The end of British colonial rule in India and the birth of two new nations--India and Pakistan--was celebrated in California in 1947 by immigrant men from India's Punjab province. Their wives and children celebrated with them. With few exceptions, these wives were of Mexican ancestry and their children were variously called "Mexican-Hindus," "half and halves," or simply, like their fathers, "Hindus," an American misnomer for people from India. In a photo taken during the 1947 celebrations in the northern California farm town of Yuba City, all the wives of the "Hindus" are of Mexican descent, save two Anglo women and one woman from India.
There were celebrations in Yuba City in 1988, too; the Sikh Parade (November 6) and the Old-Timers' Reunion Christmas Dance (November 12). Descendants of the Punjabi-Mexicans might attend either or both of these--events the Sikh Parade, because most of the Punjabi pioneers were Sikhs, and the annual Christmas dance, because it began as a reunion for descendants of the Punjabi pioneers. Men from India's Punjab province came to California chiefly between 1900 and 1917; after that, immigration practices and laws discriminated against Asians and legal entry was all but impossible. Some 85 percent of the men who came during those years were Sikhs, 13 percent were Muslims, and only 2 percent were really Hindus.
Marriages between Punjabis and Mexicans began in the second decade of the twentieth century. Most descendants of these Punjabi-Mexican couples continue to refer to themselves as Hindus, and they are very proud of their Punjabi background. Yet most descendants are Catholic, and while most are bilingual, they speak English and Spanish, not Punjabi. An understanding of the ethnic choices made by the Punjabi-Mexican descendants requires an excursion into the history of their community.
The Punjabi Immigrants
For decades, farming families had been sending sons out of the Punjab to earn money. Punjabis constituted a disproportionate share of the British Indian military and police services throughout the British Empire, in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the China treaty ports. Many of those who ended up in California had served overseas in the British Indian army or police in China and crossed the Pacific for the better wages in railroad, lumbering, and agricultural work. On arrival in California, a few sold tamales from carts in San Francisco, but the majority began as migrant laborers, moving in groups around the state with a "boss man" who knew English and made contracts with employers.
Work and settlement patterns varied regionally in California, depending on the types of crops grown and the nature of the local population, both in terms of numbers and racial or ethnic composition. Intending to return to India, only a handful of men had brought their wives and families; soon it was not possible to bring them. In northern California's Sacramento Valley, Punjabis tended to work in gangs, and were called "Hindu crews." Most of the Punjabi men there remained bachelors, at least in part because there were no local women whom they could legally marry. California's miscegenation laws made marriage with women of other races difficult. In the southern Imperial Valley, however, the Punjabis met and married Mexican or Mexican-American women, whom Americans considered racially the same as the
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