arrival of another ship with Indian workers. In the same year, 1907, the Legislature of British Columbia deprived natives of India of the right to vote in local elections, a special act in 1908 prohibited Indians from settling in Canada, and they could even land on the Canadian coast only if they had a large amount in local currency. Shipping companies were not recommended routes from India to Canada.

RESURGENCE OF SOUTH ASIAN IMMIGRATION

With the declaration of Indian independence in 1947, the Canadian Government returned to the topic of Indian immigration, which had been closed for several decades. In 1951, Canada and India agreed on an immigration quota of 150 people per year. In 1956, this quota was increased to 300. A year later, the Indians who settled in the country were allowed to invite their spouses, children and elderly parents. In 1961, the Canadian Embassy in Delhi issued more than 2,300 visas to Indians on their way to work in Canada, and another 2,000 to their family members.² With the recognition of the right to accept relatives, Canada essentially opened its borders to large-scale Indian immigration, the main destinations of which were Vancouver and Toronto; at the same time, Indians began to appear in Eastern Canada.

The pioneers of the "Indian" exploration of New Brunswick were physicist Dr. Ram Verma and his wife Madhu Verma, who came to the University city of Fredericton in 1964 from Chicago. After receiving his Ph. D. in Chicago, Verma was invited to the University of New Brunswick to head the Department of physics at the local university. The sister of his supervisor, Madhu, became the wife of the young doctor. With Indian brides finding it difficult to enter the United States and Canada through family reunification, this arrangement, which resembled a parent-arranged marriage, proved to be a very successful solution for a couple who have lived happily in North America for more than 40 years.

The couple became the first Indian family to settle in Fredericton. Since the mid-1960s, the Verma house has become a kind of Indian club, where both Indian families and single Indians came to find their "little India" here3.

The second half of the 1960s was a time when the Government of Canada, in need of qualified specialists, began to open the doors to immigrants from Asia and introduced a points system for them. To get the required 70 points for the "desired" immigrants, you had to speak English and have a university education. Along with the Indians, many Pakistanis also received an invitation from the Canadian side. M. Arif, a graduate of Lahore University, was among those who arrived.⁴ Both M. Verma and M. Arif mentioned to me that the government of New Brunswick, which had the right to conduct an independent policy towards immigrants, invited many Indians and Pakistanis to St. John, Fredericton, Moncton and other cities to work in schools, hospitals and universities.

Among the schemes that allowed Indians to get to Canada and stay there, Madhu Verma named various scholarship programs under the then British Commonwealth. Many of the Indians who came through this line decided to stay in Canada after receiving their education. Among them, Gugar and Balasubramanyam are current professors at the University of New Brunswick.

LITTLE INDIA FAR FROM HOME

In the early years of the formation of a small Indian community, the desire of all South Asians to unite was especially great.

They were not interested in the local entertainment - church services and ice skating. Harsh canadas-

The study was supported by the Government of Canada (Faculty Research Award. Canada Studies Program. ICCS file number 624/2/02).

They were also intimidated by the cold weather, so it was not uncommon to meet all the members of the community in the same house at this time for a simple meal made according to a traditional recipe, first with local products, later with Indian ingredients.

During this period, students and teachers of Indian origin celebrated together " Indian Night "(Independence Day Eve) and Diwali - the traditional Hindu festival of light and joy. It was not uncommon for a few Hindus from St. John's to come to Fredericton to participate in the celebration. Among the participants of the celebration were Hindus Dr. Date and Saini, as well as a Muslim Dr. Azam, a Canadian of Chinese origin Dr. Lee.

The reunion of Indian women with their husbands in Fredericton led to the emergence of a kind of "women's clubs", neighborhood communities in which housewives helped each other, looked after children together, and prepared traditional food.

In the 1970s, dozens of "Asians" from Uganda who were expelled by Idi Amin's regime joined the Indian community. These ethnic Indians, who had a rich and sometimes sad experience of living far from their homeland, brought with them the entrepreneurial skills, willingness and ability to create a "little India" far from the great homeland. Many of the Ugandan "Asians" started their own businesses, while others got jobs in the provincial and capital administration.

This period also saw an increase in the number of Indians and Chinese, the main groups of "Asians" in New Brunswick. In 1972, several enthusiasts, namely Dr Gulishan Singh, Raj Gambhir, Dr Baloo, Professor Ram Verma, Inder Kamre and Dr Rudra Singh decided to establish an Indo-Canadian Association in Fredericton. Soon, one of the activists of the association, Gulishan Saini, organized a Multicultural conference of representatives of the Atlantic region.

This action coincided with the beginning of Canada's move towards a multicultural model, proposed in 1971 by the then Prime Minister of Canada, P. Trudeau. In addition to Indo-Canadians Dr. Saini and Dr. Tiwari, the conference was attended by representatives of the Italian, Dutch, French-Canadian, and Hungarian communities of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. So the Fredericton Multicultural Association was established, and Dr. Saini soon took over.

The Multicultural Association of Fredericton provided assistance to refugees from Uganda, Vietnam, Sikhs from India - in providing temporary housing, food and medicine, and legal support. The Association actively collaborated with the Canadian Human Rights Commission established in the same years, whose members were Indian Dr Saini and Dr Lodi. English language courses were organized for those in need. They were assisted with obtaining working qualifications and jobs. These organizations lobbied for the interests of ethnic minorities in the provincial Parliament, and through their efforts, New Brunswick adopted a multiculturalism program in 1986, which the Government pledged to follow in its policies.

In Fredericton, the "samosa story" is very popular - the appearance of traditional Indian patties, which turned out to be extremely popular on this university campus*.

Bena Patel, a member of the Patel merchant and pawnbroker caste in Gujarat, who had spent many years in East Africa in Fredericton in the 1970s, lost almost all the property that remained in Uganda. But she did not lose her composure and in 1975 decided to offer the local consumer something that was well known to her, but unfamiliar to Canadians in this region-traditional Indian cuisine, and above all samosa-fried pies in oil with peas, potatoes and other vegetable fillings. I liked the" ethnic " food.

Her product got a brand - "Patel samosas", but the brand was followed by competition. A small local family-owned company, Samosa Deal, also began selling Indian patties at the Fredericton Farmers ' Market. Queues at the Samos stalls began to irritate farmers, who managed to expel the "Indian guests"⁵. Bena Patel even became the heroine of the feature film "Saturday Incident", shot in 2009 and tells about the pioneers of Indian entrepreneurship in Fredericton ⁶.

SCIENTISTS AND TEACHERS SET THE TONE

A group of high school teachers and academic practitioners, as well as their family members, who form the backbone of the local Indian community, are very active in the city. On their initiative, the Asian Heritage Society was established in the province.

The activities of various multicultural associations in the province are particularly active in May, which was declared Asian Heritage Month at the beginning of this decade. Representatives of theater and dance groups, artists, other cultural figures, members of the public and political figures are invited to visit Canada from India, China, Japan, and the Philippines. The screening of Indo-Canadian films is also timed to coincide with this time. Two documentaries shown as part of Asian Heritage Month were directed by Ali Kazimi. They reflect important aspects of the history and current life of Indo-Canadians.

One of them-the film "Long Journey" - tells about the tragedy of the passengers of the ill-fated flight "Komagatamaru", who in the summer of 1914 went to the coast of Canada from India, but were not allowed to set foot on the Canadian coast and after a two-month wait were sent back to India, where many were waiting for humiliation and prison, and where many, outraged by the injustice of Canadian and the British authorities, took the path of armed resistance to the colonialists ⁷.

Another work of Ali Kazimi is the documentary film " A kind of agreement "(1998). This is a story about marriages arranged by parents, about the transformation of such marriages in the conditions of Canada.

Unlike Western Canada and the larger metropolitan areas of Toronto and Montreal, the Indo - Canadian community in New Brunswick is small, only about 450 people. Young people often get married and get married

* I have been told about the" samosa story " by both the Indians themselves (e.g. Madhu Verma) and my Canadian colleagues. I also found a number of articles about it in the local newspaper, the Daily Gleaner.

The children of Madhu Verma, who I interviewed, and Ushi Kuruganti, a second-generation Indo - Canadian, were married outside their community. The daughter of M. Verma is married to a French-Canadian, the son was in a civil marriage with a Korean woman. Usha Kuruganti is married to an Acadian descendant of the first wave of French-Canadians in Eastern Canada. The situation, however, may change with the growth of the Indo-Canadian community in Fredericton and other cities in New Brunswick, as both marriage preferences and adoption preferences among Indo-Canadians favor members of their ethno-cultural community.

NEWFOUND "PARADISE"

In the cities of the neighboring province of Nova Scotia, the situation is somewhat different, which was explained by the policy of the local provincial government.

In 1956, Robert Stanfield, the Premier of the Government of Nova Scotia, which enjoyed broad autonomy like other Canadian provinces, decided to attract foreign students with appropriate qualifications and proficiency in English to work in the higher education system, which was experiencing a significant shortage of teachers. More than 500 teachers from Asia and Africa went to Nova Scotia, with 420 from India.

This practice continued for a number of years. New arrivals received high-paying (by their standards) jobs, housing, and could immediately buy new cars on credit. Unsurprisingly, in their letters home, young teachers who had taken jobs in Nova Scotia described the area as a newfound paradise. Many Indian teachers who first found work in Ethiopia, with the support of friends who settled in Canada, moved to Nova Scotia.

We will note a number of factors that made such a move possible. For many centuries, members of the higher castes, and most teachers belong to the brahmin caste, were forbidden to cross the kala pani - "black waters". The employer-sanctioned violation of the ban on crossing the ocean, but in fact the creation of a new tradition - this time the tradition of going overseas-allowed young people from the highest Hindu castes, along with their Muslim and Sikh peers, to continue working in another country.

Along with this, we see here, as in most cases of independent migration of Indians, an example of chain migration. The first teachers who got a job in Canada became the first stages of migration. They invited their relatives, classmates, fellow countrymen, and friends to follow their example, describing the advantages of their position abroad.

Mukhtiyar Tomar, who wrote a remarkable work on the Indians of Nova Scotia, gives examples of the emergence of migration chains. For example, a Punjabi named Sukhdev Kumar Uberoi, who was educated at Cambridge School in New Delhi in the 1950s and found a teaching job in Halifax in 1960, recommended his friend as a candidate for a teaching position at the same school where he got a job. And the latter, in turn, found a place as a teacher there for his brother as well. Their wives also received teaching positions in Halifax schools.

It is noteworthy that many of the Indian immigrants who arrived in Nova Scotia in the 1960s are from Punjab. This is not surprising. Punjab is one of the most densely populated states in India, where teachers, engineers, and university teachers find it especially difficult to find work, because the state's industry is poorly developed, and the higher education system is largely dependent on subsidies from the central government, usually insufficient.

Over time, there were Indian teachers in Nova Scotia who were educated in Fredericton, Halifax, and Toronto. Local students often complained about their accent in English.

To protect their rights, teachers from South Asia joined the association in 1969. By then, the provincial Department of Education had banned their hiring in India. Faced with some financial difficulties, the provincial authorities began to review the conditions for hiring, firing and retiring teachers in order to reduce their education costs. Most of them were already retired in the 1990s, and now more than half of Nova Scotia's Indian population is made up of retired teachers and their families.

The emergence of a relatively small but well - to-do group of Indians in Nova Scotia contributed to the emergence of their cultural centers in the province-community organizations, Hindu temples, mosques, the only Sikh Gurdwara (temple) in the province, as well as the South Indian Association.

However, unlike the Indo-Canadian community of New Brunswick, Indians here are more divided, more scattered across the province: almost all towns that have secondary schools have small groups of working Indian teachers or retired Indo-Canadians. At the same time, as in New Brunswick, in Nova Scotia, Indo-Canadians have a great interest in their roots, they actively participate in events dedicated to Indian culture, invite Indian artists, artists, poets, political and public figures.

The situation is different in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but in both provinces the small South Asian communities that emerged in the 1960s made and continue to make a significant contribution to the development of multiculturalism in eastern Canada.

¹ For more information, see: Kotin I. Yu. South Asian element of the Canadian multicultural mosaic / / Ethnographic Review. 2002. N 6. P. 3-17.

^{Samuael E.} 2 Integrative Anti-racism. South Asians in Canadian Academy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. P. 47.

³ Interviews with Madhu Verma. October 22, 2009

⁴ Interview with Muhammad Arif, October 25, 2009

⁵ Patel couldn't give her samosas away // Daily Gleaner, July 29, 2009.

⁶ Fredericton samosas to star in film // CBC News. July 29, 2009.

^{Josh Sohan Singh.} 7 Tragedy of Komagata Maru. New Delhi, 1975.

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