The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11: From Obscurity to High Visibility 1593324057, 9781593324056

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The New Americans Recent Immigration and American Society

Edited by Steven J. Gold and Rubén G. Rumbaut

A Series from LFB Scholarly

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States after 9/11 From Obscurity to High Visibility

Shafiqur Rahman

LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC El Paso 2011

Copyright © 2011 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rahman, Shafiqur. The Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States after 9/11 : from obscurity to high visibility / Shafiqur Rahman. p. cm. -- (The new Americans : recent immigration and American society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59332-405-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Bangladeshis--United States--History--21st century. 2. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001--Influence. 3. Bangladesh--Emigration and immigration. 4. United States--Ethnic relations--21st century. I. Title. E184.B13R34 2011 973'.04914126--dc22 2010051338

ISBN 978-1-59332-405-6 Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...............................................................................vii Chapter 1: Introduction ..........................................................................1 Chapter 2: The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States ...........................................................29 Chapter 3: Ethnography and the Study of Diaspora.............................55 Chapter 4: The Post-9/11 Backlash and the Bangladeshi Diaspora .....71 Chapter 5: Engagements with Bangladesh...........................................99 Chapter 6: Media and the Bangladeshi Diaspora ............................... 117 Chapter 7: Negotiating Religion, Gender, Generation and Class....... 147 Chapter 8: Identity Constructions ...................................................... 179 Chapter 9: Conclusion........................................................................ 203 References.......................................................................................... 219 Index .................................................................................................. 235

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Acknowledgments

This book about the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States was a necessity, primarily because of the paucity of information about this growing immigrant community. The post-9/11 backlash created a new urgency to address the questions of identity and citizenship that this predominantly Muslim immigrant community confronted. It was my pleasure to write this book because I wanted to tell the story of a group of people of whom I am also a part. I thank Dr. John Downing, Dr. Thomas Johnson, Dr. Lisa Brooten, Dr. Nilanjana Bardhan, and Dr. Jyotsna Kapur for their advice, support and encouragement in various stages of conceptualizing and writing this book. I especially thank Dr. George Griffith of the Department of English and Humanities at Chadron State College, who read the whole manuscript and gave me critical editorial feedback. All of my participants and informants who helped me gather information made this work possible. I am grateful to them. As always, my wife and our daughter’s support was invaluable in the process of writing this book.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Diaspora studies always generate interest for providing critical information about identity, cultural belongingness and citizenship of a growing segment of population that is displaced by globalization and other market forces. Those issues are important not only to the immigrant population but also to their host societies, especially the United States and Europe, because immigration is an integral part of these societies. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 brought new urgency to the study of diaspora, especially Muslim diasporas, for not only uncovering the traumatic experiences that Muslims in Western countries went through following the attacks but also for revealing the “crisis of citizenship debate” (Detroit Arab American Study Team--DAAST 2009) that followed. Justifying the DAAST study, Baker and Shryock (2009) pointed out that the analysis of Arab Detroit, which experienced a “concentrated version of the anxieties about identity and boundary maintenance that are now endemic to the contemporary nation state,” can provide “important insights about national belonging and the crisis moments in which it is tested and transformed” (p.14). In the same vein, the study of the Bangladeshis in the United States is especially significant not only because the members of this predominantly firstgeneration immigrant Muslim community experienced backlash but also because they confronted the questions about their citizenship and identity in their relatively new host country. Ethnic Bangladeshis in the United States are part of about 3% of the total population of Bangladesh (almost 5 million), who migrated to 1

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

different Western, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries for jobs, education, and a better livelihood. Historically immigration was a livelihood strategy for the people of Bangladesh (Siddiqui, 2003). Despite the positive economic growth in Bangladesh recently, the country remains poor and there is a growing recognition that migrant Bangladeshis can contribute to the economic development of the country by sending remittance, transferring technological know-how, and investing in Bangladesh. Compared to the United Kingdom, which has the largest number of Bangladeshi immigrants in Western countries, Bangladeshi immigration to the United States is recent but their numbers are growing fast. The exact number of the people of Bangladeshi origin in the United States is almost impossible to determine, but it is believed that the number would be between 300,000 to 500,000 (I have discussed this issue in detail in chapter 2). Invisible yet Highly Visible In spite of their growing numbers, Bangladeshis in the United States were largely invisible before 9/11. In official category, Bangladeshis are lumped with Asian, a category dominated by China and India. A cultural category, South Asian, is in the making, but immigrants from India are much more visible in that category. Although Bangladesh is the third or fourth largest Muslim-populated country and more than 80 percent of the people in Bangladesh and perhaps an equal percentage of Bangladeshi immigrants in the United States are Muslims, they are not visible in the so-called Muslim communities either. The study of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the backdrop of post-9/11 backlash reveals how Bangladeshis turned from what Jamal and Naber (2008) referred to as “invisible citizens to visible subjects,” and faced measures of state’s population managements (Rana and Rosas, 2006). In spite of their diversity in ethnicity, national origin and culture, Muslims are treated as an “undifferentiated mass,” and are made visible to the whole gaze of the society (Abbas, 2004). Abbas (2004) observed the following about the post-9/11visibility of British Muslims, which can be applied to US Muslims as well: “the social and religious foundations of Islam, as well as Muslims in general, have attained such a degree of notoriety that their visibility is immediately recognizable in entirely negative and detrimental frames of references” (p. 29). Bakalian and

Introduction

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Bozorgmehr (2009), who tracked the post-9/11 backlash on a wide section of Muslims in the United States, summarized the post-9/11 visibility of Muslim immigrants in the following sentence: “the events of September 11 had changed irrevocably their status from invisible minorities to notorious suspects of terrorism” (p. 178). As researchers continued to investigate the effects of the post-9/11 backlash on the Muslim diaspora, they are likely to bring those invisible groups to the mainstream research domain (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009). Focusing and separating out different cultural and national Muslim identities and avoiding the all-too-frequent identification of “Muslim” with “Arab,” this book directs our attention to a Muslim group that lay largely outside the gaze of US media and academia, until the post-9/11 backlash put them in the spotlight. This book is based on data from a series of in-depth interviews and focus groups that I conducted during my extensive fieldwork in New York City and in Carbondale, a small university town in Southern Illinois, in the summer of 2006. I updated my study by a short fieldwork stint in New York City in the summer of 2008. Data for this book were gathered at a time (2006-2008) when the post-9/11 process of normalization was going on, giving researchers time and data for careful analysis and understanding (Baker and Shryock, 2009).This book, although it addresses the Bangladeshis’ encounter with the post9/11 backlash substantially, takes on other issues, such as the roles of diasporic media, the internal diversity of the community, and the articulation of identity and citizenship of Bangladeshis in the United States. Bangladeshis in the United States became “visible subjects” not only because they faced discrimination, harassment and deportation, but also because their Muslim identity was brought to the forefront after 9/11. This happened primarily because there were continuous reports involving Muslims and Islam in the 24-hour news media, which used an Islam-vs.-West frame to report terrorism and other affairs that involved Muslims and the West, causing a “forced” awakening of religious identity among Muslims (Aksoy, 2006). The forced awakening of their religious identity, the backlash that they experienced in the streets for being brown and Muslim, and the legal measures that they encountered, shaped their identity and informed their citizenship in the United States after 9/11. Thus, the visibility of

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

Bangladeshis did not mean that they were recognized as a distinct ethnic community, but rather they were visible as members of the targeted communities, who must be subjected to discrimination and harassment, and whose civil liberties can be compromised. Members of the Bangladeshi diaspora also experienced something that can be labeled as “visibility from within.” Their narratives suggest that the feeling that others are watching them caused a sensitivity, impacting their day-to-day affairs. They had to think before they dressed, especially putting on the religious symbols, such as hijab for women and skull-cap for men. They had to choose their words carefully when they spoke over the telephone. They had to monitor constantly what they did to avoid the slightest show of security-sensitive behaviors that might bring troubles to them. The situations of the Bangladeshis in the United States were tied to the situations of other Muslims, because Muslims were generally understood as a homogenized group, and the cultural distinctiveness of Muslim groups including Bangladeshis, was either ignored or deemphasized, blurring the distinction between ethnicity and religion (Allen, 2004). The backlash against Muslims that began in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks continued unabated in the following years. American Muslims understood the emotional reactions that Americans showed after the terrorist attacks but they also thought that those reactions would be temporary. Interviewing Muslim activists, Murphy (2004) wrote, “Three years later, many Muslims say the atmosphere seems much bleaker. Anti-Muslim sentiment appears to be hardening into a permanent feature of public discourse, and Muslim advocacy groups report an increase in hate crimes and discrimination” (p. B 01). Murphy (2004) quoted Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as saying that his organizations received 800 anti-Islam and anti-Muslim emails. The “viciousness” of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim messages has gone way up compared to the period immediately after 9/11, Hooper said. Leaders of Muslim organizations acknowledge that “continuing acts of violence by Islamic terrorists, especially beheadings in Iraq, have contributed to Islam's deteriorating image in this country.” But, they also blamed “a constant stream of invective against Islam by illinformed talk radio and television pundits and some religious leaders” for portraying Islam negatively. Those invectives and constant forms of

Introduction

5

media reporting, often without adequate contexts, criminalize images, or the visual identifiers (Allen, 2004) that are related with Islam and Muslim. According to Allen (2004), “The visual identifiers provided a seemingly societal stimulant that offered an outlet for the venting of rage, revenge, or any other denigratory sentiment or action” (p.4). Not only the conservative radio talk show hosts and the ill-informed television pundits, the general tendency of mainstream media was to present Islam in the prism of terrorism. The New York Times reporter Andrea Elliot, who won a Pulitzer for her reporting on the Muslim communities in the United States post-9/11, said that a lot of Muslims felt that their faith was covered in media in a selective way, with an emphasis on terrorism (Charlie Rose, 2007). According to Elliot, media, as a conduit between Muslims and non-Muslim Americans, created a negative image of Muslims as they explored Islam and Muslims through the prism of terrorism (Charlie Rose 2007). Negative attitudes toward different immigrant groups are not new in the United States (or other countries as well), and September 11 was not the first event that focused attention on Arab and Muslim Americans (Detroit Arab American Study Team, 2009). But the post9/11 backlash was unique for the Bangladeshis in the United States for two reasons. First, this was the most severe and pervasive backlash to this relatively new immigrant community. All the other events such as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Iranian hostage crisis, the US intervention in Lebanon and the 1991 First Gulf War happened at a time when the Bangladeshi diaspora was in a very early stage. Bangladeshis remotely identified with those predominantly Arab and Persian events. Even though some elements of prejudice against Islam were present in the Western world, the anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic expressions became more extreme, explicit and widely tolerated after 9/11 (Allen, 2004). Because Bangladeshis had not experienced any other major backlash before in the United States, it appeared to be the single most severe backlash that created a sense of rupture in their life, which was evidenced in their classification of American experience into pre-and-post-9/11 categories. Second, the severity of the exclusionary narratives about Islam and Muslims made the post-9/11 backlash a unique phenomenon. The post-9/11 widespread hate crimes, criminalization of Muslims, invasion of their privacy and violation of their civil rights did not discriminate between Arab, Asian or African

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

Muslims. What Turner (2003) observed about the situations in multicultural Australia seems also true about the post-9/11 backlash experienced by US Muslims. Giving a parallel historical analysis of other major incidents of backlash in Australia, Turner (2003) wrote: The process to which Muslim-Australians are now subject are not typical of the process required to manage assimilation, accommodation, or inclusion; they are those required to manage exclusion. We are not just messing about with complaining about the smell of their food, or the sound of their language or their failure to assimilate with AngloAustralians. It is more damaging than that. We are characterizing them as a treacherous and primitive gene pool, demonizing their religion and cultural practices, refusing our commonality with them as human beings, accepting their placement in detention centers, and turning a blind eye to breaches of their civil liberties in the name of spurious national emergency. These tactics are more along the lines of how foreign nationals are treated during periods of war, as internees, members of “the enemy.” (p. 414) Bangladeshis in the United States: Who are They? Two major waves of immigration (discussed in detail in chapter 2) created the contemporary Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States. Even though a small number of immigrants from present-day Bangladesh arrived in the United States before 1965, the post-1965 immigration, which brought mostly students and some skilled workers, created the foundation of the Bangladeshi diaspora. Later, immigration through different diversity lottery visas created a diverse diaspora by bringing a large number of unskilled and less educated Bangladeshis. While the earlier immigrants settled in different parts of the country and were employed in professional jobs, the recent immigrants concentrated in large cities and found employment in the service sectors, such as cab driving and small store sales. Their numbers are growing fast as many others are entering the country through familysponsored visas, or as students and visitors.

Introduction

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In spite of the increasing presence of Bangladeshis, their old home country, Bangladesh, remains relatively unknown to average Americans. If someone says that he or she is from Bangladesh, an average American would probably give a blank look. Nazli Kibria (2008b) who studied Bangladeshi diaspora, put it this way: “in the US, as I am often told, one’s assertion of Bangladesh origins is often greeted with a blank stare or the response of ‘Bangladesh? Where’s that?” (p. 257). Because a great majority of Bangladeshis are firstgeneration immigrants, their identification is tied with Bangladesh. The virtual invisibility of Bangladesh explains the invisibility of Bangladeshis in the United States. However, it would be inaccurate to say that Bangladesh is invisible in US media. As Bangladeshi journalist S.G. Hasan pointed out, Bangladesh is brought in the imagination of Americans when either media or politicians need to paint a hopeless and desperate situation. In Hasan’s (1996) words: Whenever someone needs to prove that America is sliding through a downward chute, Bangladesh is fished out as a good example of "rottenness." Malnutrition is on the rise among the American blacks; their longevity is declining. What measure does one use? Compare it with Bangladesh. The situation in New York's Harlem is so despicable that its child mortality rate is higher than even that of Bangladesh, writes the New York Times, among many other newspapers, at every available opportunity. While it is true that Bangladesh is poor and it is plagued with malnutrition and corruption, it is also true that people are resilient, they love their language and culture, and they defied authoritarian rules historically and fought for democracy. Yes, there are fundamentalists and terrorists roaming in the country, but at the same time people of Bangladesh generally sided with moderate, liberal and secular political forces. Muqtedar Khan (2005), an Indian-born US scholar, identified Bangladesh as a “poor Muslim democracy.” “It is representative of the contemporary postmodern condition when nothing is clear-cut. It is at once both highly developed as well as underdeveloped. Bangladesh is a country that is economically backward and politically quite advanced,” he wrote in his self-syndicated column Glocal Eye. It is true that

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

women are oppressed but it is also true that Bangladesh is among the handful countries in the world that routinely elects women as the head of the government. Citing the election of women as the head of the government, Khan argued that Bangladesh had shattered a myth about Muslim society. “It is amazing that this country of a hundred million Muslims looks like a matriarchical society, belying another myth that associates patriarchy with Muslim culture.” The very birth of Bangladesh, according to Khan, breaks another popular myth about pan-Islamic unity. “By its very origins it has exploded the myth of Islamic unity. By breaking away from Pakistan, Bangladesh has shown that asabiyyah (Ibn Khaldun’s term for ethnic solidarity) can at times overwhelm Islamic unity.” But the image of Bangladesh in US media is what Hasan (1996) called a “single image portrait.” The older image of Bangladesh as a poor country, or what Henry Kissinger called a “basket case,” has been replaced by a Muslim country which is sliding in to be the “next Afghanistan.” Even though the portrait changed over the years, it is still a single-portrait-image. While in Western representation Bangladesh is either a hopeless, corrupt country or a breeding ground of terrorism, in the perception of Bangladeshis it is much more than that. The question is: why does the image of Bangladesh matter to the Bangladeshi immigrants in the United States? The obvious and simple answer is that as firstgeneration immigrants, Bangladeshis feel strong connections to their old home country. It is true that Bangladesh has limited signifying value in the United States but still first-generation Bangladeshis want to be associated with their ethno-linguistic identity (The Pulse of Bangladesh Survey, 2005, conducted by BBC in Bangladesh, found that while religion is “very important” to 97% respondents, 69% preferred to be identified as “Bangladeshis”). When the New York Times published a story in 2005 asserting that Bangladesh was becoming the next Afghanistan, some Bangladeshis became furious not only because that report did not represent Bangladesh accurately, but also because those type of images of their old home country would add more fuel to the already hardened negative attitudes of Americans toward Muslims. A furious Bangladeshi-American, Fakhrudin Ahmed (2005) asked the reporter, Eliza Griswold:

Introduction

9

Are you aware Ms. Griswold that a Cornell University survey found 44 percent of the Americans in favor of restricting the rights of Muslim Americans? Are you aware that arrangements have been made to intern Muslim Americans to camps in case of (God forbid) another 9/11, just as Japanese Americans were interned during WW II? Diaspora or Transnational Community? Usually the concept of diaspora is brought to describe the lives of small pockets of populations, such as the Bangladeshis in the United States. The word “Diaspora” derives from the Greek word diaspeirein, which means scattering of seeds. Among the Greeks, this expression was used to describe the colonization of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean during 800-600 BC (Cohen, 1996). Cohen suggested that although there was some displacement of the ancient Greeks to Asia Minor as a result of poverty, overpopulation and wars, diaspora essentially had a positive connotation. However, in contemporary times, the term diaspora has traditionally referred to the historical Jewish dispersal outside Palestine, which Cohen calls “victim diaspora.” Cohen (1996), modifying the definition of William Safran (1991), presented the following nine-point model, which he thinks describes diaspora: • • • • • •

Dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically to two or more foreign regions Alternatively, the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions A collective memory and myth about homeland, including its location, history and achievements An idealization of the putative ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety, and prosperity, even to its creation The development of a return movement that gains collective approbation A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history and the belief in a common fate

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 • • •

A troubled relationship with host societies, suggesting a lack of acceptance at the least or the possibility that another calamity might befall the group A sense of empathy and solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries. The possibility of a distinctive yet creative and enriching life in host countries with a tolerance of pluralism.

Cohen (1996) argues that those are the common features of a diaspora, but no one diaspora will manifest all the features. Any discussion of diaspora makes some sorts of reference to identity, because diasporas are generally associated with loss of original identity, maintenance of that identity and creation of new identities. Earlier conceptualizations of diaspora stress the “roots,” or original homes of the displaced people, and identify them with their somewhat static and essentialized cultural identity. Gilroy (1993), shifting the focus from the “roots” to what he calls “routes,” entails the experiences of the displaced people in defining diaspora. The “routes”—the long journey from the “original homes” to the place of settlement--shapes the identities of diasporic people because they change from their multi-layered negotiations--with poverty, racism, and social inequalities. The Black diaspora in Britain that Gilroy discussed changed so much that it could not be reduced to any national or ethnically based tradition (Clifford, 1994). But as Ray (2003) argues, diasporas are not what he calls “splinters in the transnational world” that readily lead to floating lives; rather they usually have anchorage points when it comes to their identity articulations. That anchorage point is their real or imagined connections with their home country. Their lives and identity articulations are also shaped by how they are represented in their host society (Hall, 1990). Thus diasporic identity emerges as a layered, complex and contested one, usually embodying many strands. The identity of the people in a diaspora is also subject to the conditions in their host society, international tensions and situations in their home countries, or imagined home countries. Werbner (2004) rightly pointed out: As mobilized groups, they [diasporas] are cultural, economic, political and social formations in process, responsive to global

Introduction

11

crises and multicultural or international human rights discourses. This means that diasporas are culturally and politically reflexive and experimental; they encompass internal arguments of identity about who “we” are and where we are going. Diasporas are full of divisions and dissent. At the same time they recognize collective responsibilities, not only to the home country but also to co-ethnics to the far-flung places. (p.896) Even though diaspora is used to refer to the ethnic immigrant communities, scholars argue that the lives of modern immigrant communities cannot be described by the classical concept of diaspora. Contemporary scholars tend to redefine diaspora, reflecting on the experiences of the people whose lives are characterized by transnational connectivity. Some use the term “modern diaspora” to distinguish the diaspora under globalization from the earlier classical diaspora. Preferring the term “modern diaspora,” Amersfoort and Doomernik (2002) wrote: “we propose to reserve the term ‘modern diaspora’ (or transnational community) for ethnic communities that have kept their cultural identity and whose members are still guided by specific cultural norms in important areas of behavior” (p.59). Dudrah (2002) summarized the concept of diaspora as: A social condition that articulates the interplay of migrant people, their successive settled generations, and their ideas in terms of triadic relationship. This relationship works across place of origin, place of settlement, and a consciousness that shifts between the two, and incorporates possibilities for new subjectivity formations. (p.164) As Charusheela (2007) pointed out, diaspora can be viewed as an important concept that “situates analyses of subject formation and social experiences in a transnational context” (p. 280). Scholars recently are increasingly bringing the transnational context in discussing the experiences of the post-second World War immigrants. Especially US researchers prefer transnationalism while European scholars prefer the term diaspora (Kennedy and Roudometof, 2002). Transnationalism, sometimes defined as “a set of sustained long-

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

distance, border-crossing connections” (Vertovec, 2004, p.1), is used to describe migration, media, political participation and social mobilization by a wide section of researchers across disciplines. Although scholars debate issues such as whether transnationalism is a new phenomenon and how to operationalize its meaning, it is nonetheless an important concept, especially to grasp the lives of immigrants who maintain a transnational connection to such an extent that many observers think that transnational connectivity defines the lives of contemporary immigrants, whose lives stretch across borders in a literal sense. I have used transnational community and diaspora interchangeably throughout the book, understanding that irrespective of the terminological differences, transnational connectivity significantly impacts the lives of pockets of population that are scattered across the globe, leaving their places of birth. Recent scholarship distinguishes modern diasporas from the earlier diasporas, pointing that they are not like the victim diasporas—struggling to fit in their new place while dreaming of going back to their real or imagined homes, exhausting their energy in constructing the imagined home or, tracking the routes of their journey. Instead, members of the modern diaspora show a form of subjectivity and strive to make their lives more integrated in their old and new homes. Diasporas are increasingly being recognized as the catalyst of economic development in their country of origin and the government and political elites recognize the growing clouts of diaspora. High skilled professionals in the diaspora contribute to the development of their home countries by providing tangible benefits to the receiving country in terms of new business creation and human capital and linking domestic and foreign firms in the service sectors (Kuznetsov, Yevgency^Sabel and Charles, 2006). The host society also recognizes the importance of diaspora and makes an effort to utilize this resource to connect with the country and culture native to a particular diaspora. For example, Anwar Choudhury, a Bangladesh-born naturalized British citizen, was appointed the High Commissioner to Bangladesh. Bangladeshi political elites and media outlets recognize the roles of the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide and engage them in the development efforts of Bangladesh. The high profile members of the Bangladeshi diaspora are more likely to exert influence in Bangladesh because the host-country recognition gives

Introduction

13

members of the diaspora new weights to their opinions at their home countries (Kuznetsov, Yevgency^Sabel and Charles, 2006). When Rushanara Ali, the first Bangladesh-born British citizen, was elected Member of Parliament (MP) from the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, Bangladeshi media published the story in the front page, branding it as a historic event. According to the Bangladeshi media report, people in the ancestral village of Ali brought out victory celebrations, showing Bangladeshi and British flags. Rushanara Ali, who identified herself as a “British Bangladeshi of Muslim faith but also as an East ender,” gave an interview to the BBC Bangla Service in which she said that the Bangladeshi community has been in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years and there are many legacies involving the community and the community should be represented in British Parliament for representation, and their voices should he heard (Khan, 2010). She told Masud Hasan Khan of BBC Bangla Service that her victory would encourage members of the Bangladeshi community in the United Kingdom to be more active in mainstream politics. “To millions of Bangladeshis around the world, it will mean so much to them that somebody of their background has been elected to the mother of all parliaments,” she said after she won the elections. Agreeing with other Bangladeshis who live in the diaspora, she said that young people of her generation are interested in fostering connections with Bangladesh by investing there and lobbying for issues that are important for Bangladesh such as global warming. Not only the high profile members of the Bangladeshi diaspora, the educated, middle class and entrepreneurs also emphasize their transnational connectivity and need a flexible framework of belongingness and citizenship that would facilitate their cross-border initiatives. Media and Diaspora Usually the roles of media in the discussion of diaspora come to the forefront not only because those media provide an unprecedented opportunity to the people in the diaspora to be connected with their old home and culture, but also because those media fill the need for a “wider audio-visual representation of minority social groups” (Dudrah 2002, p. 163). Broadly speaking, the term “diasporic communication” has come to describe the networking and media use of geographically

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

dispersed communities (Chitty, 2006). A wider transnational network of communication and media, which is the result of media globalization, plays a significant role in sustaining the formation of diaspora and enhancing diasporic consciousness (Cohen, 1997). The development of global television networks and other forms of media not only enhanced the reach of Western media to the peripheral regions of the world, but also enabled the media systems of those peripheral regions to reach the pockets of population that migrated from those regions at an unprecedented volume and frequency in recent years. This global trend of migration, what Appadurai (1996) calls the “shifting ethnoscapes,” elevated the roles of media in the lives of millions of people who are displaced by the forces of globalization. Taking into account the increased access and use of media in the diaspora, researchers often discuss the roles of media in a celebratory tone. For example, Shi (2005) wrote that transnational media have built up a new virtual geography that offers migration a new kind of media experience. Although transnational connectivity was always there and people in the diaspora utilized whatever media were available to them in different periods in history, now, as Aksoy and Robins (2003) pointed out, the extent of the connectivity has become the key issue. Aksoy and Robins (2003) said that people in the diaspora can maintain connection to such an extent that it has significantly shaped their lived experience in the diaspora. This new experience of migration is reflected in the blogs and snippets of online articles that the middle-class educated Bangladeshis post. The key themes of those blog postings are the increased connectivity and what that means to their lives in the diaspora. The following quotation from an online article (Zaman, 2005) captures the essence of the experience that increased connectivity brings to the lives of Bangladeshis in diaspora: Sitting in front of my desktop, I instantly can connect to anyone across the globe. I can tune to Dish Network and find out what issues Zillur Rahman is navigating in Tritio Matra (Third Dimension--a political talk show in a popular Bangladeshi television) at Channel i, or Farah Sharmin is talking about in Ajker Sokal (Early morning news show in a Bangladeshi television) at NTV. I can log on to MuktoChinta (means free thinking--a yahoo discussion group) and connect

Introduction

15

to a few thousand like-thinking minds. I no longer feel estranged, as I used to feel. My inner kaleidoscope now can process myriads of economic, societal and cultural images thus linking me and making me--“what I am.”… My today’s manifest cultural identity is nothing but the end result of an intense interaction between my global exposure and my innate local (I mean, Bangladeshi) sensitivity. The author of the above-cited piece, who hails from a “sleepy village of Bangladesh,” and is now a resident of the United States, reflects on a critical aspect of his life: what does it mean to be a Bangladeshi who lives in the United States in the age of globalization? The images that he invokes about ethnic Bangladeshis living in Western countries are in line with what scholars frequently use to describe modern diasporas: the increased connectivity and ability to imagine a life not defined and confined by space-bound borders (Gupta and Ferguson 1992). The author lives in what Appadurai (1996) calls mediascapes (in fact, he cited Appadurai in his piece), which is inundated by images that come from different parts of the world. The author is the beneficiary of globalization, which not only erased physical borders of the nation states for him but also eliminated his mental borders. As a result, leaving his “sleepy village” in Bangladesh, he was able to find a life in the United States. Because of his access to technology and his disposable time (he is a professional), he can not only settle in his new home but also can remain constantly connected to his old home and culture. This connectivity eliminates his estrangement, which many in the diaspora experienced in earlier periods. This connectivity, the ability to imagine a life that spans across national boundaries, gives him an anchorage point; his life is not floating any longer—it is anchored in the diaspora but yet it is more than just a space-bound life. He is part of a migrant community that “show up less as victims and more as agents, participating in alternative media environments that are at least partially their own constructions” (Carruthers, 2002, p.325). He is connected to what is going on in Bangladesh as well as in other parts of the world. But his Bangladeshi connection does not necessarily express his longing for an ethnic Bangladeshi or a hyphenated Bangladeshi-American identity; rather it shifts our attention to his longing for an identity that is not defined by

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

any dichotomy. His quest for a new kind of identity is based on his reworking of the very concept of migration in the age of globalization. However, for a wide variety of people in the Bangladeshi diaspora the experience of migration is different from the experience of the author of the above-cited piece. Many of them migrate for economic necessity, leaving their extended family members in Bangladesh dependent on the money sent from the United States. The borders of the nation-states are not that porous for many of those immigrants for a variety of reasons. The contact that they need to maintain with their extended family members is not much about celebrating the globalization-induced connectivity; it is more of a necessity. They use communication technologies such as cell phones to reorganize the family that is splintered across borders. Media are important tools for the people in the diaspora whose lives are stretched across borders not only for maintaining relations with family and friends but also running businesses and other financial and social affairs that are necessary for living a life in the diaspora. Media are not only connecting devices for many first-generation immigrants, they also provide a much needed space in their new home. Bangladeshi media, language newspapers and television programs, fill the long morning-hours of many housewives whose husbands drive cabs and children are in schools. Media also provide information that spice up the social conversations in the diaspora. The Post-9/11 Backlash and the Shaping of the Bangladeshi Diaspora I studied the Bangladeshi diaspora at a time when its members were reeling from the post-9/11 backlash, which cast a long shadow over their lives and thinking, leveling their experience with what Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds encountered in the United States and Europe. So, undoubtedly the post-9/11 backlash left a significant impact on their identity and citizenship. As I have discussed in chapter 4 of this book and elsewhere (Rahman, 2010), Bangladeshis, with their dark skin and Arabic sounding names, were subjected to hate crimes, workplace discrimination, harassment, special registration and deportation. While the post-9/11 backlash impacted Bangladeshis across class, gender, and citizenship status, different sections of people

Introduction

17

experienced the impacts at various levels and talked about it differently. The working-class Bangladeshis, who must go out and use public spaces for their living, had to face hate crimes and harassment more frequently than people with higher education and professional jobs. Limited English skills of the working class Bangladeshis worsened their situation. But interestingly, the working-class Bangladeshis, even though they faced discrimination and humiliation in the streets and felt vulnerable, were reluctant to discuss the backlash, fearing security consequences. Therefore, I had to count on the narratives of a few respondents whom I knew on a personal level and a few respondents who were the community leaders. This is consistent with what other researchers reported. There was a strong and consistent pattern in US media and other popular culture outlets to connect 9/11 with Islam, either explicitly or implicitly. Consequently, a wide section of the US population also readily connected 9/11 to Islam and turned their negative gaze to the Muslims around them. The controversial bumper sticker by a Virginia man, which reads “everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11,” does not represent the opinion of Americans, but certainly it makes the point that 9/11 was generally understood as a religiously motivated and grounded terrorist activity. This trend, even though subsided to some extent in the following years, came into play after every terrorist activity perpetrated by Muslims. Continuous association of Islam and terrorism cast doubts about their religion, at least temporarily, for some Bangladeshis who were not practicing Muslims and never thought of the religious aspects of their lives seriously. For example, one female participant with a secular outlook, who watched volumes of television news shows and was disturbed by her exposure to those media, said that she bought a copy of the Quran with translations and began reading it--something she never had done in her life. While some literature involving Muslims in Europe reported increased religiosity among Muslims following the post-9/11 backlash, I have not found such a trend in my study. However, in some cases, some participants, especially the second-generation BangladeshiAmericans, showed an assertive Muslim identity. My limited data (just one interview with a female activist college student) suggest that the articulation of an assertive Muslim identity was the outcome of her

18

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

coping with the post-9/11 backlash and her lived experience in a multicultural campus where an assertive Jewish identity was practiced, accepted, and even appreciated. Seeing their faith under attack in media, some Bangladeshis, like other Muslims, initially distanced themselves from the practice of the faith (low attendance in mosques, unwillingness of show religious emblems in public), but at the same time they were also engaged in what journalist Andrea Elliot says a “reinitiation” process in which they learned more and got closer to their faith, which gave an assertive Muslim identity and new-found camaraderie in the Muslim community (Charlie Rose, 2007). This issue certainly needs further exploration with more empirical evidence. But at this point, it can be said that even if the Bangladeshi Muslims as well as the Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds showed a pan-Muslim solidarity, it is not only because of their common faith but also because of their common experience as they faced the post-9/11 backlash. While some of my participants said that they had to go through a period of intense questioning of their religion, they found that the overwhelming impact of the post-/911 backlash was not religious; rather the impact was social and political, which involved their identity and citizenship. One of the strongest impacts of the post-9/11 backlash was what Aksoy (2006) called the “forced” awakening of Muslim identity, which my participants reported to experience as media and political discourses continuously highlighted Islam when referring to terrorism. My participants felt that there were so much talk about Islam and Muslims in the media post-9/11 that it was difficult to escape the thought that they were Muslims, which often pushed them to think intensely about their life, religion and identity. The introspection that many Bangladeshi Muslims experienced generated different sorts of reactions, often creating a gap between what they thought of their religion and how it was represented in the media. It was difficult to reconcile that gap given the fact that Bangladeshis did not have any voice in the construction of that narrative of Islam. As I have discussed in chapter 7, Western media narratives of Islam are constructed in exclusion of the experiences of Bangladeshis, but they are then included in that narrowly constructed category of Muslim, leaving the members of the Bangladeshi diaspora in a difficult terrain of negotiation of their identity.

Introduction

19

Also, the narratives of Islam and US citizenship are constructed as mutually exclusive categories, forcing Bangladeshis to think of their identity in binary either-Muslim-or-American terms. Bangladeshis rejected this either-or identity not only because that they did not see any contradictions in being a Muslim and a US citizen but also because they thought that a Muslim-only identity would curtail their ability to exercise their citizenship rights, given the fact that being a Muslim has become a code word for someone who is deemed as a lesser American and whose civil liberties can be compromised. However, in spite of its negative association, Bangladeshis desired to be recognized as Muslims because it is recognized in the multi-cultural United States and gives them a stable identity. They want their Muslim identity recognized but they do not want their religious identity to eclipse their other identities. The historical experience of many Bangladeshis with an ambivalent relation with Islam and their aspirations to reconcile Islam with democracy and human rights informed their identity articulations. I have discussed in chapter 7 how Bangladeshis showed ambivalence toward their religious identity; ethno-linguistic and religious identities gained prominence in the psyche of Bangladeshis depending on historical contexts. In spite of this ambivalence toward the religious identity, the firstgeneration Bangladeshi parents in the United States encourage their children to embrace Islam, believing that religion will shield them from the “bad” influences of popular culture. But at the same time, firstgeneration Bangladeshis show discomfort when their children embrace a revivalist Islam in the transnational context not only because that Islam can slide to an exclusionary and even an extremist version of Islam but also can take their children from the Bangladeshi Islam that they practice. Thus, as I have elaborated in chapter 7, Bangladeshis are engaged with Islam in a complex way and the simplistic narratives of Islam in Western media not only misrepresent their lives but also put them in an odd situation. Their awakened sense of their Muslim identity and the real and perceived backlash that they experienced eroded the sense of belongingness and citizenship among Bangladeshi respondents. Bangladeshis made the connection between the backlash they experienced and the exclusionary narratives about Islam and US citizenship that they were exposed to. They heard it loud and clear that

20

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

they did not belong in this society. Like other ethnic Muslim communities, the greatest concerns of Bangladeshis were the erosion of their civil liberties. Those concerns were expressed when my participants invoked the expression of second or third-class citizenship when they described their citizenship status. Those Bangladeshis, although they were granted legal citizenship and exercised their citizenship obligations by participating in the consumer economy and following the rules of the country, still fell short primarily because they were Muslims, a category deemed not only inferior but also incompatible with US citizenship. Yet others felt that religion signified a broader issue of racism that was invoked post-9/11 and was used to stifle their citizenship rights. This heightened their unease about whether their children with their Muslim names and dark complexion would be able to live in the United States as full citizens. This invoked a narrative of going back to Bangladesh in some educated professional female Bangladeshi respondents who migrated to the United States not only to pursue a better livelihood but also to explore their full potential as US citizens. In some working-class Bangladeshis the backlash reminded them that they were economic migrants and they would have to put up with that for a long time. In both cases, the backlash, both physical and mediated, disrupted their sense of home and hurt their aspiration for US citizenship. I have discussed how Bangladeshis articulated their citizenship post-9/11 in greater detail in chapter 9. The identity of Bangladeshis in the United States was shaped by their old home-country connections as much as it was shaped by their lived experience in the United States post-9/11.The influence of Bangladesh is strong in their self-definition not only because a majority of them are first-generation immigrants and they lived a good part of their lives in Bangladesh, but also because they recreate their old home through continuous telephone calls, frequent visits to Bangladesh, use of Bangladeshi media and consumption of commodities that come from Bangladesh. Many working-class Bangladeshis live a Bangladeshioriented life in the ethnic neighborhoods of large cities, virtually creating “little Bangladesh.” Those Bangladeshis saw that people of other ethnicities become American citizens while retaining their ethnic traditions and they aspire to do the same. While many Bangladeshis think that it would be counterproductive in their new home to reproduce essentialized Bangladeshi culture, they nonetheless try to

Introduction

21

keep what they believe the core Bangladeshi culture: the family relations, especially how their children would fit in the family (The Pulse of Bangladesh Survey that I cited earlier, found that 98% respondents recognized the influence of their families on the decisions they made in their lives, 91% said that they would do things only to make their families happy, and almost all thought that young people should look after the elders). Bangladeshis’ attitudes to strong family relations get stronger in the diaspora because they fear that their children would lose it. Therefore, they approve the articulation of a generic South Asian identity, desi, which their children espouse, not only because that identity emerges celebrating foods, festivals and popular culture of South Asia but also because the desi identity does not disrupt the family relations that they value most. While the middle-class Bangladeshi-Americans lament for losing family relations, the working class people struggle to maintain their families splintered across the globe, being pulled apart by globalized labor. While the middle class Bangladeshi-Americans with high paying professional jobs celebrate globalization where borders are porous, working class Bangladeshis find borders everywhere, “which isolate immigrants from their homes and families in the Third World” (Mathew, 2005). Globalization does not melt the borders of nationstates for them; rather it creates increasingly well-defined territorial states to control the flows and the networks (Mathew, 2005). Unlike middle-class Bangladeshi immigrants for whom family is the site of day-to-day routine activities, for working class Bangladeshi immigrants who are separated from their families for years, family becomes a different site, to be used for pleasure: The family then becomes an extraordinary occurrence— something one could argue, that is consumed as part of one’s leisure time, rather than lived as everyday life. For men who grew up within relatively stable structures, who assume that the family is a normal structure of living, the condition of being immigrant workers slowly turns them into folks who reconcile and understand the family as an extraordinary unit – one located within the realm of pleasure every other summer (Mathew, 2005, p. 170).

22

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

Maintaining the family relations, which encompasses gender relations and relations with their children (discussed in detail in chapter 7), is critically important to many first-generation Bangladeshis. Some of my participants either explicitly said or suggested that the post-9/11 backlash would fade away some day but family relations would remain an issue that they would have to deal with. In many cases, especially in working class families, gender relations become strained for a host of reasons. The family relations of many first-generation Bangladeshis disrupt when they migrate to the United States. Both men and women I interviewed brought the discourse of freedom when they talked about gender relations. Bangladeshi males who are employed in the service sectors think that they sacrifice a lot to bring their families to the United States and provide for them by working multiple jobs. Women, on the other hand, find that although they live in a country where they have freedom and do not have to entertain the social roles, they nonetheless find that their lives and aspirations are constrained by their limited English proficiency, lack of opportunity of education, and lack of support from their spouses to pursue their careers. Ironically, many of the women who had career prospects in Bangladesh and now are confined to home in the United States, long for the supports of their inlaws that appeared as a burden when they lived in Bangladesh. Those tensions often result in broken families. People do not want to talk about it in formal conversations; many would acknowledge informally that those family issues are major problems in Bangladeshi families, especially in large cities. Whose Voice? I want to make it clear at the outset that this book is based on my selfreflexive ethnography of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States. By declaring this, I threw the claim of objectivity out of the realm of my work. This is my ethnography—I have conceptualized it, negotiated the access to the field, conducted the fieldwork and interviews, and finally wrote it. I have given a reflexive methodological description detailing every methodological procedure that I pursued, because the ethnographic ethic requires that (Altheide and Johnson, 1994). At the conclusion of the study, I feel that it is also about finding my voice. But this voice is mutated as I moved around—in my family, community

Introduction

23

and the research field. Therefore, my voice is not the only voice that is reflected in this book. The frustration, concern, and identity-crisis of Naseema, Fuad and Naseem, the assertiveness of Nazia, and the eagerness of Mahfuz and Roushan to represent the Bangladeshi community in a positive way are loud and clear in this narrative of the Bangladeshi diaspora. My position can be conceptualized as an “overlapping insider/outsider” (Hidalgo, 1998). This insider/outsider status influenced every decision that I made regarding conceiving and conducting the research. During conflicting situations my insider view was negotiated and modified by the outsider views. Finding a voice was crucial, especially in the post-9/11 United States, because I was constantly placed in clearly-labeled one or more boxes. Finding a voice also has implications for the way I conceive my identity in the diasporic context. I wanted to express my identity without necessarily being confined to the watertight compartments that have been discursively constructed for me. I am concerned with the conditions of many immigrants including Bangladeshis who faced backlash in the United States post-9/11. While I associate with Bangladesh and Islam, I do not accept any essentialized view about Islam or Bangladeshi culture. I agree with Salih (2004) that an identity of Muslims in the Western diaspora should emerge critiquing the essentialist and dichotomous constructs of Islam and the West, which can lead to multiple meanings of identity and the creation of a “third space” (Bhabha, 1994). Limitations What is not adequately addressed in this narrative of the lived experiences and identity constructions of Bangladeshi diaspora is class. The bulk of the literatures on migration and diaspora, derived from the works of cultural critics and literary theorists, overly focus on separation, yearning for home, sense of loss of cultural identity and construction of diasporic identity. Theorists who analyzed modern diasporas in a globalized world, such as Appadurai (1996), also did not break from the culturalist tradition of analysis. According to Appadurai (1996), media-generated images of life in the United States trigger people’s imagination in other parts of the world, and accelerate global migration. Thus media and migration emerge as the primary focus of

24

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

his conceptualization of a globalized diaspora, leaving class as a residual component. The relegation of class as an explanatory factor in the analysis of diaspora is the outcome of an assumption that the modern capitalist world is divided into monolithic oppositions (Ahmad, 1994), such as White/non-White, industrialized/non-industrialized. But if we conceptualize the world as a hierarchically structured global system, then class emerges as a vital factor of analysis. Global flows of capital move people from one location to another in the integrated global system, creating ethnoscapes (Appadurai, 1996). These ethnoscapes are not class-blind—the life of a skilled information technology professional and that of an unskilled worker are not the same in Bangladesh, nor are they the same when they migrate to the United States. Thus my conceptualization of diaspora as a cultural construct has an in-built bias in it; the class-issue did not receive due attention. While this book disrupts the binary notions of identity, it did not problematize the narratives enough by addressing the class issue. Future research on the Bangladeshi diaspora can be conducted by focusing more on economic conditions and class issues. Even though I have discussed how Bangladeshi-run businesses sustain the diaspora and shape diasporic experiences of different classes, the issue should be explored further. The roles of remittance, which I have discussed in chapter 2, should be explored further also. Religious affiliations of people in the Bangladeshi diaspora can also be explored to examine whether people’s diasporic experiences differ on the basis of their religion. This issue could not be explored in this book for logistical and methodological reasons. Muslims were the primary focus of this study because they constitute more than 80% of Bangladesh’s population, and they were the targets of the post-9/11 backlash. I based the theoretical premise of this study primarily on theories and literature that addressed the post-9/11 backlash and Islamophobia and the experiences of Muslims in Europe and the United States. That directed the focus of the study toward Muslims in the Bangladeshi diaspora. Finally, by using a snowball sampling technique I reached a pool of participants most of whom were Muslims (except John and Sheila Rozario, who are Christians). My attempt to recruit participants outside the snowball did not work very well. One such failed attempt even convinced me to plan a future study of the

Introduction

25

Bangladeshi diaspora, primarily focusing on how people’s religious affiliations would factor in the discussion of diaspora. It would be especially useful to examine how the experiences of Bangladeshis, who lived in Bangladesh as religious minorities before migrating to the United States, shaped their diasporic experiences. During my stay with my informant’s family in Astoria, New York, I found that at least one Hindu family lived in that street. I had occasional conversations with the female members of that family. When I approached them for an interview, they said that they could not talk to me without consulting with the male member of the family who was not available. However, I had a chance to talk to the male member one day and I proposed an interview. He agreed but we could not proceed much because he became very angry when I mentioned Bangladesh, saying that he did not consider Bangladesh his country and would never go back there. Later, I knew from the female members of his family that he experienced violence targeted at Hindu people in Bangladesh, which accelerated his migration to the United States. Later, I met him again in a grocery store at Astoria. He apologized for being rude and invited me for another interview. But I could not interview him because I had to leave New York. I did not explore the issue any further and did not include the data in this book so that I can keep my research manageable. But I strongly believe that people’s experiences in their home country would shape their diasporic experience and their relations with their old home country. Their motivation for using diasporic media might be different as well. Only a full-blown study can explore the issue with full context. But I should mention here what I observed in Carbondale where Muslim, Hindu and Christian Bangladeshis lived. Religious identities of those Bangladeshis never blocked the social relations of those Bangladeshis. Irrespective of their religious affiliations, people were included in the Bangladeshi community activities. Religious issues never became the topic of discussion of the family and social gatherings. Rather, the community members sometimes showed a split along their political allegiance, not along religions. Finally, in spite of the limitations, this book contributes by telling the stories of a group of people who are almost invisible in US media and academia. Although relatively new, the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States is well in formation and shows the complexities in terms

26

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

of identity constructions, internal differences, and media use of its members. Narratives of the Bangladeshi people I interviewed for this book clearly show that people’s lived experiences in this diaspora are anything but homogeneous. Bangladeshi people’s diasporic experiences are colored by their gender, generation, and social class. The interview and observation data also show that Bangladeshis in the United States use the Bangladeshi diasporic media extensively. But they do not use those media in isolation; their media use is embedded in the broader social and cultural context they live in. Also, they do not use the diasporic media just to maintain connections with their old home, Bangladesh. Rather their media use is integrated to the lives they live and the lives they imagine. Plan of the Book In this Introduction I outlined the broader questions that I addressed throughout the book. I introduced the key concepts, such as homecountry connections, identity articulation, roles of media and the effects of the post-9/11 backlash on the Bangladeshi diaspora. I presented a brief history and a contemporary profile of the Bangladeshi diaspora in chapter 2 on the basis of the scant information available. I outlined the methodology of gathering data for writing this book in chapter 3. I have provided in chapter 4 a detailed ethnographic narrative of how Bangladeshis in multiple locations in the United States talked about the impact of the post-9/11 backlash on their lives. Chapter 5 provides a narrative of Bangladeshis’ engagements with their old home. A major part of the chapter is written on the basis of my observation, field notes and in-depth interviews. Chapter 6 discusses the use of media by the members of the Bangladeshi diaspora. I have listed and briefly described the major media that are available to the Bangladeshis in the United States. The major part of the chapter is written on the basis of interview data that focus on how and why people use home-country media in the diaspora. The broader theme of chapters 7 and 8 is the identity articulations of the Bangladeshi diaspora, which I have written on the basis of a series of in-depth interviews, participant observation and field notes. I have conceptualized identity as the complex and layered sense of belongingness of the people in the diaspora, which emerges as they negotiate their religion, gender, ethnicity and

Introduction

27

generation in multiple locations. I have provided an ethnographic narrative of how Bangladeshis were engaged in those negotiations in chapter 7 and provided the identity-related data in chapter 8. I have summarized the key points in chapter 9, which is the concluding chapter of the book. I have closed that chapter by citing interview data and my analysis regarding how Bangladeshis connected the post-9/11 backlash, exclusionary media narratives about Islam and Muslim and their aspirations of US citizenship.

CHAPTER 2

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States

History Although considered a recent immigrant community (Leonard, 1997), people from what is now Bangladesh began to arrive in the United States as early as 1920’s as part of the “colored seamen,” but those early immigrants “remained virtually invisible in the literature on South Asian migration to the US” (Bald, 2007, p. 64). According to an entry (Jones, 2000) in the Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, immigration from the “Bengali region” to the United States can be traced even earlier--when a small number of dissident student activists, both Hindus and Muslims from East and West Bengal, fled to the United States after the partition of Bengal in 1905. According to the same encyclopedia entry, their numbers were small, perhaps because of the discriminatory immigration laws that allowed citizenship only to Caucasians at that time. Those immigrants, all male students, settled mostly in San Francisco, Oregon, and Washington. The colored seamen were the ethnic Bengalis from the southeast part (Noakhali and Chittagong) of present-day Bangladesh, who found jobs in British ships, which carried goods from Kolkata (then Calcutta) to the rest of the world. “Those men typically signed on in Calcutta, often after waiting for months or even years to get on a crew, and then 29

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

circulated almost everywhere the British traded goods” (Visram, Balachandran, Dixon, cited in Bald, 2007). Those men, like others in many European sea port cities, jumped ships in New York and found jobs in restaurants and factories and joined the local labor force, “often doing work similar to that which they had done on ships–for example, firing and stoking industrial furnaces” (Bald, 2007, p. 64). According to Bald (2007), many of those men returned to their ship jobs after some period but a small yet significant number of them settled in New York City and lived with immigrants from other countries. Many of those men married women from the African American and Puerto Rican communities, perhaps because they lived and socialized in those ethnic neighborhoods and it was illegal for them to marry Caucasian women. Those earlier immigrants also created cultural spaces in the boarding houses they lived, restaurants they worked or dined, and the blocks and neighborhoods they shared with other immigrants (Bald, 2007). But those people and the communities they created did not become a part of the post-1965 self-definition of the South Asians including the Bangladeshis in the United States. The small number of students from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), who arrived after 1965, are generally considered the founders of the Bangladeshi diaspora, which later expanded greatly by new arrivals under various US immigration programs (Opportunity Visa and Diversity Visa) in the 1990s. According a Gale Encyclopedia entry (Jones, 2000), in 1960s many people from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) fled to the United States to avoid political persecution, or, in the case of religious minorities, to avoid religious discrimination. Many of the post-1965 immigrants were the refugees of the 1971 War of Independence of Bangladesh (South and Southeast Asians of the United States - History and Cultural Relations, 2010). According to the same encyclopedia entry and other sources (Siddiqui, 2004, for example), this first wave of immigrants was generally composed of professionals--well educated and affluent. There is some conflicting information about how many people of Bangladeshi origin lived in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For example, the Gale Encyclopedia entry says that in 1973, 154 Bangladeshi immigrants arrived in the United States, 147 in 1974, 404 in 1975, and 590 in 1976. As table 2 (Siddiqui, 2004 estimate) shows, these numbers do not match, but they are not drastically different either. According to one

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

31

estimate, about 8,000 people of Bangladeshi origin lived in the United States in 1984, of which about 6,859 arrived between 1960 and 1984 (South and Southeast Asians of the United States - History and Cultural Relations, 2010)). But, as table 2 (Siddiqui, 2004, estimate) shows, there were only 590 Bangladeshis with immigrant visas and 4,178 with non-immigrant visas in the United States in 1984. According to the same estimate, only 275 people of Bangladesh origin were granted US citizenship at that time. So, there are discrepancies in the scant data available as to how many Bangladeshis migrated before the 1990s. The post-1965 immigrants were largely skilled people comprised of the students who stayed over after completing their studies. According to the 1986 immigration data, 61% of the Bangladeshis who were granted permanent residency were students (Siddiqui, 2004). By 1992, when the wave of immigration from Bangladesh began under various Lottery programs, almost 90% of the Bangladeshis in the United States were professionals (Mali, 1996, cited in Siddiqui, 2004). But that percentage dropped drastically once the low-skilled and less educated people began to arrive under different lottery visas. A slice of picture of the post-1965 Bangladeshi immigrants can be found in an entry of the electronic encyclopedia of Chicago (Mehrotra, 2005). According to the entry, between the 1960s and early 1970s, a group of immigrants from present-day Bangladesh, mostly graduate students and young professionals, settled in and around the Chicago Metropolitan area. The 2000 federal census officially reported that 712 Bangladeshis were living in the Chicago metropolitan area. However, local community leaders estimated that nearly 4,000 Bangladeshis lived in the greater Chicago area, most of them Bengali-speaking Muslims. According to the encyclopedia entry, Though small in number and scattered across the metropolitan area, the Bangladeshi community in Chicago is a socially and culturally active ethnic group. The Bangladesh Association of Chicagoland has been the community's official organization since 1980. In addition to disseminating information regarding health care, literacy, and immigration and citizenship, the association also provides assistance with employment and other issues related to assimilation into American society Mehrotra, 2005).

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

The Bangladeshi Association of Chicagoland was active organizing various cultural and social programs to celebrate days such as the Independence Day of Bangladesh (March 26). Chicago's Bangladeshi community celebrated the Independence Day of Bangladesh with a citywide, day-long cultural festival. March 26 has been recognized by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago as Bangladesh Day since 1996. According to the encyclopedia entry, The ceremonies usually begin with an assembly near Devon Avenue—the symbolic and commercial hub of Chicago's South Asian communities. After opening remarks by community leaders and local politicians, the celebration proceeds with a parade along the portion of Devon Avenue (West Devon Avenue between North Ravenswood Avenue and North Damen Avenue) that has been officially designated “Sheikh Mujib Way,” in honor of the founder of Bangladesh. The day of festivities concludes with a dinner and cultural show. Bangladeshi culture is also on display on Chicago's local television channels, where every Saturday Bangladeshi dance recitals, poetry readings, and plays are broadcast (Mehrotra, 2005). Compared to their predecessors, the new Bangladeshis who migrated in the 1990s under different diversity visa programs were less educated and settled in large cities where other Bangladeshis already concentrated. A big chunk of those new immigrants were employed in the service sectors, such as cab driving and small store sales. Bangladeshis constituted a big chunk of the 99,400 licensed cab drivers in New York City (2000 census data as analyzed by Schaller Consulting, 2006). According to the data, 38 percent of New York City cab drivers were immigrants from South Asia (14 percent from Pakistan, 14 percent from Bangladesh, 10 percent from India). The data show that Bangladeshi cab drivers have supplanted Pakistanis as the largest percentage of newly licensed drivers of yellow taxicabs. Of those who entered the business in the last two years, 18 percent were from Bangladesh, 15 percent from Pakistan and 9 percent from India. Table 1 shows that Bangladeshis had an 8% increase while Indians and Pakistanis showed a decreasing trend in cab driving. Quoting Schaller,

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

33

the New York Times reported that the growing number of new Bangladeshi drivers reflected a sharp increase in Bangladeshi immigration to the city, from 400 per year in the 80's to 3,900 per year in the mid-1990's (Luo, 2004). Because of the scarcity of reliable statistics, it is almost impossible to determine how many Bangladeshi taxi drivers worked in New York and other large cities. A report published in a local newspaper put the number of Bangladeshi cab drivers at 6,500. Table 1: National origin of newly licensed NYC medallion taxi drivers, 1984, 1991 and 2002-04 (all figures in percentages) Country Bangladesh Pakistan India

1984 1.1 3.0 3.

1991 10.2 21.3 10

2002-04 18.3 14.8 9.5

Change +8.1 -6.5 -0.5

Source: Anne G. Morris, “The Impact of Mandated Training Program on New Taxicab Drivers in New York City, Center for Logistics and Transportation, CUNY Graduate Center, December 1985; Taxi and Limousine Commission, “Who’s Driving New York,” April 22, 1992; analysis of Taxi and Limousine Commission licensing records (200204) as cited in Schaller Consulting (2006). Because this number is changing (as more and more new immigrants from Bangladesh are choosing this profession), many Bangladeshis in New York City think that the number would be higher. A small survey involving only 50 cab drivers gives a glimpse of a profile of those cab drivers. The details of the survey, such as who conducted it, how respondents were selected, were not available; an essay based on that survey was posted on Alochona (discussion) online magazine. According to the survey, 85% of the respondents were 35—55 years old, only 20% have English proficiency, 20% had a bachelor’s degree from Bangladesh, and they stayed in the United States for more than 10 years (Bangladeshi Taxi Drivers in New York, USA, July 2002). The survey also reports that 70% of all the respondents claimed to have a high school or two-year college degree. Half of the respondents were full-time cab drivers and they had been in the job for 10-15 years.

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

Almost all of the respondents (98%) were married and 72% lived with their families in the United States. Most of those cab drivers came to the United States with Diversity Lottery visas. Many of the respondents lived in other countries before migrating to the United States. Table 2: Bangladeshis awarded US visa and citizenship Year 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1972-95

Immigrant visa 17 122 97 382 410 362 449 382 423 607 504 504 590 873 1,239 1,293 1,129 1,373 3,811 6,202 2,248 2,928 29,771 6,895 35,817

Nonimmigrant visa 98 795 1,483 1,212 1,385 1,766 2,124 2,610 3,395 4,519 4,852 4,226 4,178 4,857 7,185 7,091 9,570 10,864 8,963 9,804 12,888 16,889 7,582 17,860 156,196

Adjustment of visa 182 301 306 373 437 410 354 813 980 4,651 1,202 544 487 11,040

Awarded citizenship 8 25 39 55 86 78 132 146 207 223 273 275 337 296 334 419 496 696 874 967 942 1,151 8,059

Reprinted from Siddiqui (2004) with the permission of the author. Author’s source: Report of the Visa Office, 1974-19995 and the statistical Year Book of INS, Department of Justice, 1973-1994.

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

35

As Table 5 shows, the Bangladeshis who became naturalized citizens, or were granted permanent residency recently (2003-2008), settled in the states of New York, New Jersey, California and Texas. The immigration data do not report exactly where in those states Bangladeshis settled, but anecdotal and other evidence suggest that they settled in large cities of those states including New York City. As Table 4 shows, a sizeable number of Bangladeshis admitted to the United States through family or relative-sponsored visas. Obviously those people joined their relatives and family members, most of whom lived in large cities such as New York. Not only Bangladeshis, but also other Asian immigrants tend to settle in New York and California (Chiswick and Miller, 2008). Many of the recent Bangladeshis who migrated to the United States with diversity lottery visas and familysponsored visas had limited English proficiency and found it easy to navigate the Bangladeshi enclaves in large cities. Those unskilled immigrants also found suitable employment in large cities where many ethnic Bangladeshis owned businesses. The arrival of post-1990 immigrants changed the face of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States. The newly arrived Bangladeshis reclaimed the narratives of what it means to be Bangladeshi-Americans. Before the arrival of thousands of Bangladeshis, only a few educated and professionals could migrate to the United States—the land of opportunity and dream. The narratives of the lives of those in United States were dominated by those people-many of whom took an elitist view of what it meant to be a Bangladeshi-American. That situation has completely changed; the new immigrants, who are “common folks” from Bangladesh, now define America and Bangladeshi-Americans (Ahmad, 2006). How Many? Like many other immigrant communities, the number of people of Bangladeshi origin in the United States is difficult to ascertain. The 2000 census put the number of people of Bangladeshi origin at 57, 412. The number of Bangladeshis was put at 41, 280 in the Asian population category of the same census report. Using the 2000 census of 5 per cent Public Use Microdata Sample (weighted data) Kibria (2008b) estimated that 92,235 people of Bangladeshi origin were present in the United

36

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

States in 2000. Yet the census 2000 special tabulations reported that 95, 295 people of Bangladeshi origin were living in the United States at that time of which 32, 420 were naturalized US citizens. A total of 62, 875 people were non-immigrant residents of the United States who entered the country in different periods. The Bangladesh government and the International Organization for Migration published the first and only comprehensive report (Siddiqui, 2004), documenting information of the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. The report put the number of Bangladeshis living in the United States at 500,000. This number was estimated on the basis of the educated guess of the Bangladesh government officials who had firsthand experience with the Bangladeshi immigrant community. According to the report (Siddiqui, 2004), the difficulty of determining the exact number of Bangladeshi people arises from the fact that neither the Bangladesh nor the US government keeps a record of all Bangladeshis ranging from short-term sojourners to permanent residents and citizens. The report also notes that the population census data of Bangladeshis do not include information on migration, and US government agencies also do not have data of all the categories of the Bangladeshis living in the United States. For example, the report cites that the 1990 Census Report of New York City, where the largest segments of Bangladeshis lived, did not show any count of Bangladeshis. The report mentions that community leaders in New York City estimate that between 300,000 to 500,000 Bangladeshis live in the United States. Quoting Bangladesh Embassy sources, the Poughkeepsie Journal put the number of Bangladeshis in New York City at 80,000 and in the country at 250,000 (Haavie, 2004). However, the ethnic Bangladeshi press claims that there are 500,000 Bangladeshis currently residing in the United States. The estimate of 300,000-500,000 seems plausible if we consider several factors. First of all, as table 3 shows, 159,451(120,337 in another estimate) Bangladeshis entered the United States between 1999 and 2008. A great majority of those people stayed and were granted either permanent residency or citizenship. Those Bangladeshis joined a community of almost 100,000 Bangladeshis. According to census data, only 1,015 Bangladeshis entered into the United States before 1980. In the decade following (1980-89) 8,385 Bangladeshis were admitted. The number of entry from Bangladesh jumped to 53,475 in next 10 years

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

37

(1990-2000). As table 3 shows, the entry from Bangladesh increased many folds since 2000. A variety of factors contributed to the higher entry of Bangladeshis. First, the diversity lottery visa systems that were enacted during that time resulted in increased migration from Bangladesh. The immediate family members and the relatives of Bangladeshis who already became naturalized US citizens also entered the United States under the sponsored visa category (table 4). Although that data did not record how many people entered the United States as students, it can be assumed that their numbers would increase substantially as many Bangladeshi college students explored higher education opportunities and many of them migrated to the United States. As table 4 shows, an increasing number of Bangladeshis were granted employment-based visas as well. Because New York City has the highest number of Bangladeshis in the United States, Bangladeshi population count in the city would give some idea about the overall number of Bangladeshis in the country. Bangladeshis are one of the fastest growing ethnic communities in New York City. Census data shows that New York City’s Bangladeshi population more than quadrupled from 1990 to 2000. Bangladeshis were the sixth largest Asian group in New York City in 2000. According to census data, in 2000 New York City’s Bangladeshi population was 28,269. However, various informal sources indicate that the number of New York City’s Bangladeshi population was much higher than was reported in census. This seems plausible because many Bangladeshis whose visas expired remain undocumented and continue to live in large cities such as New York primarily because of the employment availability. Table 3: Bangladeshis admitted to the US (with I-94) from 1999— 2008 1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

Total

17,855

0,266

1,120

15,593

3,914

14,712

14,909

4,224

3,100

13,758

159,451

13,662

5,432

15,665

12,343

10,845

10,731

11,364

10,441 9,485

10,369

120,337

The figures in the first row represent people who identified Bangladesh as their country of citizenship while the second row represent people who identified Bangladesh as their country of residence. Source: Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Family sponsor M F 568 553 1,059 1,040 1,570 1,546 1,635 1,749 1,628 1,387 1,707 1,503 M 271 537 827 597 614 706

F 219 425 693 463 551 598

Employment

Relative sponsor M F 744 1,320 1,096 1,885 1,646 2,979 2,125 3,911 1,451 2,657 1,394 2,489 F 514 549 569 1,062 1,164 1,087

Refugees /asylees M F 67 86 100 98 223 182 536 445 265 210 211 174

Top five states settled New York (1,960); California (441); Texas (240); New Jersey (169); Virginia (155) New York (1,995); Michigan (533); California (453); Texas (304); New Jersey (274) New York (2,642); California (385); Michigan (349); Texas (313); Virginia (305) New York (3,301); California (406); Florida (399); Texas (344); New Jersey (331) New York (2,060); California (335); Texas (338); New Jersey (329); Michigan (295) New York (1,734); New Jersey (484)California (417); Texas (386); Virginia (350)

M 745 1,207 1,184 2,031 2,090 1,842

Diversity Visa

Source: US Department of Homeland Security and US Census Bureau.

Year 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Table 5: Naturalized Bangladeshis’ place of settlement

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Year

Table 4: Bangladeshis in the United States: How admitted

M 35 44 53 71 38 25

Other F 8 20 13 19 19 16

4,616 8.016 11,487 14,644 12,074 11753

Total

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

39

Demographics As table 6 shows (based on 2000 census data), the Bangladeshi diaspora was composed of primarily young (63.2% in the 20-44 age brackets) males (58.2%). A majority of Bangladeshis was either selfemployed or worked in the service sectors, such as small stores and cab driving. According to census 2000 data, 25% of Bangladeshis had a bachelors degree and 21% had a graduate or professional degree. That means 46% of Bangladeshis in the United States had a college degree (This percentage is even higher in Kibria estimation). According to demographic data of 1980, 58% of men over 20 and 42% of the women in the same age group had four or more years of college education. Current occupational data of Bangladeshi immigrants are even hard to get. A very small survey (Siddiqui, 2004) found that most Bangladeshis were either self-employed or worked in private sector businesses. Engineering, medicine, information technology, and cab driving were some of the main professions Bangladeshis pursued. Many Bangladeshis with college degrees from Bangladesh took cab driving, mainly because they could not find other employment with the Bangladeshi diploma. Also, new immigrants found it easy to get into this job as other Bangladeshis, who were already in the profession, helped them. A large number of Bangladeshis were also students. Bangladeshis in the United States are not homogenous; they differ in terms of location, generation, gender, economic status and profession. There are significant differences between the post-1965 immigrants and the more recent arrivals. According to Khan (2003), Bangladeshis who arrived in the 1960s or 70s settled down in small towns, away from big cities where large Bangladeshi communities were located. The physical distance made them less connected to Bangladeshi communities, which helped them assimilate more into American culture. Some married non-Bangladeshi partners and their children grew up more with a sense of being American, as opposed to “Bangladeshis in America.” This situation is analogous to what ColicPeisker (2002) reported about the internal diversity of the Croatian diaspora in Australia. Like the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States, the Croatian diaspora in Australia is composed of two waves of

40

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

immigrants. Their internal diversity, often overlooked by the outsiders, is real: What an outsider’s gaze usually identifies as a single ‘Croatian community’ is in fact a conglomerate of diverse groups: some of them tightly knit and some only loosely connected; some formalized in associations and clubs and some entirely informal and private. The divisions within these groups run along political as well as class lines. (Colic-Peiske, 2002, p. 31) Anecdotal data suggest that the people who migrated through visit, student or work visa, do not treat the diversity lottery visa people as equal to them. Professional Bangladeshis, who live in the suburbs or in the upscale neighborhoods in large cities, often do not socialize with Bangladeshis who are employed in the service sectors such as cab driving. The lives of Bangladeshis can be different depending on where they live. Bangladeshis in large cities, particularly people with limited income and mobility, live together as communities in places such as Astoria and Jamaica in New York City. While Bangladeshis in small towns have limited socialization with fellow Bangladeshis, in big cities they socialize intensely among themselves and maintain a Bangladeshioriented life style, largely sustained by businesses created by Bangladeshi and other South Asian immigrants (Azad, 2006). They eat Bangladeshi food, wear Bangladeshi dress and watch Bangladeshi television channels. They work longer hours just to survive and when they come home they mostly socialize with other Bangladeshis. They visit each other’s houses, have dinner together on occasions, talk about affairs back home, and watch Bangladeshi or Indian movies. Bangladeshis in small towns socialize with Americans of other ethnic and cultural backgrounds in their workplaces but remain largely Bangladeshis in their private lives (Khan, 2003). In many cases, in small towns “life consists of work, school, TV, books, computer, recreation, and every day matters so that we do not even socialize much at all” (Khan, 2003). However, they want their children to integrate in US society and achieve a good education and career, retaining their ethnic and religious identities. In Carbondale, a small college town in

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

41

Table 6: Demographics of Bangladeshis in the United States Item Total Population Male Female Age Under 5 years 5-19 20-44 45-64 65 and older Educational attainment (25 and over) Less than 9th grade 9th-12th grade (no diploma) High School Graduate (includes equivalency) Some college, no degree Associate Degree Bachelors Degree Graduate or Professional Degree Income (per household) Less than 10,000 10,000—24,999 25,000—34,999 35,000—49,999 50,000—74,999 75,000—99,999 100,000—149,999 150,000—199,999 200,000—

Source: 2000 Census data

Number

Percentage

95, 295 55,455 39, 840

100 58.2 41.8

1,760 15,590 60,215 15,260 2,470

1.8 16.4 63.2 16 2.6

69,180 6,000 9,115 10, 980 7,075 3,840 17,335 14,840

100 8.7 13.2 15.9 10.2 5.2 25.1 21.5

2,920 7,190 4,565 5,745 6,140 2,530 2,195 665 645

9 22.1 14 17.6 18.8 7.8 6.7 2 2

185

2005

4

50 141

213

F

67

93

77 200

243

255

M

F

144

197

233

Sales

Operators,

M

31

ND

70

F

30

ND

57 247

312

236

M

355

407

2007

2008

F

124

105

144 D

116

155

M

D

34

50

F

Transport

Production/

Sales/

106

124

183

M

88

94

167

F

Offices

D

-

5

M

D

153

268

F

Homemakers

5

D

16

M D

0

F

Maintenance

Construction/

Precision

ND

ND

5

F

209

188

297

205

200

383

F

children

Student/ M

ND

ND

39

M

craft, repair

production,

Source: Census data 2000; “D” indicates data withheld to limit disclosure.

432

M

/Professional

Management

2006

Year

65

65

40

F

laborers

Administrative fabricators,

Table 8: Occupation of naturalized citizens (2006-2008)

193

2004

215

M

39

F

M

194

technical

Professional

managerial

2003

Year

Executive

Table 7: Occupation of naturalized citizens (2003-2005)

F

44

92

123

68

50

D

M

36

22

D

F

Service

151

227

266

M

Service

ND

0

0

F

D

17

15

M

D

-

3

F

Retirees

ND

13

13

M

Military

No

F

560

686

749

18

13

28

M

22

18

55

F

Unemployed

262

249

290

M

Occupation

F

1,443

1,088

600

1,895

1,695

2,138

M

1,821

1,543

2,199

F

Unknown

1,853

1,324

845

M

Unknown

5,345

4,746

6,683

Total

5,503

5,148

4,345

Total

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

43

Southern Illinois, a dozen of families of Bangladeshi origin lived during the time of my fieldwork. Their lives were confined to schools and homes. Their children attended local schools and socialized with children of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. I lived in Carbondale for more than six years and during that time Bangladeshis of different religious backgrounds lived there. Religion never emerged as a dividing issue in the small community. I attended numerous family parties and I saw that people of all religious backgrounds were invited in those parties. Bangladeshi Muslims socialized with Muslims of other ethnic origins and Hindus maintained contacts with other Hindu people (mostly from India) living in Carbondale and St. Louis. Muslims attended Friday prayers and Eid celebrations with other Muslims in Carbondale. They attended the Eid dinner at Mosque with their children but rarely visited the houses of Muslims of other ethnic origins. They celebrated Bengali New Year with the ethnic Bengalis of India. Their children, with some lessons on traditional Bengali music and dances, would perform in the ethnic Bangladeshi social occasions. They would eat, drink, sing, recite Bengali poetry, and ruminate on how they enjoyed New Year celebrations in their home country. They sent their children to the local Islamic Center to receive religious education. Many would give their children lessons in Bengali language and culture. As most immigrants experience, many first-generation Bangladeshi immigrants oscillate between the thoughts of going back to Bangladesh and settling in their new home. For example, Badrul Haque, who managed the Bangladesh American Foundation, Inc (BAFI), left Bangladesh when he was only 12. He always wanted to go back home, but it never happened. Although he could not return to his old home country, he maintained a strong emotional connection to his home country and culture, which influenced his life in his new home. Haque (1995) wrote in an online posting: I remember vividly my excitement when I left Bangladesh. I was only twelve years old. I was very sure that I will return, to be with my friends and relations. My childhood determination gradually faded into hopes and wishful thinking. After living abroad for twenty-seven years, I continue to be guided by my rich cultural heritage.

44

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

This emotional attachment to Bangladesh and Bengali culture influences the way parents raise their children in the United States. One of the common concerns of many first-generation Bangladeshi parents is how to orient their children to Bangladeshi culture while they grow up in this country. The main dilemma for Bangladeshi parents is that if they raise their children in “the American way,” they will lose their Bengali identity. Yet they do not “impose” a total Bengali/Bangladeshi culture on their children either. For example, as Farida Khan’s experience suggests, many Bangladeshi parents let their children have a good education, but probably they would discourage them from attending proms or dating. This is especially true for the young women. Khan (2003) explained: This is intended to screen out all the "undesirable" effects of the culture--provocative clothing, dating, dancing, going out with American children at night--in other words, all aspects of American culture that grooms their growing individuality and sexuality in their post-adolescence years. Part of the reason may be to ensure that that (especially) girls do not engage in any intimacies with boys and stay “marriageable” so that they can be married within the Bangladeshi community—of course the restrictions are a little more lenient for boys, but the restrictions still prevail. This way of parenting occasionally results in unpleasant situations. This is a conflict, conflicts of cultures maybe, but certainly a generational conflict that Bangladeshi families have to encounter. A Bangladesh-born American writer who wrote “Her Feet Chime,” which she labeled as the Bangladeshi version of Cinderella story, said that it’s a constant struggle growing up in the United States. “There is a struggle when growing up as a Bangladeshi-American and trying to maintain the Bengali culture, while adapting to the American environment” (Kabir, 2008). This conflicting situation emerges as parents want their children to grow up in the United States retaining their ethnic Bengali identity. The general expectation of Bangladeshi parents is that their children will be “different from other Americans and live as Bangladeshis in a foreign land, happy to have a small bite of the American pie” (Khan, 2003). Angel (1999) revealed a more broad

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

45

cultural anxiety of Bangladeshis in the United States. According to her research, Bangladeshis construe their identity as bearers of a distinctive culture and also as a “certain sort of person”—relational, affective and sharing. Bangladeshis fear that their distinctive identity is being threatened by individualism and materialism. Angel (1999) found that Bangladeshi parents fear that their children would become “another sort of person,” and will not “fit” in the family. I have also found strong evidence from my interview data and observations that the firstgeneration Bangladeshi parents constantly worry about this issue— “losing their children,” as they name this concern. I have expanded on this issue in great detail in chapter 7. Fearing that eventually they might lose their children, the Bangladeshi immigrant parents take deliberate measures to counter the effects of the host culture in the lives of their children. According to Angel (1999), they resort to an “identity-maintenance strategy,” which is to “recognize and choose.” Bangladeshi parents instruct their children to “recognize what is the best and worst in each culture, and to choose the best in each.” As a whole, parents are glad to have employment advantages for themselves and good school and colleges for their children, but they hope the children will keep the personal qualities and family-centered loyalties of a “real Bangladeshi” boy or girl. For the young people, then, good choices would lead them to take advantage of the United States education and training while remaining essentially unchanged as a person, thus pursuing an elaborated rather than a contradictory identity (Angel, 1999, p.182). The first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant parents are aware of the “special situation” of their children and arrange formal and informal activities to orient their children to Bengali culture (Rahman, 2000). They usually do this by speaking Bengali at home, eating Bengali food and wearing Bengali dress on social occasions (Siddiqui, 2004). Other activities include visiting Bangladesh, calling relatives in Bangladesh frequently, watching Bengali movies and socializing within Bangladeshi communities. As evident in Khan’s comment, an extra effort is sometimes made to orient the girls to conform to Bengali and Muslim norms. Many first-generation Bangladeshi mothers try to do this by being a role model to their daughters. Like other ethnic communities, Bangladeshis in the United States form a variety of organizations and associations to promote their ethnic

46

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

life styles. It is difficult to identify all the organizations and associations because no ready-made directory is available. Siddiqui (2004) identified the following categories of association/organizations in the United States: • • • •

Associations of communities residing in particular geographic location such as cities and states Associations formed on the basis of districts and other units in Bangladesh from where people are hailed Professional bodies, and Spiritual and religious organizations

The Federation of Bangladeshi Associations in North America (FOBANA) is the umbrella body of a variety of organizations that operate in North America. The growth of ethnic Bengali media, increased connectivity among the members of the Bangladeshi diaspora, and the need for a “pan-group public identity” (Angel and Rahim, cited in Siddiqui, 2004) resulted in the creation of FOBANA. According to the website of this organization, Since its inception in 1987, FOBANA has been working tirelessly in this land far away from our ancestral homeland to keep our indigenous culture and commence it to our next generation growing in the United States and Canada. Bangladeshi Americans gather to celebrate their success and introduce their vibrant culture to this multicultural country. Although FOBANA touts that the organization is a “unifying force for bringing our communities together and for moving it in forward direction,” in reality competing organizations emerged splitting the communities. The membership of FOBANA-affiliated organizations stands at 96,000 (Siddiqui, 2004). Linkage: Push and Pull The Bangladeshi diaspora is well connected through varieties of formal and informal linkages, which should not surprise anyone given the fact that this diaspora is young and its members have their families still

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

47

living in Bangladesh. Besides, they feel an emotional attachment to the country and culture they left behind. Bangladesh is very much alive in the collective consciousness of most first-generation Bangladeshi Americans. But the connection is not a one-way initiative from the part of the people in the diaspora; forces in Bangladesh also have a stake in this connection. In fact, the diaspora’s connection with Bangladesh is the outcome of a push and pull. Bangladeshis remain connected with Bangladesh through calling their friends and families and also making trips to Bangladesh. In addition, they also reproduce a Bangladeshioriented life style through consuming Bangladeshi foods, wearing traditional dress and appreciating Bengali language and culture. Bangladeshi businesses that sprang up in big cities, such as New York City, support the needs of Bangladeshis, and help them sustain a Bangladeshi-oriented life style, which I have discussed in detail in Chapter 5. A significant “pull” that comes from Bangladesh also helps sustain a Bangladeshi-oriented life style in the United States. For instance, all the major political parties have their branches in the United States and party leaders and the activists make regular trips to the Bangladeshi community to seek their support and raise funds. Bangladeshis in the diaspora also maintain connections with the political elites in Bangladesh for a wide variety of reasons including lobbying to enact pro-nonresident Bangladeshi policies. This pull becomes even stronger when there are political crises in Bangladesh. In the wake of the declaration of emergency rule in Bangladesh on January 11, 2007, the military-backed interim government restricted the movements of the two former prime ministers of the country; one was later arrested. The government allowed them only to use their personal cell phones. Khaleda Zia, the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), pushed aside by her party leaders and with her son in jail, used the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States, Canada and Australia, to get her message across. Khaleda Zia’s cell phone calls were turned into teleconferences by her party activists in the diaspora and those events made front-page news next day in Bangladesh. Another former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, also used the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States and United Kingdom to mobilize support and put pressure on the Bangladesh government.

48

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

Table 9: Year-wise growth of remittance flow from the United States from 1997--2002 (in million dollars) Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 (Nov) 1997-2002

Amount 207.65 217.09 229.64 248.21 264.95 392.12 1559.66

Increase 4.57 5.78 8.08 6.74 47.99 14.63

Reprinted from Siddiqui (2004), with author’s permission. Author’s source: Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) data of 2003. Remittance The flow of remittance, the money transferred from the diaspora to the country of origin of the immigrants, perhaps creates the strongest pull and push. Remittance is discussed in the literature of diaspora for a variety of reasons including its potential for development of the receiving countries. The global remittance flow reached $160 billion in 2004 and it was more than $200 billion each year on an average, which was far greater than the value of international aid, and in many regions it exceeded foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign exchange earned by exports, tourism and loans (Seddon, 2006). According to an Economist report, in 36 countries remittance exceeded all other public and private imports (Monetary Lifeline, 2004). The flow of remittance creates bonds between the people in the diaspora and their old home country on multiple levels. Bangladeshis send money to their old home country for a variety of reasons. Some of the frequently cited reasons are: maintaining own and extended family, occasional support to family, friends and neighbors, undertaking social welfare projects, and donating to charities (Siddiqui, 2004). Some send money regularly to run their businesses there and pay installments of the loans of the houses they built in Bangladesh. Thus, the Bangladeshis not only show

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

49

emotional attachment to Bangladesh but also translate that emotion to material commitment (Siddiqui, 2004). Remittance takes an important position in the development discourse of Bangladesh simply because Bangladesh is a labor surplus country (Siddiqui, 2009). Bangladesh has been sending workers to other countries since the early 1970s, and since then overseas employments are on the rise. The remittance increased in the years 2007 and 2008, mirroring the increased flow of migration from Bangladesh. According to statistics provided by Siddiqui,(2009), the remittance increased from $2.1 billion in 2001 to $9.2 billion in 2008. Even though Saudi Arabia, which employs more than 2 million temporary Bangladeshi workers, provides the highest (30%) of the remittances, the United States stands second, from where 17% of the remittances are sent. According to BMET data, from January 1997 to November 2002 Bangladesh received a total remittance of $11,572.47 million of which $1,559.66 million (13.5%) from the United States (Siddiqui, 2004). Siddiqui (2009) noted that in 2008, remittances were equivalent to 56.1% of the total export earnings of Bangladesh and constituted 11% of the country’s GDP. The remittances help Bangladesh to alleviate poverty and maintain balance of payment, Siddiquie noted. As chart 2 shows, Bangladesh was one of the 10 countries in the world that received highest remittance in 2008. Observing the potential of the remittance money to alleviate the poverty of Bangladesh, some development scholars proposed that 10% of the population of Bangladesh be migrated to the developed world (Moses, 2009). Currently about 3% of Bangladeshis live as immigrants and in 2006 they sent about $ 12 billion as remittances. Of that $12 billion $6 billion was sent through formal channels and Moses (2009) estimated that an equal amount may have been sent through informal channels. So, 10% immigration would generate about $40 billion as remittances, which would be more than half of the current gross national income of Bangladesh. (Chart 1) Moses (2009) estimates that the multiplier effect of $40 billion will generate a national income of $84 billion, which is more than the country’s current GNI. Citing Bangladesh Bank statistics, Moses (2009) argues that the current remittances have already created impacts on poverty alleviation and low unemployment.

50

The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11

The strongest push and pull is in play in the business and financial sectors. Business people in Bangladesh and in Bangladeshi diasporas worldwide recognize the business potential and create push and pull “to unlock the potential of the Bangladeshi diaspora” (Islam, 2008). Islam recognizes that Bangladeshis working primarily in the financial sectors in different diasporas are enthusiastic about what he called “participating in the next phase of Bangladesh’s economic development.” Following a theoretical model of a transnational way of doing business, those financial professionals see their potentials as a catalyst to the economic development of Bangladesh, because they have cutting-edge technological exposure and capital and professional contacts (Islam, 2008). Globalization and the relatively unfettered flow of capital have created this possibility of development through diaspora linking. Islam (2008) wrote: This recognizes that, in the current era of globalization, global links may be more important than human capital “stock” in a particular country. A professional can contribute as much to the home country by residing overseas as they can by returning permanently. Expatriate knowledge networks have been created to foster regular contacts; transfers of skills; and opportunities for business with researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs in the country of origin. Those financial professionals have success models in front of them. As Islam (2008) notes, the Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian immigrants significantly contributed to the economic development of their country of origins for the last decades. Those entrepreneurial Bangladeshis, touting themselves as members of the so-called knowledge diaspora networks, make connections and lobbying with the influential political, business and cultural elites and create strong push from the diaporas to their original homeland, Bangladesh. Bangladeshi political, business and cultural elites also routinely create strong pulls connecting the elite members of diaspora. Some organizations grew up recently, which created platforms connecting the elites of Bangladesh and the members of the Bangladeshi knowledge diaspora. One such organization is NRB Voice. NRB stands for Non-resident Bangladeshi, a nomenclature created following the well-known Non-resident Indians

The History and Profile of the Bangladeshi Diaspora

51

Chart 1: Remittance gains from Moses’ (2009) proposal, relative to other important indicators GNI

Aid Import Export Remit

Remit2

Note: Gross National Income (GNI) is for 2006, while other variables are for FY 2006-7. “Remittances 2” refers to a hypothetical scenario with a 10% emigration rate. Reprinted from Moses (2009), with author’s permission. Author’s source: Bangladesh Bank (2007) and World Bank (2007). (NRI). The website of the organization says that NRB Voice is a joint program of a number of organizations including the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) and Asian Tiger Capital Partners (AT Capital). The program was launched at a Bangladesh-British Chamber of Commerce (BBCC) event on September 23, 2009 in London. According to the website, the objective of this organization is “to unlock the potential of NRBs (non-resident Bangladeshis) in all geographies and professions.” The website also states that it wants to move beyond transferring remittance flows to Bangladesh efficiently, and seek to improve knowledge transfer and increase foreign direct

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Chart 2: Top 10 remittance-recipient developing countries in 2008

Reprinted from Ratha, Mohapatra, and Xu (2008) with the first author’s permission. investment into Bangladesh. Following are the stated objectives of NRB Voice: •

• •

Increase the impact of NRB remittances on the economy by offering more transparent and credible investment mechanisms to increase the flow of overseas capital towards productive sectors. Assist in the development of Diaspora Knowledge Networks (DKNs) that see greater skills transfers from NRBs in host countries back to Bangladesh. Encourage both the return of NRB entrepreneurs back to Bangladesh as well as more JVs between NRB entrepreneurs in the host country and local BD companies.

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Leverage the credibility and global interface of the diaspora as part of the Bangladesh Rebranding Strategy. Improve the effectiveness of NRB policy advocacy to encourage and positively influence the Bangladesh economic reform agenda.

Entities such as the NRB Voice lobby highly placed government and other business officials to create a more favorable setting so that members of those knowledge diaspora can operate in Bangladesh with relative ease with their know-how and capital. They ask Bangladesh government to partner with diaspora network and make steps to attract the skilled members of the diaspora to Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States is not only growing but also evolving rapidly, making it difficult to portray a contemporary profile of this community. Lack of formal research and credible data make the job even harder. Even though some commonalities bind the Bangladeshis in the United States together, there are differences along the lines of location, socio-economic status, education and generation. Ethnic Bangladeshis across the board show a desire to ground their lives in their new home while they maintain a connection with their old home and culture through a web of economic, social and cultural practices.

CHAPTER 3

Ethnography and the Study of Diaspora

This book is written on the basis of my ethnography on two sites of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States: New York City and Carbondale, Illinois. I wanted to capture the lived experiences of the members of the Bangladeshi diaspora with a focus on how they responded to the post-9/11 backlash and constructed their identities using varieties of diasporic media. Ethnography Traditional ethnography is characterized by long fieldwork and immersion in a local setting to understand the totality of a given culture. Long fieldwork is associated with traditional ethnography, because it intends to study the “alien, foreign, and strange” (p.12) Others (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000), which are “absolutely elusive” (Malinowski, 1948, cited in Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Usually an ethnographer, a “lonely, frustrated, isolated fieldworker” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p.12), who is not familiar with the culture and language being studied, conducts this type of ethnography. Traditional ethnography has long been critiqued, and has become outdated for its association with colonial discourses (Murphy and Kraidy, 2003), and also for its fascination with capturing socio-cultural totality on the basis of localized observations (Weber, 2001). Similar to 55

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positivistic researchers, traditional ethnographers “wrote ‘objective’ colonizing accounts of field experiences that were reflective of the positivist scientific paradigm” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p. 12). But, here, a distinction should be made between the methods of traditional ethnography, such as prolonged fieldwork and immersion, and their “colonial association.” The critique of traditional ethnography, questioning many of its assumptions, opened up the possibilities for more creative and strategic applications of ethnography (Park, 2004). This strategic turn opened many possibilities of the uses of ethnography responding to the needs of a changed environment (Koro-Ljungberg and Greckhamer, 2005). Different theories--critical, postmodern, feminist--contributed to the growth of ethnography. Those theoretical premises called into question the issues of gender, class, and race, giving a voice to society’s underclass (Denzin and Lincoln 2000). Also, innovative ways of collecting and analyzing data facilitated multiple uses of ethnography. Now, loosened from its earlier tradition, and enriched from various theoretical and methodological developments, ethnography is being used in a variety of inquiries, including communication research, especially in audience research. As a key element in the growth of British Cultural Studies, ethnography has been used in audience research in order to help researchers better grasp the lived experiences of audiences. Following David Morley’s (1980) seminal study “The Nationwide Audience,” an increasing number of researchers have applied ethnography in audience research. One critical advantage of ethnographic research over the traditional positivist approach is that it takes audience activity into account, and studies the audience in its natural settings. Also, as Murphy and Kraidy (2003) indicated, ethnography can be better engaged in grasping the complex phenomena that arise when the global media interact with local reception processes. Ethnography is a preferred method to study the audiences of global media who inhabit interstitial space, between local traditions and global modernity, and whose media consumption is characterized by hybridity (Kraidy, 1999). Kraidy (1999) employed ethnography to understand Lebanese Maronite youths, who consumed global media while grounded in a local place, Lebanon. Those people simultaneously identify with Western and Arab cultures and reject both of them. In

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other words, they live on “both sides of the symbolic faultline without allegiance to any” (Kraidy, 1999, p. 464). The diasporic context is equally, if not more, complex, as groups in global diaspora use transnational media, including the ones from their “old home,” and are engaged in a process of cultural adaptation and negotiation. Ethnography has the flexibility to grasp the interaction of this wandering (Grossberg, 1988; Radway, 1988) audience, who receive transnational media being grounded in local settings. Diasporas are marginalized in their host cultures and ethnography is generally suited to study the lived experiences of marginalized groups (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002). People’s lived experiences, particularly the ones related to identity constructions, are complex. Therefore, the methodology to study this audience needs to be critical and flexible enough to grasp that complexity. Although ethnography is used widely in audience research, the challenging task is “how to develop more contextually grounded ethnographies while at the same time expanding the notion of field to address the unique dilemmas of localized research in relation to the global issues raised by transnational media processes” (Murphy and Kraidy, 2003, p.7). The notion of “native ethnography” is an example of contextually grounded media ethnography, which maintains the essence of ethnography but at the same time tailors it to a specific context (Kraidy 1999). I find the notion of “native ethnography” (Kraidy, 1999) especially useful for studying the people who are the audience of global media either in national or diasporic settings. Marwan Kraidy, a native of Lebanon with his lived experience in the local culture and understanding of global media and cultural discourses, studied how Lebanese youths used global media while embedded in a local setting. Kraidy (1999) views native ethnography “as a sub-genre of critical ethnography with an imperative to excavate power vectors from cultural matrices” (p.461). He does this by including the voices other than his who are not “Other-as-Theme,” but “Other-as-Interlocutor.” Similarly I have included voices of my participants in my ethnography. This recognition was critical for his study as well as mine as his projects deal with the question of identity, not constructed by essentialized representations, but by the participants. Kraidy (1999) wrote:

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 Rather than resorting to dubious claims of authenticity, the native ethnographic project must then be an appropriation of voice by a subject whose speaking position is located on the borderline between two worldviews: that of the native culture, the culture of intimate, taken for granted, quotidian knowledge, and the worldview of the ethnographic, academic, systematic, and therefore, instrumental knowledge. (p. 461)

The Field: New York City and Carbondale I conducted my fieldwork in New York City and Carbondale, Illinois. Initially I planned that I would conduct fieldwork in New York, Chicago and Carbondale. Finally I had to drop Chicago partly for logistical reasons. Also, I thought Chicago probably would not add substantial variance as I had already included New York City. The decision to retain New York City and Carbondale was justified because the lives of Bangladeshis who live in large cities and small towns are strikingly different. My objective was to see how the lived-experiences, identity articulations, and the use of media differ depending on the place the participants live. New York City has the highest number of Bangladeshis in the United States. Bangladeshis are one of the fastest growing ethnic communities in New York City. Queens has the largest number of Bangladeshis in New York City. I stayed with the family of my informant in Astoria, where many Bangladeshis who are employed in the service sectors such as cab driving and small businesses live, creating closely knit communities. I lived for more than six years in Carbondale, home of about 30 people of Bangladeshi origin, mostly faculty members and graduate students of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and their spouses and children. Negotiating Access Accessing the “field” and finding the respondents were challenging for me given the “statistical invisibility” and “elusiveness” (Sreberny, 2000) of diasporic communities such as Bangladeshis in the United States. It was almost impossible to trace Bangladeshis following any paper trail or official documents. I had to depend on my personal information and my informants to trace Bangladeshis in New York City

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and Carbondale. I gained access to the New York Bangladeshi community through my informants--a media professional-cum businessman and cab driver. I knew my media professional informant since the mid-1980s when we attended college together in Bangladesh. I made extensive contact with him once I conceived my project. I explained my research objectives and asked for his help to get access to the New York Bangladeshi community. He introduced me to Mahfuzur Rahman, who worked at the New York office of a Bangladeshi television channel. Rahman talked a lot about the Bangladeshi community and their media use, especially he focused on how widespread was Bangladeshi television viewing among the Bangladeshis in the United States, and how it was impacting their lives and sense identities. I recorded the conversation with his permission. The way Rahman was trying to project the community to me was fascinating. As soon as I shared my intention that I would write a book on the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States, he told me that he was glad that I came to him. He said that many people would tell just the bad sides of the community and thereby give a distorted image of Bangladeshis. He admitted that there are problems in the community but there are many good things going on as well. He said that the good faces of the community need to be projected along with the bad sides. He showed his frustration, mentioning that when journalists and researchers want to write about Bangladeshis, they usually find the cab drivers as representatives of the community. He “hoped” that being a Bangladeshi, I would be more careful about projecting the image of the Bangladeshi community. In order to project the “bright sides” of the community, I need to talk to the “right people,” he advised me. He gave me a list of a few people and promised me that he would give more names and contacts. He gave me the names of the people who were successful in their respective fields and were more integrated into the mainstream society. He gave me the names and contact information of an Attorney, an Imam of a New York mosque (he was also the Chaplin of a local hospital), an engineer, a politician from another state, and a cultural activist. I had family relations with my other informant, who was employed as a cab driver at that time. He came to the United States on a Diversity Lottery visa. He lived in Astoria with his wife and their two-year old daughter. We stayed in their home during the fieldwork. He helped me

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to get access to the members of the immediate community he lived in. He introduced me to them when they came to visit his home or when we visited their homes. My understanding is that in their day-to-day conversations he might have told his friends about my visit. So, when I met someone, he or she would tell me, “I have heard about you. You are here for your research.” Staying with my informant’s family gave me a tremendous opportunity to observe their lives, social interactions, and media use. The family lived in an apartment building in Astoria. Dozens of Bangladeshi families also lived in the same six-storied building. They knew their apartment neighbors by name. Most of the people who lived in that building were cab drives. Their spouses were mostly housewives; a few worked at nearby small stores. There was a park close to the apartment building where he lived. During weekends Bangladeshis would go to the park with their children. Sometimes, neighbors together take a walk with their children secured in strollers. I met many new people and later recruited them for interview while I walked with them to the park. Also, most of the weekends there were parties at people’s houses where close family friends gathered together and had dinner. During my visit I was invited to some of the parties. I also conducted two focus group interviews in those family gatherings. I met many other people of the Bangladeshi community in those house parties. I also met people quite accidentally and later interviewed them. One early morning I was in the local Eckerd store in Astoria to buy some supplies. When I was looking for audiotapes on one shelf, one young man asked me in Bengali what I was looking for. He was an ethnic Bengali from West Bengal but he told me that many Bangladeshis also worked there. I met Saleha, an employee there, and later interviewed her at her home. I also met another woman employee at a local GNC store and interviewed her there. I met Bangladeshis in metro stations, Bangladeshi businesses, in the streets of Jackson Heights and Jamaica and Bangladeshi-run mosques. I went to the local mosque to say the Friday Jumma prayer. After the prayer I met a couple of people. Most of the people attending the mosque were Bangladeshis. After the prayer broke, my informant and I stood on the street outside the mosque to approach the outgoing people. I was trying to find people who can be easily approached. I

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deliberately targeted a young man because I thought it would be difficult to find people in that age group. The young man was wearing jeans and a half-sleeved T-shirt. I said Salam to him and introduced myself. I told him that I was from Bangladesh and doing research on the Bangladeshi community in the United States. I said that I was interested to interview him at any place at his convenience. He gave me his cell phone number and asked me to call him. I called and set an appointment with him. Finally I had a long interview followed by dinner in his home. I spent many hours in the streets and businesses in Jackson Heights to meet Bangladeshi people. Part of my time was spent in a small office where Kazi Mantu, a journalist-turned paralegal professional, ran his business. I knew him from Bangladesh when he worked at an English language newspaper in Dhaka. At that time I also worked as the Dhaka University correspondent of another newspaper and sometimes visited Kazi Montu’s office to meet my friend who worked there. When my informant took me to his office, he welcomed me warmly. He allowed me to sit in his office and talk with people who gathered there for business, or just to chat. Most of the time I found the small office room crammed with people. I would sit there and listen to what people talked about. I met some people there who later helped me recruiting interviewees. Kazi Montu also gave me an interview in which he talked about mostly Bangladeshi communities. There were many outdoor and cultural activities going on in New York City during my fieldwork. Summer is the annual season of picnic. I attended two picnics and interviewed people in the picnic spots. My informant took my family and me to a picnic organized by the Madaripur District (county-like administrative unit in Bangladesh) Association and the other event was organized by the Dhaka University Alumni Association. I saw the advertisement in the local newspaper and contacted one of the officials of the association. He allowed me to participate in the picnic and introduced me with other people. I conducted several interviews in that picnic spot. I conducted one interview in a bus while I was traveling to the Dhaka University Alumni Association picnic spot. I conducted one focus group and half a dozen of interviews in the two picnic spots. I interviewed Kajol and Shahnaz in the Dhaka University Alumni Association picnic spot. I chose them quite randomly. I found a group

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of women sitting on a mat and approached them whether I could interview them as a group. I started the interview as a group interview but in less than five minutes all the other women vanished, leaving Kajol and Shahnaz. Kajol is a 25-year-old housewife who came to the United States just 18 months ago (interview conducted in 2006). Shahnaz is also a housewife aged between 35 and 40. She has been living in the United States for the last 15 years. I also recruited participants from the venues of Bangladeshi cultural programs that I attended. I met Farhana, an 18-year-old college student at a cultural program at Athens Park and interviewed her. Mahfuzur gave me the name and telephone number of Nasimun Nahar Nini, who was involved in cultural activities in New York City. Nini was a journalist in a Bengali language newspaper in Dhaka and I met her several times in her office. I called her and explained my project and asked whether she could help me recruiting participants. She invited me to a cultural program at a local park. She introduced me to Farhana, who was watching the program. I thought that I would have a short interview, probably asking what she thought about the cultural program that was going on. I found quickly that she was articulate and willing to give a long interview. I asked for her mother’s permission; she was also present in the program and I had a long interview with her. We talked for about an hour, standing in one corner of the park. My participants also helped me recruiting other participants. Shahrier, an 18-year old college student, whom I interviewed at a picnic spot, introduced me to Nazia. Initially Shahrier was not very enthusiastic about the interview and suggested that I would rather find some “typical” Bangladeshi young people. Once we sat down and began talking, Shahrier became interested about the topics that we covered and suggested that I talk to Nazia. He helped me to get the permission of Nazia’s parents for the interview. All the participants took part in the interviews and focus group discussions voluntarily. Participants also signed the Southern Illinois University Carbondale (where I was a graduate student) Human Subjects approval consent form and gave me permission to use the interview and focus group data in my research. All the participants gave me permission to use their names in my study. By using a snowball technique I interviewed 27 males and 21 females of various age groups, 18 being the youngest and 60 the oldest.

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All participants said that they were documented immigrants who either became citizens or were on Student Visas at that time. Some of the participants had post-bachelor’s degrees while many others had received their college degrees from Bangladesh. A majority of the participants were first-generation immigrants and had stayed in the United States for years ranging from one year to 25 years. Interviews and Focus Groups I employed ethnographic interview as my primary data-gathering technique. Ethnographic interviews are conducted in the field and this is the most informal and spontaneous form of interview (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002). I used the ethnographic interview because this type of interview encourages the interviewees to freely articulate their interest and experiences” (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002, p.170). Also, this type of interview is especially suited to capture the reflective moments of the people. By employing this type of interview, we can understand the social actors’ experiences and perspectives through stories, accounts, and explanations (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002). In-depth Interviews Most of the interviews were planned ahead while some were spontaneous. I interviewed Naseema Islam quite unexpectedly. As I have mentioned, I knew her since we attended the same journalism school in Dhaka, Bangladesh in the late 1980s. I went to her house in Jamaica in New York City to interview her niece. I took my wife and daughter with me because Naseema invited us for dinner. When I went to her house, her niece was not at home. So, we began a casual conversation. We had not met for many years, so it was basically catching-up type conversations. She asked me about my project and I explained it to her. She started to talk once I explained my project to her. I instantly decided that I would interview her and asked for her permission to record the interview. She was in a talking mood and she was alone at home. Her husband went to Bangladesh for a business trip and her sons were vacationing at their relative’s house. We began talking in her living room with the television on. Our daughter was

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glued to the television. My wife did not participate in the discussion but she was listening to what we were discussing. When I was transcribing Naseema’s interview, I found that I asked only a few questions. Mostly she talked and occasionally I asked a few follow-up questions. During transcription I also found that I even participated in the discussion. After listening to the recorded interview a couple of times, it seemed that it was more like two friends talking rather than a formal interview. In fact, it was my goal to conduct openended ethnographic interviews where participants would openly express how they conceived their identities in the context of post-9/11 backlash and the wide availability of disporic media to them. In many cases I had to make several visits to the places where participants worked and spent time with them before conducting a formal interview. But with Naseema I conducted an excellent interview in just one visit, which was not even planned in the first place. Most of the planned interviews were conducted in either the homes or the workplaces of the participants. Most of the home interviews were conducted in the living rooms (in Bangladesh, this is called the drawing room), which are considered an ideal setting for talk in Bengali culture. This setting also gave me an opportunity to make observations, primarily about the patterns of family interactions and the cultural artifacts present at home. In most cases, other family members were present in home during the time of the interview, but they did not interfere with the interviews. In many cases the interview participants were not removed from their daily family activities. For instance, when I interviewed Saleha in the early morning sitting in her living room, her two daughters were getting ready for school. During the course of the interview, Saleha had to fix breakfast for her younger daughter and attend to the queries of her other two daughters. We spoke in Bengali when I interviewed the first-generation Bangladeshis. The secondgeneration Bangladeshi young men and women preferred English, except Shemanti. She learned Bengali in a Bengali language and cultural center and she was teaching there when I interviewed her. Kazi Montu’s interview was very different from the other interviews. First, he did not talk about his life; he mostly focused on the lives of Bangladeshis in New York. Secondly, he gave a kind of presentation on Bangladeshis, rather than answering my questions. He

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first interviewed me asking what I was trying do, what were the questions in my research, etc., and then he talked. Focus Groups Although I planned focus group interviews along with ethnographic interviews and observations, finally I was able to conduct only one fullblown and two semi-focus groups. Focus groups are defined as a research technique that collects data through group interaction on a topic determined by the researcher (Morgan, 1997). I ended up conducting more interviews mainly because I could not gather a sufficient number of participants for a focus group. l used focus groups, along with participant observation and in-depth interviews, for a variety of reasons. First of all, every method has something unique that helps the researcher’s understanding of the phenomenon under study (Morgan 1997). For example, focus groups reveal aspects of experience and perspectives that would not be accessible without group interaction (Morgan and Spanish 1984). Also, as Morgan argued, preliminary focus groups can provide clues for individual interviews on a topic that is relatively unexplored. My Carbondale focus group, which was long and unstructured, helped me to formulate questions for the in-depth interviews that I conducted later in Carbondale and New York. Interview Protocol I used a combination of unstructured and semi-structured protocols to conduct the interviews and focus groups. In the beginning, I used an unstructured protocol, which contained only the topics to be discussed. My broad topics to be addressed in both the in-depth and focus group interviews were: experiences of living in the United States; differences between the experience of men and women; patterns of socialization in the Bangladeshi community; media use; and finally, people’s expressions of their identity. I conducted the focus groups and interviews by using a written protocol with a list of these topics. I did not deliver the instrument to the participants to fill out; I used it only to help myself to conduct the interviews. I used an unstructured protocol in the beginning for two reasons. First, this was an exploratory study of the Bangladeshi diaspora, and I

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was only at the threshold of understanding the current state of this diaspora. Unstructured interviews could provide a greater breadth of data than semi-structured and structured interviews (Fontana and Frey, 2000). Therefore, by using an unstructured protocol, I intended to explore some leading experiences of the Bangladeshi diaspora in order to have a better understanding of their main concerns. After conducting a couple of interviews and focus groups with an unstructured protocol, I developed a semi-structured protocol, which contained more structured questions. I used this protocol to conduct the remaining interviews and focus groups. As the same questions were asked in a similar order, these interviews and focus groups gave me an opportunity to compare the responses across gender, age, location and other variables. I used open-ended, non-leading questions in both unstructured and semi-structured interviews. Asking open-ended and non-leading questions was critical because the open-ended questions would enable the respondents to describe their experiences using their own language—“naming their own reality” (Delgado, 1995, cited in Ladson-Billing, 2000, p.268). My job was to engage them in discussion. I used the interview as a “digging tool” to explore the themes brought by the respondents. All the interviews were long and detailed and I asked many followup questions. However, it was a difficult task for me to evoke the post9/11 backlash and identity-related responses. The backlash-related responses were difficult to have primarily because people did not want to talk about this issue. I found in the Carbondale pilot interviews that people have difficulty articulating the identity issues. So, rather than asking one or a set of identity questions directly, I asked a series of questions that were related to identity. I conceptualized the lived experiences of the participants as the sites of their identities and worded my questions in the broader frame so that they had a chance to talk about their lived experience in the United States. In almost all the cases, I began the conversation by asking how they were doing. This simple question often resulted in longer responses with details of their experiences. In many cases, I had to ask a more specific question, such as asking them to describe a typical day, or what things they do in a typical day. Also I asked them: Who were their friends, who were invited in their family parties, where they were invited, what were the

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places they visited, what are the places they would miss if they had to leave the country, how they felt when they took their citizenship oath, what was their feeling when the US soccer team lost, etc. But still it was difficult for me to understand what they thought they were. I asked a series of questions intended to know how they negotiated their Muslim identity with other Muslim groups in the United States. This question was particularly important because Bangladeshi Muslims generally fall within the Western stereotypical and often fixed category of Muslim. I asked the “Muslim” questions in two places: First when they talked about their lives as a whole and then when they talked about their identities. Most of the participants did not mention about the Muslim part of their lives in their discussions. In those cases, I had to ask the question: How is your life as a Muslim in this country? In some occasions, the Muslim issue came onto the table when participants talked about the post-9/11 backlash and its impacts on their lives and identities. I asked the women participants a set of questions on their lives as women who came from a predominantly Muslim society. In some cases women raised the issue of their lives as women in the United States when they talked about their lives as a whole. However, in most of the interviews, I had to ask the question: How is your life as a woman in this country? In almost all the cases, women talked about their lives as women, giving a comparative description of their lives in Bangladesh as well as in the United States. Obtaining data related to media-use was easy while data on how people relate their diasporic media use to the construction of their identities was difficult to obtain. Almost at the end of the interview, right before the identity questions, I asked the participants about their media use. The first question asked was pretty straightforward: What media do you use? On some occasions, I had to explain media by naming all of them. Yet in some occasions, participants talked about why they liked Bangladeshi television programs and how those media were integrated in their everyday lives. Conducting the interviews and focus groups in natural settings cancelled out the obstacles of language and nationality because I was also a member of the Bangladeshi community. I entered into the field with my purpose (conducting research) known to the participants. As a participant-observer, I had the flexibility to move in various settings,

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observing the interactions. I participated in some activities, particularly watching Bangladeshi diasporic television programs with my respondents. I particularly observed how Bangladeshis reacted to the (mis)representations of their identities (Kuma, 2002). Also, while watching Bangladeshi diasporic media, I observed the “patterns of engagement with the images” (Kuma, 2002), as Bangladeshis watched diasporic television. List of Questions I wanted to answer three broad questions from the interviews and fieldwork. The questions that I asked in the interviews and focus groups were designed to answer those questions. Although the impacts of the post-9/11 backlash were listed as the first research question, I never asked questions on backlash in the beginning of the interview. Usually I asked those questions when I asked the participants about their religious life in the United States. Some participants brought up the issue of backlash that they experienced in the beginning of the interview when they talked about their lives as a whole. I have listed the questions below that I asked throughout the interview. I have categorized the questions in some logical clusters. • • • • • •

Tell me about your life? Describe a typical day. What is your life like? Who are your friends? Who are the people you socialize with? What are the challenges you face in this country? How is your life as a woman? Compare your life here in this country with life in Bangladesh? How is your life as Muslim in this country? Compare it with life in Bangladesh? How is your life after 9/11? What media do you use? What are some of the television programs you watch? Why do you watch those programs? What do you think is your identity now? How do you identify yourself? How would you respond should anyone ask you about your identity?

I tape-recorded the interviews, except the ones conducted informally in the field. In those cases, I immediately recreated the

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conversations using my notes and memories as soon as possible after the interview was over. Also, I took extensive field-notes about the interviews and observations. While I was conducting fieldwork, I made some ongoing analysis, although most of the analysis and interpretations were done once all the interviews were transcribed and responses categorized in themes. Besides taking field-notes, I kept a journal to record my personal reflections on what I had done and what had happened in the field. Analysis and Interpretation The interview transcripts, field-notes, artifacts collected in the field, and my journal entries created my data. My next job was to analyze and interpret these data. What do those data mean in respect to my research questions? Findings in any qualitative study can be given multiple interpretations (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). I analyzed and interpreted my data in a way so that they provide answers to my broader research questions. I began analyzing data as I was conducting the interviews and making the observations in the field. The first step of analysis was categorizing and labeling data, which began early in the interview and fieldwork. My research questions created three broader categories: post-9/11 backlash, identity construction, and media use. Subcategories of identity-construction began to emerge when I conducted pilot interviews and focus groups. One such sub-category was labeled as “Bangladesh connection.” Later, a couple of other sub-categories of identity-constructions emerged. These are listed as: being a woman, being a Muslim, desi identity and family relations. I used the essence of grounded theory in organizing my data. Two of the main features of grounded theory are: the theory is based on the relationships between data and categories, and categories are not mutable (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). I began with a few categories and organized my data in those categories, created new categories when new data came into the scene, and always looking for relations between categories (axial coding, Lindlof &Taylor, 2002, p. 220). Mine was a “simpler set of codes designed only to navigate the data more easily” (Lindlof &Taylor, 2002, p. 222).

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Self-Reflexivity Whereas the positivistic quantitative research tradition strives to detach the researcher from her/his research, and thereby tries to find the “objective” truth, the qualitative and interpretative traditions maintain that objectivity is unachievable and hence prefer to recognize the researcher’s experiences and preferences and make them known. The researcher’s personal experiences and preferences inevitably influence the whole research process—from beginning to end. I conceptualized the project of studying the Bangladeshi diaspora after I spent seven years in the United States. By that time I obtained a Master’s degree and was completing my Ph.D. degree. I planned to pursue an academic career in the United States after completion of my Ph.D. Eventually, my wife and I might settle here with our daughter. Obviously, I am personally interested to know more about the Bangladeshi community in the United States. Like many other firstgeneration immigrants, I am also concerned that our daughter would eventually lose her Bangladeshi cultural identity. I was born and raised in Bangladesh and I internalized Bengali culture very well. I have strong feelings about Bengali culture and I need to reflect on them constantly to critically evaluate how they might have shaped my research. In the wake of 9/11, I followed US media closely. I was disturbed to note that media reports on other countries and cultures, particularly on the so-called Muslim world, were premised in a narrow and ideological perspective. Although Huntington’s clash of civilization theory has been largely discredited in academia, media routinely used that frame in reporting issues related to Muslim-majority countries and the relations between those countries and the West. Thus, media discourse consistently creates a conflicting situation between the West and the Muslim world. I was appalled by this and at times became worried thinking about the future for our daughter in this country. I entered into the field with the biases and concerns that I have just discussed. I was constantly aware about my experiences and preferences and discussed those throughout the book.

CHAPTER 4

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The Post-9/11 Backlash and the Bangladeshi Diaspora

It has been a cliché to say that 9/11 has changed the United States forever. Millions of Americans who saw the Twin Towers collapse in real time experienced tremendous shock and subsequently turned their anger and frustration towards Middle Easterners and Muslims, as numerous opinion polls shown. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 took place in a representational state in which Arabs and Muslims were deemed as tribal, irrational, violent and anti-progressive, and thus incompatible with Western values. These lines of representations, referred to as Orientalism (Said, 1978) in critical scholarship, were pervasive in news media and popular culture, which created a broader perspective of understanding Islam and Muslims in the West. In a sense, 9/11 fulfilled a prophecy for many Americans—what media and other political and religious propagandists had been saying about Islam and Muslims was proven “true” in the events of 9/11 (Haddad, 2004). The widely cited and controversial “clash of civilizations” theory (Huntington 1996; Lewis, 1993), although discredited in academia, was used in media to report the complex and multidimensional socio-

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A revised version of this chapter was published in Cultural Dynamics, 22 (1). 71

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political events involving the Muslim world and the West. Consequently the relations between the West and the Muslim world emerged as a simple, binary, predominantly conflicting, and mutually exclusive one in political and media discourse. Media headlines such as “The Islamic War against Modernity,” “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” “Still Fighting the Crusade” are some of the examples of those simplistic narratives of complex issues. “While such headlines capture public attention and popular imagination, they exaggerate and distort the nature of Islam, the political realities of the Muslim world and its diverse relations with the West” (Esposito, 1999, p.3). The strong sense of fear among US and European citizens that 9/11 terrorist attacks invoked was compounded, streamlined, and reinforced as US politicians, media, and religious leaders continued to represent the attacks from a religious and civilizational standpoint (Abrahamian, 2003). A barrage of reports of terrorism involving Muslims as perpetrators in the 24-hour television news cycle showing images of suicide bombings and other terrorist activities continuously fed into the narratives of that fear, dubbed as “Islamic threat” (Karim, 2003b; Halliday, 2003). Sections of media and political pundits equated that threat with the threat of communism, drawing a battle line between the West and the Muslim world from where most Muslims immigrated to the United States and Europe. What Allen (2004) observed about how British media framed the issues of Islam and Muslims contributing and perpetuating fear among the citizens is broadly applicable to US media also. Allen (2004) wrote: The news media has reported heavily on the growth and vociferousness of fringe Muslim groups with anti-western and isolationist ideologies that, in turn, have gone some way to both shape and simultaneously reaffirm public fears and concerns that have been subsequently–and quite inappropriately–attributed to all Muslims without discrimination. (p.21) Domestically, politicians in the United States and Europe reacted to 9/11 by creating a narrative of “mutually exclusive boundaries” (Gillespie, 2006, p. 918), which not only defined Muslims as “Others” but also potential threats to their nation states, creating backlash against

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Arabs and Muslims that was overwhelming and relentless (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009). Specifically, in the United States the Bush administration’s “tactics” of keeping the 9/11-generated fear alive “in order to advance the conservative agenda” created fear among Americans and made them hostile to the Muslims (Khan and Esposito, 2005). The extremist rhetoric that routinely emanated from Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and was repeated in US media, reminded Americans that there was an enemy out there hatching plots against Americans. Although media sometimes differentiated extreme elements within Islam, in many cases that distinction blurred. Too many times the images of terrorism were juxtaposed with the images of Muslims praying in mosques. The expressions such as Islamic terrorism, Muslim extremist, Jihadist, constantly pointed a finger to Islam and Muslims. Sections of politicians, media commentators and religious leaders made derogatory comments about Muslims that they would not make for any other sections of populations, making people who looked Middle Eastern or Muslim the “scapegoats of Americans’ anger and vengeance” (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009, p.1). At the same time, widespread reports of the violations of civil liberties involving Arabs and South Asian Muslim groups surfaced, creating fear in those communities. But fear was constructed in mediated and political discourses in a way as if the only fear that mattered was the fear of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism (Naber, 2006). The civil liberty issues of Arab and Muslim populations were disregarded or marginalized. Raising questions about those issues was deemed unpatriotic. Members of those communities lived in such fear that they chose not even to talk about the post-9/11 backlash that they experienced, let alone to voice their dissent. Experiencing Backlash Bakalian and Bozorgmehr (2009) defined backlash as “an excessive and adverse societal and governmental reaction to a political/ideological crisis against group or groups” (p.14). Various Muslim groups experienced emotional stress and a fear of being detained, deported and other measures that government took post-9/11 (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009). Studying immigrant Muslim communities post-9/11 Bakalian and Bozorgmehr (2009) wrote: “The

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targeted populations experienced the whole gamut of stressful emotional responses. But if one word best describes the atmosphere in the Arab/Muslim communities in the months following the terrorists’ attacks, it is fear” (p.168). The sense of fear became overwhelming to Muslim populations not only because of the fear of hate crimes that they experienced in a disproportionately higher rate but also because of the government laws and regulations that exclusively targeted them, subjecting them to detention and deportation. “The treacherous legal and political context is augmented by continued public backlash—the crimes, hate speech, and job discrimination—sensationalized media portrayal of Muslims, and strong anti-Muslim and anti-Islam rhetoric from the political right” (Cainkar, 2004, p.1). Bangladeshis as Targeted Population Like other Muslim groups, Bangladeshi-Americans were not only subjected to hate crimes, widespread prejudice and workplace discrimination but also the government actions that were targeted to Muslims. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were reportedly committed by people who were Arab in ethnicity and Muslim in religion. But all Muslims in the United States were constructed as enemy populations who could be justifiably subjected to official and extra-official forms of discrimination and harassment. The category “Muslim” was constructed as a race-like category post-9/11 to include a wide variety of people who happened to be Muslims. Bangladeshis with their brown skins and Arabic sounding names easily fell into the category of Muslim and were subjected to discrimination, hate crimes, profiling and deportation. “Muslims are victims of the same racial profiling that tormented Black Americans for decades. Now, in the post-9/11 hysteria, Muslims have become the disenfranchised minority in America and Europe,” said a civil liberty activist of Bangladeshi origin (Sobhan, 2004). Growing anti-Muslim backlash in the host society and exaggerated reports of the emergence of militant Islamism in Bangladesh have triggered discussion in the Bangladeshi diaspoara in the United States, an issue I have discussed in detail in chapter 5. Bangladeshi-American organizations such as the Federation of Bangladesh Association of North America (FOBANA) allocated a full session of its 2004 annual

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seminar to discuss Islamophobia and its impact on Bangladeshis. Bangladeshi ethnic media reported incidents related to the effects of post-9/11 backlash on Bangladeshis. The weekly Thikana, the Bengali language newspaper, reported in its January 3, 2002 issue that a Bangladeshi-American had dropped “Mohammad” from his name through an affidavit. According to an English version of the report report (Naser, 2005), a 37-year-old Bangladeshi businessman and a permanent US resident altered his name, fearing anti-Muslim discrimination. The Bangladeshi-American Foundation Inc. (BAFI), an online discussion group, posted writings from its members on the first anniversary of 9/11. Those snippets indicate that the post-9/11 backlash impacted not only the lives of individual members of the Bangladeshi community but also the community as a whole. Surprised, Shocked Like all Americans, Bangladeshi-Americans were completely surprised by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was a traumatic event for Bangladeshi immigrants, especially people who lived in New York City at that time. At least six ethnic Bangladeshis were among the thousands of people killed in the 9/11 attacks (according to some sources this number is 12). Fuad, who was employed in the service sector and lived with his brother’s family in New York City, recalled that on the morning of September 11, 2001, he was getting ready for work. At that time his brother called him over the telephone, saying that the Twin Towers were “bombed.” He did not believe it. His brother asked him to turn on the television. Then I saw the news--first I thought it is a part of a movie; I felt bad. I did not know about Al Qaeda, I never heard the name of Bin laden before that time. Then I thought what these Muslims are doing? I was furious..what happened I did not expect as a New Yorker. Then I became afraid. People did not talk about it even in the phone.. I don’t see anything to fear, still community is afraid..if I am not involved, I’m fine...Many people in the Bangladeshi community are afraid--they do not speak (about it). It has a side effect: If someone cannot express grievances it does not go away; it remains inside you. If you

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 are aggrieved, you want to share it with someone…I do not see our community is vocal about political activism..I’m an American citizen--I have the right to speak… If I live in fear, that will be wrong. I’ll have to express, and Bangladeshis who are citizens ought to speak; no need to be afraid…I am not in favor of being afraid without any reason.

Other Bangladeshis had similar stories to tell. Rifat, who lived in a small university town at that time recalled: “I did not have a television at my home and I did not know about 9/11. I can still remember that people were not greeting me. I thought what happened today. Do they not like me today?” She said that as she was living in a university town, she was less scared. But Bangladeshis, before absorbing the shock of the 9/11 attacks, realized that they were “being blamed” for the attacks because they resemble somewhat the terrorists who carried out those attacks. The following statement, a select part of a letter written by an ethnic Bangladeshi New Yorker, which was published in the New York Times one week after the September 11 attacks, illustrates the situation: I fear being hated and blamed by the very city I love. I am a Bangladeshi woman and my last name is Rahman, a Muslim name….I am so used to thinking about myself as a New Yorker that it took me a few days to begin to see myself as a stranger might: a Muslim woman, an outsider, perhaps an enemy of the city. Before last week, I had thought of myself as a lawyer, a feminist, a wife, a sister, a friend, a woman on the street. Now I begin to see myself as a brown woman who bears a vague resemblance to the images of terrorists we see on television and in the newspapers… as I become identified as someone outside the New York community, I feel myself losing the power to define myself and losing that wonderful sense of belonging to this city (Rahman, 2001, p. 27). BAFI posted a long message from the Bangladesh Ambassador to the United States on “Islam, suicide and terrorism,” on 22 October 2001, in which the Ambassador Tariq Karim put forward the fundamental tenets of Islam, saying that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance and it never condones suicide and terrorism. He also said that

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Bangladesh unequivocally supported the US war against terrorism. He then “took the opportunity” to call Bangladeshi Americans’ attention to the “new, uncertain environment”: We Bangladeshis tend to be shy, quiet, withdrawn, and insular. Because we are in a foreign land, foreign in a sense that is not, for many of us, the land of our births (sic) or childhood, this insularity is deepened. But in the process, we present ourselves as enigmas to the local people, in whose land we have been accorded hospitality. Such insularity will tend to lead to misperceptions. It is like the analogy of fearing the dark, because we cannot perceive what is behind the curtain of darkness. So stand up and make yourselves known. I urge upon all of you gathered today, to persuade your compatriots all over the United States, to come out of their traditional shells of insularity. Reach out to your fellow American neighbors, and identify yourselves for what you all are: Decent, God-fearing, hard-working human beings, who all share similar hopes and aspirations as their fellow Americans (Karim, 2001). The ambassador’s statement in a veiled way portrayed the “uncertain environment” in which the post-9/11 Bangladeshi community lived. Obviously the ambassador thought that the reach-out initiatives by Bangladeshis would soften Americans’ attitude toward Muslims and protect them from discrimination and harassment. Hate Crimes Like other Muslim communities, Bangladeshis experienced hate crimes and discrimination, but those incidents were not documented systematically. “Media were reporting the hate crimes. I also heard stories from people’s mouth that hate crimes are going on,” Naseema, a part-time school teacher who lived in New York City, recalled. Naseema, who migrated to the United States during the Clinton presidency, never even heard the word “hate crime” before. “I heard stories that other races are attacking Muslims. They attacked Sikhs thinking that they were Muslims. They teased Muslim youngsters, beat

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them and even killed them,” Naseema said. The Bangladeshi online discussion forums reported that Bangladeshis were nervous and fearful. BAFI posted a Washington Post article (22 September 2001), which described how a Sikh man was harassed, apparently being mistaken as a Muslim because of his turban and long beard. That story quoted a 32year-old Bangladeshi-American man, who lost relatives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as saying that attendance in the mosques was half the usual attendance. BAFI and other online discussion groups routinely posted articles, cases, and reports from different sources documenting incidents of backlash on Muslims. For example, Sonarbangladesh (the golden country of Bangladesh) posted a CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) report, which headlined that anti-Muslim violence was up by 70 percent. The New York-based ethnic Bangladeshi media reported some of the incidents involving Bangladeshis’ encounters with backlash. Some of my participants made references to those reports occasionally. Some of those stories were translated in English and published on the websites of New York Community Media Alliance and September 11 Digital Archives. According to the dozens of stories that were translated from Bangla Patrika (Bengali newspaper), Bangladeshis experienced “hate crimes,” discrimination in jobs, and deportations routinely. Some of the headlines read: “Bangladeshi mosque in Michigan vandalized” (14 February 2006), “Hate crime erupts in PA Bangladeshi community” (18 November 2005), “FBI raids Islamic educational institutions” (30 September 2005). The Bangla Patrika published the following account in its 16 September 2005 issue, which was later translated by Moinuddin Naser (2005a) in English and was published on the New York Community Media Alliance’s website: During the 9/11 fourth year anniversary, several attacks believed to be hate crimes against Bangladeshi Muslims were reported around New York City. Because there was a pattern in the assaults, many people in the Bangladeshi community believe that the hate crimes were planned. According to reports, as soon as Imam Moulana Muhibbur Rahman crossed Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens to get to Madina Mosque in Woodside, Queens where he conducts a

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religious class, an unidentified Latino teenager suddenly attacked him and ran away. On the same day, at around 12:00 noon, Moulana Abdul Latif, Imam at the Abu Hanifa Mosque, located on Steinway Street, in Astoria Queens, was also attacked. While he was parking his car on 31st Street and Broadway, a white woman came near his car and started verbally abusing him in filthy language. Instead of parking his car, he quickly ran away to avoid further problem. Too Afraid to Speak Up One of the impacts of fear was that people were very reluctant to talk about post-9/11 backlash even in their private homes. The issue of backlash surfaced in the focus group discussions that I conducted in Carbondale before undertaking the New York fieldwork. None in Carbondale reported experiencing backlash; some said that their friends and family members faced situations in other parts of the country. However, they were certain about one thing: people do not want to talk about it, even with friends and family members, which gave me an early alert of the difficulty of gathering data about this sensitive issue— also reported by other researchers (Naber 2006). I interviewed more than fifty people of Bangladeshi origin, but only half a dozen of them openly spoke about how post-9/11 backlash impacted their lives. Among those few were the respondents whom I either knew on a personal level or reached through my friends. Other respondents either did not speak about the issue at all, or spoke very cautiously. One of those respondents was Mahbub, 58, owner of a clothing store in the Jackson Heights area of New York City. When my informant and I stepped into the store, he greeted us as he routinely does to many Bangladeshi customers. He knew my informant by his first name and when we sat down, he asked my informant about his wife and their children. Three people were working in the shop: Mahbub, his wife and his sister. As I usually do when I meet a Bangladeshi man or woman, I began a casual conversation with them by asking informal questions such as how was business and how were they doing, etc. Mahbub’s wife, 50, clad in salwar kameez (South Asian traditional dress) and a scarf covering her head partially, responded by being engaged in some small talk with me. I assumed

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that she had to engage in this kind of casual conversation routinely with fellow Bangladeshis she meets in the store. At some point she casually said that business was not running well after 9/11. Mahbub jumped into the conversation, attempting to change the topic. I could see uneasiness in his face, as he was desperately trying to change the topic of discussion. He became extra-hospitable, offering me a seat next to him and asking me whether I wanted tea or anything. Noticing his uneasiness, I became attentive to what he was saying. Mahbub maintained his reluctance of not talking about 9/11 when I interviewed him at a later date. Like many other Bangladeshis, when he was mentioning 9/11 he said the numbers in Bengali. I had a focus group discussion with cab drivers in 2006 and when I met the same group again in the summer of 2008 at a family gathering in my informant’s house, they said that situations were getting better. But still, they did not say the word nine eleven; instead they used different expressions. For example, one cab driver said that their lives were horrible after the “collapse of the building.” This anecdotal evidence and my observations suggest that what Mahbub did was not an exception but a typical behavior that many working class Bangladeshis pursued after 9/11. For the remainder of the interview, instead of talking about 9/11, Mahbub shared long stories on how he developed friendships with a white bus driver and other Americans, dispelling their wrong ideas about Muslims. “People are very appreciative of my religion now,” he said in a voice suggesting that he did not like to continue the conversation about 9/11 and would appreciate it if I switch to a different topic. The US government’s program of collecting information about potential terrorist plots by infiltrating the Muslim communities through the use of native informants might have caused the fear of talking about 9/11 and the backlash that followed (Maira, 2007). The government use of inside informants was publicized in some terror trials, alerting Muslims that informants might be living in their midst (Elliott, 2006). As the government pursued a policy of surveillance, Muslims found the distinction between their private and public spaces blurred, which made them apprehensive of talking about the post-9/11 backlash even in their homes and other private spaces (Maira, 2007), which limited my ability to gather data on this topic. A part-time school teacher, an activist college student, a journalist and the restaurant-worker (Fuad) whom I

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have quoted above, spoke openly about how the post-9/11 backlash impacted their lives. I knew the part-time school teacher, Naseema, since we attended college in Bangladesh and we had been in touch since we moved to the United States. Therefore I was not surprised when she spoke openly about the post-9/11 backlash. One of my informants, who had a long journalism career in Bangladesh before he migrated to the United States, introduced me to Journalist Abu Taher and arranged the interview. Abu Taher also began his journalistic career in Bangladesh before pursuing the same career in the United States. I had a brief career in newspaper before I moved to academia and we quickly found that we had many common friends in Bangladesh, which helped to build rapport with Abu Taher. Nazia, whom I met at a Bangladeshi picnic, spoke about 9/11 at great length. Nazia, a college student and activist, took it upon herself to voice her concern about the post-9/11 backlash and when she found that I was a PhD student and planned to write on this issue, she took an opportunity to make her point. However, Fuad’s openness remained somewhat unexplained to me. It took more than a week to schedule an interview with him after we met serendipitously and exchanged telephone numbers. What people would not say on record was expressed in some fictional writings. During my many visits to Jackson Heights I purchased a couple of Bengali books, mostly novels about Bangladeshi life, spanning from New York to Dhaka. Most of the books were written by Meena Farah, who identified herself as a writer and activist. The books were published from Dhaka and were brought to New York City, in the same fashion the ethnic groceries and cultural products are exported to cater to the needs of the Bangladeshi-Americans. I began to read those books when I was writing this book, almost two years after I undertook the fieldwork. None of my participants told me about those books, whether they read them, how popular they were, etc. Because I did not know about those during the fieldwork, I never inquired about them. Given that I did not find many written accounts of the post-9/11 backlash on Bangladeshis and many of my participants were reluctant to talk about it openly, I thought those fictional writings would provide a glimpse of the situation. Those stories were written in Bengali and remained largely outside the gaze of the US security apparatus. Journalist Abu Taher said that the New York Police Department had its

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translation services and ethnic writings, including those in Bengali, were under scrutiny. Perhaps the translation services were mostly focused on what was reported in ethnic media; Bengali fictions that were published in Dhaka probably did not get the attention of the security apparatus. After a quick reading I found that the storylines of at least two short stories and one novel related to the post-9/11 backlash on the Bangladeshi communities in New York City. One story entitled “The Misery of Being Minorities” (my translation from Bengali) gives a glimpse of the life of a Bangladeshi cab driver who lived in New York City for more than a decade. The cab driver, Jahid, befriended a Nigerian immigrant, William, who also drove a cab. However, Jahid’s relation with William changed following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. One day William verbally abused Jahid by saying: “You are all the followers of Bin Laden—go back to your own country.” Later William repented when he was attacked and brutalized. William and Jahid realized that they were the minorities and were subject to the same violence and discrimination. The second story also has a similar theme: the Eid day (Muslim holiday) celebration of Meser Ali, a working class Bangladeshi immigrant man in New York City, whose earnings supported his disabled wife and three school-going daughters. That was a working day for Ali and when he went to say his morning prayer he found the mosque full of police. “It’s not prayer, it’s the Army field training,” Ali thought by looking at the security presence in the mosque, 26 months after 9/11. Ali tried to concentrate on thinking of God and His prophet, but the presence of police lurked in his mind. Ali felt bad; he did not find the composure to say his prayers; he wanted to find a refuse “where there were no media, no terrorism, no Bush, no Corporate America.” The plot of the 223-page novel revolves around a young man of Bangladeshi descent. Amir Khan, a penniless but conscientious man, unsuccessful in finding a living in Bangladesh, migrated to the United States. But his American dream turned upside down when he found that his name matched with the name of a wanted terrorist. The whole novel portrays how he was haunted by the fear of being apprehended in his dream and also in real life.

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Keeping Away from Public Gaze The post-9/11 fear of being harassed in the street was particularly high among immigrant women who wore hijab (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009), a visible marker of Muslim identity. Ethnic Bangladeshi media reports and my informal and formal interviews strongly suggest that people avoided showing visible signs of Muslim-identity in public. Forty one year-old Seema, who lived in New York City with her 18year-old daughter and a young son (her husband lived in Bangladesh but made yearly trips to stay with the family), said that she was ambivalent about covering her head. Her sisters and sisters-in-law did not cover their heads, and partly because of that peer influence she was not used to wear hijab. She thought that covering her head was a religious obligation and she felt guilty for not complying: “Sometimes I think Allah will be displeased with me for not covering the head, then I think that if I cover my head they will look at me differently...thinking about the post-9/11 situation, I am also afraid that I might be singled out..and I might not get hired.” She said that she did not face any backlash but she became apprehensive of hearing stories that “if you are a Muslim then you will be discriminated against in jobs.” Seema, who worked with Pakistani and Indian immigrants, noticed more religiosity among Pakistanis before 9/11. “Now I have noticed many Pakistanis abandoned (showing religious signs) completely.” Interestingly, Seema justified this discrimination by saying “a big accident happened, so it is natural.” Not only the “big accident” but also any other incidents in the United States or other places that involved Muslim and terrorism carried the potential to flare antiMuslim sentiments, making Bangladeshis routinely apprehensive to be visible as Muslims in public spaces. The Bangla Patrika published a story on 22 July 2005, under the headline “Harassment against N.Y. Muslims in New York after London Blasts.” Following is Moinuddin Naser’s (2005b) translation that appeared on the New York Community Media Alliance’s website: The terrorist attacks in London have also created a deep impact in New York. People from different mosques say that they are now living in fear. Many of them have even stopped from coming to mosques. Anwara Sultana, a Bangladeshi

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 Muslim woman in Queens, was waiting for a car to go to Elmhurst Hospital for Kidney Dialysis. Because she was wearing a scarf and a cloth that wrapped her body, she said that she was harassed. Sultana commented that a white person approached her and said, “Hello, Miss,” When she stopped, the person added, “I hate Muslim people,” while spitting on the ground

For Bangladeshi males, who often do not look like a mediaconstructed image of a typical Muslim, their names emerged as markers of Muslim identity. The working-class immigrant Muslims, with Mohammad in their names, limited English proficiency, and a dark complexion, became the symbols of Islamic fundamentalism and a potential threat to the citizens post-9/11 (Naber 2006). Bangladeshi cab drivers in New York City experienced firsthand how people with Muslim names felt when someone looked at them with disdain. Cab drivers talked about their experiences at a family party, making jokes about it, saying that their parents made a big mistake by putting the word Mohammad before their names. But they could not hide their fear and frustrations. “I can see in my rearview mirror how their faces change when they see my name,” one cab driver recalled. That uneasiness becomes so intense in that small space inside the cab that he had to share with someone who hates him so much not because he had done any harm but because that person projected the media-constructed image of a Muslim on him and sealed the deal of their relationship. This was how the post-9/11war on terror and the subsequent media backlash played at “local contexts” (Naber, 2006), which reminded Bangladeshi cab drivers of their foreignness and their wretched existence in this country. “Sometimes I felt so miserable that I thought of going back to Bangladesh,” said one cab driver who came to the US on a Diversity Lottery Visa. Other participants whom I either interviewed or just spoke to about the issue told me stories that strongly indicate how they and the people they knew had to “think” before they pursued any behaviors that had remote references to 9/11. Rifat came to the United States as a graduate student only a couple of days before 9/11. Her relatives who lived in large cities told her that they had stopped wearing Sari and salwar kameez since 9/11. They decorated their homes during Christmas so

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that no one could understand that they practiced a different religion. She recalled that she was nervous while doing Internet research back then, fearing that she would be tracked. She discouraged her high school-going son from participating in discussions and debates in school to avoid any problem. Another graduate student, Mitu, has been in and around in the United States since 1994. “I understand people’s attitude; I felt that their attitude has completely changed toward us.” Mitu said that she thought twice even before talking over the telephone: “My uncle’s last name is Hossain; talking to him over the telephone had become a big deal. I do not feel the liberty to talk about America, let alone the politics and other things.” Abu Taher described the Bangladeshi community in New York City, which he closely observed as a newspaper editor: Before September 11 people thought it’s a country of freedom, individual freedom, freedom of speech, political freedom…The expression ‘who cares’ was frequently used. Our community also used this word a lot. I do not hear this word any more after 9/11. What people thought about freedom already has been curtailed. Before September 11 we never thought that we are under watch. Now that registration program was enacted for some select countries, Bangladesh included. …There is a third eye always following you, so you ought not to do anything that might bring you troubles. When I talk over telephone I always think that they are taping my conversations; I never thought that before. Manjurul Islam, who migrated to the United States leaving behind a journalistic career in Bangladesh, wrote a monograph (From Twin Towers to Ground Zero—my translation from Bengali) on his post9/11experiences. The book, written in Bengali, was published from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in February of 2003. Islam wrote that the sense of freedom that he enjoyed stumbled after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His friend’s son was called a terrorist in his school because his name was Mohammad. His friends and colleagues changed their names, making those sounding more American. What he thought would never happen in the United States, happened after 9/11.

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Practicing Safe Behavior As Muslims were under society’s close scrutiny, individual Muslims felt the burden to behave “properly,” showing that they were not harmful. The “fear of being monitored by the state” (Naber, 2006, p. 252), the presence of a “third eye” as Abu Taher called it, had a chilling effect on Fuad, who was torn between his rights to live freely as a US citizen and the post-9/11 atmosphere of fear in which he could not even express his frustrations and anger, fearing that he would be quickly branded “another angry Muslim.” “Every Muslim is nervous and afraid, if they want to be hot tempered for a simple thing, they will feel discouraged thinking how it will be viewed,” Fuad said. “I have that fear, I’m afraid thinking that I cannot express my normal anger, street fight, sports fight, I will not do it,” he said. This constant fear and frustration “conditioned” him, linking him with the fear-producing state mechanism and media narratives. Although he was frustrated over the fearful situations and his community’s inability to address it, he was also extra-careful and resorted to “behaviors that might help to limit the potential of being targeted by the state or on the streets” (Naber, 2006, p. 257). When I raised the issue of Fuad’s pent-up frustrations with a 53-year-old businessman, he was alarmed. A successful businessman who raised two sons, he seemed not troubled when we discussed the post-9/11 backlash at a community picnic, but without a moment’s hesitation and without even listening to the whole story he said, “He should not be angry—it is not good.” His advice of caution: “We should understand the situation and behave appropriately,” echoing what Lord Desai said about the behaviors of British immigrants of South Asian origin: “We are a tolerated minority, but we are still a minority and we really should not test the tolerance of the majority” (Gokulsing, 2008, p. 79). Journalist Abu Taher, a sort of interlocutor between the Bangladeshi community and the “Americans,” understood that emotions ran high when people in the street reacted to 9/11. He brought the analogy of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh to illustrate the level of emotions involved in the post-9/11 reactions of Americans. At the same time, he pointed out the fervor of emotion and patriotism turned American common people’s attitudes against Muslims. Again, agreeing with model minority Lord Desai he said, “We should not do

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anything that might appear that we are igniting something--emotions are involved here.” Kazi Montu, a journalist-turned paralegal professional in New York City, said that not only the Bangladeshis, but also the US government and common Americans were nervous after the 9/11terrorist attacks. However, the ethnic population, especially people with Muslim names and looks, had more reasons to be nervous primarily because they were the perceived enemy populations, he explained. “When people see someone as enemy then they develop cynicism about people who they can identify with that enemy population,” he said. The 9/11 attacks also inflamed deeply held antiimmigration attitudes in sections of the US population, he said. Intense Personal Introspection and Identity Crisis Literature, mainly from Europe, suggests that a religious-based identity was emerging among Muslim citizens as a result of the backlash they experienced in their host society. Some research suggests that the “identity-based religiosity” (Werbner 2004) that was in place in Europe before 9/11 strengthened following the stigmatization of Muslims post9/11. While I have not found any empirical evidence that the Bangladeshi-Americans became more religious or more likely to show religious-based identity, many participants reported that their Muslim identity was awakened following post-9/11 backlash. Some participants, especially people who watched high volumes of television, experienced what Aksoy (2006) called “forced” Muslim identity—an intense reminder of the Muslim identity caused by media’s continuing reliance on a West-vs. Islam frame to report the events of 9/11. My conversations with Naseema, whom I have known from Bangladesh, revealed that she went through stages of personal introspection (Cainkar, 2004) that researchers found in Muslims of other ethnicities post-9/11. Because the 9/11 attackers were Muslims and they used religious justification for the attacks, Naseema examined her religion with pain and anguish. She said that she was so shaken about her religion after 9/11 that she purchased a copy of the Quran with Bengali and English translations. The issue was so strong that Naseema could not escape the thought of it. A heavy television viewer, Naseema felt that she had to situate her identity by confronting questions such as whether she was a Muslim, if yes then what type, and

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how she was related to the Muslims and Islam that were portrayed in media. Her lifelong idea of Islam, which she developed by living in Bangladesh in her formative years and watching her parents and other relatives as they practiced the faith, stood in stark contrast with what she continuously saw in media. This “wide gap between the Muslims’ perception of who they are and the way in which they are viewed by the host society” (Afshar, Aitkens and Franks, 2005, p. 262) created a crisis in Naseema’s life. For the first time in her life she had to think intensely about a part of her life and identity that she never thought before. I experienced a crisis after September 11---whether I am a Muslim, good Muslim or bad Muslims? When I came here in 1993-95, then I was completely a Bangladeshi—I thought that I will not stay here and will go back to Bangladesh. Then when I was settling down here, got the Green Card, children grew up, I found my life here. .. I think New York has a big heart to hold all these differences. Now living in New York I think that I am the citizen of the world... My religion is not Muslim, my country is neither Bangladesh nor United States, I have come to this world for the time being and will leave this world after a while. I see my identity like this now-a-days. …also, I have become more a mother and a wife. This crisis caused a tremendous stress and a sense of alienation for Naseema; she became extremely vulnerable to the media barrage and was confused as to how she would respond to the post-9/11 situations. In a follow-up interview after two years, Naseema said that she stopped watching television, especially the programs and channels that she found offensive to her sensitivity. She said that she had enough “bitter” experience as a Muslim post-9/11. “I do not want to be a Muslim if you use this Muslim-ship to get your power,” she said in a sour tone. This desperate statement clearly shows her refusal to be torn not only by what she thought about Islam and Muslims and what media were telling, but also the battles that were being waged among Islamic extremists and Orientalists. For Fuad, who does not look like a typical media-constructed Muslim—bearded, clad in long garb--the issue that he was a Muslim

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often came in informal conversations that he routinely went through with his coworkers and friends. The Muslim issue usually came when he declined to drink alcohol when partying with his friends. “They ask: ‘Do you drink?’ I say ‘no,’ then they ask ‘why?’ then I say, as others say, ‘for religious restrictions.”’ Yet in many other occasions the Muslim issue was brought in the form of jokes: Sometimes my friends make fun, they would tell: “look at this Bin Laden cousin,” They will ask: “Who is Bin Laden? Do you have any relations with him”? I would say, “He is my cousin, be careful,” One day one Sikh man came to our restaurant. One coworker approached and asked: Come on, look at that table, your cousin is sitting there.” Kishwar, a Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) undergraduate female student from Bangladesh, said that it was very common that her friends would come up with some jokes involving Muslims and terrorism. “They will come up with bomb jokes, you know, just for me, ‘Oh, don’t get her angry, she might just bomb your house.”’ Obviously those bomb jokes surfaced because they knew that Kishwar was a Muslim from Bangladesh. “Oh you are a Muslim, so you must have had lunch with Osama bin Laden at some point, and he must be your fellow Muslim brother and you guys bomb people together,” they would say jokingly, Kishwar recalled. Unlike first-generation Bangladeshis, the second-generation youths showed less sense of an identity crisis and more of an assertive Muslim identity. I have discussed the assertive Muslim identity in chapter 8 on the basis of one person’s (Nazia) interview. Nazia found it problematic that people were being fed with what she called “Islam through television.” “Especially after 9/11 there are so many books on Islam, people read those, fed by the media, that’s it; that’ their understanding of Islam, which is not true,” Therefore, she needed to own Islam and become more knowledgeable so that she can answer people’s questions. American’s “interest” about Islam and the increasing media spotlight on Islam only made her job more challenging to live as a Muslim in this country, she said. So, when she fasted during Ramadan, people would ask her why she did that. “I tell them it’s a struggle; this month is a month of struggle.” She said that the word “jihad” came up

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a lot in those conversations. I tell them, “Jihad is a struggle that you will have to face every day; it’s not just that you go out and in the name of Allah you do all the crazy things.” She said that post-9/11 was an “exciting” time for American Muslims, to get together with other Muslims and make their voices heard. She thought that the 9/11 created an interest among people and focus on Islam could be used to “promote” Islam, but she recognized that it was difficult: It’s difficult because many times people criticize a lot and you have to defend your religion a lot. That’s why I say, so many times they do not hear “Oh my gosh, you are a Muslim, and get happy; it’s Oh, you are a Muslim, why did you choose that? Are you like a terrorist, is that what your religion teaches you? Can you not be a Muslim? ….. Everyone else is going to be asking you questions that they might not ask, if, for example, you are a Catholic. Let’s say because that’s not the situation now…..but as Muslims you have to be on top your toes because… you know for job interviews sometimes I have heard people saying you are a Muslims, does that mean you will have to take Fridays off?….. our politicians…and lots of communities are very anti-Muslim…they believe that this religion is a evil religion--something that you need to be ashamed of…..it is difficult because you will have to convince people, it’s a lot of convincing that this is a good religion, it’s a pure religion, it’s a religion that teaches us to respect the elders, take care of the elderly, give charity, it’s really a peaceful religion, it does not teach terrorism. “Racial Thinking” Another trend in the post-9/11 thinking was what Naseema called a “racist” thinking, giving a glimpse of ethnographic support of the potency of the racialization of the narratives of Islam and Muslims post-9/11 (Grewal, 2003; Naber, 2006; Cainkar and Maira, 2005; Rana, 2002; Kristof 2008; Allen, 2004). Racism has a complex history in the United States but scholars continue to conceptualize racism as a structure of ideology and domination and exclusion (Torres, Miro'n and Inda, 1999). At different times in US history narratives have been

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constructed to criminalize different groups and cultures, excluding, or marginalizing those groups and cultures. The long-term trends of racial exclusion in the liberal politics of the United States tend to intensify in the moments of crisis (Naber, 2006). Muslims, an ethno-religious group, not a race, were constructed as a race, and the raciliazed image of “Muslim a terrorist” emerged in the Western visual representations. Racial prejudices against people of color using the expressions that were used against Blacks and other minority groups were unacceptable, but it was acceptable to express prejudiced expressions against Muslims. My participants probably perceived the post-9/11 backlash as racial because the portrayal of various Muslim groups, the analogy used to associate them with crime, carried the same racist overtone that was used for Blacks and other minority groups to fuel xenophobic hysteria. This was not an explicit form of racism but nonetheless this new form of racism was constructed and justified by pivoting the discussion of citizenship on the cultural incompatibility of Muslims with Western values. In Allen’s (2004) words: Unlike older forms racism, this new racism sought to elaborate upon the differences identified in much less explicit ways. The markers of difference do not underpin explicit hatred and hostility; rather, they implicitly infer and establish direct challenges and threats, where “difference” challenges and threatens “our way of life.” The demarcation of difference, therefore, appears to be underpinned by differences that are either unacceptable or incompatible with the “norms” of society, the norms relating to “us” and definitely not to “them.” (pp.11-12) Naseema blamed media discourses, which not only excluded her from the realm of US citizenship but also “polluted” her mind. Media gave her an impression that just by being a Muslim she belonged to a completely different category—foreign, inferior and incompatible with US culture. Naseema brought the imagery of race to describe this perhaps because racism invokes fear and segregation to her. As a Muslim, Naseema felt that this was a racial category not only because it erased all of her identities except that she was a Muslim, but also it helped her put the discrimination that she and other Bangladeshis faced

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in a broader context. The post-9/11 racial overtone in media representations of Muslims and the anti-terrorism legal measures targeted to Muslim groups accentuated the racial profiling and prejudice that Bangladeshis experienced in their day-to-day lives. Many participants, sharing their experiences at airport security procedures, said that they found a similarity between the profiling of Muslims and the profiling of Blacks. Naseem Ahmed, who had been living in the United States since she was 22, had to overcome many obstacles as a single mother who raised a daughter. “My skin color is the single most obstacle in this country, associated with my Third World identity,” said Naseem, who worked at Southern Illinois University Carbondale during the time of the interview. The racism that she encountered was so pervasive that she kind of accepted that it would be a part of her life in the United States. “I do not know whether color-divided immigrants ever assimilated,” she said. “I have negotiated my gender, navigated and had reached to a certain point, I could not navigate race, it is very difficult.” Naseem, who was never a practicing Muslim and was openly critical of the conservatism in some mosques, never considered post9/11 backlash as religious; she always thought that there are politics involved, which had implications for her identity and citizenship in the United States. Sense of Home Naseema and her husband, after going through the typical immigrant dilemma whether to stay or go back, finally decided to stay in the United States, not only because of the many opportunities that their new home country offered but also because they began to love their new home. Naseema made New York City her second home and decided to settle there: I thought it (New York City) was my second home. I missed my mother and friends but as time was passing on I became used to this life. I could move here easily..I grew up in Bangladesh. I could not navigate there that easily. I found that here everyone is free--they can move freely. Gradually I started to like this place and I began to think that it is my country.

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But Naseema began to lose her belongingness to New York City that she had developed over the years post-9/11 not only because she was concerned about her short term security and identity crisis that she was going through at that time but also her fear that her sons would be treated differently in their new home country. Sometimes I asked my son--his name is Mohammad--did anyone ask his name? My son was growing up at that time. He started school. He did not understand what was going on…He did not report any problem. I have seen him doing project on September 11. He did it like other students did. He was not singled out for being Mohammad..But the fear that I never had before, started to grip me. I was worried thinking whether my son would be harassed? What is our future in this country? This fear is still continuing. But it is less now. We got our passport. Still I fear for my sons, they will be staying here, being a Muslim having the name Mohammad. I worry if they are kept as outsiders. Then I think, why I will keep my son in a country like that? Engagement with Media Scholars have long been pointing fingers to media for creating negative public perception of ethnic minorities, especially the Arabs and Muslims. The anti-Muslim tone in mainstream media was so widespread and obvious that it did not take any scholar to critically examine media representations; regular people like medical doctor Ali could see that: This is definite. It has taken a serious turn. If you follow media in this country, you will see that Muslims are involved in all the conflicts all over the world. In Muslims’ eye, they think that they are oppressed. They are under oppression due to colonialism. But they (USA, Western countries) think that they (Muslims) are violent. They violate the democratic organization and resort to terrorism. So, you get the impression that Muslims are in conflict with Western culture. The way communism was against Western culture, now it is

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 the Islam all over the world that is against Western culture..I do not feel anything personally. But if you do it continuously, people here follow media, if media keeps saying this, it will have an effect. If you go for air travel, if you are single and if you have a Muslim name, they will treat you differently.

One of the impacts of post-9/11 media narratives on the Muslims in the Western diaspora was what Aksoy (2006) called a “forced awakening” of their Muslim identity, which I have discussed earlier in this chapter (Intense personal introspection). My participants, especially the heavy television viewers, said that the awakened sense of being a Muslim resulted in active news consumption about Islam, Muslim, terrorism and other Islam-related issues, which brought more worries and fears. Naseema watched volumes of cable television post9/11. It was not passive television viewing that is usually the characteristic norm of television watching for many viewers. When Naseema watched news and commentaries on Islam, Muslim and terrorism (there were plenty of those), she kind of talked back to television. Sometimes she and her husband playfully watched some of the conservative shows to see “how far they can go.” As she watched news and commentaries, she became more fearful. “These tensions, ups and downs, are created by media,” she said. But the post-9/11 media coverage of Islam and Muslims put some people in a defensive position and made them more critical of media. Fuad, who said that he had a balanced view of Islam, characterized his engagements with US media in this way: Now I say to myself that what they are saying is not right. I did not do it before. When they report about an incident involving Muslims, I critically analyze it. People want to do good things. People do not do bad things out of their desire. All people can be hot tempered, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. When a non-Muslim does something out of bad temper, religion is not brought there…he is thought as another Muslim guy-- he is doing it because he is a Muslim. Other participants also complained that the post-9/11media narratives troubled them so much that they had stopped using US news

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media for Islam-and-terrorism-related news on the ground that the news on those issues had become ideological, repetitive and predictable. As a whole, they said that their reliance on US media eroded substantially, and they had become more skeptical of the media narratives about Islam, Muslims and terrorism. The second-generation Bangladeshis, who were not practicing Muslims, were nonetheless impacted by the media discourses and the discourses that emanate from different brands of Islamism. Secondgeneration young Bangladeshis felt the pressure to be boxed either as a Muslim or as an American. Nyrene, who was raised by a single parent and who was not a practicing Muslim, experienced the pressure of the discourses of Islam-vs.-America from two different sources. One source is the Imam of a mosque she attended. According to Nyrene: He (the Imam) made it seem like it was Islam versus America, you know. You did not get the sense that Islam could be a part of America, you know… he always treated them as two separate things that never could combine, that if you try to embrace American culture then you would be committing a sin, or something like that. He went as far as to say that.. if you go to somebody else’s house, if they are not Muslim then you should not eat their foods because that was not prepared by Muslims. The other sources that gave an America-vs.-Islam narrative were US media. Nyrene was a casual user of US media and did not care much what media reported. But she felt that media also wanted to put her in either “Islam” or “America” box, by creating a mutually exclusive narrative of Islam and America. Everything you hear about, any act that might be terrorism, like whether bomb goes off somewhere or not, everybody’s first conclusion is that it must be a Muslim attacks. Like any time anybody attacks America, it’s gonna be a Muslim. So I mean that is like an America-versus-Islam kind of thing…I just remember watching news and if something bad happens they immediately assume that it is a Muslim attack. I do not

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 think that’s right, because they may not have information about what is this, but that’s their first conclusion.

Inward Push The disenchantment with the mainstream US media that some participants mentioned might mean something more significant than just losing confidence in those media. Many first-generation educated Bangladeshis relate to the United States through their consumption of US news media and popular culture. Many participants who spoke about their bitterness with US media were exposed to those news media and popular culture when they lived in Bangladesh. Bangladeshis are famous for their interest in politics and they would talk endlessly about the politics of the United States and Bangladesh in family and social gatherings. US news media connected them with the politics of the United States and provided them a space to exercise their rights to talk about those in their private spaces. When they sensed that it was not “safe” to talk about US affairs post-9/11, they found Bangladeshi politics as a site to exercise their right to talk. Bangladeshi newspapers and television channels fed them with updates of politics of Bangladesh and people in the diaspora vigorously debated every political issue of their old home. Sometimes those discussions turned into brawls; but those were still “safe” issues to discuss because they fell outside the realm of US national security interests. However, as many participants recognized, being too much involved in Bangladeshi affairs was counterproductive to their citizenship in their new home. They felt that the post-9/11 backlash and the exclusionary media narratives pushed them back into their Bangladeshi ghetto. However, research suggests that engagements in ethnic associations could have provided the members of the Muslim communities with support that was much needed in the post-9/11 backlash. Howell and Jamal (2009) found that participation in ethnic associations directly correlated to the empowerment among Arab Detroiters. Ethnic associations acted as “gateways to a larger political world, linking local residents to mainstream institutions at the local, regional, and national level” (p.80). Analyzing data, they concluded that Arab Detroit weathered the post-9/11 backlash with fewer scars than Arab American community nationwide” (p. 82). Those Arab

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Detroiters also showed more confidence about their futures in the United States and were more likely to assert their rights as citizens. Even though the ethnic Bangladeshi organizations took some initiatives such as organizing seminars on the effects of Islamophobia and meeting with law enforcement officials, those were not enough to allay the concerns and fear of the members of Bangladeshi community. The community members such Fuad, whom I quoted earlier, did not feel that they had the support of the community leaders and ethnic Bangladeshi organizations. Different Experience, Different Meaning Although scholars argue that the post-9/11 backlash had historical continuity (Naber 2006), my participants, with their relatively limited stay in the United States, perceived the backlash as unique, which created a rupture in their lived experiences. They saw the United States changing radically in front of their eyes, which surprised Naseema, who went to visit Bangladesh before the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place. I have discussed Naseema’s experience earlier in this chapter, outlining how she felt about becoming foreign in the city she began to love and considered her home. “If you want to hear my experience, I will tell that that I have two experiences—before and after September 11,” Naseema said. Not only Bangladeshis saw a different America after 9/11, they also talked about their lives in a way which suggests that they began to notice their foreignness in their new home. The master narrative of post-9/11 United States was a narrative of patriotism, fighting terrorism, and spreading freedom. My participants’ narratives suggest that they were forced to draw different sets of meanings from those narratives. Economics professor Mabub Morshed, who lived in Bangladesh and had a teaching career there for years before migrating to the United States, certainly understood how the discourse of freedom was created after 9/11. He saw how the United States changed from a place with lots of freedom to a place where he could not even speak his mind, which had changed his engagement with his new home: We did not treat ourselves as serious Bengalis or serious Muslims. We used to talk a lot about different issues--we

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 talked why Bangladeshis remain Bangladeshis, why they do not become politicians, lawyers, etc. After 9/11 people began to talk in a way as if someone is eavesdropping. People would not express themselves--they tend to lead a docile life. It seems that in one hand there is an atmosphere of openness, but on the other hand, we remain very suppressed.

The way many ethnic Bangladeshis who were legal US citizens, positioned themselves when they talked about post-9/11 backlash was revealing. They were American citizens, but they were “different” from “the Americans” in the streets. Journalist Abu Taher used the term “White Americans” on many occasions when he explained the impact of post-9/11 backlash. It was nothing unusual given the fact that Bangladeshi-Americans, in family and social gatherings, usually use a “we/they” binary when they talk about American people. While my participants recognized that this we/they binary was an innocent expression, the post-9/11 backlash made them look into this and “find” some new meaning. Abu Taher succinctly summarized this feeling: Let me tell you what, now Americans can discuss many things..People who were born here and are involved in politics, or are intellectuals here, can say many things. But because we are under watch, if we say something they will scrutinize it and want to decipher why we have said that. They will try to find links. Maybe there is not any problem, but if they want to harass you, there are many ways to do that. You know about the government, if you are under watch and they want to harass, they can do it.

CHAPTER 5

Engagements with Bangladesh

The imagery of “here” (the present home) and “there” (the old home that immigrants leave behind) is usually brought in the discussion of diaspora to highlight the tensions that people experience. The life of the people in diaspora is characterized by a “dual frame of reference” (Guarnizo, cited in Vertovec, 2004), through which they switch back and forth between their old home and their new place of settlement, constantly comparing their situations in two locations. This switching back and forth was evident when I spoke with the Bangladeshis in the United States: they always brought the lives of Bangladesh when they discussed their lives in this country. People in diaspora remain engaged with their old home country and culture in varying degrees in some forms. Sometimes the engagements revolve around their longing for the home they left behind and their desire to return to that homeland. Sometimes maintaining the old-home connections becomes a necessity primarily for family and business purposes. Bangladeshis in the United States keep their memories of their old country alive by making trips to Bangladesh, calling their family and friends there, using Bangladeshi media, and maintaining a Bangladeshioriented life style in the United States. I have discussed in detail in chapter 6 how Bangladeshis in the United States use a wide range of media to connect to Bangladesh. The focus of this chapter is to discuss how the Bangladesh connections are reproduced in the day-to-day lives of Bangladeshis in the United States. 99

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The Bangladeshi-Oriented Life Style Bangladesh is visible in the way many first-generation BangladeshiAmericans dress up, decorate their homes, and cook and eat their foods. This is especially true for those who came to the United States on different lottery visas, live in large cities, and have limited English proficiencies. As I have discussed in chapter 3, I stayed with the family of my informant in Astoria, New York. During that stay, we completely led a Bangladeshi life. I met Bangladeshi people all the time, ate Bangladeshi foods, watched Bangladeshi television programs, visited Bangladeshi families, and attended Friday Juma prayers (weekly Muslim religious congregation) at Bangladeshi-run mosques. I hardly spoke English during that three-week fieldwork in New York City. Kazi Montu, a first-generation immigrant, had worked in Bangladesh as a journalist before moving to the United States. As a paralegal professional in Jackson Heights, the heart of Bangladeshi-run businesses in New York City, he meets hundreds of Bangladeshis almost every day. He said that the dietary habits of Bangladeshis in New York had not changed at all: People’s dietary patterns remained the same Bangladeshi because all the things are available here. We do not feel a bit that we are in America, at least in respect of foods. But the people outside New York City do. They had to take both Bangladeshi and American foods. When they visit New York City, they buy a whole lot of spices and store them. Although we are staying here in the United States, our taste of food did not change at all. A number of Bangladeshis I interviewed or talked to during my fieldwork, said that they felt comfortable with what they called “Bengali dressing.” For men this would be shirts and trousers and for women salwar-kameez and sari. Some working women said they preferred trousers and shirts because in some workplaces they were required to wear that dress. Seema, whom I met and interviewed at a GNC store in Astoria in New York City, said the following about her dress:

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I wear this (trouser and shirt) only at work. In other cases, particularly in cold weather I wear jeans while I am out. We have a dress code at work. I wear salwar-kameez most of the time. I wear Sari when I attend parties. Here salwa- kameez is very common. We do not face any problem here…. if someone wears pant-shirt in a party (Bangladeshi) people look at them differently. People say, “It’s a Bengali party and she wore pants-shirts—trying to become American, etc.” There are social pressure, you know,.…I have raised my daughter in my culture. She will wear salwar-kameez in Bangladeshi parties but her main dress is jeans. They feel comfortable with it; they wear it all the time. They will never wear American dress in a Bangladeshi party. Mitu, a graduate student, said that she felt comfortable in casual pants and shirts. But she was familiar with the complexities of dressconcerns of Bangladeshis of both large cities and small towns. “In big cities, if you wear pant-shirt people will not look at you, but if you wear salwar-kameez, they will pay extra attention, maybe a compliment,” Mitu explained, pointing to the issue of public gaze that ethnic dress brings. “But I don’t need the extra attention of anybody…. if we have any occasion I would wear traditional dress to express myself. Otherwise pant-shirt,” Mitu said. Maintaining a more Bangladeshi-oriented life style in big cities is possible partly because many Bangladeshis, particularly the people with limited income and mobility, live together as communities in places such as Astoria and Jamaica in New York City. Although small town life is significantly different from city life, Bangladeshis largely live as close communities in places like Carbondale. I have discussed the community-oriented life style of Bangladeshis, both in large cities and small towns, in chapter 2 in detail. However, compared to the firstgeneration Bangladeshis who live in New York City, the people in small towns usually socialize with people of other ethnicities. Mahbub Morshed, an economics professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, said that his life was confined to his work, family and a Friday visit to the mosque. However, his life was not always like that; in Seattle (before 9/11) they had many American friends of other ethnic backgrounds. He recalled that Bangladeshis were the minorities in their

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family parties. In Carbondale Morshed mostly socializes with his colleagues from the Indian sub-continent in his workplace. Morshed’s family has also created a support group in Bangladesh through telephone communication. “Due to the cheap telephone rates, we call frequently and a support group has been created in Bangladesh,” Morshed said. Although Mitu, a female graduate student, had some American friends, the Bangladeshi community was a big support for her. “When I think I will have to speak Bengali, or I like to spend time with them, I turn toward the Bangladeshis here.” Bangladeshi Cultural Spaces Compared to small towns, large cities such as New York provide relatively more spaces—ethnic restaurants, shopping places, schools, mosques—to the Bangladeshis. My participants said that they made frequent visits to two locations in New York City, Jackson Heights and Church McDonald’s Avenue, not only for groceries but also for relaxation. Jackson Heights is similar to what I have seen in Devon Street in Chicago, a business center dominated by the South Asian immigrants. “Devon met our yearnings for Bollywood, South Asian foods and groceries, and a public space that was predominantly South Asian, where people draped in saris, dhotis, and salwaars loitered around with no apparent self-consciousness of difference,” said Rudrappa (2004, p.4) about the fascination of South Asian immigrants with the ethnic space they created in Metropolitan Chicago. There are many similarities between Devon and Jackson Heights. The difference is that Devon does not have a Bangladeshi corner; Jackson Heights has one. A Visit to Jackson Heights During my fieldwork in New York City I spent most of my afternoons in Jackson Heights, primarily to meet people and interview them. I saw people of South Asian origin all over Jackson Heights. I could separate the Bangladeshis by their appearance, subtle differences in their dress, and certainly by the language they were speaking. All the conversations, interpersonal or on cell phones, were in ethnic languages. Probably there was no other place in the city of New York

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except Jackson Heights where Bangladeshis had a strong business presence. 74th street had the highest concentration of Bangladeshis. The increased presence of Bangladeshi businesses in Jackson Heights is a recent phenomenon. The expansion of Bangladeshi businesses began in 1992 with the setting up of a grocery store, Meghna (name of a major river in Bangladesh) Grocery (Ahmad, 2006). There are scores of stores and businesses along 73rd and 74th streets and 37th Avenue that attract thousands of people every day. 73rd Street is almost entirely occupied by Bangladeshi–run businesses. There were restaurants, bookstores, groceries, legal counseling offices, venders’ shops—everything. Almost all were Bangladeshi-run. This area resembled a street corner in Dhaka. There were different types of people—young, old, single, with family. Most of the men dressed like typical Bangladeshi middle class men. I have seen a few women with hijab, partially covering their heads. Some were wearing shorts and T-shirts. Some women were wearing summer trousers with half-sleeved tops. Most of the women were wearing salwar kameez; saris were rare. Many people were standing in small groups in the street corners and gossiping. Mostly the conversations were businessrelated. I heard the word Bangladesh frequently. At times they were saying “Hi” to the people who were passing by. I met a couple of families who were visiting from nearby states. Some brought their friends and families who were visiting them, to show them the “little Bangladesh.” I saw people taking a photograph in the streets and in front of the stores. Certainly Bangladeshis transformed Jackson Heights as their own little space where they can navigate relatively easily. Different sections of Bangladeshis utilize this post-modern cultural space in New York City in different ways. Recent immigrants find the streets of Jackson Heights familiar and less threatening because they can be themselves there, speak Bengali in public, and meet many Bangladeshis and people from other South Asian countries. They can enjoy shopping almost like the way they did back home in Bangladesh. The first-generation women whom I interviewed said that the shopping in Jackson Heights for saris and others items brings the memory of shopping in Bangladesh. While Jackson Heights provides some necessary services the place has become a site of recreation for many Bangladeshis.

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Ethnic stores not only meet the day-to-day mundane demands of Bangladeshis but also work as a node where trasnational commodities and moving people converge (Mankekar, 2002). Thus the ethnic grocery stores signify the life and yearnings of people in the diaspora. Conducting ethnographic studies on Indian grocery stores in San Francisco Bay area, Mankekar (2002) said that grocery stores are the sites in which objects and people on the move converge. Quoting a store owner, Mankekar said that people visit those stores not just to buy groceries but also to get the “whole package”—the “India shopping.” Through the ways in which Indian grocery stores produce a sense of familiarity for their customers, they provide them not just with the spices, lentils, and other ingredients deemed crucial to Indian cooking, they also make available a range of objects, artifacts, images, and discourses for consumption. (p. 81) Commodities that are sold in those stores are not only consumed but also are displayed (Salih, 2002), invoking memory of old home and culture. I have seen many household items displayed in the houses of Bangladeshis I interviewed. Some of the food and the grocery items that are sold in the stores in Jackson Heights signify the culture of not only Bangladesh but also South Asia. For example, samosa, a “deepfried, fist-sized triangular pastry traditionally filled with either spicy potatoes or ground lamb and is India’s great contribution to the world of fast food,” (Samosa diaspora 92 Y Blog, 2005) invokes people’s feelings of living in their old country and all the things that associate with their family and social relations. The anonymous blogger used the term “Samosa diaspora” probably in reference to South Asian ethnic communities in the United States. Samosa is a popular appetizer that is offered with tea in Bangladesh, India and other South Asian countries and people from those regions can readily identify with this snack. It’s not just an appetizer, it’s a cultural commodity. According to the blogger, even though samosa was originated in Persia, it has become a “uniquely Indian food.” But as the 92 Y Blogger mentioned, samosa is also “the product of a thousand years of culinary heritage and variants of this food can be found everywhere from Cape Town to Singapore to Tashkent to Tel Aviv. Thus in a way, this simple appetizer symbolizes the lives of people in diaspora.

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An Evening at Athens Park Various social and cultural activities that Bangladeshis organize and participate in are almost similar to the ones organized in Bangladesh. I attended a Bengali cultural program organized by the Bangladesh Institute of Performing Arts (BIPA) not only to see a slice of the cultural life of the Bangladeshi diaspora but also to recruit participants. I contacted Nasimun Nahar Nini, a journalist-turned cultural activist, seeking her help to recruit some second-generation Bangladeshi Americans for interviews. I have known Nini from Bangladesh, and when I called her and briefed her about my research, she took interest and advised me to attend the BIPA program. She told me that many Bangladeshis attend the programs and I would have an opportunity to meet new people and also get an idea about the Bangladeshi cultural activities in New York City. Athens Park in the City of New York was transformed into the site of a Bangladeshi cultural program on the evening of my visit. A small stage was erected and decorated with Bengali artifacts. Lighting and sound were amateurish. More than two hundred people gathered there on a summer afternoon to enjoy the performances. Many people came in families, sitting together on mats that they brought from home. Many of them were taking photographs of the artists. Quite a number of onlookers, tourists and local residents, gathered outside the park to have a glimpse of the event. Bangladeshis I interviewed on-site talked about other cultural activities they have attended. One such event was the street fair that concluded just before my trip. Jackson Heights’ business owners organized the street fair that attracted thousands of Bangladeshis as well as other New Yorkers. The fair provided entertainment to the Bangladeshis but at the same time it showed other ethnic communities that the Bangladeshi community was getting larger (Ansar, 2006). Second-Generation’s Bangladesh Connections The second-generation Bangladeshi youths find it difficult to relate to Bangladesh. First-generation Bangladeshi parents customarily ask their children to talk to their elderly grandparents and other relatives who live in Bangladesh. I interviewed six parents and their young children

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(8-14) for another project (Rahman, 2000) in early 2000 in Mississippi and Louisiana. At that time, some of the parents said that they encouraged their children to speak Bengali at home and talk to their relatives back home so that they did not forget their “roots.” But children complained that they did not have much in common to talk about. A group of college students, who were either born in the United States or were brought to the country by their Bangladeshi parents at an early age, said that their parents’ never-ending attempt to connect them with Bangladesh put them in a difficult situation. Prattay came to the United States at the age of 10; he can read Bengali, which most of his friends cannot. All of his families were in Bangladesh but he never visited Bangladesh since he migrated to the United States. In the meantime his grandparents passed way, family members got married. “I see them when they come to visit here, that’s the only way I can keep in touch with them,” he said. However he maintained communication by calling them almost every week. It’s more like “hi” “hello” “how are you,” things like that, and health issues. Since I came here at 10, I know them but my sister does not, so a lot of time when she is asked talk to her aunt, to her it is: “who is this”? She knows that she is her aunt but she never met her. Prattay’s friend, Asif, whose father was from Kolkata, India, and his mother from Dhaka, Bangladesh, also faced a similar situation. He could speak Bengali very well but could not read and write. He came to the United States when he was 10 years old. His family called back home every week and he was always asked to speak with his relatives. It’s kind of weird for me ….they put me on the phone--I do not have a lot to ask besides “hi, how are you, how are things, how is everyone, give everybody my salam,” etc. How much more you can say? I cannot really relate, my parents kind of get mad at me; they say “we ask for five minutes from you and you cannot even do that.” But I just want my parents to understand that I cannot relate.

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College Freshman Nyrene made several visits to Bangladesh. Her grandmother and other relatives visited her mother’s house in the United States. She always maintained contact with her grandmother, aunts and cousins. But, Bangladesh was still an unknown and uncertain territory to her. I am fluent in Bengali, but I guess I am more comfortable in speaking English--my Bengali vocabulary is not that big, I do not know the hard words. Some songs I cannot understand, all of my cousins pretty much speak English, but my grandmother does not speak English at all. We speak (with cousins) a mix language, like half and half (Bengali and English), whenever we need a word from other languages we just take it, whenever I talk to my grandmother I try to speak Bengali so that she understands. Parents play a major role in the second-generation young people’s relations with Bangladesh. Shemanti, a Hunter College student, can read and write in Bengali very well, In fact, she was the only secondgeneration youth who spoke in Bengali during the time of the interview. She released her CD of Bengali poem recitations. Her mother used to update her about the current literary affairs in Bangladesh. She said her mother played a major role in developing an appreciation for Bengali culture and literature in her. My mom loves to talk about Bangladesh…. I always speak Bengali with my mom all the time, with my dad also. I got the encouragement from my mom; she used to talk about Bangladesh: “This writer has done this, that, etc.” My mom used to tell me the story, basically the story of my mother’s life. I grew some kind of curiosity, who is Rabindra Nath, Jibanananda Das (well known Bengali poets)?…My mom tells me, “When people ask you who are you, you cannot tell them that you are an America, you will have to tell that you are a Bangladeshi American. When you will say Bangladesh, then you will have to know Bangladesh--its history and culture.” That was the beginning. I want to know (about Bangladesh), it is necessary to know.

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College student Shahrier, whose parents had a “firm grip on money, which many Blacks and Latinos lack,” and who has been assimilated in Hip Hop culture, also connected to Bangladesh, but in a more complex way than most of the second-generation youths I interviewed did. Shahrier identified Bangladesh as “my country” but said that his relations with Bangladesh had changed once he associated himself with the Hip Hop culture. He severely criticized the elites of Bangladesh saying that they put a system in Bangladesh that was corrupt. He visited Bangladesh in 1996 and he could still remember the following image of Bangladesh: I saw the villages, I saw the children… without food, I saw the people without clothes, on their backs--all these destitutions, all these poverty. Yet the elites of that country are just rich-like my uncle, or whatever the case may be my father’s friends.. They live a lavish life. I do not say that I have stereotypes about it, but I have generalizations, you know countries that are really financially not secure, financially really destitute, but they have elite systems. The Image of Bangladesh No other issue bothers educated, middle-class and professional Bangladeshis in the diaspora more than the image of their old home country. Roushan Jahan, a special education teacher in New York City, was very frustrated in the way Bangladesh is represented in US media. She criticized Bangladeshi writers and activists for not projecting Bangladesh in a positive way. She said that for her school project she looked for books on Bangladesh for children but did not find the ones which project the real image of Bangladesh. “Now Bangladeshis are spread throughout the world; should not have they anything for our kids? Others will not represent us, we will have to do that,” she said. It is not clear whether they have any significant sway in the way their old country is represented in the US media, but, by utilizing the social media they take the issue and at least share their feelings among themselves. Hasan Ferdous, a journalist-writer, who lived in Bangladesh and the United States, articulated the image issue of Bangladesh that many

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Bangladeshis face and usually talk about in informal social gatherings. According to Ferdous (2004), “Foreign newspapers and electronic media, while referring to Bangladesh, usually add a prefix to identify it: the most corrupt country, the most polluted country, the most impoverished country, etc.” The lives of Bangladeshis are impacted by the poor image of Bangladesh. “Each time I introduce myself as a Bangladeshi, I have to be watchful about that little smirk, that slowly fading grin, on people’s faces. They don’t have to say, I just know what is behind that smirk,” Ferdous wrote. The image of the home country might well impact on how people in the diaspora would engage with their old home country. Interviewing Bangladeshi returning workers from Middle Eastern countries, Kibria (2008a) reported that those Bangladeshis developed a critical perspective of Bangladesh primarily because the poor image of Bangladesh abroad. Those unskilled workers received poor treatment not only from locals in the Middle Eastern countries but also from their coworkers of other nationalities. Certainly their low socio-economic status contributed to the mistreatment that they received but they thought the poor image of Bangladesh was also to be blamed for that. As is evidenced in Ferdous’ comments, Bangladeshis in the United States also experience situations because of the image problem of Bangladesh. But, rather than accepting the image of Bangladesh, the educated, middle-class Bangladeshis challenge the representation of Bangladesh. Bangladesh as a poor, corrupt, and lawless country that is sliding into a terrorist haven was the predominant image portrayed in US media. Bangladesh has been condemned in Western media since the then foreign secretary Henry Kissinger labeled the newly independent country as a basket case. It seems that everyone, from comedian to respected news anchors and filmmakers take a shot at Bangladesh. In a radio commercial one credit agency claimed that they would be able to help their clients even if their debts are more than the gross national product of Bangladesh. Roseanne Barr once jokingly said that she can lose weight by living in Bangladesh. One of the Israeli agents in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Munich” rebuked his team members for wasting foods, saying that his leftover can feed the whole Bangladesh. NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw saw Bangladesh when he looked at the Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

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No other story stirred as much discussion in the online Bangladeshi discussion forums as did the New York Times story with a provocative headline “The next Islamist revolution?” The story, written by Eliza Griswold, was published on January 23, 2005, in the Magazine section of the newspaper. A journalist by training, Griswold was looking for a story that would cater to her readers in the context of the post-9/11 war on terrorism, and she got one in the in the Northwestern part of the country where a man, Bangla Bhai (the brother of Bengal), was unleashing terrorist activities torturing, and in some cases, killing people, in the name of Islam. The government of the country, which has an Islamist party, Jamat-e-Islami, as coalition partner, turned a blind eye for some time, and was in denial even though local media were reporting on the incidents. “The global war on terror is aimed at making the rise of regimes like that of the Taliban impossible, but in Bangladesh, the trend could be going the other way,” Griswold wrote. Griswold claimed that Bangladesh was indeed sliding into Taliban rule by quoting the man, “the thickset” one in the crowd, who said ''they wanted the regime of the Taliban here.'' The Talibanization of Bangladesh is not only possible but also imminent, she warned her readers. She wrote that 80 percent of Bangladeshis live in villages that can be “hard to reach and are under the tight control of local politicians.” Those hard-to-reach villages can be the breeding grounds of terrorists because “the government is far away in Dhaka,” and “divided on precisely this question of how much Islam and politics should mix.” In this context, “Bangla Bhai and the type of religious violence he practices are filling the power vacuum.” What she saw in the field she laced with what the security experts in the West told her. She quoted Christine C. Fair, who said that Islam is becoming the legitimizing political discourse in Bangladesh. “Once you don that religious mantle, who can criticize you? We see this in Pakistan as well, where very few people are brave enough to take the Islamists on. Now this is happening in Bangladesh,” she quoted Fair as saying. Highly educated Bangladeshis in the United States and Canada who read the New York Times and understand US culture and media expressed their frustration with the story. Fakhruddin Ahmed, a noted economist who later became the head of Bangladesh caretaker government, wrote a caustic review of the Griswold article not only pointing out the factual errors in the story but also questioning her

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motives. Griswold’s suggestion that “Bangladesh is all about Bangla Bhai and his thugs.. is as insightful as claiming that the most important thing about America is the racist Ku Klux Klan,” Ahmed (2005) wrote. “In her six-page article, complete with photographs of fierce-looking Tupi-clad men and boys shouting at the top of their voice, Ms. Griswold does not utter a single word of praise for Bangladesh,” Ahmed accused. Ahmed accused Griswold of making sweeping generalizations on the basis of anecdotal evidence. “You know how to use the proper sound bites by adding, "linked to Al Qaeda" at every opportunity! This is your personal prejudice, Ms. Griswold; you offer no shred of evidence to back it up!” Referring to the economic and diplomatic position of Bangladesh, Ahmed challenged Griswold that she would not dare to do a similar kind of reporting on a country like India. He wrote: “Have you been to Gujarat to do investigative reporting on the carnage that followed (there was a communal riot and many Muslims were massacred)? Of course you would not dare! You find it so much easier to beat up on tiny Bangladesh than to take on mighty India?” Taj Hashmi, an expert in Islamic and Asian history, posted a rejoinder, denouncing Griswold’s “abysmal ignorance about Islam and Bangladesh.” Hashmi was born in India but was raised and educated in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Australia. He taught in Bangladeshi universities and wrote books on the politics and society of Bangladesh. In a long commentary that was posted in the Muktamana (free thinker) discussion forum, Hashmi said that while there are some factual truths in Griswold’s account she missed the big picture. Hashmi (2005) wrote: What Eliza Griswold has written about the “Islamist terror” in Bangladesh is grossly exaggerated, inaccurate, confusing and misleading. She has no idea about the similarities and differences between various Islamic groups and their leaders, the “great” and “little” traditions of Islam in the region and the difference between the mass/popular perceptions and the reality. Despite its poverty, backwardness and the preponderance of Islamic ethos in the main streams of its politics and culture, Bangladesh is not just another Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or even Pakistan. Despite having several Islamic groups—some militant but most

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Observers who are familiar with the politics vis-à-vis the roles of Islam would probably agree with the assessments of Hashmi. Griswold’s suggestion that Islamists enjoy political legitimacy in Bangladesh on religious grounds shows her lack of understanding of the history of politics and culture of Bangladesh. Bangladesh faced political turmoil since its independence in 1971 and the roles of Islam have been debated since but still Islamic political parties remained in the margin. Different elements of Islamists collaborated with the Pakistani Army during the 1971 War and even though those elements were rehabilitated in the political process of Bangladesh, their positions are all but settled and legitimized. The current Hasina government has set to try some of those people for committing war crimes. Bangladeshi observers know it very well that the activities and statements of not only the Islamists but other religious authorities such as the chief preacher of the premier mosque in Bangladesh are critiqued robustly in the public sphere. So, the suggestion that by just putting on an “Islamic hat” people would gain legitimacy sounds absolutely naïve to the people who are even remotely familiar with Bangladesh. Another contention of the Bangladeshis in the United States who are active in online discussion forums is that Western media are not interested to know and to report on the larger problems such as global warming and poverty. “They just want bearded Muslims alighting from midnight boats to deliver arms..hard pressed fringe journalists have to bid for a story that barely exists,” Chowdhury (2003) wrote. 9/11 has made the Western journalists even more tunnel-visioned. Mohaieman (2002), an activist, wrote: “After 9/11, only one thing seemed to matter to Western journalists—that Bangladesh had a large Muslim population. Therefore, it must already be a training ground for “militant terrorist Islam,” or failing that, the danger must lurk right below the surface.” So, it was not surprising that Griswold would find the story she found. Not only the New York Times, but also other Western media were on assignment to find Islamic extremism in Bangladesh. Mohaiemen chronicled a few media reports on Bangladesh (2002):

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In 2002, Bangladesh attracted more coverage from the "Taliban hunters." In April, the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) published an explosive cover story, "Beware of Bangladesh." The story was accompanied by the menacing image of angry, bearded men (later it turned out the photo was taken at a rally protesting the Gujarat riots -- the lead man in the photo has filed a lawsuit against FEER). The issue carried a secondary story about alleged terrorist camps, with the alarmist title "A Cocoon of Terror." The story provoked a firestorm in Bangladesh. The BNP banned the issue and launched an international campaign against the story. The BNP (stands for Bangladesh Nationalist Party, a major political party) attack was expected. Far more discomforting to the FEER was the criticism from western-aligned sources such as Bangladesh's Daily Star newspaper, Humanist Association of Hong Kong and, most damagingly, the former Editor of FEER. In spite of the criticism, the story was reprinted by the Wall Street Journal (Asia), which neglected to print any of the rejoinders. Following the FEER's report, The Nation magazine came out with its own report, "The 'Talibanization' of Bangladesh." Interestingly, those incidents were reported in local Bangladeshi media but the then government kept denying the reports until those organizations had a countrywide bombing in August of 2005. Mohaieman, blamed what he called the “media colonialism mentality” of the Bangladeshi ruling elites. As Mohaiemen pointed out, the government and the political elites of Bangladesh do not pay heed when Bangladeshi media report something that can be damaging to the country’s image. But when foreign media report the same thing, the government responds. But those reports tarnish the image of the country. Foreign media’s reports usually lack sufficient context and they depict a one-sided image of the country. Political and cultural elites both in Bangladesh and in the diaspora show frustration, noting that Bangladesh, as a moderate Muslim democratic country, is not recognized in the United States. Especially during the height of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism and the promotion of democracy in the Muslim world, those elites think that

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Bangladesh should have been recognized. Farooq Sobhan, a former Bangladesh foreign secretary and the president of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (a think tank), said the following (2010): Under these circumstances perhaps Bangladesh should have figured prominently on the list of countries to be wooed and cultivated by the US. After all, we are among the very few Muslim majority countries that both profess and practice a commitment to democracy, albeit with Bangladeshi characteristics. We have freedom of the press, free and fair elections and a semblance of the trappings of a functioning democracy, which add up to a great deal more than what is to be found throughout the Arab world, indeed throughout the Muslim world, minus one or two countries. But while there has been some acknowledgement of this by successive US Ambassadors in Dhaka, as well as the US State Department, it has clearly not percolated to the White House, the NSC, Congress, key government departments, the media and the powerful think tanks in Washington, which in the case of this administration, certainly wield considerable influence. On the contrary, Bangladesh has been castigated in the US media for the rise of Islamic militants and the perception in some circles in the US is that Islamic militants have already become a significant force to reckon with. Sobhan thinks that the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States can play a vital role in not only creating a positive image of Bangladesh but also bridging the gaps between Bangladesh and US government. He recognizes that the India caucus is the second most influential caucus in Congress, second only to the Israeli caucus. “The key to the quantum leap in Indian influence in Washington is to be explained by the coming of age of the sizeable Indian community or Americans of Indian origin in the US,” he wrote. His advice to the Bangladeshi community: “First and foremost abandon this totally wasteful, useless and possibly suicidal practice of setting up chapters of the Awami League and the BNP (Bangladesh political parties) all over the US and replicating the on-going battles in their country of origin.” He argued that politically active Bangladeshi-Americans should join the US

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political parties. “If they want to help Bangladesh then they should actively contribute to strengthening both the size and effectiveness of the Bangladesh caucus in Congress. They should organize fund raisers for their local Congressman and Senator,” he wrote. Business leaders and entrepreneurs of Bangladeshi origin feel that they are in a better position to market “brand Bangladesh” (Islam, 2008). As brand agents, the Bangladeshis in the diaspora can help direct investment to Bangladesh. Ferdous (2004) argued that Bangladeshis in the United States can play a role to address the image issue by calling on the government in Bangladesh and also by presenting a positive face of Bangladesh in the US media. He argued that because the Bangladeshis in the diaspora have financial clout, access to western media and policy makers in foreign capitals, and they have safety from persecution, they can make the government pay attention. Ferdous (2004) wrote: What however they can do is introduce a new language in the overall conversation about Bangladesh that will help illuminate some less focused elements…Bangladesh’s struggle for democracy and political pluralism, its resistance to religious extremism, innovative approaches to fighting poverty, and most importantly, its rich and varied culture. The single most important thing that NRBs can do is raise their voices. When expatriate Bangladeshis speak, their voices are heard much louder back home. The media takes notice; the government pays attention, the civil society gets energized. When we extend support to a cause, for example, in areas of human rights, the people feel emboldened, and in the process we help create a global ring of solidarity. NRBs must act.

CHAPTER 6

Media and the Bangladeshi Diaspora

Contemporary diasporas are largely transnational communities created by global flows of people, money and images (Appadurai, 1996). Unlike “victim” diasporas, transnational communities, or modern diasporas, as some prefer to call them, are well connected with their old homes and their co-ethnic communities scattered all around the world through a transnational media system. The tremendous development of transnational media systems not only carried information and entertainment to the developing world, but also created a reverse flow of information and entertainment from those so-called peripheral regions (Sinclair, Jacka, & Cunningham, 2000) to the pockets of population in the Western developed world. Transnational media’s niche marketing strategy, the ascendancy of non-Hollywood films and television industries such as Bollywood and Globo, and the spread of language television programming resulted in an increased flow of information and entertainment to the diasporas (Albizu, 2007), building a new “virtual geography” that offers migration a new kind of media experience (Shi, 2005). The contemporary research focuses on the increased connectivity and networking of dispersed people (Chitty 2006), marking a break from the earlier research, which largely focused on isolation, pain of migration, and longing for a real or imagined homeland. The connectivity that the web of media brings helps people in contemporary diasporas imagine a life that is substantially different 117

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from past diasporas (Chitty, 2006; Shi 2005), giving people a whole different meaning to the way they think of their lives and identities. Media in the Bangladeshi Diaspora Mediascapes (Appadurai, 1996) of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States is emerging, responding to the needs of a growing community. Despite the internal differences, a collective consciousness that they left behind a “rich cultural heritage” (Haque, 1995), continues to shape part of the social and cultural life of the first-generation Bangladeshis in their new home. A strong pull from their old home country supplements the Bangladeshi diaspora’s eagerness to remain connected economically and culturally with Bangladesh, primarily through a web of media--ranging from almost-obsolete videocassettes and amateurishly produced local newspapers to transnational television programs aired from Bangladesh. Bangladeshi national media outlets recognize the audiences outside Bangladesh and include them in their marketing fold. Bangladeshis in the United States can access the most popular and widely circulated newspapers and magazines, the ones which are available online. Also, dozens of weekly newspapers in Bengali, which are published from inside the United States, provide information about the Bangladeshi communities in New York City and elsewhere in the country. Locally published Bengali newspapers provide a blend of local content and the lifted materials from Bangladeshi newspapers. Along with print media, more than half a dozen television channels are available including three Dhaka-based channels, namely Channel i, NTV, and ATN Bangla. A few other television channels—Londonbased Bangla TV, New York-based TBC and STV—are also available. All the people I interviewed or chatted with in New York City said that they had watched Bangladeshi channels either in their own or their friends’ homes or Bangladeshi-run businesses. Whenever I visited Bangladeshi restaurants in Jackson Heights or Church McDonald I saw the same picture—a restaurant-full of people eating, gossiping and watching Bangladeshi television programs. “The facility becomes full at the time of 9’O clock news,” one waiter in a restaurant at Church McDonald of New York City said.

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Subscribing to Bangladeshi television channels is expensive, but many Bangladeshis subscribe to those often by sharing the cost. This arrangement is made possible because many Bangladeshis in New York City live close to each other, usually a couple of families in one apartment building. The Bangladeshi television channels became popular quickly for two reasons. First, many first-generation Bangladeshis were familiar with those programs when they lived in Bangladesh. Secondly, many Bangladeshis watched videos and DVDs of Bangladeshi television programs, especially drama serials, even before the widespread availability of Bangladeshi television channels. I saw stocks of videos and DVDs of those television drama serials in the homes of Bangladeshi people in Carbondale and New York City when I visited them for interviews or on social occasions. They had Hindi and Bengali movies in their collections also. They bring those materials when they visit Bangladesh or big cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where those are easily available. Many Bangladeshis generously share their audio and videocassettes, VCDs and DVDs. Those entertainment products are popular gift items in the Bangladeshi communities also. They could also rent DVDs from the local stores and movie rentals in New York and other large cities. Thus, the media that are directly available from Bangladesh still dominate the mediascapes in the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States. Therefore, a brief discussion of Bangladeshi media is imperative to understand the media of the Bangladeshi diaspora and their uses. Bangladeshi Media: A Brief Description Newspapers Newspapers are the most influential medium in Bangladesh in terms of their popularity with the educated middle class and their impact on politics. The origin of Bangladeshi newspapers can be traced to the early eighteenth century when newspapers began to publish from Kolkata (Calcutta then), the city developed by British merchants, which later became the cultural capital of Bengal--spanning its influence all over India in the early British colonial rule. The Bengali educated middle class, mostly Hindus at that time, began to venture into

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journalism mainly as a weapon to fight British colonial rule and as a tool of domestic social and religious reform movements. In fact, newspapers developed in colonial British Bengal paralleled the political struggle at that time, influencing the eventual character of the Bengali press. The political character of the Bengal press carried through the decades when Bengalis struggled first for their autonomy and finally for the independence (1947-1971), which culminated with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. In Bangladesh, this political vigor of the press continued as the country experienced long military or controlled democratic rule (1975-1990). Along with its strongly politicized character, the Bangladeshi press also matured institutionally, professionally, and technologically following the installation of democratic rule (1990-onward, with a stint of military-backed unelected government from January 11, 2007 to January 6, 2009). Although more than 200 daily newspapers were published from Bangladesh (this number is calculated on the basis of my research in 2006 using various Bangladeshi sources), only 14 Bengali-language and six English-language dailies were published regularly and were widely read. The growth of newspapers is predominantly urban-based with almost all the major newspapers concentrating in the capital city, Dhaka. The local or small town newspaper is largely absent in Bangladesh. Major newspapers are branded as national and they are published from Dhaka. Only one Bengali language newspaper was published simultaneously in different locations of the country. Generally, Bengali newspapers are targeted to a mass readership with a lower education level and in a lower income bracket, while English language newspapers are targeted to business people, professionals, and people with higher education and income. Bangladeshi print journalists are predominantly male, well educated, and have some journalism education and training. Although they consider the “development” function of mass media as part of their jobs, they, like Western journalists, consider their “libertarian” operations, such as informing people, criticizing government, and evaluating and analyzing government policies, as their main functions (Ramaprasad and Rahman, 2006). However, on many occasions, they cannot perform those functions, mainly for infrastructural and other reasons.

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Bangladeshi newspapers continued to enjoy relative freedom following the annulment of the 1974 Special Powers Act, which was frequently used to ban newspapers. The caretaker government that was installed in the country in 1991, ending a decade-long military rule, annulled the Act, reflecting the demand of political parties and members of civil society. But government still retains some indirect control over newspapers through the distribution of the government advertisements--still the major lifeline of newspapers. Besides this, newspapers also had to go through hurdles, such as handling occasional threats from sections of political and religious groups. Newspapers, once the primary sources of information and commentary on politics, are increasingly facing competition from television channels, which are offering news and programs on contemporary affairs. Radio and Television Electronic media penetration is very low in Bangladesh--one television set for 227 people and one radio set for 555 people (Prantajan, Mass line Media Center, July, 2002, cited in Alam, 2010). The above figures are dated and the electronic media penetration is probably higher now. Radio and television are nonetheless popular media in Bangladesh. Radio and television were traditionally state-run and strictly government-controlled media. During 1990s when the major political parties and professional groups launched mass protests for democracy, they also demanded independence of state-run radio and televisions. The elected government, which was installed in 1996, allowed private television channels to operate in the country, although it retained the control of state-run radio and television channels. Private television channels quickly became robust and popular. At least two private channels, Channel i and NTV, air 24-hour programming. Bangladeshis living in many countries including the United States can watch the programs of those two and other channels. The target audience of Channel i is Bengali-speaking people all over the world and its programming is available in 84 countries. People can watch those channels either through the Internet or satellite television subscriptions. TV drama is one of the most popular forms of entertainment in Bangladesh as well as in the Bangladeshi diasporas throughout the world. In fact, those dramas or plays are one of the dominant programs

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in the government-run and the privately operated channels. Bangladesh Television began broadcasting dramas or plays almost in the beginning days of television. Those dramas, both single-act and the serials, are also very popular to viewers across gender and income level. Dramas are aired regularly on a daily and weekly basis. Besides the regular dramas, special dramas on such occasions as Victory Day, Independence Day, Eid, Christmas, Durga Puja, the birth and death anniversaries of Rabindranath and Nazrul (well known Bengali poets), are broadcast on different channels. Regular weekly dramas, drama serials, and special dramas for various occasions are the top-ranked programs on television (Television play, 2006). The popular and frequent themes of TV dramas include family and social life, politics, love, the degeneration of social ethics and Bangladesh Liberation War. Those dramas occasionally portray village life, ordinary people struggling for a living and abject poverty in the city's slums. According to television critics, the aesthetic and production qualities of once popular television dramas fell sharply as producers began to produce a large number of dramas catering to the needs of various channels. “There is hardly any substance in the story of the dramas shown on our channels, performance is below standard, sets are often dimly lit, sound system is abysmal, direction is amateurish” (Wahid, 2006). As a result, viewers tend to switch to the Indian television channels, which are easily available in Bangladesh. Bangladeshis like to watch dramas in Indian channels because “they understand Hindi quite effortlessly, they are more interested in watching drama and drama serials on the Indian channels, at least for the glamour and powerful performance” (Wahid, 2006). However, the qualities of Bangladeshi private television channels were improving gradually. The proliferation of private television channels attracted talented people from print media and other cultural fields. This resulted in good quality programming in news and entertainment. The format of news in government-run television is static, repetitive, and boring. Private television channels’ news presentation is innovative and it attracts huge audience (Wahid, 2006). The competition also pushed government-run Bangladesh Television to make changes in its news and other programming. The most visible change that half a dozen of the private channels brought was the tremendous growth of political talk shows. Open

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political discussions were always a major diet of Bangladeshi print media. Even during the strict censorship of military rule, print media ventured to criticize government and openly supported the opposition political movements. The editorial pages of most of the newspapers opened their spaces to accommodate columns and essays written from a variety of perspectives. Following the print traditions, the electronic media, especially television channels, began broadcasting programs on political talks and other discussions. Tritio Matra (Third Dimension) is the prime example of a political talk show. The show was first aired on July 17 of 2003 and completed its 1000th episode on April 11 of 2006 (Bin-Habib 2006). The host of the show is a political commentator who cut his teeth in political writing in the 1980s. Although the government-run Bangladesh Television (BTV) is criticized for being the government propaganda tool and for its dull, repetitive production of news, historically this medium created avenues for Bengali cultural performers. Another unique feature of state-run BTV is that it routinely airs development messages, such as health, nutrition, immunization, women’s rights, women’s education, and communication-related information. For example, a survey found that 69% Bangladeshis listened to radio programs on mother and child health, women's rights and other development issues (MOI Baseline Survey, February 2002, cited in Alam, 2010). BTV is the single largest provider of development information (MOI Baseline Survey, February 2002, cited in Alam, 2010). Even though private television channels are becoming widespread and popular in Bangladesh, the predominant theme of programming remained what Rajagopal (1993) termed as “national programming.” Bangladeshi television, both government-run and private, run locally produced programs now, significantly reducing the canned programs, which filled the airwaves in the 1980s. National cultural themes that appeal to middle-class Bangladeshis, such as relations in the family and the spirit of the Independence War, emerged as dominant themes of those television programs. Those programming generally portray a more favorable image of the country, its culture and people. Kaur (2002) observed that the Bollywood movies, which are targeted to the diasporic South Asian audiences, construct the image of India in the mould of the urban middle class. While there are significant differences between Bollywood movies and the Bangladeshi television

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programming, they share one common theme: they generally provide a much more positive image of the home country and culture that people in the diaspora leave behind and reconnect with by using a myriad of media. That image appeals to the people of the diaspora because they feel that their old country and culture are not represented properly in their host-country media. Online Media The special relevance of online media in the context of diaspora is that these media act as platforms of communication between the diaspora and Bangladesh. For example, Bangladeshis in the diaspora can access major Dhaka dailies and a few weeklies online. Bangladeshis can watch Bangladeshi television channels online also. A host of other websites are also available that are used as discussion forums and other socializing tools. Although Bangladeshi newspapers can be accessed independently through their websites, many portal websites offer links to all newspapers conveniently. E–mela.com is a popular website which has links to Bangladeshi newspapers. Besides, this website maintains discussion forums participated in by Bangladeshis from all over the world. Access to the online newspapers is free. The most widely read Bengali newspaper, the Prothom Alo, offered two extra editions for some time, the noon and the evening editions, for which readers needed to log on and pay. Bangladeshis living in the United States, as well as other countries, receive news and information from a host of websites. A weekly online news magazine nybangla.com, published from New York City, has links to all the Bangladeshi newspapers. The website has links to 14 Bengali-language dailies, seven English language dailies, six weeklies, one entertainment magazine, six radio stations and one Indian Bengalilanguage daily. This website also provides links of other diasporic media published from various parts of the world. Bangladesh International Community News (www.bicn.com) is a website intended to “cultivate awareness, understanding and appreciation of Bangladesh and to make positive contribution to the development in Bangladesh.” The website, launched in 1997, publishes newsletters twice a month. The target audiences are expatriates living in Dhaka and Bangladeshis living in other countries.

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Adhunika (modern women, available at www.adhunika.org) is a “global volunteer organization dedicated to the promotion of technology usage for women of Bangladesh.” This website, founded in March 2002 in New York, is dedicated to promote women’s web presence. This website is a tool for networking among women of Bangladeshi origins. This site has links to news, articles, events, and blogs on women’s issues. Alochana (discussion)—an online magazine and discussion forum, is designed “to provide voice to Bangladeshis worldwide to discuss serious world issues and news using the Internet.” Besides publishing a magazine, this website manages a discussion group and a lobbying group for Bangladesh and Bangladeshis living in the United States. This website lobbied for granting amnesty to undocumented Bangladeshis in the United States. Bangladesh Researchers Community, an online community for all Bangladeshi scholars and researchers around the world, provides a space for “scientific” discussion about the problems and prospects of Bangladesh. Many other websites and discussions groups connect the people of Bangladeshi origin to talk about issues and to enjoy the ethnic Bangladeshi events. The magazine Priyobangla (Dear Bangla) is published from Atlanta, Georgia. The magazine is also available online (www.priyobangla.com). Mostly the magazine covers the Bangladeshi community in Atlanta and other parts of the country. Also, it publishes news and features on Bangladesh. The first issue was published in April 2005. The cover story of this issue was written on the 1971 Independence War memories of the people who witnessed the war. In the December 2005 issue Priyobangla published a cover story on George Harrison and other musicians who took active roles in the 1971 Independence War to raise funds for the freedom movement in Bangladesh. A feature story on the businesses that sprang up to support the Bangladeshi community in the city was also published in the same issue. Some of the other headlines in the same issue were: The largest aquarium is now in Atlanta, Bangladeshi dies in Georgia, Sorrow grips the community, Georgia Bangladesh Association celebrates Eid reunion, Bangladeshi community in Alabama celebrates Eid, Priyo Bangla throws dinner, South East Asian tennis tournament held, at last the Bangladesh Sports Federation of Georgia was disbanded. The

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magazine also published a special essay on the evolution of the Bengali language and nationality. A total of 21 advertisements were published in the issue. Along with the community news, the magazine published a detailed essay on Puja (Hindu religious celebration) and Eid (Muslim religious festival) in Kolkata, written by the editor of a web-based magazine in India. Four short stories were also published in this issue. The cover story of the August 2005 issue focuses on how Bangladeshis can invest in the United States. Mukto-mona (free thinker--available at http://mukto-mona.com) is an online bi-lingual (Bengali and English) blog and article collection which focuses on social, political, religious and cultural issues involving Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide, and the other South Asian communities. This magazine also maintains an online discussion forum. This magazine and forum provides commentary on the contemporary issues from a scientific and humanistic perspective. The magazine has a section on secular news in which it places news on the secularization movement all over the world. Ebarta (E news--available at http://www.ebarta.com) is also a web-based bi-lingual (Bengali and English) journal with a focus on the contemporary social, political and cultural issues. This is a bi-lingual journal. Articles in both Bengali and English are published in the journal. Its editor had a long background in journalism in Bangladesh. Its slogan is: “the global information center of the Bengali-speaking people.” Bangla2000.com is an “effort of some very bright and young entrepreneurs of the country.” This website is aimed at Bangladeshi people worldwide. The website does not say from where it is published and maintained. This site has a discussion forum and link to contemporary news, articles on immigration, Islam, education, cricket, horoscope and Bangladesh. Bangladeshis in New York City can also read from dozens of weekly Bengali newspapers, which are published in New York. Those newspapers extensively cover the lives of Bangladeshi communities in New York City. They largely play the roles of community media. Those newspapers cover the affairs in Bangladesh extensively because readers are interested to know more about Bangladesh. One of the notable features of those newspapers is that they heavily lift materials

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from Dhaka newspapers. Those newspapers are the preferred media of the Bangladeshis who have limited English proficiencies, and do not have Internet access. Bangladeshi Diasporic Media in the Media Mix Given the virtual absence of research on the use of media of the Bangladeshi diaspora, it was extremely difficult to determine which media Bangladeshi-Americans used. But it was evident from my observation that online Bangladeshi newspapers were the primary media for Bangladeshis in Carbondale while Bangladeshi television and New York Bengali newspapers were the primary media for Bangladeshi-New Yorkers. Most participants reported that they had watched videotaped Bangladeshi television programs. Almost all Carbondale participants and some in New York said that they regularly visited e-mela.com to access newspapers and other sources of news. It was evident at the outset of my fieldwork that Bangladeshi people used diasporic media not in isolation but embedded in a wide and rich mix of media available to them. Bangladeshis--especially the educated and professionals--read US newspapers, watched select US television channels, and also used Bangladeshi diasporic media. Both US and Bangladeshi media were “must” for Mir Mizan, a practicing Manhattan Attorney, who left Bangladesh more than a decade ago. “I read the New York Times--that is a must. I think I need to read it… I follow CNN regularly,” he said sitting in his Manhattan office. When I interviewed him in the summer of 2006, he said that he had begun subscribing to three Bangladeshi channels, ATN Bangla, NTV and Channel i. “I watch those, it’s a great pleasure to watch those,” he said enthusiastically. He also read Bengali language newspapers published from New York City. I am very fond of those. .These newspapers have given me a lot..I went to Law School and I got a certificate of award from the Chief Judge of New York; it was published in the newspapers with photographs. I performed jury duty, which was in the newspapers also. I passed the bar examination, it was published in the newspaper with photographs…

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Naseema Islam, who used a mix of US and Bangladeshi media, considered her Bangladeshi television channels as “local channels.” “I treat Bangladeshi television news as local news. You know, it’s a globalized world, I go back to CNN and BBC after I watch Bangladeshi news—Bangladesh is just another station,” she said in a follow-up interview in the summer of 2008. Other than US and Bangladeshi channels, she also watches Sony and Zee TV, Indian movie channels. Like Naseema, many Bangladeshis in New York City and Carbondale, who can afford satellite and have English proficiency, subscribe to a combination of television channels including Bangladeshi televisions. Rifat, a graduate student, used a mix of local, national, international and diasporic media. She watched Heartland News (a Carbondale local television channel), CNN and PBS documentary. She read Prothom Alo regularly, Weekly 2000, Ananya (Special Woman), occasionally. However, Bangladeshis with limited English proficiency depended on Bangladeshi media for their news and entertainment. These groups of people also watch Bangladeshi television for news, entertainment and sports. Post-9/11 Media Narratives and the Media Mix Post-9/11 backlash left a significant impact on the self-definitions of the Bangladeshi community, an issue I have discussed in detail in chapter 4, arguing that Bangladeshis not only faced official scrutiny and a hostile street post-9/11, but they also experienced a “forced” Muslim identity (Aksoy, 2006), which permeated their thinking, as US media continuously reported the international and domestic issues from an Islam vs. West frame. As I discussed in chapter 4 citing interview data, many Bangladeshis reported stop using mainstream US media for news on Islam, terrorism and Muslim societies because they found those news ideologically packaged, simplistic and predictable. Mahbub Morshed, who taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale during the time of the interview, watched volumes of television programs, both American and Bangladeshi. Morshed’s family subscribed to two Bangladeshi channels. Morshed said his media use changed once his

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family began subscribing to Bangladeshi television channels. He said, “First I used to follow the political news (in US television channels), now I don’t. I occasionally see BBC, CNN and MSNBC websites, sometimes now I read the New York Times, because I found materials that I can use for my teaching.” A heavy media user, Naseema also experienced even an intense troubling encounter with US media, which resulted in less US media in her mix post 9/11. Naseema, a part-time schoolteacher and mother of two school-going sons, watched American cable television a lot, which brought not only dissonance and discomfort but also what she called a “racial thinking” in her, reminding her that she was a Muslim. Overall, Bangladeshis perceived post-9/11 media narratives on Islam and Muslims not only exclusionary but also insufficient to capture the complexity of their lives and identities. Connecting to Old Home Bangladeshis welcomed media from their old home not only because those media provided them a space to imagine their lives in a different framework than the West-versus-Islam frame “forced” on them, but those media also performed a “linking function” (Sampedro, 1998; Thompson, 2002; Ogan, 2001), connecting them with their home country and culture they left behind but have not forgotten (Naficy, 2003). Seeking information about old home is a necessity for many first-generation Bangladeshis because many have families in Bangladesh and they felt the need to be updated about the affairs there. Many of them regularly send money to Bangladesh to build houses and run businesses and therefore they need to make seamless contacts with their families and relatives there. The political upheaval that was going on during the time of my fieldwork accentuated the need for information about Bangladesh affairs. The information-seeking was augmented by a pull from their old home that was routinely created by political and economic parties in Bangladesh. This ever-increasing need for information about their old home and mainstream media’s lack of coverage of these affairs made diasporic media the most sought-after outlets of information for the members of diasporic communities (Kolar-Panov, 1997).

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Economics Professor Mahbub Morshed was always interested about the affairs of Bangladesh, which he fulfilled either by reading newspapers or by talking to family members over the telephone, before he began subscribing to Bangladeshi television channels: I used to be briefed by my parents about the politics of Bangladesh. Now I can read and watch. I am an expert now. I was always interested about Bangladesh and wanted to be updated in both the situations of this country and Bangladesh. I feel as if I am living in home. I doubt I would watch that much Bangladeshi television if I were in Bangladesh. We have 90 channels but we prefer Bangladeshi channels. People are talking in Bangla, it’s a special feeling--I feel good. We were born and brought up in Bangladesh; anything that is going on there appeals to us. Re-imagining Home One of the impacts of globalization and the communication technologies is that the migrants are better able and willing to make social, economic and cultural connections across borders, especially with their old home. That ability helps them to re-imagine and reconstruct their home by reconciling the usual tensions of “home here” and “home there.” It’s an expansion of the concept of home, stretching the home to their country of origins where members of their extended family live. A small-town resident, Mahbub Morshed watched Bangladeshi television not only to seek information about his old home but also because he wanted to re-imagine his life--his childhood, college, and early part of his career--in Bangladesh. The day-to-day life in Bangladesh, political upheavals, socio-cultural patterns attract him because those provide him with imagery of the life he lived in Bangladesh. Naseema, a New Yorker, watches news in television almost regularly, but she not only looks for information but also the visual snapshots that accompany news. “By looking at the sky, people, I want to have an idea of what type of weather was there, was it raining, etc,” Naseema recalled in a nostalgic voice. “When I miss my family and friends then I turn on Bangladeshi television channel--I try to

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understand Bangladesh, I connect myself with Bangladeshi environment,” Naseema said. While Naseema and Morshed maintain connections with their old home primarily through television, 28-year-old restaurant worker Fuad uses the cell phone, which is one of the most significant but underresearched modes of transnational connectivity (Vertovec, 2004). Fuad lived with his brother’s family in a small apartment in New York City, but his home also includes his mother and other siblings who lived in Bangladesh. Fuad can reconstruct his family splintered in two continents through routine regular phone call. Apparently these mundane telephone calls give people like Fuad a feeling that even though they are physically separated they can still function as a family (Mahler, 2001) Fuad, who worked six days a week, used cell phones extensively to maintain connections with his family members in Bangladesh because it suited his schedule: I call home, talk to family members--two-to-three times a week. I have two brothers in Bangladesh. I call and my brothers also call back. So it is almost every day that we talk-usual mundane talks, updating each others..We have been grown together, now we are separated. I want them to understand that we are not that far and we also want to feel that they are not that far either. We just talk about five minutes. Now situation is like that if we do not call in three days they think is there any problem?..We do not feel that that we are geographically apart. Even we do funs over telephone! Being able to know the affairs of home daily is a new kind of engagement with the old home—this is not just connecting with home; this is more of expanding home, by re-imagining home in every-day lives. People brought different imageries to express their ability to imagine their expanded construction of home by pointing to the compressed sense of time and distance that communication technologies brought in. Mahbub who came to the United States in 1982, recalled how expensive and difficult it was to call back home then. Now his family calls back home almost every day. “It has become Dhaka-Chittagong now,” he said, invoking the image that living in the United States seems like living another city in Bangladesh.

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Exoticizing Home Home-country media use narratives of some participants suggest that some Bangladeshis create a space exoticizing their home country, culture and language and take emotional refuge there. Many Bangladeshis found video clips of mundane lives of Bangladesh and Bengali words and expressions appealing. Bangladeshi television programs not only offered entertainment for Mitu, who was a graduate student during the interview, but also provided her materials to engage in long telephone conversations with her family members and friends in Bangladesh. “Sometimes when I talk to my friends and give a detailed description of what was going on television, they become surprised-they do not watch that meticulously like I do,” Mitu said. Thus Bangladeshi media provide Mitu with social cues to socialize with her friends on a regular basis. Most of Mitu’s family members live in the United States and she does not need the information about Bangladesh on a daily basis. But still she watched Bangladeshi television programs online and also read online newspapers, mainly to escape from the busy and stressful life of a graduate student. Mitu said that she was spending increasingly more time online: First she read only one newspaper; then she began reading all the Bengali newspapers plus the weeklies. She would watch Bangladeshi television channels three months a year when she visited her brother at Atlanta, Georgia. She would watch programs on farming and agriculture, which did not have any relevance in her life. I just love to watch just because I was born there. I know some information about some performers. It’s a window way out in the midst of work. I can go there whenever I want. When I work in the lab, I visit a website, see one program, maybe not that important, but I enjoy it. One special aspect of Mitu’s Bangladeshi media use is that she would read only Bengali-language newspapers and watch only Bengali programs in Bangladeshi channels. “I love to read Bangla--here I read English all the time--it’s a relief to read Bangla; it is kind of a recreation for me,” said Rifat, another graduate student. Both Mitu and

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Rifat used their home country for escaping from their stressful life as graduate students. Television Drama and Imagining Home Television drama, the top-ranked programs on Bangladeshi television (Television play, 2006), was popular before private television channels were available widely. Many Bangladeshis watched those dramas, both the single-act and the serials, in video cassettes and DVD’s. But television dramas transformed substantially as the private television channels became popular in Bangladesh. Drama serials, although modeled on Indian television soaps, are shorter, usually not more than one hundred episodes. Large parts of the serials were shot inside home, showing activities and conversations in the family settings. I knew from my experience in Bangladesh that television dramas are popular, but I was curious why Bangladeshis in the United States would like to watch those. I also knew that many first-generation Bangladeshis developed a taste for drama back home and carried that over when they came to the United States, like the way they carried their dietary preferences. But there might be something else. My interview and fieldwork data suggest that Bangladeshis watched television drama serials to sustain a diasporic imagination—imagining a life they left behind. Shahnaz, a 35-year-old housewife who had been living in the United States for 15 years, said that she always maintained contact with Bangladesh. She said that her relations with her old home Bangladesh had become closer after she began watching television dramas in a Bangladeshi television channel: I think my relations with Bangladesh have become a little bit closer. I have been living here for many years. The culture and life in Bangladesh is changed. When I used to visit Bangladesh after a couple of years interval, I see many things changed. For example, let’s talk about fashions. Compared to Bangladeshi sari and dress, it seems that we are outdated. Shahnaz’s friend Kajol was also an avid fan of drama serials. Compared to Shahnaz, she was a relative newcomer in the United States. She watched television drama serials when she lived in

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Bangladesh. She liked a particular aspect of the drama serials: “Now dramas are life-based. Before, it was like drama. There were more dramatizations. Even the language was different. It has changed. The way I am talking now has become the language of drama. I like that.” Mohammad Ali, a dentist who practiced mainly in the Bangladeshi community, watched television dramas primarily for entertainment. He developed the habit of watching television dramas back home. “I think drama is realistic, they portray real life. There are some dramas that are funny. Those are appropriate for killing time.” Roushan Jahan, a professional woman in her mid-thirties, had been working in the Department of Education in New York City for eight years. She watched Bangladeshi television a lot. She subscribed to NTV—the popular Bangladeshi channel. Roushan summarized the roles of Bangladeshi television in her life in the following way: I left Bangladesh in 1993 and visited once since. I could not visit for works and papers/documentation. I feel for Bangladesh very much. I love my country very much. Now Bangladesh is very close to me because I am watching television and knowing what is happening. Even I see news about my old home district. People are speaking Bengali— sometimes I feel I am not in a foreign country. Although there are many Bangladeshis in New York, but (while watching television) in my bedroom I feel Bangladesh. When I come home in the evening, I turn on the television, sit and watch Bangladeshi television as I sip my tea. When I watch and listen to people speaking Bengali, all my day’s fatigue goes away. I also watch television plays also. Diasporic Media in Everyday Life As discussed above, diasporic media not only provide Bangladeshis niche information about their old homes but also create a space to imagine their lives as ethnic Bangladeshis in their new home. But this framework—analyzing media-use in terms of connecting to real or imagined “home”—fails to capture the essence of people’s diasporic experiences. People’s media use needs to be premised within the routines of everyday life taking into account “its inscription within the

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routines of everyday life and the interweaving of domestic and public discourses” (Morley & Silverstone, 1991). This formulation, focusing our gaze on the everyday routines of people’s lives, reveals how media are integral parts of people’s lives and how roles of media should be analyzed in multiple layers. Bangladeshi television and locally published Bengali newspapers fit well in the lives of many first-generation Bangladeshis whose social mobility is limited by their minimal proficiency in English. Bangladeshi drama serials and Bollywood movies fill the long mornings and afternoons of a 32-year-old housewife whose husband remains out of home during that time for cab driving. “My television is turned on all day so that I get a company,” said Farhana, who lived with her husband and two children in a Bangladeshi neighborhood in Astoria. She watched two Bangladeshi channels, Channel i and NTV, and two Indian channels, Sony and Zee TV. She said that she watched news and dramas on Bangladeshi television channels. She also liked Hindi music. “They are being played all day long while I work,” she said. She organizes her daily life around the television schedules. Drama serials that she watches air at mid-morning to early afternoon-prime time at Bangladesh television program. She gets all of her chores done early in the morning so that she can watch those programs uninterrupted. Not only Farhana, other stay-at-home women I interviewed also told similar stories of their media use: They watch television to fill the long hours in the mornings and early afternoons, when their husbands and children are away from home. Many Bangladeshis with professional jobs also watch Bangladeshi television daily. I found that Bangladeshi television programs were slotted in people’s daily lives. A 50-year-old New York City Council official, whom I met quite serendipitously at the Dhaka University Alumni Association picnic, shared his detailed media engagement. After we got down from the picnic bus, he offered me a ride to the place where I was staying. On our way home he stopped at a Bangladeshi tea stall and offered me tea. We talked for a while, and after a few minutes he looked at his wristwatch. He said that after going home he would watch Bangladesh television news and Ramizer Aina (Mirror of Ramiz), a drama serial, before going to bed. He said that he regularly watches Bangladeshi television news and some of the select programs. He said that in the 24-hour schedule many programs were

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rerun and it suited his life style here. For example, if he missed the news or any of his favorite drama shows in any night, he would watch those programs next morning, before he hit the road for office. Mohammad Sadek, 50, employed as a pharmacist during the time of the interview in the summer of 2006, always maintained a connection with his old home Bangladesh. His parents lived in Bangladesh and he had appointed two caregivers to look after them. Although he occasionally attends social gatherings of his coworkers, he said he still felt that he could not “socialize with their culture that much.” He said that Bangladeshi television channels filled a part of his life that was missing. Watching Bangladeshi television filled his free time as well as connected him with Bangladesh. In a sense, watching some programs of Bangladeshi television channels, such as news and drama, had become a ritual of his life, the same way visiting a Bangladeshi restaurant for tea and gossip had become a part of his life. Everyone is sitting at home, enjoying news, and drama. I also do the same. I need to watch the 9 O’ clock news—what is going on in Bangladesh-- it has become kind of an addiction. Media has changed my life, now I get the news from Bangladesh on a daily basis. I get information about the fish market, how much vegetable cost, all sorts of news for us…. we cannot do without this. I have NTV, ATN Bangla and I have heard more (channels) are coming. Bangladeshi and Indian television programs occupied a big part in the daily lives of Bangladeshi housewives in New York. Many of them used to watch Zee TV and Sony before Bangladeshi channels were widely available. Some of these people developed their habit of watching Zee TV and Sony from back home in Bangladesh. The narratives of the people I interviewed and my observation data strongly indicate that Bangladeshi and Indian channels had become so integrated with their lives that they could not even imagine their lives without those television channels. In fact, a few women mentioned television watching as one of their daily activities when they recalled a typical day’s activities during the interview and focus group discussions.

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Spicing up Social Conversations Media allusions frequently come up in the social gatherings of Bangladeshis, both in small towns and large cities. They talk about Bangladeshi politics endlessly and debate fiercely about the issues. Media reports give them the information and act as the lubrications (Gillespie, 2000) of their social interactions by providing them common reference points to socialize (Shi, 2005) with other fellow Bangladeshis. I observed that Bangladeshi television programs were conversation starters at many family and social occasions. During my fieldwork my family members and I were invited for dinners in Bangladeshi homes on many occasions. I attended those dinners with a hope that I would recruit participants and also have an opportunity to observe their lives unobtrusively. On many occasions, I saw the host family’s television on and usually the guest would look at the television screen and ask: What is going on now? Is it Ramijer Aina going on? No, it is Ranger Manush. Ramijer Aina is on Tuesday. Television and Cultural Negotiations Although second-generation young children in the Bangladeshi households are not enthusiastic about Bangladeshi television, they end up watching some programs with their parents. Mahfuzur Rahman, a print journalist turned electronic media practitioner, sounded very enthusiastic about the prospect of home-country television in promoting Bangladeshi culture in the diaspora. Rahman, an ATN Bangla executive during the time of the interview, closely monitored the trends of Bangladeshi television channels in the community primarily for business reasons. He said that television was having an impact on the Bangladeshi households. According to his observation, Due to television, second-generation Bangladeshis can have a chance to live in an atmosphere where Bengali words are

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 spoken every day. My younger daughter, who came here at the age of three, watches Bengali drama in TV. She knows the Bengali alphabets, cultural icons, and listens to Bangladeshi music. What I could not attain spending hundreds of dollar a month, I am getting it now through television. They all watch TV--listen to Bengali words either intentionally or unintentionally. They are becoming interested about Bangladesh and Bengali culture.

However, many parents, most of whom are enthusiastic viewers of Bangladeshi television programs, did not recommend those uncritically for their children who did not know much about Bangladesh. They were concerned that those programs would not make them interested and knowledgeable about Bangladesh. Rather, they would develop a negative idea about Bangladesh, or reinforce their already held negative attitudes about Bangladesh. A heavy user of US and Bangladeshi media, Naseema was very concerned about how media would influence her two sons. I interviewed Naseema after I interviewed her 20-yearold niece with her two friends. Those young people shared their negative ideas about Bangladesh candidly with me and I brought those into Naseema’s attention. Naseema’s response was detailed, thoughtful and reflective of her experience with Bangladeshi media use in a home where her two sons, almost ignorant about Bangladesh, were growing up: Children here mostly view Bangladesh in a negative light... When they turn on Bangladeshi channels they see RAB (stands for Rapid Action Battalion, a special security force in Bangladesh, which was widely blamed for many extra judicial killings) killing people, hartal (strikes), burning. They get all the negative information about Bangladesh from Bangladeshi media. American channels also give negative news about Bangladesh.. Parents express their raw frustrations when they talk about Bangladesh in the family. They (children) get this picture. They were not grown in the environment of Bangladesh. We can see the negatives and positives. Children do not have the perspectives.. I wanted before that my children

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watch Bangladesh television, especially TV drama and news. Now I do not want fearing the reverse results. Home-country television had become available to the Bangladeshis in New York and other parts of the United States only for a few years before I conducted the fieldwork. So, it remains to be seen what type of long-term impact it will have on second-generation young people of Bangladeshi origin. But what Mahfuz said about Bangladeshi television’s effects on their young children demands further exploration. This is true that Bangladeshi television provided a tool to the parents who are eager to teach their children Bengali language and Bengali culture. Bangladeshi people make an effort to transform their homes into spheres of Bangladeshi culture, primarily by speaking Bengali at home and retaining the ethnic Bengali dietary practices. They also decorate their homes with emblems of Bangladeshi culture. Because of those initiatives children of Bangladeshi origin perceive their homes and the world outside their homes as two cultural spheres, and they had to switch back and forth between these two spheres (Rahman, 2000). Although parents are aware about the situations of their children, they never cease their search for new ways to instill Bengali culture, and Bangladeshi television seemed to provide them with a potent tool because it has the power of beaming Bengali words and images to their children. Many parents proudly reported during the formal interviews or informal conversations that their young children learned Bengali words and even memorized Bengali songs by watching television. However, parents also reported that their children watch Bangladeshi television rather “actively,” asking questions about what they watched, which ranged from simple information-seeking queries to complex cross-cultural issues. Shahnaz, a 35-year-old housewife who raised a 16-year-old daughter in the United States, welcomed Bangladeshi television in her home. Her children, although initially they did not like those channels, watched some programs, such as music shows and dramas. Seeing Bangladeshi young women in skirts, her daughter brought the issue of “proper” Bangladeshi dressing, putting Shahnaz in a difficult situation: Dhaka is much more advanced--for instance, when I dress up my daughter I become cautious… but when she watches

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 drama then she says “Bangladeshis wear even worse, why do you ask me not to wear those?” If she wears something that is tight-fitted I object. Yesterday we watched something… I saw one girl wearing a skirt above her knee, then I told her that when I left the country 15 years back I did not see those. There are something that we do not do here, but they do in Bangladesh--they are much more advanced…she cannot square what she hears from me and what she sees in television. She got confused--she asks me questions and sometimes I do not know the answers.

This is a common practice of first-generation BangladeshiAmerican parents to discipline their young children in terms of how they dress, with whom they socialize, what they do outside their home, etc. In so doing, they usually invoke the examples of authentic Bengali culture, food, dress etc., and ask their children to retain part of their ethnic Bengali identity. One of the visible aspects of that identity is dress. It is not that parents ask their children to wear Bangladeshi dress all the time; they approve most the dresses such as jeans and shortsleeved tops but a constant tug of war usually is in play on how revealing those clothes will be. As Gillespie (1995) observed in the case of Punjabi families in London, Bangladeshi television programs sometimes prove to be subversive to immigrant parents by providing a counter-narrative of Bangladeshi culture to their children. Although Bangladeshi television put Shahnaz in a difficult position, it nonetheless helps her unfreeze her idea about Bangladesh and the evolving nature of Bengali culture. She realizes that the distinctions of American and Bangladeshi dress and fashions are not as stark as she believed them to be. Thus, although she does not know the answers, she faces the difficult and uncomfortable question: What is Bengali culture? Her question also brings the issue of who represents which Bengali culture. This is an interesting representational issue that needs to be analyzed further. Emerging Questions The primary focus of this book was to weave an ethnographic narrative on how Bangladeshis in the United States maintain connections and

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construct their identity though their use of media. I explored how people use diasporic media not only to maintain connections with their old home but also how those media are slotted in their daily lives in their new home. I also explored in detail not only how the engagements with diasporic media give meaning to their day-to-day mundane life, but also how they stimulate questions about identity negotiations. However, many important issues pertaining to media, cultural negotiations, and identity constructions remained unexplored; they just appeared briefly in my ethnography. Those issues are important in understanding diasporic media, but I do not have sufficient empirical data to make conclusive remarks. Creating Transnational Communities? Going beyond the connection between the host countries and the old homes, some researchers examined whether transnational media help people in diaspora to imagine their lives as part of a community scattered across the globe (Carstens, 2003; Sun 2006; Dudrah, 2002; Karim 2003a). Drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson (1983), they argued that telephone, the Internet, satellite television and other media help construct a web of connections among ethnic diasporas living in various parts of the world (Karim, 2006). Not only media but also other global forces such as deregulation, privatization, and technological convergence contribute to a particular form of transnational imagination (Sun, 2006). Although people of a particular diaspora can now access a wide variety of information about different diasporas, it is not conclusive that they lead to a unified sense of transnational identity (Cartstens, 2003). Many of my participants said that they have family members who live in Canada, Europe and the Middle East, and they maintain connections with those people mainly by telephone. Many of the people that I met and interviewed also lived in other countries before migrating to the United States. The seamless communications not only connect them with their relatives and friends in those countries but also help them to construct a narrative that they are part of a transnational community. The sense of this transnational community is much more apparent in Facebook and other social networking sites where discussions centered on Bangladesh and Bengali culture give shape to a transnational sense. Transnational movements concerning

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Bangladesh and Bengali culture and language also crystallize the sense of transnational identity. Bangladeshi television channels, such as Channel i, NTV, and ATN Bangla have recently begun airing programs in North America, Europe and Middle East. It will take another project to see whether these media create a new transnational Bangladeshi identity. Mainstream Audience? As I was conducting fieldwork in New York City and in Carbondale, I was grappling to understand what type of audience--the “central problematic” of the discipline of mass communication (Allor, 1988)-Bangladeshis were. Usually Bangladeshis and other small immigrant communities are conceptualized as marginal groups in the broader context of the society they live in. Therefore they can be logically conceptualized as a marginal audience. Their marginality is defined in terms of their differences with the mainstream. But my thinking was problematized as I lived with the Bangladeshis in New York City and Carbondale and observed their media use patterns. However, in no way did my field data give conclusive evidence to determine the nature of the audience that Bangladeshis constitute. This needs substantial theoretical grounding buttressed with empirical data, which is beyond the scope of my current project. My idea about the marginal versus mainstream audience transformed as I began analyzing my observation and interview data, comparing those with my earlier experience about the media use patterns of Bangladeshis who lived in the United States and other European countries. When I was a college student in Bangladesh during the mid-1980s, I was an enthusiastic reader of some letters-to-the-editor published in a popular weekly magazine. Those writings, penned by Bangladeshi immigrants in Western countries, contained snippets of information about different aspects of the countries they wrote from. But mostly what I got from those writings was the writers’ yearnings for the country, people and culture they had left behind. Those writings told the stories of a group of people who were isolated from Bangladesh, yet not integrated in their host societies. The tremendous changes that have occurred in communication technologies and their impact on the people of the Bangladeshi diaspora can be understood if

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we contrast the lives of those writers with the lived experience of a Bangladeshi who lives in a Western diaspora now. The feeling that they are not isolated, that they are part of transnational communities, was the dominant theme in the narratives of Bangladeshis I interviewed. The Bangladeshi people I lived with did not seem to be marginal audience in terms of the volume of media they receive and the way they use those media. Bangladeshis in New York City have access to an array of media such as Bangladeshi television, Indian television, Bangladeshi newspapers, other online media, and a plethora of Bengali-language newspapers published locally. They also have access to all the US media--electronic, print and online. We should be cautious to identify the audiences of diasporic and ethnic media as a marginal audience because diasporic media are much more integrated to their host mainstream society than we usually think. Zhou, Chen & Cai (2006) observed that English-proficient and assimilated Chinese immigrants who moved out of their ethnic enclaves earlier showed a tendency to return to their enclaves. They also got involved with ethnic organizations and turned to ethnic media for information and entertainment. Also, the ethnic and diasporic media increasingly find their voices translated in the mainstream publications. For instance, Voices That Must be Heard, a project of the Independent Press Association’s New York office, survey the city’s ethnic newspapers including Bangladeshis’, select stories, and channel those to media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times. However, this is not primarily because of the diasporic media that are becoming increasingly fluid, but the imagination of the people who live in that media environment reveals more about the nature of the diasporic audience. People in the diaspora imagine their lives in a space where they are not isolated anymore; they are connected with their old and new homes and other diasporas scattered throughout the world. These people (audience) may be conceptualized as marginal from a national perspective but they are not marginal in a transnational context. Smart Marketing? Diasporic media use in the context of a globalized world raises an important question about the nature of international communication.

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The popularity of Close Up programs (American Idol type music show that drew contestants from all over Bangladesh) in the Bangladeshi diaspora is significant because it embodies the impacts of globalization of culture on media and their audiences. The format of some television programs, such as American Idol and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, is globalized and appropriated by different televisions throughout the world. This trend in international communication highlights how global forms are localized to facilitate not only the global capital development but also to facilitate the expressions of local identities (Straubhaar, 1997). This trend also shifts our attention to glocalization, hybridity, transculturalization, and indigenization (Lull, 1995) away from the simplistic assumptions of cultural imperialism and electronic colonialism. However, rather than glorifying hybridity and glocalization as sites of local expressions, we should demystify the concept by illuminating the process. In fact, in the case of Close Up programming hybridity was used as a business tool and it is indeed a successful strategy of global music, television and films (Chalaby, 2006). A multinational company sponsored the Close Up programs and it utilized an innovative marketing strategy to make the program popular in Bangladesh and in Bangladeshi diasporas all over the world. The marketing slogan of the program was Gao Bangladesh Gao (Sing Bangladesh, Sing) and through massive television commercials the organizers created a festival-like atmosphere in Bangladesh. The company marketed a commemorative toothpaste in the country before airing the program. The people in the Bangladeshi diasporas in North America, Europe and the Middle East were brought into the program by making arrangements that they can also participate in selecting the contesting artists. Cell phone technologies, which are widely used in Bangladesh and Bangladeshi diasporas, played a crucial role in the success of this program. The creative marketing strategies employed by the media executives in Bangladesh to incorporate the expatriate Bangladeshis also resulted in increased home-country media consumption. A case in point is the popularity of Close Up programs in the New York Bangladeshi community. According to the organizers, for the first time in the history of Bangladesh, the non-resident Bangladeshis in the United States and the United Kingdom participated in the program. The

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qualifying programs aired from eleven different locations in Bangladesh. Most of the songs selected in the program were patriotic and highly emotional. According to the Close Up website, its purpose was to give encouragement to the youth of Bangladesh, and give them a sense of pride and confidence. The videos were shot in various locations, especially the tourist resorts in Bangladesh. Later, Close Up artists visited the United States and performed in different locations, including New York City, attracting huge crowds. I came to know about the Close Up programs during my fieldwork in New York City. During my stay in New York City, I watched television programs with my informants and other participants. One of my informants shared stories enthusiastically about how he liked Close Up shows and how popular the programs were among Bangladeshis in his neighborhood. He showed me DVDs of the recorded programs and briefed me about the performers. Other Bangladeshis I interviewed or visited, particularly men, also spoke highly about the Close Up programs. For example, 60-year-old John said that he watched all Close Up series on the Bangladeshi television channel. “We like it because the show tried to exploit the talents of our Bengali folks; it’s an exploration.” Conclusions Media use in the diasporic context is a more complex terrain than it appears in the surface. Participants reported using diasporic media in conjunction with a wide variety of media in multi-channel households. Although most of the participants were enthusiastic about the availability of a wide variety of media, including television programs from Bangladesh, they showed some uncertainty in terms of how they would categorize the Bangladeshi media available to them. People with limited English proficiency depended heavily on Bangladeshi media primarily because of language. Participants who had professional jobs also used Bangladeshi media extensively. Some participants brought the necessity vs. pleasure dichotomy to talk about their media mix. They said that although they have reservations about some US media, they “need” to follow those media. Bangladeshi media, especially television programs, provided them with pleasure of television-viewing and at the same time connected them with their old home and the

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Bangladeshi community in the United States and other diasporas worldwide. But this dichotomy cannot capture the complexity of diasporic media use of a wide variety of Bangladeshis in the United States. The endless cell phone conversations in Bengali that someone will overhear while strolling in Jackson Heights of New York City are mostly intended for business. It is true that Bangladeshis in the United States used their home-country media to connect with their old homes and cultures, but media meant more than just connecting devices to them. Diasporic media were integrated in the lives they lived in the United States and the lives they imagined as ethnic Bangladeshis. Media, especially television drama serials, invoked a diasporic imagination, an imagination that is not necessarily tantamount to grand national narratives; rather it is a quotidian imagination. This is an imagination of lived experience in Bangladesh—in families, offices, marketplaces. This imagination creeps into the familiar and semiscripted plots of drama serials. Mentioning the semi-scripted dimension of television drama serials, one interview participant said that she can relate to the characters of those and the settings of the serials, and they remind her about the life that she had just left behind. The viewing of television in diasporic context often invokes questions that relate to culture, identity, and assimilation. Gillespie (1995) found in her ethnography on the Punjabi community in Southall that transnational television consumption in family settings often brings up the issue of cultural practice, cultural changes and identity issues. In Gillespie’s (1995) study, the cross-cultural and identity-related issues surfaced as the Southall Punjabi families consumed an increasingly “transnational range of TV and films” (p.76). Similar discussions also surface while Bangladeshi parents watch Bangladeshi television programs with their young children who are not that familiar with Bangladesh and Bangladeshi culture.

CHAPTER 7

Negotiating Religion, Gender, Generation and Class

People in modern diaspora have to go through multiple layers of negotiations, not only in their host society but also inside their own homes. A great majority of people in the Western diaspora including the United States are economic migrants who maintain substantial contacts with their old home and culture not only because they consider their old cultures rich but also because they think conforming to that culture would give them some sort of coherence during their cultural transformations in their new homes. As I have discussed in chapter 2, maintaining contacts with their original home country has increasingly become a necessity for many Bangladeshi immigrants as well because they contribute significantly to the economic development of their original home by sending remittance and investing there. Tremendous development of communication technologies, especially cell phones, Internet, and transnational television, help maintain connections with their old home and cultures. Although the old culture remains present in immigrants’ life, they have to engage in a constant negotiation process with their new home regarding how much of the old homeconnectivity and culture they would retain in their new life. The negotiation also involves religion that they need to share with the followers of the faith from other ethnic backgrounds. Negotiations are also generational in the sense that they have to engage with their children who are much more integrated in the culture of their host 147

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society. Also, they need to recalibrate the gender and family relations that are disrupted by immigration. Religion Many world religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam, are practiced across cultures and nationalities. Therefore, when people of those faiths migrate they bring their “national” brand of religion to a transnational context in which they practice their faiths with people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The Muslim Bangladeshis (There are no statistics available on what percentage of Bangladeshi immigrants are Muslims; but it can be assumed that it will be more than 80%--the percentage of Muslims in Bangladesh), constitute a part of what Aminah McCloud (2003) called “at once a mosaic, and a tattered quilt” (p. 159) of Muslim community in the United States. Although it is difficult to ascertain the number of Muslim population in the United States, it is widely believed that that their numbers would be somewhere between six to ten millions. The Muslim community in the United States is composed of indigenous Muslims and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. Bangladeshis are part of the expanding South Asian immigrant Muslims who constitute about 35 percent of all immigrant Muslims, followed by Arabs (20 percent), Africans, Iranians, Bosnians, Somalis, Chinese and others (McCloud, 2003). Depending on where they live, Bangladeshi Muslims must engage with Muslims of other ethnicities and negotiate their religious practices. Bangladeshi Americans, who hail from the third or fourth largest Muslim-majority country but are markedly different from Arab Muslims--the boiler plate image of Muslims in Western countries--have to go through a two-fold negotiation process in terms of their religious identity. They have to negotiate the mediated image of Islam and Muslim and navigate not only an unsympathetic population toward Islam post-9/11 but also a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Muslim population who vie to define Islam in the United States. Negotiating Mediated Islam Islam is generally represented in the Western mediated discourses not only as a religion but also as a culture that solely explains the lives of

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Muslims all over the world. Despite their substantial national and ethnic differences, Muslim communities in the United States are largely identified as a unified whole, which frames Muslims as predominantly Arab, conservative, religious, violent, non-democratic and anti-modern. Different brands of Islamists and Jihadists reinforce the Western discourse by defining Muslims as a unified community with an identity distinct from the West. Those voices are important to mention, not because they represent the majority of Muslims population, but because they are picked up by media and the right-wing politicians and they use those assertions as the representative voice of the so-called Muslim world. Popular cultural outlets such as film and television historically followed the Orientalist line of representations and explicitly or implicitly tied Islam with Arab and all the imageries that come with it. Continuous spotlight on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East and American media’s tendency to present conflicts as news seamlessly project an image that Arabs (read Muslims) are always at war with the West. The 9/11 terrorist attacks further deepened the Arab (read Muslim)-West conflict and their mutual exclusivity. Consequently, “to the average American, the word Islam and Muslim conjure images of Arab nationals, the Middle East, the terrorism” (Rashid, 2000), and thus pose a threat to them. Bangladeshis are caught in the process of exclusion and inclusion by which the Western media construct the mediated image of Islam and Muslims. Bangladeshi Muslims, with their moderate posture to Islam, are excluded in the construction of Islam in Western media. For example, when Western media construct the image of Muslims as communities opposed to women’s rights, they always highlight the example of Saudi Arabia where women are not allowed to drive, but conveniently ignore the example of Bangladesh where women routinely get elected to the highest office of the country. I’m not suggesting here that the situations of women have significantly improved in Bangladesh and they are not oppressed by social patriarchy, religious zealots and greedy corporations, but some of the stigmas that are commonly associated with Islam and women in Western discourses certainly have been shattered by women’s election to the powerful positions in Bangladesh. Bangladeshis in the diaspora observe that in spite of being the third or fourth largest Muslim country, they do not contribute even marginally to construct the narratives of

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Islam and Muslims in Western discourses. But, Bangladeshis are nonetheless lumped together in the discursively created category of Muslim, leaving Bangladeshi Muslims in a difficult terrain of negotiation of their religious identity. Bangladeshis’ frustrations are expressed when they see that their host society does not recognize their distinctiveness and stereotype them for being Muslims. College junior Kishwar, who socialized extensively with American undergraduate students, thought that religious ignorance was a “very common thing” among American college students. Kishwar, who did not dress like a “stereotypical” Muslim woman, usually did not reveal her religious identity on the ground that she never wanted to know the religious affiliation of the person who would be asking about her identity. But at times, she would answer just to make a point and to “educate” people about diversity in Islam. Once people knew that she was a Muslim, the next obvious question would be: Why she did not cover (wearing head scarf). I tell them there are many Muslim women who do not cover. Stop being so ignorant, go visit Muslim countries and have your own statistics, see how many women cover up and how many don’t. Everybody has her or his own belief, not all Muslims have the same level of beliefs. You have Catholics and you have Christians (other denominations). Bangladeshis aspire to remain Muslims and be recognized as such, but at the same time they show an aversion to be identified primarily as Muslims--not only because Muslim identity has become criminalized post-9/11 but also because this Muslim-only identity does not represent who they are. Although depending on the existing social, political and economic conditions, Bangladeshis historically showed ambivalence to their national identity articulations; they neither ceased to be Bengalis (ethno-religious identity) nor had rejected their association with Islam (Ahmed, 2001; Ahmed and Nazneen, 1990; Kabir, 1995). Maintaining this ambivalent position in the diaspora has become impossible after 9/11 because “both Bush and Osama need Islam, the religion of the Arabs, more than anybody else to define Muslims in clear-cut religious terms” (Chowdhury, 2003). People in the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States largely share the ambivalence of their identity not only

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because most of them are recent immigrants but also because they are continuously exposed to those identity narratives through their use of Bangladeshi media, where the complex interplay of ethno-linguistic nationalism and people’s religious aspirations find a balance. Bangladeshi media, largely secular, use the spirit of the country’s liberation war, a culmination of the nation’s ethno-linguistic identity aspirations, to offset the influences of fundamentalist Islamist political elements. However, unlike Western media, mainstream Bangladeshi media construct the narrative of Islam and terrorism, focusing on the political aspect of terrorism. For example, when Bangladesh experienced a country-wide bombing by some Islamist terrorist organizations in August of 2005, media generally blamed the political parties who overlooked those activities for political expediency. The failure of the government to keep law and order also came to the forefront. Some of those terrorist groups’ association with Afghanistan was also brought in the narrative. Prothom Alo (the first light), a liberal newspaper with a large circulation, in its 15 November 2005 issue, published the photographs of the grieving family members of two judges who were killed in a terrorist bomb attack. That image, destruction caused by “Islamic” terrorist bombing, was balanced by juxtaposing the photograph of a retired chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court—an elderly man with long grey beard wearing a white skull-cap and white garb—an image symbolized in Bengali literature as a symbol of purity, tolerance, and peace. The newspaper quoted the justice as saying that Islam does not support terrorism. The firstgeneration Bangladeshi-Americans, despite their pan-Islamic connection and a sense of cultural displacement (Khan, 2003), are continuously exposed to the narratives of Islam and terrorism that emanate from their old home country. The experience of a Pakistani-Canadian Muslim feminist scholar Shahnaz Khan (2000) about the problematic aspect of Muslim identity in North America can also speak of Bangladeshi Muslims’ experience in the United States: Although my life does not fit into the essentialist categories, I am constantly pressured to identify my single truth. …As I express my desire for flexibility and the right to be contradictory and confused, which more fully reflects the

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 hybrid nature of my life, I receive subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages that I do not quite fit. My refusal to be slotted into a correct truth results in comments like ‘You are not a real Muslim, you are different, you are not like others.’ As an Other of the Other in Canada, I am constantly positioned to defend an identity I may not have defended in my “home” country Pakistan. (p. xi)

As Khan (2000) suggested, the category Muslim invokes complex reactions when it is associated with the identity of Muslim groups in the diasporic context. Khan’s participants, all Muslim women, showed an ambivalent reaction—they turned away from identifying themselves as Muslims, yet their narratives suggested a longing for a stable and comfortable identity, such as being a Muslim. Muslim identity is even more critical for Bangladeshis because an ethno-linguistic-cultural Bangladeshi identity has limited significance, if not totally absent, in the United States. If not identified by visible markers of Muslim identity such as a scarf or hijab for women and long garb, skull-cap, and long beard for men, Bangladeshis are usually mistaken to be Indians primarily because of their physical similarities with Indians and relative high familiarity of India in the United States. Bangladeshis know it very well that a majority of the Muslim men do not look like the image of a Muslim that they see in US media—bearded, turbaned, and draped in long garb. Similarly they know that a great majority of Muslim women also do not wear hijab, like the one that they always see in media. Critical scholars argue about the politics of creating homogeneity and Otherness, but Bangladeshis face a practical problem when they navigate the multi-cultural United States. The stereotypical image of Muslims delegitimizes Bangladeshis as “true” Muslims because they do not fit the stereotypes. A group of women who attended a group comprising White and Middle Eastern women said that the White women, while they recognized that Bangladeshi women were Muslim, treated them as lesser Muslims. Muslim: Bangladeshi Way? Although Muslims all over the world practice the same Islam, their ethnic, national and cultural differences shape their understanding of

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the religion. Because a great majority of ethnic Bangladeshis in the United were born and raised in Bangladesh, their understanding of Islam is shaped by what can be labeled as “Bangladeshi Islam.” Like the way many of the first-generation Bangladeshis maintain a Bangladeshi-oriented life style by eating Bangladeshi foods, dressing in a Bangladeshi way and using Bangladeshi media, they also continue to practice their Islam in Bangladeshi way. Muslims across cultures and nationalities differ not only in the interpretations of social roles of Islam but also in the way they practice some religious rituals. For example, in Bangladesh the Friday prayers are usually followed by a lengthy Munazat (A traditional way of seeking God’s forgiveness by spreading two hands in front of the face). This is not a mandatory part of prayer, but Muslims in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan perform this. Usually Muslims in Middle Eastern countries do not perform this ritual and it is markedly absent in Friday prayers in mosques run by Middle Eastern Muslims. Bangladeshis have their own mosques in places in the United States where they live in large numbers. I have the following journal entry after I attended a Friday prayer at a Bangladeshi-run mosque in Astoria, New York: I went to the local mosque to say the Friday prayers. The Bangladeshis in Queens run this mosque. About 400 people gathered in the prayer. I did not see any women. The main theme of Imam’s Khutba (pre-prayer speech) was haya (modesty). I had the feeling that I was in the Friday prayer at Dhaka. The older and conspicuously religious people (bearded, dressed in long garb) took the front row. This was very reminiscent of the Friday prayers that I attended in Bangladesh. I haven’t noticed this trend in other mosques run by Middle Eastern people. People who come early usually get the front seat. Usually the Imam in the Middle Eastern mosques does not offer any Munazat. In Bangladesh, no Friday prayer is complete without a Munazat. The Imam in the Queens mosque performed a lengthy Munazat. Before conducting the Munazat he announced that many people requested prayer for the recovery of their illness, reminding me of the similar practice in Friday prayers in Bangladesh.

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In formal interviews, most of the Bangladeshis would not differentiate between Muslims of different nationalities, but in informal talks they would talk about this issue at great length. In those informal settings they would say that although they were Muslims, they were different. I have also noticed that they enjoy a subtle pride that they are moderate and progressive, but equally Muslim. It hurts their ego if a fellow Muslim of other ethnicity accuses them of not being authentic Muslims, and at the same time they get disappointed if Americans fail to see their distinctiveness as Bangladeshi Muslims. The Battle Line The battle line between “Bangladeshi Islam” and other Islam is drawn in many fronts. One of the contending issues is the conservatism practiced in the mosques run by Middle Eastern Muslims. A prime example is the separation of male and female that is being practiced in mosques through separate sitting arrangements of men and women worshipers. Bangladeshis are ambivalent about the gender-segregation in mosques, to say the least. Many people I interviewed said that they did not like the different sitting systems in the mosques, but at the same time they were comfortable with the systems in Bangladesh where women, in spite of their visibility in society, did not even attend Friday prayers. It is not that there are religious or legal restrictions that women can attend mosques, but it is the social practices that result in a maleonly mosque attendance in Bangladesh. Some of the Carbondale participants who came to the United States more recently said that women were beginning to attend Friday mosque prayers in Dhaka, the capital city of the country. However, Bangladeshis were troubled by the zealous enforcement of the practice of separate sitting arrangements in many Middle Eastern-dominated mosques. Rifat, a Doctoral student and a frequent visitor to the mosque in Carbondale during the interview, gave a different reason for the sitting arrangements. She thought that it was not only the Arab-South Asia division that determined the degree of conservatism in the mosque, but also it depended on the mosque committee members. The Tablig (preachers) groups play a major role in determining the character of mosques. Saudis are usually strict about male-female separation, and Tablig groups support this. So, if those two groups combined, the mosque

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became more conservative, particularly in respect of women’s sitting arrangements, Rifat explained. Wearing hijab is another contending issue that many Bangladeshi women face in a multi-cultural Muslim community in the United States. Rifat, while attending a religious discussion group at mosque, noticed that women who wore hijab got this practice from their socialization back home, which helped her to treat those women in a less judgmental way: Muslim identity is very important to me. When I am with other Arab Muslims, I tell them I respect your view but I was raised in a society where I have the right to judge things on the basis of information….no one is imposing anything. I am open to your views. Hijab groups have separated me from them, but others treated me as a moderate Muslim. Some participants made the point that they were not following a different Islam, but what made them different was their cultural orientation. Saleha is religious and she sends her youngest daughter to mosque to take Islamic lessons along with her regular schooling. She had done the same for her two older daughters. For some time she also kept a tutor at home so that her daughters could learn their religious lessons. Saleha, who was not wearing a hijab during the interview, made it immensely clear to me that being a Muslim was important to her, but she did not want her religious affiliation be judged by only hijab, which had emerged as the visual signifier of Muslim identity in the West (El Hamel, 2002). She also positioned her religious identity separating herself from the Muslims of other ethnicities, who showed their Muslim identity by using religious emblem in public spheres. They cover their heads but there are differences in the way they and we lead our lives. There are some people in the Middle Eastern countries, you cannot even imagine—they are Muslims, but their roughness is beyond thinking, …they are so fast, their life style, the way they talk… I think we are better Muslims, we have the modesty—maybe we do not cover that much. They are Muslims because they were born there, speak

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 Arabic, the language of the Quran, but we try to be good Muslims.

Saleha’s narrative about “good Muslim” is somewhat common among first-generation Bangladeshi immigrants. Bangladeshi migrant workers who returned to their home country after years of work in Middle Eastern countries expressed similar feelings about good Muslim vis-á-vis Bangladeshi and Arab Muslims. While Bangladeshi workers, mostly poor and unskilled, appreciated the atmosphere conducive for their religious practices in Middle Eastern countries, they nonetheless became disillusioned finding loose morality of the Arab Muslims they met (Kibria, 2008a). Moinul Khan Rasid, a 29-year-old information technology professional, drew the line not in terms of ethnic origin of Muslims but in terms of their conservatism. Moinul Khan had been living in the United States for 14 years. His wife Sharmin joined him later. I interviewed the couple at a dinner table in the house of one of my friends in an upscale neighborhood in New York City. Moinul mentioned several times that he remained the same Bangladeshi—after going through his undergraduate education and living in the United States for many years. He also considered himself a US citizen and a Muslim. Here is what he said about his Muslim identity: To tell the truth, I will not say that I do what I should do. I need to pray five times a day, I don’t. I pledge everyday that I will start doing, but I don’t. There are some extremists who said that you will have to wear Burqa (hijab), you will have to grow beard, and you will have to do this, do that, etc. I do whatever I have learnt from the Quran. The society is changing, everyday there are updates; what we did yesterday we do not do today. There are many opportunities; you need to adjust with the society. I am not going out with shorts on every day. I am trying to uphold our religion as far as I can. There are some deviations, of course. I knew some Muslims of other countries—they always wore skull-caps. I do not know details about wearing skull-caps. But I do not think that it is necessary. If you believe in Allah, it is important to have your belief in your heart.

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Another contending issue relates to what my participants called the “judgmental” attitude of many Middle Eastern Muslims, especially about hijab. Bina, a Bangladeshi Muslim housewife, had friends of Indian, Pakistani and Arab origins with whom she had regular social contacts. She thought that as a Muslim she was different from her other Muslim friends in many respects. For example, her friends covered their heads, but she did not. She covered her head only when she had to attend mosque for prayers. The most troubling part for Bina was that some of her Arab friends thought she was not a perfect Muslim. “You understand that from their looks and their behavior,” she said. Mitu, a graduate student in Carbondale, did not like the “judgmental” attitudes of other Muslims. She recalled an incident that gave me an example of this type of attitude. Mitu took a visiting Bangladeshi well-known sociologist to the local mosque where a fellow Muslim asked her why she did not cover her head. Mitu was not willing to take this judgmental attitude. “For some reason, the atmosphere in the mosque is like that I do not feel like going there more than twice a year,” Mitu said in a bitter tone. Second-Generation Bangladeshi Youths and Islam Clearly the second-generation Bangladeshi young people do not associate themselves with “Bangladeshi Islam,” primarily because they do not strongly associate with Bangladesh. Even though in many cases they were oriented with Islam through their parents (they would teach them personally or send them to mosques), they were much more attuned to the transnational Islam that is practiced in diapsora. I asked college student Nazia, who clearly demonstrated an assertive Muslim identity, but did not look like a “typical” Muslim (did not wear hijab), whether she was a “different” kind of Muslim because of her Bangladeshi ancestry: I believe that we are Muslims regardless of our country, because of the fact that we believe in Allah, we believe in five pillars..I am an ethnic Bangladeshi and I do love my culture. My parents always promoted that culture in me but maybe because I am here and because I got the taste of so many other cultures, I do not discriminate against other Muslim people. I

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 am not saying that my parents do, but they probably have a higher patriotism for Bangladesh than I have.

Depending on where they live, the Muslim identity of secondgeneration Bangladeshis can take different shapes. In some cases, those young Bangladeshis show a much more assertive Muslim identity than their first-generation immigrant parents, who are religious but do not pursue a religion-centric identity. This identity articulation is partly a function of the post-9/11 backlash in which the young Muslims felt that it was their responsibility to own, learn about, and assert a Muslim identity in the multi-cultural United States. I have discussed this type of identity articulation in Chapters 4 and 8, solely on the basis of one interview with Nazia, a female college student who was active in a multi-cultural campus where an assertive Jewish identity was practiced, accepted, and appreciated. Kibria (2008b) pointed out that the first-generation Bangladeshi parents welcome the “revivalist Islam” to their children’s lives “viewing it as a useful tool by which to avert the social and cultural assimilation of their children into the mainstream society” (256). It is true that the first-generation Bangladeshi parents would utilize every available tool--from simple and mundane to complex mechanism--in order to orient their children not to Bengali or Muslim culture but to what they call the “family relations.” Islam--Bangladeshi, transnational or revivalist--can be considered as an effective tool in this regard. Imam Nurul Alam Raisi, Chaplain of Amherst Hospital in New York City, who was “deeply related with the Bangladeshi community,” told me the following story: A woman asked him to give her a charm for her daughter because she brings her boyfriend to home. He asked the woman whether she taught her daughter to read the Quran and how to say prayers. The woman said “No.” He then told her that she should not expect a better outcome, given that she did teach her daughter Islam. The association of second-generation immigrant Muslims with an assertive Muslim identity is sometimes complicated with the notion of what some scholars referred to as “transnational Islam,” “virtual

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Islam,” “resurgent Islam,” “new Islam.” Much has been written about the emergence of those revivalist strands of Islam involving Muslims of Europe and the United States. A section of those writings heavily focuses on the political aspects of Islam and discusses the emergence of political movements laced in Islam. Focusing on Islam’s absence of any central authority, some of those writings usually discuss how Muslims in the diaspora create a transnational Muslim identity through the use of communication technologies (Mandaville, 2001). But as Kibria (2008a, b) argues, the national context should be considered in understanding the emergence of “new Islam” in the immigrants from Bangladesh in the United Kingdom and the United States. The new Islam has many features but one particular aspect complicates the generational divide between the first-generation and what Kibria called the later-generation immigrants. Kibria (2008b) found that the later generation immigrants of Bangladeshi-origin in the United States and United Kingdom talk of “feeling distant from Bengali Islam or the style of Islam prevalent in Bangladesh” (p.254). This seems logical because the later-generation immigrants are not as attached to Bangladesh as their parents are. Many of those young people get their Islamic lessons not only from family but also from mosques, social networks and from the Internet. Those people found the Islam as practiced by their first-generation immigrant parents (labeled Bengali or Bangladeshi Islam) “impure” because Bengali folks and Sufi traditions crept into it. Also, as Kibria wrote, they thought that Bengali Islam represented tradition and hierarchy whereas “pure” Islam called for individual choice, self-reflection, reflexive modernity and equality (Kibria, 2008b). While it is not a new phenomenon (historically there were revivalist movements in many countries including Bangladesh), this trend might have consequences in terms of the family lives as well as their sense of belongingness to US society. As I have mentioned, only one of my participants (out of a dozen) articulated an assertive Muslim identity and none in the firstgeneration made Islam as their salient identity point. So, I do not have enough empirical evidence to discuss the emergence of resurgent or revival Islam in the United States. However, I think some critical questions need to be addressed to put the discussion of “pure Islam” in the Bangladeshi diaspora in perspective. It is true that the Islam as practiced in Bangladesh is influenced by Sufism and some folk traditions have been part of the

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religious practices. But the question is: is it possible to find the Islam as practiced in a particular place or time that was not influenced by the culture and power relations? Then from where would the “pure Islam” come? Pure Islam would have to have some genealogy and trajectory that needed to be tracked and deconstructed. I think it will be useful to dissect the concept of pure Islam, identifying its characteristics as understood by its practitioners. I can state from my observations in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States that some people equate pure Islam with renewed and intense religiosity while others focus on the conservative interpretations of the religious texts (almost literal) as those apply to the religious practices and the social aspects of Muslims’ lives. Some of the religious practices, such the celebration of Shab-e-Barat (the birthday of the prophet of Islam), are also questioned by some religious purists. Shab-e-Barat is a national holiday in Bangladesh and Bangladeshis celebrate it with great enthusiasm. But a small section of Bangladeshis do not celebrate it on the ground that it is not sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammad. But those issues are all but settled and there are disagreements among religious scholars. In many cases Muslims resist what is presented as “pure” Islam. This happens in the diaspora also. I witnessed an encounter between a Bangladeshi Muslim and the Muslims of the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, in a midsized town in South Dakota. A sizeable number of Muslims from Middle Eastern and South Asian countries including Bangladeshis lived in that town. There were arrangements for Friday prayers and Muslims would also gather to celebrate religious festivals in a particular venue (not a mosque). Usually the disagreements on religious and social practices would not appear on the surface but there were plenty of anecdotal evidences of occasional flare ups. The disagreements on religious issues arise partly because the Islamic texts are subject to multiple, sometimes contradictory, interpretations. There are contradictory evidences in the religious text on whether a congregation, such as the Friday congregation, can pray for the salvation of a deceased person. Orthodox Muslims believe that only family members should pray for the deceased. On the other hand, a great majority of people in Bangladesh believe that it is religiously sanctioned to pray for deceased Muslims in Friday congregations. In fact, this is a common scene in the Friday prayers in Bangladesh to note

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that people would stand up and ask the Imam to pray for their departed dear ones. I was present in the gathering convened by a Bangladeshi man whose relative passed away. Sensing that the fellow Muslims from Middle Eastern countries might object, he researched and presented the evidence in support of the claim that it is in fact supported by the religious text to pray for the deceased. Interestingly, the Bangladeshi Muslim man used the Internet for his research. Thus, the Internet not only facilitated the people in the diaspora to find the pure or “authentic” Islam but also facilitated Bangladeshis to find evidence that support their positions. I think it would be useful to consider “American Islam” rather than pure or authentic Islam to discuss the embracing of Islam by the second-generation Bangladesh-origin Muslims. As Jennifer Friedlin (2004) argued, disillusioned with the narrow interpretation of Islam by their local communities, some second-generation Muslims showed an eagerness to reform Islam by forming groups and utilizing social media. Quoting a number of reform-minded Muslims, Friedlin (2004) said that those young people desired to create a space from where they can create an alternative narrative, which would be different from the narratives of most of the mosques and the mainstream Muslim organizations. According to those people, most of the American mosques were supported by the Saudis and those mosques created a conservative narrative of Islam, much like the ones that emanate from Saudi Arabia. Many of those young Muslims are knowledgeable about Islam because in the post-9/11 backlash they had to be prepared to defend their faith with information on Islam. By claiming Islam through the reworking of the reformed interpretations of the faith, those youths showed a more assertive Muslim identity than their firstgeneration parents showed. Gender Before going to New York City for my fieldwork, I interviewed Mashooq Saleheen, a 28-year-old graduate student who lived in New York City for a number of years before moving to Carbondale to attend college. Mashooq said what I would not see in the surface would be the number of broken families in the New York Bangladeshi community. People talked about this issue when I asked them about their lives in the

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United States. Jinnah (not real name), whom I met in a Bangladeshi restaurant at 36th Street in New York City and interviewed him there, requested me to write about this problem. He did not reveal much about himself but said that he migrated from Bangladesh and worked as a cab driver for some time. Unlike most of my participants, he asked me a series of questions before he agreed to talk to me. While most of the people I interviewed said that they are concerned fearing that their children would not uphold their culture, Jinnah was concerned about the relations between a husband and wife, which he thought was the base of a family. I feel bad that husbands bring their wives going through great pains… they live here for longer years, save money, they long for their family.. Then after sometimes there are problems in the family; it hurts me. At times wife does not respect him… sometimes they would leave their husbands, it does not happen that often with men, children are trapped between the father and the mother; this is very painful. Jinnah was so concerned about the changed family relations that his whole interview revolved around this issue. He also thought I would write a book on Bangladeshis and if I addressed the issue it would help solve the problem. Interestingly, desperate to maintain the status quo in family relations, he brought the issue of culture to make his argument: Here women can move freely--but you know everything is not open. You have a culture. Women are doing fine, not a problem at all--but the problem is with the family…people need to be aware about this, like in Bangladesh you see programs on the bad sides of overpopulation; similar programs are needed here. There are many books written on boyfriendgirlfriends relations, on romantic love..there should be books on husband-wife relations as well. I understood the tensions that run between men and woman better when I talked to a 28-year-old small-store employee, Anwar, who volunteered to talk to me in a Bangladeshi community picnic. He was hanging out with two other men in the picnic spot and might have

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noticed that I was conducting a focus group interview with a group of women. In a lighter tone he told me that he was having difficulty finding a wife here among Bangladeshis. He said the Bangladeshi women even could not see that he existed; they had so many men courting them. It should be noted here that the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States has almost two men per women (65% males, 35% females, the percentage varies in different estimates). However, serious conversation involving gender roles, Bengali culture and of course the interplay of power dynamics in gender and family relations began to emerge when he became more comfortable talking to me. The conversation began when we were talking women’s dress—a site on which usually the cultural battle is waged. I asked him whether he would be comfortable if his girlfriend or wife wore jeans and shirts. This will be a problem for me. I want my culture be followed. salwar kameez is perfect for me; sari at the parties. It has been going on since the days of my forefathers. Never before wearing jeans, if someone starts wearing jeans and T-shirts after she came to America, it looks ugly. You cannot walk with a regular pairs of sandals, why would you start high hills all on a sudden. If you want to change your culture then you need to change everything--you need to improve your language (English) first. Interestingly, he set a different set of rules for the Bangladeshis who were born in the United States and “will have federal jobs.” “You spent the last 30 years of your life in one way and all on a sudden you changed completely--that is not believable, not authentic,” he said. What he said echoed a popular discourse in Bangladesh: rich and urban people can do a lot of things; those are not for the poor rural people. “If you go to Gulshan and Banani (Upscale residential areas in Dhaka, capital city of Bangladesh), you will see women wearing short tops. It suits them. Gulshan-Banani is different. But if women coming from Comilla, and Noakhali (small towns in Bangladesh) wear short tops you cannot tolerate it,” he said.

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Discourse of Freedom I asked a generic question to all the female participants: How is your life as a woman in the United States? My transcripts show that many of the female participants did not elaborate on this question. However, a few women of different socio-economic backgrounds talked about this issue in detail. What emerged from those responses can be labeled as “discourse of freedom.” When I asked Roushan Jahan, a special education schoolteacher in New York city, how her life was as a woman in the United States, she responded by saying the word freedom without thinking a second. I am not saying that I did not have freedom in my home country; in fact I had plenty. But you have a lot of societal freedom here in this country. I can go anywhere I like. I am a Muslim and even after 9/11 I toured many places. My husband and I traveled a lot this summer—did not face any problem. But I am afraid in Bangladesh, even when I visit now, we cannot do this. So from security point of view this country is still way ahead. I agreed with her but raised the question that there are many women in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh who work outside their homes. Roushan said that she too worked in Dhaka before immigrating to the United States. Then she brought one issue that switched our discussion to another direction. She said that she was “tired of giving people explanations” of why she was late, why she did that, etc. Although I had a pretty good idea of what she meant by “giving explanations,” I asked her to whom she needed to give the explanations. Her response: Maybe to your mother-in-laws; usually father-in-laws do not say anything. A mother in law would ask: “Why you are so late?” But it is not that she gets nosy; she does so being concerned for your safety. But if it happens every day, if you are asked the same questions again and again, it does not feel decent; it appears as a burden. Sometimes when I came home I would explain even if not asked. Also, many odd situations

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occur when women work outside. If that happens, we women suppress those for social reasons. Naseem Ahmed came to the United States as a graduate student at the age of 22, raised a daughter mostly as a single mother, appreciated the security and the “social openness” in the United States. “Social openness is very valuable to me. Here people do not judge me—how I am sitting, how I am looking etc. A woman’s life in Bangladesh is full of social roles, which are not always good for a woman.” Naseem said that she liked to be left alone, and she had made it possible here. It would have been very difficult to live in Bangladesh being a divorced woman with a two-year-old daughter. I am very grateful to the US society that it has given me a space. My decision to live in this country, becoming a citizen of this country, coincides exactly with the fact that I had a daughter. As a woman I wanted to give her the benefits and privileges that only this society can give to a woman compared to Bangladesh. Kishwar, an undergraduate student who attended SIUC during the interview, did not have much in common with Roushan and Naseem. But she almost echoed what Roushan and Naseem said about their lives as women in the United States. She said that she felt more confident living as a woman in the United States: My confidence goes up a lot… I am going to be able to do anything just as a boy over here can do. Society does not declare any obvious distinction, like these things only boys can do, these things only girls can do, etc. They do not segregate gender capabilities. I’m not restricted by my gender, being in a foreign country, in this education system, working side by side with other foreign nationals; just make me a little more capable. Kishwar noticed that people in the United States are more selfsupporting. She said that “due to the fact that you have to do everything by yourself, makes you self-conscious in a good way.” Kishwar posited

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this self-assurance and confidence in the context of her life in Bangladesh. According to her, Bangladeshi society and her socialization process made her less confident about herself. She partly attributed Bangladeshi society’s gaze on gender identity for her lack of confidence. She said that in Bangladesh she was constantly reminded that she was a woman, the same way she was reminded in the United States that she was a person of color. Also, Kishwar did not feel confident back home because her parents raised her in a way that she was not required to do things by herself. Also, there were differences in the treatments for males and females, which gave Kishwar a “level of inferiority.” Our parents would not send me to the grocery shops. I know if I had a brother, my mother would hand him the money and ask him to do the grocery. There are certain things that our parents don’t expect me to take care of, like servicing car, paying bills, doing grocery. Also, boys are not likely to serve the guests because it looks more presentable if a lady walks in with the food. While reflecting on life in Bangladesh, Kishwar thought that there was always a “line of discipline,” sometimes enforced considering other people’s perspectives. Her parents always advised her to respect other people’s perspectives, and not to act “unladylike.” I know my parents are not going to admit it, but I know, if I were a boy, I know they will let me take my car. … They will say it is road safety. I know if I were a boy they would not have stopped it. I know it for fact. They do not want to tell me that there is a gender segregation--boys can bend the rules, difficult for girls..a little bit of oppression is going on there… However, this freedom discourse did not resonate with some women I interviewed in New York City. Those women had to negotiate their freedom as they were constrained by their economic conditions, family relations, and their life-long socialization. This issue was raised during my interview with Kajol and Shahnaz. We talked at length about this complex issue sitting on a family mat in a picnic spot. It is

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customary at a Bangladeshi picnic that men do all the activities including cooking, serving, cleaning while women just sit and relax. Although some women were taking part in various sporting events, most of them were sitting and gossiping. Kajol and Shahnaz, it seemed to me, were in a reflective mood and wanted to talk. Kajol’s five-yearold son was constantly bothering her, nagging, crying and pulling her dress. Shahnaz’s husband insisted that she participate in games. But they kept talking until the food was served. Kajol was married when she was a freshman at Dhaka University and came to the United States to join her immigrant husband. Their son was born when she was still in college. Kajol gave a not-so-rosy picture of her life in the United States. The economic condition had a bearing on her life as a woman in this country. She clearly saw an economic disparity in the lives of Bangladeshis in the United States. The lives of the people who had good education and who had professional jobs were better and they could realize the American dream. But her life was not like that. Almost in the beginning of the conversation, she brought her frustration that she had to withdraw from college after 15 days of beginning of the classes. Both Kajol and Shahnaz said that they could not continue their college here because they did not have anyone to take care of their children. The long conversation with them on this issue began when I asked them what would have happened had they stayed in Bangladesh. Kajol: It would not have happened, because I had a family there. Family used to take care of my baby. I am kept inside since I came here in the United States. There are opportunities here but I could not avail of those. My friends back home have already started jobs. Shafiq: Have you thought of daycare? Kajol: We think but we cannot. Many people here do that.. Shahnaz: If we put a little more effort, we probably would have done it. But we did not have the family support here.

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 Kajol: Husband’s support is crucial—if you do not get it 100% you cannot do that. Shahnaz: Like me she (pointing to Kajol) did not have any relatives here. We actually could not afford daycare. Women who go to college get support from their husbands, if not 100%, definitely 90%. Kajol: For example, when I leave my child, I want to make sure that he has been taken care of, fed properly, things like that. Shahnaz: You know, I get every household thing done before I leave home. But he (her husband) cannot take care of the child. I have accepted this—there are some men who cannot take care of children. Otherwise he is a nice man. I did not get his support here; I should say, he did not take it seriously. Kajol: My husband was enthusiastic all the time. He encouraged me for my studies back home in Bangladesh. Here also he did everything for my enrollment. But once I began-sometimes I was late, there were some talking….There are freedoms but not for us, where is freedom for us? Freedom is for the people here. Our husbands are from Bangladesh. They are ready to give us freedom but not that extent. Shahnaz: I do not care how much freedom my husband will give me, but my concern is how much I will accept—how I will exercise the freedom. What you mean by freedom we cannot exactly take that, even if our husbands give. Shafiq: By freedom I mean going out any time as you wish. Kajol: No, we cannot do that, Can you? (pointing to Shahnaz). Shahnaz: That’s what I said—even if my husband wants, I do not want that. I cannot leave my children with someone else. I

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cannot accept from my heart that I will relax leaving my children. I just cannot do that. Shafiq: For example, you and your friend could go and spend some time.. Shahnaz: That we can do, but we ourselves do not create that opportunity. My husband does that—he goes out and does his social work. Freedom Discourse and Second-Generation Bangladeshi Women When the second-generation Bangladeshi young women talked about their lives as women, they also used the discourse of freedom. But at the same time they recognized that their lives were more challenging because they had to accommodate two seemingly conflicting things: the culture of this country and their parents’ culture. Tumpa, who came to the United States as a child, thought that her life was much more challenging here compared to the lives of Bangladeshi women of her age. She did not just talk about her life as a woman in this country; she also gave her view on the lives of women in Bangladesh. I believe that here in America there is a value for women; woman is somebody, she is not an invisible thing…Now Bangladesh has modernized but some people still have the old morals like women should cook, clean and get married, they should depend on their husbands….you have more opportunities, you know, let’s say if I go to a job interview he is not gonna think that she is a woman. For example, I have a friend--she is in construction. She went to the job interview, they are not gonna think she is a woman, she cannot pick up the heavy stuff, …but in Bangladesh a woman going for a construction worker’s job, they are gonna laugh, because woman just don’t do that, they don’t pick up heavy stuff, they don’t build thing, those are men’s jobs. Tumpa not only undermined the agency of Bangladeshi young women but also posited women’s lives in Bangladesh and in the United

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States in polar opposites by invoking a traditional versus modern binary. Also, she did not differentiate women of different social and economic classes. When I reminded her that many women in Bangladesh work outside their homes and even two women became the prime minister of the country, Tumpa became defensive. We were locked in a conversation that was a little bit charged but revealing. It was almost the end of the interview and I deliberately became provocative. Following are parts of our conversations: Shafiq: Is there anything in this country like that, in terms of job? Sarwar: Yes, I am in the military, in Army there is a thing that women do not fight, so we do not put women in the frontline. Shafiq: Why US still cannot elect a woman president whereas in Bangladesh there is a woman prime minister? Tumpa: There are certain things I believe are not done by women, should not be done by women…I think women are too emotional to think straight… Bangladesh is divided into two parts because women are leading--their emotions take control of their judgments. Men do not use emotions, they think with their heads… I’m putting myself down but that’s the fact; we are emotional..when there is an important decision to make we have to think and think and think and eventually our emotions take control. Nyrene, 19, was raised by a single mother, made occasional trips to Bangladesh with her mother, but still thought that she had a somewhat frozen image of Bangladesh in terms of women’s lives there. With improving conditions of women in Bangladesh, Nyrene still was not comfortable navigating in Bangladesh. There were many reasons for this including the law and order situations. But her growing up in the United States with a sense of identity of a woman, Nyrene thought that she could not navigate in Bangladesh. She said that Bangladesh was out of her comfort zone, mainly because she could not navigate there as a woman.

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In Bangladesh when I was younger, I wore jeans and people looked at me in a funny way...I guess people did not wear jeans back then, may be things are different now but not much,….I have just turned 19 but if I were in Bangladesh I would not feel comfortable in going to school by myself or going and riding baby taxi..and meeting somebody somewhere.…but on the other hand, if I went to a different city, a big city in America, if I went to New York City, I would not have any problem going by myself, or walking by myself…..I know that you hear all the stories about how girls do not go places by themselves…but I guess things are changing because like I have cousins (in Bangladesh) who have jobs and they go to works by themselves and they do everything by themselves. Generation Many first-generation Bangladeshis express a concern of losing something that they consider valuable when they migrate to their new home, United States. This is a concern of losing something, identity maybe, but it is not the grand Bengali or Muslim identity; it is more of a relational thing—how their children will fit in the family. They expect that their children will show them respect and carry out the family obligations that they have performed. They expect from their children the mundane things such as addressing their friends more formally (uncle and aunts), calling and talking to their elderly grandparents, and sharing their rooms with visiting relatives. Sometimes this creates conflicting situations, but in most cases it is more of a generational negotiation. The story of a small business owner Jalil, who came to the United States in 1989, illustrates the concerns of many of the first-generation Bangladeshi parents. Jalil and his wife have three sons; the eldest one was just beginning college during the time of the interview in the summer of 2006. Jalil seemed very concerned about raising their children in the United States. He said that he was shocked to observe that the adult children were likely to abandon their parents. He told me that recently he visited his son’s college campus and had picked up some of the conversations that some children of Bangladesh origin were having with their teachers. He said

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that when asked about their parents, students of Bangladesh origin told their teachers that they were 18 and that they did not have any responsibility to their parents. To Jalil that was a very shocking statement. He said only the “grace of Allah” can help avoiding this situation. I asked him whether he would have still come to this country had he known that this would happen to his children. He said that had he known this he would have brought their children when they had reached 18. He was so sure about the beneficial effects of bringing children after they have become 18 because he learned this from his own life. He left home at the age of 21 and lived in many European countries before migrating to the United States. “I had long hair and people thought that I had gone astray …but I did not change,” he said. But he is happy that his children have been taking care of him thus far. He told me the following story: He was slightly ill but still came to work ignoring his son’s request to stay home. His illness deteriorated and he was hospitalized. His son came to visit him leaving his schoolwork. He was very happy that his son came to see him. He became very emotional and said, “that’s what I want.” The second-generation Bangladeshi youths are also aware about their special situations in this country in respect to the gaps they have with their parents, and maintaining their parents’ culture and adopting the culture of their new home. Abdul, who came to the United States with his parents at a very early age, said that it appeared as conflict when he was in high school, but later it turned into more of a negotiation. He saw his father working hard and helping his extended family. Now, as he was growing up and taking responsibility for his family, he better understood his father’s situation. He said that he was ready to make some sacrifices. But, he also wants his father to understand his situation and be more flexible. Tanim Hossain, whose father had been doing “odd jobs” for the last 15 years in the United States to bring his family here, understands the conflicting situations between parents and their American children. He, along with his mother and his other siblings had just arrived in United States when I interviewed him in a picnic gathering. He was the only young person who was dressed like a typical American college

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student. I thought that he was raised in this country. But I was wrong. He provided me an example of how young people all over the world are connected by fashion and music, but still how different they are in respect of some deeper values. He said that although he looked like an “American kid,” he retained his Bangladeshi culture. I asked him what his definition of Bangladeshi culture was. His response: The culture is that they show respect to others. I also try to do that. I have cousins here who do not care. They put their feet on the desk in front of the elders. When we ride the bus and see an elderly woman standing, we let her sit in. But the children in this country do not do that. If we can maintain this respect while living in this country, it’s more than enough.. What is common in us is the respect..I am having conflict with other Bangladeshis (young people) here. It hurts me when they do not show respect. This is the conflict between them and me. Tanim’s response was insightful to me, to say the least. The Bengali or Bangladeshi culture (to some extent Islamic culture to the Bangladeshis) is transformed and reduced to the bare essentials in the diaspora. That bare essential part is the relations, showing respect, as Tanim said. The first-generation Bangladeshis are ready to negotiate all the other things in their diasporic lives, but not that core value. I do not intend to glorify this aspect of the lives of Bangladeshis, nor do I claim that the family relations do not entail power dynamics in the family. But I think this issue lies at the core of many first-generation Bangladeshis and negotiating this issue with their children sometimes brings emotion and intense conflict. Most of the people I interviewed, both men and women, recognized the influences of schooling, media, and the culture of US society on their children and were willing to make adjustments with their children. For example, Laila, who raised two daughters in the United States and was raising a school-going son during the time I interviewed her, was ready to allow her daughter to marry anyone who is a Muslim. Likewise, her daughter also told her that she would accept anyone as husband other than the one picked up directly from Bangladesh. Even though it is labeled as generational conflicts, a host of factors potentially can contribute to the conflicts between the first-

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generation parents and their children. Vertovec (2004) argued that the “disjuncture between parents’ transnational orientations and children’s local ones” (p.15) can trigger conflicts between the immigrant parents and their children. First-generation Bangladeshi parents maintain extensive contacts with their extended families in Bangladesh and they expect that their children will also do the same. Some parents use a “back there,” reference point (Vertovec, 2004) to mould their children’s behavior. Bangladeshi parents’ transnational orientations sometimes appear as Bangladeshi essentialism to their children, who are much more embedded in the local culture. However, in other cases the second-generation youths’ posture is more transnational compared to their parents. An obvious example would be the practice of transnational Islam. The second-generation youths of Bangladeshi origin follow a transnational Islam while their parents stick to “Bangladeshi Islam.” Besides those factors, some of the conflicts occur simply because of communication styles that Bangladeshi parents pursue. Imam Nurul Alam Raisi, Chaplain of Amherst Hospital, who is routinely invited to the family functions of Bangladeshis in New York City, had the following assessment of the generational divide in many Bangladeshi households: Young children who came here at an early age and the children who were born here are influenced by the education here. Free society has both the bad and good things. Children listen to more what the teachers say than what their parents say. So I tell parents, if you say that we are elder or we know better than you know and hence you will have to listen to us, then they will not understand you. It will not work. You will have to talk to them with logic and reason; only seniority or knowledge will not work. Internal Conflicts Mustafa, 40, a recent DV (Diversity Visa) immigrant to New York City, was tired with the “robotic life” in the United States. “I work night shift, come home in the morning, spend two hours with the family, and go to bed. Same routine every day,” he said when I

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interviewed him in a picnic spot in New York City. Although robotic, he liked life here because “everybody follows rules…. people stand in queue…unlike in Bangladesh where leaders, Mastans (goons) get a preferential treatment.” But he was frustrated with some of the Bangladeshis in the community. He remembered how a Bangladeshi worker in a store had discouraged him when he visited the store for a job, and treated him in a way as if he was taking a bite off his share. Mustafa had a Master’s degree and taught in a college in Bangladesh before migrating to the United States. It matters in New York City Bangladeshi communities how someone entered the United States. Mustafa had the following observation about this issue: Visit visa people think that they are sophisticated, and the DV people are not smart. I think there should be a workshop involving all of these, and reminding them that everyone represents Bangladesh…..they will never become American but when they try to become American they are neither American nor Bangladeshi….. After you come to the United States you begin to wear shorts--- if you ask them to speak English correctly they will say that you do not need it. Now, many educated people are coming, they are not properly appreciated (by the Bangladeshi community). These internal conflicts permeate living-room conversations and social gossip in the New York City Bangladeshi community. Sometimes newcomers in the community are ridiculed. But gradually people find their “groups” and mostly stick to their own groups. Not only the visa status, there are many other factors that determine the social status of the Bangladeshis in New York City. Although I did not incorporate class, especially how the diasporic experiences of Bangladeshis were class-based, in this book (I discussed the reasons in chapter 1), my interview data and field-notes give narratives of a community that was markedly divided on class. Bangladeshis with limited income and limited English proficiency live in the crammed apartments of the crowded areas of the city with other Bangladeshis, or other working-class immigrants. The lived experiences of the workingclass Bangladeshis who live in close communities maintaining a Bangladeshi-oriented life style are different from the experiences of

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“professional” Bangladeshis who live in the upscale neighborhoods with White middle-class Americans. Earlier in this chapter, I quoted from the interview of Anwar, who worked at a store during the time of the interview. Some of his comments, particularly on changed gender relations in the diasporic context, are apparently regressive but they express his experiences of a class-based diaspora. The extent of Bangladeshi-ness is also a dividing line that coincides with class differences. I had contact with a friend with whom I shared my research. She lived in a relatively expensive neighborhood with her husband who worked at an information technology firm. When I called her for recruiting interviewees for my project, she told me that she did not know anyone in the Bangladeshi community. In fact, she asked me what I found about the lives of the Bangladeshis in New York City. She invited me for dinner, in which a professional Bangladeshi couple was also invited. She lived in a spacious apartment compared to many other Bangladeshis’ homes I visited. Her dinner menu was not purely Bangladesh; she took time to explain to me the recipes. During our informal telephone conversations she said that she did not like many things in the Bangladeshi community in New York City. She said that those Bangladeshis spend their income on food and other things, do not try to improve their living conditions, gossip, fight over petty political differences, etc. It’s an Economic Issue I came to know one Bangladeshi man when I interviewed a woman employee in a GNC store in Astoria. This man took care of the share of the woman employee’s workload, giving me a chance to talk to her for more than an hour standing in the corner of the store. Later I saw him in Bangladeshi family and social gatherings. He declined to be interviewed but assured me that he will talk to me informally about the Bangladeshis’ lives in New York City. I had a candid conversation in one afternoon at Ditmars Subway Station when we were stranded there due to heavy rains and storms. He came to the United States on a diversity visa program and lived alone leaving his family back home in Bangladesh. He saved some money and also he had some disposable time to attend social and family gatherings. It appeared to me that he was not much concerned

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about his life; he had the rare luxury of finding time to pause and reflect on people’s lives around him. Our conversation quickly turned to the lives of Bangladeshis in New York City. We talked for about half an hour. He told me stories about broken families, “unfaithful” wives and husbands, and out-of-control children. Finally, he took a deep breath and spoke in a low voice as if he was talking to himself: I do not blame anyone. This is the way life is here. Both husband and wife work here just to get by. They cannot give time to each other and to the children. Results are obvious— broken families and spoiled children.

CHAPTER 8

Identity Constructions

The study of diaspora focuses on how people who are displaced from their original homes and settle in new homes are engaged in a complex process of maintaining and negotiating cultural identity (Sinclair and Cunningham (2000), and how their lives become the sites where new identities are created, contested, and maintained. Generally, identity has become a salient and yet a contested issue due to demographic diversity of many countries of the world, and the politicization of gender, sexual preference, age and disability (Downing and Husband, 2005). But as Hall (1990) pointed out, identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we sometimes think. Diasporic identity construction is a complex and contested process, which involves the original home culture of the people in the diaspora, the way they are represented in the host society, and the interplay of their internal diversity. I conceptualized identity as complex outcomes of Bangladeshi people’s multi-layered negotiations-as Muslims, as ethnic Bengalis, and also as men and women--which I have discussed in the previous chapter. I have looked at their identity issues not only in what they said about who they are, but also in what they did in their day-to-day lives. Thus, the identity has emerged as a broad, complex, and contested issue. Diasporic identity, although not fixed in some essentialized past, is constructed on some sorts of connections, real or imagined, that the people in diaspora maintain with their old home country and culture. As Ray (2003) pointed out, diasporas are not “splinters in the transnational world, ready to rearticulate their identity on the lines of 179

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extra-territoriality or nomadism; on the contrary, it is the historical subjectivity of a diaspora which holds the key to its cultural life” ( p. 21). Certainly the narratives of home-country culture that the people in the Bangladeshi diaspora create in their day-to-day interactions with their fellow Bangladeshis, the seamless connection that they maintain with their family and friends back home through cell phones and other communication technologies, and the flow of Bangladeshi cultural symbols that inundate their living rooms, provide them an anchorage point from where they articulate their life and identity. This was articulated in expressions such as “I’m that old Bangladeshi,” which I have heard repeatedly during my interviews and fieldwork. Saleha’s husband came to the United States in 1982, before she married him. She joined her husband with their two-and-half-year-old daughter, who was 18 during the time of this interview. Two of their children were born in the United States, where she spent a major part of her life, but still she felt strong emotions for her old home, Bangladesh. During the 90-minute interview, a nostalgia-stricken Saleha mostly talked about Bangladesh, her life in Bangladesh, and her relatives and family members she had left there. She said that once their children would grow up and settle in this country, she would go back to Bangladesh with her husband. She characterized her identity in the following way: I am that old Bangladeshi. I have the bad and good feelings at the same time. Good thing is I am leading a better life here, children are doing better, but my heart goes for my own country. I think when they (children) will grow up, we will return home. It might not work—it would be difficult for me to live in Bangladesh leaving the children here. We think but do not know whether this will ever happen. Saleha’s response is typical of what many first-generation immigrants say when they are asked about their identity. Shi (2005) found that Chinese immigrants deny that they had become “Americanized” or “Westernized” despite the fact that their life style and cultural practices have changed. A journalist-turned paralegal professional who observed New York Bangladeshi communities gave me some tips to locate the identity issues of Bangladeshis in the United

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States. He said that people usually would not admit that they thought themselves as Americans but their real attitude toward Bangladesh and America needs to be judged from what they did, rather than what they said. He said that people do not want to go back to Bangladesh, giving excuses of poor law and order situations and other problems. He advised me to consider this as their “love” for the United States and their indication of who they thought they were. Businessman Zahirul Islam, after living 17 years in the United States, said that he did not change that much. He said that although he remained a Bangladeshi, his life changed as he went through a variety of experiences. The United States was his place of work; he raised a family and sent his children to college. Now, after his children had their families and landed in goodpaying jobs, Zahirul had a sense of accomplishment and also a sense of identity. I think I am like the old days—the same Bengali. I do not see that much change in me. But yes, the changes occurred for living with many people, many cultures--my general knowledge has widened. There are many learning points here and I have taken my lessons—what we ought to do, where is our problem, how to fix those, etc. I have gained experience on those things. Zahirul always maintained connections with Bangladesh through his yearly visits, which he stopped after his parents died. But he maintained his emotional attachment to Bangladesh. He became nostalgic and emotional during the interview, which was conducted at a Bangladeshi picnic spot in New York City. He brought the image of “home” and “roots”—two concepts that are central in the literature of diaspora. It is interesting that he did not invoke a grand Bangladeshi or Bengali identity; rather he invoked the memory of his rural ancestral home where he was born. I can remember my birthplace--my village in Madaripur (an administrative district in Bangladesh)--my parent’s home. I have spent many years in Dhaka (the capital city of the country)—I cannot remember that much. I think of my village home. Sometimes I think of those people—Bangladeshi

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 brothers who return to their home after they retire at their older age, relax sitting on an easy chair in front of their homes. Many people even did not know him although he was born there. He left village 40/50 years back and returned to his home again, this means you need to come to your home--that land attracts people.

Zahirul’s narratives not only invoke his nostalgia for his old ancestral village home but also tell about the fragmented nature of his identity, splitting his life between his work life and after-work life. Like many other Bangladeshis, he was an economic migrant to the United States, where he built his business and raised children. After the successful completion of this work-life, he felt that he needed to go back to his ancestral village and spend the other part of his life. Mohammad Sadek, who worked at a pharmaceutical company, fitted the profile of Zahirul. He said that he made enough money to support his family here and also his parents in Bangladesh. At one point during the interview that I conducted in the same picnic spot, he said that after seven years he would go back to Bangladesh. He sounded so certain that I had to ask him why he was so eager to go to Bangladesh after living so many years in the United States. He said that after seven years all of his children would graduate. “I will put them in jobs and then will go to Bangladesh.” I asked him then what were his relations with the United States. He did not expect this question. He paused, and said that he wanted to characterize his relations with the United States in economic terms: He was an economic migrant. Sadek made a distinction between the place of work and what he called “home” where he would retire. He invoked the cultural differences of Bangladesh and United States in terms of old-age care. He idealized Bangladeshi society where he would get better care. Interestingly, he planned to leave his children in the United States where they would pursue their careers and eventually settle down. In an ideal situation in Bangladesh, children usually take care of their elderly parents. Sadek, whose children will remain in the United States, planned to buy the care in Bangladesh. That’s what he was doing for his parents: He employed two care-givers to take care of his elderly parents. In a way Sadek’s move is not that different from what some older Americans do when they decide to settle in Mexico or other

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South American countries because of economic advantage. Sadek, with his relative economic advantage, wanted to take the best of both societies he lived in. However, Sadek’s engagements with the United States and Bangladesh are much more complex than the simple proposition that he outlined. Because he migrated to the United States at an older age, he did not quite learn the cultural practices of other Americans. He had to socialize with other Americans--Cubans, Guianese, and White—and attended in some of their social occasions. But mostly he socialized with his fellow Bangladeshis outside his workplace. “I attend, say hi hello, that’s going on for the last 17 years. I had attended a wedding party, I had to attend, because a coworker invited. I cannot socialize with their culture that much,” he explained. But he was all for more integration with the mainstream society. He lamented that compared to other ethnic groups Bangladeshis were far behind in their participation in mainstream political and economic activities. “If we could integrate in the mainstream politics, it would have been better. Nobody wants to get involved. We are way behind compared to Indians and Guianese,” he said. I have seen in Astoria in New York City that many Bangladeshis, particularly women, spend their lives being isolated in their ethnic ghettos without saying a word in English. I asked him how it was impacting the community. “It is bad, but where are the opportunities?” he responded, pointing to the structural limitations that many first-generation Bangladeshis go through in their host society. “I do not think it will happen in this generation, but if we give a chance our children will be able to achieve that,” he said. Bangladeshi-American and Also Muslim Medical doctor Mohammad Ali was doing well in his profession as a dentist. He practiced mainly in the areas where Bangladeshis concentrated in New York City. His profession brought him in close contact with other medical professionals of a variety of ethnic origins. But he maintained close contact with the Bangladeshi community in New York City. Ali said that he always thought that he was Bangladeshi and a Muslim. In the same sentence, he also added that he was also an American citizen. When America got gold medals in

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Olympic Games he felt good and felt bad when America lost any games, he said. He said that America had become a part of his identity. Shahnaz, a housewife, who had been in the United States for 16 years and had become a naturalized citizen, described her situation as someone who could not plant her roots here but also did not feel comfortable there. But she was pretty sure that America had become a part of her identity. The citizenship gave her the hyphenated Bangladeshi-American identity, but she still showed the typical dilemma of a first-generation immigrant. Her feelings toward the United States and Bangladesh can be characterized as ambivalent and she oscillated between living here and going back there. She knew that she would eventually settle in the United States but still played with the idea of “going back.” I am a Bangladeshi-American, because I have taken the citizenship oath..But when I live here I do not feel that it is my country. I do not belong here..When I go home I cannot adjust in Bangladesh either. I feel a mental bond with Bangladesh. I could not plant my roots in this society.. I could not adopt the culture here, maybe I will never be able to do that, but my children will be able to adopt the culture here.. Sometimes I think that when I will get old, after the children would get married, then we will go to Bangladesh. But I think I will never be able to return..When I came here I thought that I will stay there only for five years, make some money and will go back to Bangladesh with a whole amount of dollars. We have been here for 16 years and even now we are not in a situation to go back home. Sometimes I get frustrated but when I go back home and think I will not be able to stay there, and then I think it’s better here. The 28-year-old restaurant worker Fuad was less ambivalent about his identity. He was a naturalized US citizen and lived with his brother’s family when I interviewed him. His mother and his other siblings lived in Bangladesh. He did not see any conflict between being a Bangladeshi, a Muslim, and an American. His identity articulation was informed by his lived experience in the ethnic groups who have become American by asserting their ethnic identity.

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I want my Bangladeshi identity be maintained--our social relations, family relations. Bangladeshis are improperly blamed--everyone has a culture, although they are Americans. They are proud of their culture. You see Puerto Ricans have their parades. They (United States) have given the opportunity; they do not ask you to forget your country and culture. Why shall I forget? People who were born here also attend those parades, they are proud of that. We will uphold our culture, social roles..My cousins do not know about Bangladesh, but they know we are Bangladeshis, Bangladeshis do not do that, etc. They have learned it from the family.. Bangladesh is lagging behind, should progress, need to be associated with the politics here, we should reach to a position where we will be also counted, we are not there yet, we have merits, we will be able to give them idea, they will not take it if we do not get involved, we will remain isolated, I am proud that I am an American citizen and I am also proud that I’m a Bangladeshi. Fuad’s desire, as evident in the above-cited quotation, is to become a good American citizen through ethnic routes, the same way Indian immigrants articulated their desire to be Americans (Rudrappa, 2004). Like the Indians, Fuad thought that the family and social relations that Bangladeshi culture entails are valuable and should not be lost. He was proud to be an ethnic Bangladeshi, and aspired to enrich America with his ideas. A similar desire was expressed by a woman who was active in Bangladeshi cultural activities in New York City. I interviewed her college-going daughter who was fluent in Bengali (she was the only second-generation Bangladeshi who had reading, writing and speaking efficiency in Bengali). I was surprised to see that a second-generation young woman of Bangladeshi origin was so good in Bengali. Her mother, who was a journalist in Bangladesh, explained why she was so insistent about her daughter’s Bengali education. She did not have the slightest doubt that her daughter would settle in the United States, but she believed that with her knowledge of Bengali language and culture she would be better able to contribute to America--by mixing the two cultures and traditions.

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Anwar, a Bangladeshi immigrant, articulated his identity by distinguishing his culture and citizenship. I have quoted him in the previous chapter in which I discussed how Bangladeshis negotiate gender and family relations in diasporic context. Anwar was keen to uphold his culture because that culture would give him the power in gender and family relations, which he thought was disrupted in his new life. He was loyal to the United States as a citizen but wanted to retain his ethnic culture. Like other Bangladeshis I interviewed, he did not see any conflict between being an American citizen and upholding Bangladeshi culture: America has given me visa, citizenship, so I will have to follow the system. But it does not mean that I will have to abandon my culture completely. I am following the law. I will not throw the trash here and there. This is against the law. But I will not wander around wearing shorts. We do not do that. Desi: Identity Constructions of Second-Generation Youths Most of the second-generation Bangladeshi youths whom I polled through a snowball sample associated with a South Asian generic identity, desi. One female student who was active in her college student government articulated an assertive Muslim identity. Another young man, who was involved in community work, associated with what he called Hip Hop culture. However, those identity articulations were not mutually exclusive; the young people switched their identities as they navigated from one cultural space to another. Although their identityarticulations took different routes, they had one thing in common: their identities were complex and multi-layered. I was not familiar with the term desi, and was not much concerned about how this might impact the identities of Bangladeshi people, particularly the second-generation Bangladeshis in the United States. I came across such terms as desi dress, desi food, etc in casual writings and references. This term was primarily associated in my frame of reference with a negative connotation. I knew that people use ABCD (American born confused desi) to describe the cultural mismatch of the people of Indian origin who live in the United States but still retain their old home cultures. I first realized its significance after I

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interviewed Nyrene, the 19-year-old college student of Bangladeshi origin. Nyreen came in touch with desi subculture through her cultural activities in her high school in Carbondale. She was involved in cultural activities, especially dancing and music, and socialized with people of the Indian subcontinent in Carbondale. Among her friends were an Indian, a Taiwanese, and a half-American-half-Taiwanese young woman. They went to school together and saw one another a lot in school and outside school. In after-school hours they remained active in clubs and organizations. Participation in the cultural activities glued them together. “I am not sure, maybe I think it has a lot to do with our backgrounds, like we are all Asians, we all are just hanging out with each other---I guess we were kind of used to it, and we relate to each other better,” she said. Embracing desi subculture was not something that was there for Nyrene to pick up. Rather, she constructed this cultural space with her friends. Nyrene said: We like to do Indian classical dances together…In high school we always danced together..we always had Indian nights together and Diwali and all that kinds of stuff.. We could talk about songs and movies and stuff like that..We saw each other a lot, we watch movies together, we made our American and Taiwanese friends watch (those) movies..and then, like the way we interact with our parents…like my mom was doing something and she needed help, my Taiwanese friend Jessica would ask whether she needed any help, stuff like. When Nyrene moved to a larger college town, Champaign, Illinois, to attend college, she was surprised to find out that most of the college students of Indian origin socialized largely with other Indians. Multicultural college campuses are usually sites of desi subculture where a there are concentration of students from South Asia. There are so many activities that are organized for Indian students by the Indian Students Association, and they have many members and they have so many events going on,…two or three times a year they have Bhangra parties in the Students Center, and the Garbha dancing, Gujarati dance…They have

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 so many activities that one point every week I was spending my time going to the Indian Student Association functions, you know. And they have Indian dance team which I am also part of, and when you are a part..you will practice pretty much every day and you see the same Indian people every single day.. the people you end up spending your time will become your closest friends.

I observed the desi subculture in play when I interviewed three young men—Prattay, Asif and Abdul—all in their 20s and all students of Baruch College, CUNY. Being desi was a big deal for the group. When they told me that desis are like brothers and sisters and they socialized a lot, I did not have any difficulty understanding the dynamics of that relation. They were talking to me, quite enthusiastically, but one of their pals, a student of Indian origin, who was sitting with them, was a constant reminder for me that I was keeping their friends. The class was suspended quite unexpectedly because of a power outage on their campus. So, it was party time for friends, or what they call desis. It was lunch hour when we were talking. I observed that students were quite segregated on the campus. I found all-White tables as well as all-Black and All-Indian tables. I asked the group at one point why desi identity was so strong among them. Prattay, who was the oldest in the group, said that it was because of their common problems and concerns that bound them together. Asif, whose father was from India and mother from Bangladesh, said that they were not born as desis; rather they constructed this desi-ness as they lived their lives here: I remember in high school I was very anti-desi. I had no desi friends when I was a freshman. I only had Hispanic and African American and West Indian friends. I never ever got along with Indians. I just never knew anyone who was Bengali or Indian I would hang out with. But what happened when I became a junior--I had one Indian friend who asked me to dance. I thought that was pretty funny--who dances at school? And what happened was I gave it a try. I met a lot more kids. After we met them we became close friends..The guy I danced

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with in school now is in college with me, and we continue to dance together. A similar sentiment was echoed when I had a two-hour long interview with another group of college students, two females and one male. I planned to interview the 20-year-old college student Tumpa on a Friday afternoon at her home. But she was hanging out with her desi friends and I ended up interviewing Nadia, a 19-year-old college student, and 19-year-old Sarwar, a male college student, with Tumpa. One theme that quickly emerged was their connectivity and social networks. All of them said that they spent a portion of their daily times talking to desi friends over the telephone. “Everybody knows everybody when it comes to Bengalis,” Nadia said. I could not understand whether she was happy or annoyed with this situation. From the conversation I began to conceptualize desi as a social network of people of similar culture. This is what Sarwar had to say about desi: Even though we grew up in United States, we still have a thing, culture--we grew up with a desi touch--we still have a cultural touch. So, whenever we hang out we try to hang out with Bengali friends. We feel comfortable hanging out with Bengali kids of our age. Basically we are connected to each other--like social connections--because you go outside and you have some friends, and met some new friends through your friends…it’s like a network…let’s say, you have two Bengali friends and he has five other friends, so you are hanging out together and you meet some new friends and that’s how you make new friends--that’s how we are connected. Different dimensions of desi culture and identity began to emerge from the long conversation that I had with Tumpa, Nadia and Sarwar. They brought the issue of culture, American culture, desi culture and Bangladeshi culture into their discussions. I was curious to learn what desi subculture actually was. So, I just asked them what they think about desi culture and let the discussion continue. Following is the relevant part of the conversations:

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 Sarwar: Definition (of desi culture) is you’re very attached to your culture, but live in Canada or UK or any other country. Any place, but you cannot be desi living in Bangladesh. Tumpa: You cannot be in the same country-- that’s not called desi, you have to be outside. Sarwar: let’s put it this way--you live in a different country but hold on your culture, when I say you stick to your culture, I mean going to Jackson Heights, eating desi foods, gossip in Bangladeshi style, drink tea; not so Americanized. Shafiq: Then what is American culture? Sarwar: by American culture I mean eating junk foods, basically same thing in a different way-- we don’t like it. They do not appreciate family values and traditions, there is nothing as American culture--American culture borrows everything from different cultures of the world.

Asif, Prattay, and Abdul, whom I interviewed earlier, also had their own definition of desi culture. I asked how powerful desi identity was for them: Prattay: It is very strong--we are like brothers. You do not have to be Bengali—Bengalis, Punjabis, we all hang out together. We consider ourselves desis--we all are friends. We all get along perfectly fine. Abdul: People identity us the way we hangout. Everyone has a different look--like Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and Indians-but as far as school goes, people identify us as desis. This is the way we act, I guess. Prattay: By nature you associate with people who are most like you. So obviously in every college and high school you find that common bond--the heritage that you share with

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everybody, and obviously when you see someone from that part of the region, (having) very similar culture, automatically you gravitate toward it. To these youths desi subculture is a space where they felt comfortable. Desi is a cultural space where they can navigate with like-minded people with relative ease. Desi can be conceptualized as a social network where they can meet and interact with other people of their “kind.” The second-generation youths of Bangladeshi origins craft this cultural space as they live their day-to-life, often confronting the generational conflicts with their first-generation parents and facing racism and other forms of discrimination outside their homes. In Tumpa’s word: We have a whole different way that our parents raised us, right? We cannot go out at night and go clubbing. We like to stick to our own kind, as we call it, our own culture. Nadia (her friend) will understand that Cathy will not understand. We go to a lot of family functions; that’s how you get to know another person of your own kind or culture. Being desi is to live in a cultural crossroad. The young people I interviewed openly discussed how they had to adjust their lives as they live in US culture but at the same time had to reconcile with what they called their parents’ culture. Sometimes those adjustments turn frustrating. Their common concerns and frustrations unite them. They clearly saw a difference between them and other young people of their age, both in Bangladesh and the United States. This was how Tumpa differentiated herself from a typical Bangladeshi girl who lives in Bangladesh: We are raised here and the culture is different, the environment is different….you cannot be fully a Bengali-there are parts of you that a typical Bengali girl in Bangladesh would not do. Bengali girl from Bangladesh will not work at the age of 13 or 14, but we learn to depend on ourselves at an early age, economically. I started to work at the age of 15-it’s legal. They (girls in Bangladesh) basically stay at home

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 and learn how to cook. If their parents want them to be educated, they study, and probably get married. Here we learn how to be independent.

But Tumpa was aware that she was not like an “American” girl either. When she mentioned American teenagers she referred to them as “they.” At the same time she referred to Bangladeshi girls who live in Bangladesh also as “they.” Obviously then “we” are the girls like her— desi girls. In Tumpa’s words: They do certain things that we don’t do..they drink, go to clubs; we wouldn’t do because it’s not in our culture. Our parents taught us not to do that, you know.. Our parents expect that we tell them before we go out, but an American youth walks out the house and doesn’t say anything. Some people even don’t know that they have a son because, they come home late at night at 4 O’clock and sleep the rest of the day, and they will live next day for clubbing..But we have the connection with our parents, we have the bond with our parents, you know. Our parents can frustrate us, pressure us with education, with everything, you know, but at the same time that pressure creates a bond with our parents. Family means something to us, you know, I feel to an American a family is just a name, there’s no meaning to family, I believe. It is interesting to note how Tumpa undermined the agency of young women in Bangladesh as well as gave a stereotypical description of Americans’ family values. It might well be the case that she was not adequately familiar with the evolving situations in Bangladesh where women of her age do not just stay home; they go to college or work (most of the garment workers in Bangladesh are women). Similarly her idea about American family values probably was based on some dysfunctional families that she knew or heard about or even saw in television and other media. But what appeared even a stronger motivation for her assessments of Bangladesh and America is her desire to craft an identity for her, differentiating herself from both the young women in Bangladesh and United States.

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In the beginning of the conversation on desi, I thought that the young people did not like to be what they had become. I thought that they were not happy with their lives here—lives that were caught between the pressures of their Bangladesh-oriented parents’ culture and the culture of the United States. I thought that desi was a cultural space where all the frustrated young people stuck together. But as the conversation progressed, I found that these young people were enthusiastic, at times celebratory, about desi subculture, branding it as “their” culture. They not only created this subculture but also owned this. They celebrated it when they observed that this subculture was being recognized in the mainstream New York culture. They told me in a bragging tone that desi culture was being greeted by Americans. Even they bragged that Bangladeshis are having a bigger share in this desi subculture. They talked at great length about how desi culture was impacting New York culture: Tumpa: They borrow everything--now they go to Bengali melas (fair) in Brooklyn. I did see some American people walking around and eating our foods like Chapati (type of flat bread) and stuff like that…the impact it is having on American culture is very loud and very bold… two-three years back they did not know what henna was .. I went to some tattoo places and they do it with henna …Now-a-days everybody is walking down the streets with fatowas; that wasn’t a style before, it’s a style now. Nadia: I think we bring desi culture over here…. we stand out because of our tradition, our culture, our religion--everything. If you are walking down the street… you see the mehendi (henna) of the girl…we are growing. Sarwar: New York City is one of the multicultural cities, plus a desi-populated city. So they watch desis in every place— Subways, schools…By wearing salwar kameez they are not feeling uncomfortable…it’s acceptable now. Tumpa: I think that also proves how big our culture is growing, expanding, and influencing others.

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 Sarwar: Even in clubs, American clubs, they play desi music sometimes. I went to a party--they played Punjabi music… This is not new to American people--American kids drive and listen to Punjabi music. Tumpa: Music is not the only thing that influenced--you see in television programs they teach you how to decorate your house; they have nice Indian stock, they have pillows..when you see the design you know it’s from India.

The Bangladeshi youths whom I interviewed did not make any distinction between being ethnic Bangladeshis and desis. “When we say desi, we want to mean us, Bangladeshis,” Sarwar explained. He said that although the word desi came from Indians, Bangladeshis have already claimed it as their own. Tumpa said that when she came to the United States in 1993, there were only two Bengali stores in Jackson Heights. “Now they have so many other stores, I feel like Bengali people are taking over Indian world,” she said. Sarwar was also excited seeing that Bangladeshis were having a strong presence in Jackson Heights, the desi space in New York City: Like three years back if you told someone that you are from Bangladesh, they would become surprised--they wouldn’t know (Bangladesh). But now they know that Bangladesh is a different country--we have a different identity, we aren’t Indians. Even though we share some common things, we are not Indians. We are desi, but Bangladeshi. We have created a united desi culture with Indians. For 18-year-old college freshman Farhana desi culture is a particular way of life, which is prevalent in the young people of the Indian subcontinent. She was born in New York City and lived in the same city with her parents when I interviewed her. Farhana took Bengali classes, and she had learnt a lot about Bengali culture. I interviewed her while she was attending a Bengali cultural program. She said that she was enjoying the dance that was going on but did not understand it quite well. Along with Bengali music, she listens to other types of music including Rock, Hip Hop and Bhangra. She likes the

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beats of Bhangra. She likes Bollywood movies. She has a lot of desi friends. They go to Hindi movies together. She could remember attending Eid parties together wearing traditional dresses. To her, these were the visible signs of being a desi. Being a desi was essentially being hybrid to her. She said that she was not purely Bangladeshi; she was hybrid. Like other second-generation Bangladeshi youths, she thought that desi culture was getting absorbed in American culture. She was a mix of desi and American. I wear jeans, go to movies, and enjoy bowling. I speak English and cannot speak Bangla. There are lots of Bangladeshi families living here. (Their) parents speak the language at home. I attend a lot of desi parties. Desi people come together. I never consider desi and Bangladeshi different. Also, I am a Muslim, a conservative one. As the narratives of the young people of Bangladeshi origin suggest, the desi identity articulations of second-generation Bangladeshi-American youths are in fact what Maira (2002) called their creative response to the special conditions of the lives of secondgeneration South Asian people. The second-generation young people had to negotiate their parents’ culture with the mainstream American culture in which they were growing up. According to Maira (2002), Second-generation youths must respond to the social and economic contradictions of (1) the nostalgia of the immigrant parents and the petrifaction of visions of India in the diaspora, (2) the tension between assimilationist and pluralist models of national identity in the United States, and (3) the context of multiculturalist identity politics and ethnic segregation on college campuses. (p.189) Also, for the second-generation youths the desi club culture in New York City offers a “space in which the sounds of cultural nostalgia are remixed with the beats of urban cool, highlighting contradictions in radicalization, class ideology, and sexual desire are expressed through style or performed on the dance floor (p.190).

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As Maira (2002) found, and my interviews supported, being desi is essentially being hybrid. The best example of this hybrid existence is the remix music that these desis across national boundaries love. The second-generation Bangladeshis feel that the very existence of their lives is hybrid—they have to “mix” various elements of their lives as they mix their music. But one crucial point that needs to be highlighted is that those youths enter into this mixed life with their existing class and gender relations. The social and the desi parties they attend, the music they listen to, and above all, the Bollywood movies and other entertainment materials they embrace, reinforce the family relations their parents want them to be immersed with. But this is not to suggest that there are not any contradictions in their lives. Desi is not a pre-given category in which the Bangladeshi young people automatically fall. Rather, this identity is an explored one; it is worked out in the day-to-day interactions and other shared activities of Bangladeshi youths. Although the second-generation Bangladeshi youths said that they want to stick with their “kind,” the process by which these people connect with one another is very revealing about the nature of desi subculture and identity-consciousness. Their similarities are discovered, rather than given. They face similar types of conflicts, pressures and frustrations in their families, and encounter similar challenges outside their homes. They discover the similarities as they go along with their lives. The desi identity is solidified though interaction among desis, many of which take place through cell phones, emails, chat rooms and desi college parties. For Bangladeshi youths being desi is even more exploratory because they are relatively new in the game, and they have to claim the space from mostly Indian youths. Although desi is a South Asian identity, the literature on this subculture makes no serious attempt to include Bangladeshi youths. This is partly because Bangladeshis youths are forming a growing but an emerging subsection of this subculture. Bangladeshi youths are aware of this and they claim their space in this already developed desi subculture. The youths of Bangladesh-origin take pride when they see Bangladeshi businesses grow in the Jackson Heights area, which was occupied by Indians before. Their participation in desi subculture can be conceptualized partly as claiming spaces from Indian youth and also partly by their articulation that there are not that many differences between these two cultures.

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Thus, being desi does not conflict with being Bangladeshi to many Bangladeshi youths. In many cases, desi consciousness acts as a conduit of the awareness of Bangladeshi identity among the Bangladeshi youths, encouraging them to learn more about Bangladesh and what they called their “roots.” As Abdul, a 20-year-old-college student, said, he knew almost nothing about Bangladesh and Bengali culture during his elementary school years. He was even ashamed of his ethnic Bengali heritage and tried to hide that part of his identity. However, when he was a senior in high school he met other young people of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian ethnic backgrounds, and became conscious of his ethnic route. However, they associate with desi subculture because Bengali or Bangladeshi culture is located outside the gaze of mainstream America. Unlike the Bengali identity, desi is a strong yet flexible identity, which is being recognized by mainstream America. Also, desi identity is broad enough to incorporate cross national and religious identities. Desis also do not see any conflict between being a Muslim and being a desi. The Assertive Muslim Identity I have extensively quoted Nazia, a 21-year-old college senior, in two previous chapters. Nazia’s interview is revealing not only because it gave me a small window of understanding of how some secondgeneration Bangladeshi youths responded to the post-9/11 backlash by articulating an assertive Muslim identity, but also it pointed to the multi-layered and often contested negotiations of identities that secondgeneration Bangladeshis had to go through. Nazia felt that she would have to own her religious identity by being more knowledgeable about Islam so that she could defend her religion in the post-9/11 backlash in which Islam was equated with terrorism, backwardness and tribalism. Her desire to uphold her religious identity was informed by what she experienced in a multi-cultural campus. The following is what she said about who she was: I am liberal and conservative at the same time. I am openminded, but at the same time I am conservative. At many times there are events, dancing, DJ’s, it’s a free campus-occasionally there will be alcohols--these are the things I do

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 not associate with..it was really to make people aware of what my culture is, where I am coming from, my religion, that’s a part of my identity, just like the way they were brought up here in the United States, that’s their identity. Just because I was brought up here does not mean that I will have to do the things that they have to do.

Apparently, her Muslim identity was created in opposition to the US culture. She put herself in a “we/they” dichotomy when she espoused her identity. But it is interesting to note how this dichotomy collapsed when she began to analyze the media representations of Islam and Muslims. She understood that she had created an identity within the media representations. The discursive representations of Islam impacted the way she saw herself and her idea of “we” and “they.” Finally, she understood the politics of media and realized that media created divisions among people. This realization changed her thinking as it related to her identity: “We should think ourselves as people, as a human race, that’s really who we are,” she said. Mixing It is frequently reported that the assertive Muslim identity is constructed in exclusion of other identities. But in Nazia’s case, this assertive Muslim identity did not conflict with her other identities. Nazia was enthusiastic about her desi identity along with her assertive Muslim identity. Being a desi and being a Muslim were two layers of her identity, which enabled her to relate to people of South Asian origins who were not Muslims and also people of the Middle East and other Muslims who were not desi. Desi and Muslim were like two symbols to her and she could make instant connections when those symbols were invoked. Also, she claimed that she was a Bengali but in a different way. Most of all, she said that was an American. For being an American and for living in the United States she had to negotiate her other identities: Her living in the United States and her longing for retaining some of her parent’s culture made her identity complex: it was essentially a mixing that she had to do.

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We mix two…I do not want to be totally American, or totally Bangladeshi. Because I am not Bengali of Bangladesh, I am a Bengali in America; that’s not just the addition; it’s kind of going away with Bengali tradition…it is kind of giving the tradition a spin…it’s kind of taking the benefits of the both worlds..let’s say, we have spaghetti but we eat spaghetti at home with spices…it’s just trying to bridge that two worlds and make it one because it’s so hard sometimes to separate it, and we do not want to separate it.…it can be done through foods, through dress, like you see fatowa, but I am wearing it with jeans. Nyrene was very different from Nazia in terms of where she lived and how she articulated her identity. Nazia lived in New York City while Nyrene lived in Carbondale and later Champaign, Illinois. Nazia felt very strongly about her religious identity while religious identity was marginal in Nyrene’s life. Nazia was involved in student government while Nyrene was involved in cultural activities in her school and college. But they agreed in one thing, which in fact defined their lives: both believed that their lives were complex and they needed to switch codes constantly to accommodate the demands of their lives in the United States. They believed that their lives involved mixing two or more dimensions of their lives. Nyrene summarized her life in the following way: I never really sat down and thought about what I see myself at. But I mean like past in my and probably the rest of my life I always try to incorporate both just the same way that in my dance that do I mix together. You know the South Indian dance, South Asian dances with American styles, Latin American styles everything together, I think that’s just the way my life will be where I try to mix together things, that new people that I meet like my friends Sara I try to share my culture with them and I take part of their, I think it’s just a give and take, and I do not think when you are defining an identity I do not think you have to be necessarily something or the other, you can be a combination of more than one things.

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And Hip Hop The identity of Shahrier, a 19-year-old college student, a self-described poet and Hip Hop lover, differed from most of the Bangladeshi youths I interviewed. His identity was constructed from his association with the African American community and his critical social awareness through the appreciation of Hip Hop culture. He considered himself a Bengali, because he was born in Bangladesh and that’s from where his “flesh emerged.” He appreciated Bengali literature and music primarily through his mother. Yet he showed an aversion to Bengalis in a rather complex way. I used to look at Bengalis, Oh shit, this guy is a Bengali…I looked at (them) as inferior, you know like Malcolm X--he talks about how originally the colonizers, the people who take over your country, teach you to hate yourself, you know. They teach you to hate everything that is brown, everything that is natural to you, you know. So by hating your own people you start to hate yourself, and it’s just that I hated the Bengalis..I saw Bengalis like you are not as hard as I am, you do not understand it as much as I understand it. So I always had this aversion toward my own people and toward myself. But then when I went to college and began to study philosophy, I began to study Socrates and Plato..I found strength in me being a Bengali. Being the child of affluent Bangladeshi parents, who are considered model minority, Shahrier thought that he had the power to mould his identity. But again, he showed a complex engagement with the roles his parents played in his life. He appreciated the economic solvency of his parents because it provided him with material support and good education. But at the same time he critiqued his parents for being what he called “model” minority. He was a rebel in his mind but still needed the support of his parents. Unlike other young people I interviewed, he understood the fluidity and the superficiality of the identity:

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I am completely amorphous, I can be anything--I can take off my hat right now and speak Bengali, and I will be a Bengali boy. I can put back my hat on…I will be Black. I can put on a suit and a tie and I can speak to you formally and professionally and I will be a White, you know..I have taken math classes and there is concept of limit…..as a Bengali I can approach any identity, any race. I can assimilate with the quickness into any culture, any vive, that would be the core of my being. But Shahrier always did not like this in-between-ness, this ability “to dither between opposites.” Whereas many people might find this as an advantage, Shahrier did not find it particularly appealing mainly because of his association with poor African American youths in New York City. “I wish that I was Black, I wish that I could fit in more,” he said. The narratives of Bangladeshis in the United States suggest that their lived experiences and identity-articulations are complex, contested, and negotiated at various levels. Their constructions of identities were influenced by outside factors, such as the way they are represented in their host society. Also Bangladeshis must negotiate their identities as they navigate their families, workplaces and broader social spheres they live in. The second-generation Bangladeshi youths’ embrace of desi identity indicates that they craft a diasporic identity that is essentially hybrid and much more grounded in a US and global cultural text they grow up with. Compared to their children’s identity formation, the identity of the first-generation Bangladeshis is very fluid, in flux, and at times chaotic. Depending on their social class, gender and location certain dimensions of their identities are highlighted. Identities of the first-generation working class Bangladeshis in New York City are much more grounded in the ethnic Bangladeshi identity. That ethnic identity is reinforced by their understanding of the ethnic identities of other Americans, which are demonstrated in the parades, ethnic neighborhoods and consumption of ethnic commodities. In spite of the differences of articulating their identities, all of them agree on one point: they are unwilling to fit in a pre-given one-dimensional Muslim identity.

CHAPTER 9

Conclusion

A relatively new addition to the population mosaic of the United States, the Bangladeshi diaspora is growing fast. Founded by the students and professionals who migrated from present-day Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), this diaspora expanded greatly as immigrants from Bangladesh continue to arrive with diversity visas, student visas and immigrant-sponsored visas. With the scant information available, it is difficult to give a detailed profile of Bangladeshi-Americans in terms of their number, education, profession and civic engagements. As discussed in chapter 2, approximately 500,000 people of Bangladeshi origin live in the United States. The Bangladeshi diaspora is predominantly male, young, and educated. Employment of Bangladeshis varies greatly; the educated Bangladeshis are employed in professional jobs while the less educated people are employed in the service sectors, such as cab driving and small store sales. Like other immigrant communities, Bangladeshis in the United States show diversity along gender, generation and class. Like the members of other diaspora, Bangladeshis show an eagerness to belong to their old and new homes, making their identity and citizenship complex and multilayered. As first-generation immigrants, Bangladeshi-Americans maintain strong connections with their old home. Bangladesh’s dependence on remittance sent by the immigrants make the home-country connections of the Bangladeshi diaspora even stronger. The political and business elites in Bangladesh are increasingly recognizing the roles of 203

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Bangladeshi diaspora in the economic development of the country. The prime minister of the Bangladesh told the members of the Bangladesh Parliament on June 2, 2010 that overpopulation is not a problem for Bangladesh any longer (Population is not a burden, 2010). She said that her government wanted to avail itself of the opportunity to send people to the Western countries where the older population is growing, requiring a workforce to serve them. “We will educate our people and send them to different parts of the world,” she said. Immigration benefits Bangladesh in two ways: it lessens the burden of overpopulation and contributes to the country’s economic development as immigrants send money to their old home country, transfer technology and make investment there. As I have discussed in chapter 2, educated and professional Bangladeshi immigrants are increasingly recognizing their roles as the development agents of their old home country and creating networks with the government and nongovernment sectors, institutionalizing the connections between the diaspora and Bangladesh. Diasporas are increasingly conceptualized as units of transnational imagination and ethnic entrepreneurs in the diaspora help create and sustain that imagination. Businesses provide not only the material commodities such as food and clothing, but also cultural commodities to the people in the diaspora. The mundane items, such as food, can create and sustain a strong diasporic imagination. People sustain their imagination about their old homes partly through retaining their old dietary habits. The samosa-selling mundane grocery stores are not just stores; in the diasporic context they operate as a “crucial node” in the transnational circulation and consumption of commodities, texts, and images (Mankekar, 2002, p. 92). People in the diaspora are always on the move—both physically and mentally. The ethnic grocery stores are the sites in which people and objects on the move converge (Mankekar, 2002). Food items and other ethnic commodities that Bangladeshis use not only meet their consumption needs but also their cultural needs, often invoking home-country memories. Also, due to the initiatives of Bangladeshi entrepreneurs, Bengali cultural spaces have been substantially expanded to New York and other large cities. Those entrepreneurs bring cultural performers and activists from Bangladesh routinely who perform in various shows. Bangladeshis participate in those activities and they are proud, noticing that Bangladeshi ethnic

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culture is being increasingly recognized in the United States. They think that by “being ethnic” they feel distinctive, yet at the same time they can become full US citizens. Negotiating Religion, Gender, Class and Generation The overarching theme of this book is the articulation of identity and citizenship of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the shadow of the post-9/11 backlash, which I have explored in detail in chapters 1, 4 and 7 of this book and elsewhere (Rahman, 2010). The post-9/11 backlash brought the issue to the surface, but it was always there: the discursive representations of Muslims in the West. Said (1978) and many other scholars enunciated this issue with depth and scholarly zeal but the popular media did not change much in terms of their representations of Islam and Muslims. Said (1978) and the scholars who followed his analytical premise (Orientalism) observed that Muslims were constructed in the Western imagination as predominantly Arab, violent and devoid of human agencies. That construction of Muslims left nonArab Muslim populations such as the Bangladeshis in the United States in a difficult terrain of negotiation: they not only had to negotiate with the mediated image of Muslims and craft their space but also to navigate in the multi-cultural US society where different Muslim groups vie to define Islam. That negotiation is an uphill battle for the Bangladeshis because an Arab-centric understanding of Islam and Muslims is prevalent in media and in the general populace. I have discussed how Bangladeshis reacted to this issue post-9/11 throughout this book, but it’s a negotiation that Bangladeshis will have to continue for a long time. Bangladeshis must also negotiate their ethnic cultural identity as they navigate as US citizens and also as they encounter the issues of class, gender and generations. Bangladeshi ethnic identity is contested and different groups use it discursively to maintain their power in the family and other social relations. Home-country culture becomes a tool for Bangladeshi men as they negotiate with women in their families and the outside world. Different groups of Bangladeshis in the United States define Bangladeshi culture in their favor. For example, to a 22year-old young man who had joined his family in the United States right before I interviewed him, Bangladeshi culture was just showing

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respect to the elders. That young man, who was wearing shorts and looked like a typical American youth, defines Bangladeshi culture in a way so that this culture does not stand as an obstacle to him as he navigates US society. On the other hand, a 28-year-old man with a minimum formal education and limited English proficiency defines Bangladeshi culture in a way that creates a space for him to retain his power that he enjoyed in Bangladesh in terms of gender and family relations. To him, Bangladeshi culture is that women would be softspoken, modestly dressed, and family-oriented. First-generation Bangladeshis have to negotiate their Bengali culture with their children, who bring “American” culture in their homes, making their homes the sites of cultural negotiations. To firstgeneration Bangladeshi parents, this is the most difficult negotiation in their lives and often causes conflicts in the family. Although they embrace Bengali culture and observe many rituals, they understand that their children would grow up with a shade of Bengali culture. They understand that because their children do not have much direct experience with Bangladesh, Bengali culture is just an abstract idea to them. Sometimes Bangladeshi parents present Bengali culture in a glorified way to their children, making their children understand this culture with no acknowledgement of present-day Bangladesh--with its poverty, pollution, and corruption. Bangladesh and Bengali culture become exotic objects to them, so exotic that they would take them to Bangladesh to see it but never let them live there. They accept the fact that their children will eventually become “Americanized,” but they desperately try to maintain what I have referred to in chapter 7 as “family relations.” They want to make sure that their children fit into their families. This has become the essence, the bare bone of their culture—and they desperately want to hold on to it. Bangladeshi parents approve it when their children embrace a subculture, desi. Desi is a colloquial term for someone “native to South Asia and one that has taken hold among many second-generation youths in the diasporas of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, or even Indo-Caribbean descent” (Maira, 2002, p.2). Being desi in some way defined the identity of about a dozen college students whom I interviewed. All of those youths were either born or were brought to the United States by their first-generation immigrant parents. As I have discussed in chapter 7, desi was not a pre-given sub-cultural category to

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those young people of Bangladeshi origin. As the narratives of my participants suggest, even though ethno-linguistic and cultural similarities of young people of Bangladeshi origin with youths of other ethnicities of South Asia pull them together, their lived experience, family dynamics and politics of multicultural campuses also created a strong bond among them. In small towns, young people of Bangladeshi origin begin to explore desi subculture when they perform ethnic cultural programs in schools and colleges. The urban youths find it cool to dance with desi remix music. The desi subculture is also embedded in the foods and festivals that people of the South Asian diaspora hold on to. The first-generation Bangladeshi parents (and other South Asian parents) encourage desi subculture because it supports existing family relations. The narratives of young people also suggest that they desire to show what they think is “their culture” by being desi. As I have discussed in chapter 7, the youths create that subculture, crafting a space differentiating themselves from “other” Americans as well as the youths who live in Bangladesh. Role of Diasporic Media Diasporic media are the primary vehicle of connectivity--usually with the old home and culture--that people in the diaspora maintain (Thompson, 2002; Sampedro, 1998; Ogan, 2001). Bangladeshis in the United States can access a diverse array of media, a great majority coming directly from Bangladesh. Bangladeshi newspapers that are available online and the Bangladeshi television channels that are available via Satellite and the Internet are the major media in the Bangladeshi diaspora. Dozens of Bengali-language newspapers are published from New York City but the bulk of the content of those newspapers is lifted from the Bangladeshi newspapers that are published from Dhaka, Bangladesh. The diasporic media add rich texture to the complex media environment that people in the diaspora live in. Their use of media is varied, complex and multi-layered. Given that modern diasporic communities are increasingly interested about the affairs of their countries of origin and the mainstream media’s lack of coverage of those affairs makes various diasporic media the most sought-after outlets of information for the members of diasporic communities (Kolar-Panov, 1997). The linking functions of home-

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country media were prominent in the repertoire of media narratives of the Bangladeshis I interviewed. Bangladeshis in the United States, predominantly first-generation economic immigrants, had to maintain connections with Bangladesh not only because they were emotionally attached to their old home and culture but also because they have businesses, charities and other obligations there. Most of the firstgeneration Bangladeshis have families in Bangladesh and they feel the need to be updated about the affairs there. Bangladeshis’ longing for their old home and the pull from home that is routinely created by political and economic parties inevitably result in increased homecountry media consumption, which is reported as an important day-today activity for diasporic communities (Hage 2002). Bangladeshi media, especially television and online newspapers, work as a bridge between the lives Bangladeshis left behind and the lives they live now. When people migrate to a different country, it creates a discontinuity in their lives in terms of foods, clothing and other daily routines. Many first-generation Bangladeshis I interviewed said that they used Bangladeshi media as the carry-overs of their old daily routines in Bangladesh. Like the ethnic foods they consume in the diaspora, the Bangladeshi ethnic media, especially the Bengali newspapers published from New York City and other locations, act not only as a source of information about the new country but also as a transition tool to their new life. Diasporic media, especially television, is viewed as daily family routines and should be analyzed as everyday routines in which the viewing takes place (Morley and Silverstone, 1991). My interview and observation strongly indicate that Bangladeshi television drama, both single-episode and the serials, are popular among Bangladeshis in the United States. Most of the popular serials portray the lighter sides of family affairs in the rural and urban life in Bangladesh. My interview and fieldwork data suggest that Bangladeshis in the United States watched home-country television programs primarily for pleasure. They developed this pleasure viewing of television in Bangladesh and easy availably of Bangladeshi television channels in the United States gave them the “freedoms of entertainment in which people feel released from the prohibitions and demands of the society” (Ang, 1982, p. 2122). Watching Bangladeshi television was almost an “addiction” to the 50-year-old pharmacist. Other Bangladeshis I interviewed also said that

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Bangladeshi television channels were perfect to “kill time.” Bangladeshi television provided viewers pleasures that they actively sought. Before Bangladeshi television was widely available, they watched videos and DVDs of those drama serials for pleasure. Those television serials also invoke a diasporic imagination, an imagination that is not necessarily tantamount to grand national narratives; rather it is a mundane imagination. This is an imagination of lived experience in Bangladesh—in families, offices, marketplaces. This imagination creeps into the familiar and semi-scripted plots of drama serials. Mentioning the semi-scripted dimension of television drama serials, one interview participant said that she could relate to the characters and settings of the serials, as they remind her about the life that she had just left behind. Many Bangladeshis, especially the first-generation parents, had a mixed view as to how Bangladeshi television programs would orient their children to Bangladeshi culture. Some were enthusiastic, observing that the Bangladeshi television brought Bengali language and culture in their homes and they expected that their children would learn the language and culture better. One parent said that his children learned Bengali by watching television. Some other parents shared stories enthusiastically, saying that their children picked up Bengali words and became interested in Bengali language and culture by watching a popular music show. Yet some parents said that Bangladeshi television can subvert the narratives of Bangladesh, especially when their children watch some programs without understanding the context. Bangladeshi television was still a new phenomenon in the Bangladeshi diaspora when I gathered data for this book. So, more research is necessary to fully understand the roles of the home-country television in the lives of Bangladeshis in the United States. Bangladeshi television channels reach the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide, connecting the dispersed ethnic Bangladeshis. But more research is needed to examine whether that connectivity leads to a unified sense of transnational identity (Cartstens, 2003). Another issue that surfaced in the discussions with one media executive who marketed Bangladeshi television programs in the diaspora was whether television would integrate the Bangladeshi diaspora with the mainstream society. That executive believes that television has the potential to link the

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Bangladeshi community with the mainstream society through advertising. His reasoning is that because a wide section of Bangladeshi Americans watch those programs, the mainstream US companies will reach that demographic through advertising. Diasporic media are much more integrated to the mainstream society than we think. Zhou, Chen & Cai (2006) observed that English-proficient and assimilated Chinese immigrants who moved out of the enclaves earlier, showed a tendency to return to their ethnic enclaves, got involved with ethnic organizations and turned to ethnic media for information and entertainment. I have not explored this issue in this book, but I think it should be looked into because it has long-term consequences for the Bangladeshi diaspora. The post-9/11 Backlash and the Quest for Citizenship The 9/11 terrorist attacks came at a time when the Bangladeshi diaspora was increasing in size and this new immigrant community was beginning to accept the United States as its new home. As I stated earlier, the post-/911 backlash was the first major event that the young Bangladeshi diaspora experienced, and it obviously left a profound impact on their self definition as individual citizens and members of an ethnic and religious community. I have detailed in chapters 1, 4 and 7 of this book and elsewhere (Rahman, 2010) how Bangladeshis, like other Muslim immigrants in the United States and Europe, experienced the full force of the post-9/11 backlash, arguing that the Bangladeshis were brought to the spotlight from their almost obscure existence because dark-skinned Muslims were the suspect population post-9/11 who must be managed through official and extra-official measures. Thus, Bangladeshis were exposed to the “deeply authoritarian version of American state power” (Marable, 2001, p.1), causing a shock to them because the United States was a country of opportunity and freedom in their imagination. Bangladeshis in the United States encountered what Marable (2004) labeled as a “national security state” (p.3) in which state power was used without proper democratic controls and checks and balances to police and disfranchise its own citizens. The disfranchisement of Bangladeshis as well as other dark-skinned Muslims went on hand in hand with the mechanism of racialization of Muslims in mediated and political discourses. The power of the liberal state and the consumer culture was aligned in support of American

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freedom and liberty (Grewal, 2003), casting Muslims as the enemy of that freedom and liberty, thereby constructing Muslims as extreme “Others” whose value systems are incompatible to American value. The exclusionary narratives of “Otherness” permeated the psyche of not only those who asserted a Muslim identity but also those who did not want to be identified as Muslims, through a process of “forced” awakening (Aksoy, 2006) of the Muslim identity that I have discussed in detail in chapter 4 of this book and elsewhere (Rahman, 2010). Citing my interview data and relevant research involving the Western Muslim diaspora, I argued that continuous and seamless media narratives involving Islam and terrorism were so overwhelming, widespread, and homogenized that it was almost impossible for Bangladeshis to escape thinking that they were Muslims. Studying Turks and Kurds in London, Aksoy (2006) reported that this inescapable thinking resulted in active news consumption regarding 9/11 and its aftermath. Some of my participants who watched volumes of cable television recalled that they were also trapped in the cycle of news consumption about Islam, which caused tremendous stress in their lives. My interview data and observations suggest that the awakening of Muslim identity was powerful, but evolved over time. In the beginning it was a feeling of discomfort; something that is present everywhere— you can feel it but cannot explain it very well. As I have discussed in chapter 4, the awakened sense of Muslim identity caused some participants, who never thought of their religious identity, to take a closer look at their religion, and thereby not only exposed themselves to the public gaze but also to an intense personal introspection. Their comfortable sense of Muslim identity was severely disrupted by the exclusionary narratives of mediated and political discourses of Islam and Muslims post-9/11 that continuously associated Islam with terrorism, causing a gap between what Bangladeshis thought about their identities and how they were represented in their host society. This doubt about their faith caused some sort of a crisis of identity, forcing them to reconcile their life-long idea of being a Muslim and what the media told them about it. Some of the participants also reported that they experienced what they called a “racial thinking.” By that they meant that the Othering narratives in media made them think that they were indeed different and this meta-perspective influenced

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their thinking. The consciousness of how others view them came into the stream of their thinking and impacted how they saw themselves. Perhaps what caused most discomfort to the Bangladeshi Muslims was a perceived pressure that they felt in their repeated exposure to the loaded and exclusionary narrative of Islam to accept an either-or position vis-à-vis their religious identity. Bangladeshis showed a complex engagement with their religious identity—they did not want to abandon their Muslim identity because it gave them a stable identity in the multicultural United States. It was especially appealing to them because their ethnic Bangladeshi identity had a limited representational value in the United States. But at the same time, some Bangladeshis showed an aversion to be associated with a Muslim-only identity not only because of the criminalization of that identity, but also because that identity did not capture their lives fully. Historically, Bangladeshis showed an ambivalent, and yet a comfortable attitude toward their religious identity as a result of their experience in Bangladesh. The first-generation Bangladeshis carried that ambivalence to their new home. Also, they were continuously exposed to the narratives of Islam that emanated from Bangladesh. So, like the Turks and Kurds in London with similar ambivalence to their identity (Aksoy, 2006), Bangladeshis were also bothered because the post-9/11 narratives of Islam pushed them to an “unattainable” situation, primarily because ambivalence defines who they were. Except the few extremists who espouse an exclusive Islamic identity in exclusion of the West, a great majority of Muslims including Bangladeshis relate with Islam and the West in flexible and ambivalent terms. Many educated first-generation Bangladeshis were immersed in, or at least exposed sufficiently, to the Western narratives of liberal democracy, human rights and secular principles when they lived in Bangladesh. They also accepted Islam as part of their national life, at varying levels. They did not find much conflict in those two, which was reflected in their aspirations for democracy and human rights. The first-generation-Bangladeshis who reported to be bothered by the exclusionary media narratives fit the profiles of those educated middle class Bangladeshis. The forced Muslim identity among Bangladeshis testifies to the potency of media narratives, providing empirical support to Hall’s (1990, 1992) theory that identities are constructed within representation, not outside representation. But narratives of my

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participants suggest that Bangladeshis refused to go along with the media representations; they employed a variety of techniques to articulate their identity in their own terms. For example, Naseema, whom I quoted extensively in various chapters, was traumatized and experienced a crisis post-9/11, but refused to accept the fixed identity in media’s preferred terms; she identified herself as a mother, a woman and a “citizen of the word.” This apparent shift is in fact a resistance— an unwillingness to fit in the binary “Muslim vs. American” constructs of the Orientalists and different brands of Islamists. Some of the participants said they just refused to expose themselves to those media that caused discomfort to them. Their narratives suggest that they refused to be dragged into the narratives in which Islam was being used as a battle ground by the Orientalists and the Islamists. As I have analyzed elsewhere (Rahman, 2010), some of my participants who expressed trauma and vulnerability in 2006 showed a much different thinking pattern in 2008. One participant, who said that she faced a personal crisis post-9/11, was able to connect the dots in 2008, linking the backlash and exclusionary media narratives with her aspirations to be a full US citizen. Thus, what appeared as a “forced” awakening of religious identity in the beginning, transformed into a political awareness as my participants thought intensely about their situations post-9/11. “The word Muslim does not have an effect religiously, but rather it reminds me that I am a newcomer here as an immigrant; it impacts me by raising the question how much American I am,” a somewhat different Naseema explained when I interviewed her for the second time in 2008. In 2006 she was troubled, explicitly talked about an identity crisis she was facing at that time. In 2008 she showed much more agency in terms of positioning herself as a US citizen, but it was a reworked idea of her citizenship. Her life story reveals that when she migrated to the United States it was all about openness, freedom and opportunity. 9/11 not only brought trauma, but also a crisis and a personal introspection to her. As the immediate impacts of post-9/11 faded away, she thought about her life and talked about her identity and citizenship in different terms. The post-9/11 engagements of Bangladeshis with the national security state changed their relations with their new home, especially their sense of identity and citizenship. The backlash they faced, the exclusionary media narratives that they were exposed to, finally came

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full circle to them. They thought about what kind of citizens they have become and would continue to become in the United States. What would their citizenship entail? Again, even though the impacts of the post-9/11 backlash were overwhelming and touched Bangladeshis across class, gender and generation, there were differences in terms of how they conceptualized what was at stake. Undocumented Bangladeshis, generally young males, feared that the ultimate outcome of the backlash would be their imprisonment or deportation. The documented Bangladeshis who were unskilled and did not know English well feared lethal street violence because of their dark skin and Arabic sounding names. In either case, they would have to live in this country for economic necessity and would be subjected to violence and discrimination. Those people who were most vulnerable and needed to mobilize collectively (Maira, 2007) would not be able to mobilize because of the criminalization of their citizenship and the enactment of laws such as the Patriot Act. On the other hand, educated Bangladeshis with stable jobs were concerned for their perceived crisis of identity and the future of their children in the United States. When mediated narratives of citizenship asked them to fit into the narrowly constructed category of US citizenship, they became concerned. Like other Muslims in the Western diaspora, their belongingness to the United States was what Aksoy called “negotiated positions,” disrupted by the binary construct of Muslim and US citizenship. The Turks and Kurds in London faced a similar situation that Aksoy (2006) described brilliantly: Turks and Kurds do not inhabit one or other of the polar positions. In Turkish mental space, relations to the West and Islam are negotiated positions. There are many nuances and varieties of these positions, and they are not fixed and stable. The binary readings of September 11 events, demanding a wholesale rejection of one camp and the embrace of the other, clearly goes against the idea of entertaining negotiated positions, where the central feature is interaction between and mobility across different registers. Turks, following the tragic events of September 11, were pushed to abandon their fuzzy, contradictory and compromising positions, and to embrace en

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masse one or the other. This they were not only very reluctant, but also perhaps luckily, unable to do. (p.942) Like the Turks and Kurds in London, Bangladeshis also refused to take an either/or position in terms of US citizenship and Islam, not only because it was unattainable but also because it dehumanizes them and undermines their agency. Anecdotally, Bangladeshis share stories in social gatherings reflecting on how other Americans perceive them when they know that they were Muslims. Even people with good intentions and without prejudice against Muslims tend to think that Muslims, both good and bad, will behave in a predictable way. Many Bangladeshi women face an awkward situation when their fellow Americans ask them why they did not cover their heads. Maybe people ask this question just to satisfy a simple curiosity, but it brings the issue of how Muslims are generally understood in the Western societies. Much has been written about the tendency prevalent in Western society to understand Muslims through the prism of terrorism, but what was not fully discussed was how Muslims are understood in a binary fashion. An example of this binary construct would be the classification of moderate vs. extremists. Interestingly, a Muslim with extreme and exclusionary religious views is considered a moderate while a Muslim with moderate and inclusive religious views but a critical view of US foreign policy is considered extreme. Similarly, the good vs. bad Muslim (Mamdani, 2004) is also constructed in the Western discourses. Because of this polar and one dimensional construction of the category Muslim, Bangladeshis, while at times they accept the label of moderate Muslims, shy away from that categorization, thinking the consequence of that label on their citizenship in the United States. One of the consequences of accepting the label of good or moderate Muslim would be that they would have to have a “prerequisite to speaking” (Salaita, 2006), meaning that the only speech they can make without fear would denounce terrorism and declare that Islam is a religion of peace (Maira, 2007). They would be expected to participate in interfaith type programs, and thereby accept uncritically the premise that religion has a unique explanatory power and can explain complex issues, including the relations between the West and the so-called Muslim world. This label severely limits the civic engagements of Bangladeshis and widens their perceived schism

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between them and what they call “White Americans.” Abu Taher, who edited and published a Bengali language community newspaper from New York City, clearly understood that a “White American” could say many things that a Muslim could not say. This was not because he was officially barred from saying whatever he liked to say, but because this was the destiny of a community that is under watch. This has reinforced the general feeling in the Bangladeshi community that Bangladeshis can only reach a “certain limit” in the United States no matter how well they perform. The post-9/11 backlash came as a harsh reminder to them that they should not think themselves as “full” or “first-class” citizens of the United States who can criticize the government and its policies. Manhattan Attorney Mir Mizan, who came to the United States as a graduate student, reminded Bangladeshi-Americans that they should be mindful about their “limit” in their new home: What I think, the reason we came here (United States)—to achieve an objective--work, study--has not been impacted by this (post-9/11 backlash) substantially. We will have to remember, our means are limited here, and it will be limited for many years. We will have to recognize it. If we do not recognize, we will invite only pains. For example, I have become a lawyer, but I will not be able to go much further--if I do not understand and accept it, then it will be my bad luck. But the extent to which we can advance, I do not see 9/11 has impaired it. Obviously, the educated middle class Bangladeshis, who used to think themselves as model minorities, had to scale back in terms of their expectations of citizenship rights after 9/11. Then the question needs to be asked as to how citizenship is constructed in the United States and what it means to the Bangladeshis. Historically the United States constructed the definition of worthy citizenship by categorizing its citizens in terms of economic worthiness (Ong, 1996). In those categorizations race and class operated not in exclusion of one another; a racial signifier was used to create class categories, disenfranchising the people who could not contribute to the economy (Ong, 1996). Bangladeshis with their professional credentials thought that they had become “White,” or at least a model minority, because of their

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economic worthiness and privilege. So, when those Bangladeshis were conflated with “Arabs” and folded into the racial category of “Muslim” and subjected to scrutiny, harassment and discrimination post-9/11, they were upset and thought that they had become “second-class” citizens. As I have argued (Rahman, 2010), the post-9/11 backlash certainly brought to the surface the limitations of conceptualizing citizenship in a so-called “first-class/second-class” continuum. That pinning of citizenship not only fails to recognize and address the internal differences of immigrants but also falls short of addressing the problems of racism, homophobia and poverty that many immigrants face (Das Gupta, 2006). However, invoking the concept of “first-class vs. second-class” citizenship in the face of the post-9/11 backlash is useful and significant because it shows the vulnerability of a glossedover construct of citizenship that cannot withstand state-policing and cannot protect the rights of citizens when they need it most. The unsettling of the comfort of “first-class” citizenship has the potential to generate critical discussion, which may call for a reworking of the framework of understanding citizenship in the post-9/11 world. For the Bangladeshis that reworking might entail what Maira (2009) called a “flexible citizenship.” Bangladeshis claim their US citizenship recognizing that they are culturally different. These Bangladeshis did not see any conflicts between being a US citizen, an ethnic Bangladeshi and a Muslim, and thereby articulated the claims of “flexible citizenship” (Maira, 2004; Maira, 2008; Maira 2009). The narratives of Bangladeshis strongly suggest that they want to retain their ethnic and religious identity but they believe that their differences should not make them lesser US citizens. With a sense of multiple identities they thought that their attachment to the United States would be different, which can be conceptualized as the “shifted meaning of citizenship, identity and dissent” (Mohanty 2004). In Mohanty’s words: Clearly, the meaning attached to being a desi feminist of Indian origin, and being a US citizen, are multiple, anchored in affective affiliations in India and US, linked to the postcolonial history of India, kinship, friendship, and solidarity networks in both spaces as well as in the diaspora,

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The Bangladeshi Diaspora in the United States After 9/11 and, post-9/11, entangled in the slippage between South Asian, Middle Eastern, Muslim and Arab identities in the US. (p. 69)

Mohanty’s conceptualization of US citizenship entails her South Asian, feminist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist identities, and she wants to weave “these various elements of citizenship into a mediation and clarifying questions of identity, displacement, home, and struggles for a just world” (p.69). Similarly, Bangladeshis expect to incorporate their belongingness of multiple locations in their citizenship quests. They aspire for a broader framework to situate their citizenship so that they can live and imagine their lives that are largely transnational.

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Index

ABCD 186 Access to field 22 Internet 126 media in diaspora 13-14, 117-118, 120, 128, 141, 143, 209, 211 New York Bangladeshi community 59-60 online newspapers 124 US/Western media 116, 142 Afghanistan 8, 111, 151 Alienation 87 Al-Qaeda 73 Ambivalence/ambivalent 18, 150, 151, 184, 211-212 American Idol 144 Ananya 128 ATN Bangla 118, 127, 135-137, 142 Audience 56-57, 118, 121-124, 141 diasporic 142 mainstream 141 marginal 141

of global media 57 research 56-57 South Asian 123 Australia 5 Bangladesh Day (March 26) 32. See also Independence Day Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) 52, 113 Bangladeshi 7 association 31, 40, 45, 61, 74, 114, 125 business 23, 46, 60, 104-105 dress 100-101 enclaves 33. See also ghetto essentialism 172 ethnic media 74, 77, 82, 119 food 42, 45-46, 51, 100, 139, 151 invisible citizens 2 Muslim 148-149, 151, 153, 159-160, 164, 211 naturalized citizen 34 online forums 77 visible subjects 3-4 235

236 Bangladeshi-American first-generation parents 19, 43-45 second-generation 17, 64, 88, 94, 103, 104, 107, 136-137, 158, 160, 172, 171-174, 185-186, 190, 194-196, 201 Bangladeshi American Foundation Inc. /BAFI 74, 76 Bangladeshi Association of Chicagoland 31 Bangladeshi media access 118, 123 content 123 description 119 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) 49 Bangla Patrika 78, 83 BBC Bangla Service 12 Bhangra 187, 194-195 Bin Laden 81 Black diaspora 10 Bollywood 102, 117, 123, 135, 194-195 “Brand Bangladesh” 114 British cultural studies 56 BTV/Bangladesh Television 124125 Burqa 156 Cable television 93, 129, 211 Carbondale 3, 42, 55, 58, 62, 65, 78, 101, 120, 127-129, 140-141, 152, 156, 160, 190, 198 Cell phone 15, 47, 60, 102, 131, 143-144, 147, 180, 195

Index Channel i 14, 118, 121, 127, 134, 141 Chapatti 193 Chicago Bangladeshi community 31-32 Christmas 84, 121 Citizens first-class/full 19, 26, 205, 213, 215-216 naturalized Bangladeshis 3435, 36, 183-184 second-class 216 US and European 72 Citizenship 1, 14, 17, 19-20, 29, 31-32, 34, 36, 66, 9091, 97, 183, 186, 203, 205, 213-217 Civic engagements 95, 203, 215 Civil liberties 4, 6, 18-19, 73 Clash of civilizations 71 Clinton presidency 77 Close Up programs, 142-144 Content Bangladesh TV drama 208209 newspapers 118, 207 Conservatism 155 in mosques 91, 152 Consumer culture 210 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) 4, 77 Criminalization of citizenship 213 of Muslim identity 5, 211 Culture American/US 38, 44, 90, 94, 191, 193, 197, 201, 207

Index Bengali/Bangladeshi 19, 22, 32, 44-44, 64, 107, 111, 136-139, 141, 143, 147, 162, 171-174, 187, 191, 196, 206-208, 211 Islamic/Muslim, 158, 172 of new home 171 of South Asia 20 of New York 192 Cultural activities 61-62, 104105, 185-186, 198 Cultural imperialism 142 Cultural space 30, 103-104, 186187, 190-192, 201 Data analysis 25, 68 collection 56 interpretation 70 Desi 21, 186-188, 191, 194-195, 197, 206, 208 club culture 197 consciousness 198 dress 188, 208 feminist 217 food 186 identity 20, 69, 188-190, 192, 195-197, 209 music 193, 207, 209 party 195 people 196 space 190, 192, 195 subculture/culture 188-189, 191-192, 194 Dhaka 61, 81, 85, 103, 106, 110, 113, 120, 122, 124, 131, 138, 141, 153-154, 161, 181, 207 dailies 125

237 newspapers 126 Dhaka University 166 Dhaka University Alumni Association 61, 134 Diaspora, Bangladeshi history 26, 31 profile 26, 31, 37, 40 Durga Puja 122 E-Barta 128 Economic development 2, 12, 49, 147, 204 Economic migrant 19, 147, 184 Eid 43, 82, 122, 125-126, 195 Either-Muslim-or-American 18 Either-or-position, about Bangladeshis’ identity 19, 211 Electronic colonialism 142 Employment-based visa 37 Employment, of BangladeshiAmericans 6, 19, 35, 37-38, 44-48, 203 Engagements, of Bangladeshis with diasporic media 139 with national security state 213 with new home/US 96, 188 with old home/Bangladesh 25, 132 with US media 93 Essentialized Bangladeshi culture 19 Ethnic food 208 Ethnic ghetto 95, 183. See also Bangladeshi enclaves Ethnic stores 103 Ethnography native 57

238 sites 55 tradition 55 Europe 1, 11, 16-17, 23, 30, 72, 74, 86, 90, 140-141, 143, 158, 171, 210, 219 Face book 140 Family, Bangladeshi function/gatherings/parties 60, 81, 173, 175, 190, 205-207 relations 21, 121, 158, 161-162, 166, 195, 206 values 170, 172, 182-183, 189, 192 Family-sponsored visa 6 Fatowa 192 Fieldwork 3, 42, 55-56, 58-61, 67-68, 70, 78, 81, 100, 126, 129, 132, 136, 138, 140, 143, 161, 178, 208 First-generation Bangladeshi 118, 129, 151, 170, 172, 183, 200-201, 206-207, 212 media use 117, 130 parents 139, 157-159, 170, 172, 190, 206-207, 209 FOBANA 46, 74 Focus group 67 Forced awakening, of religious identity 3, 17, 72, 86, 93, 128, 210-215, 217 Freedom discourse 22, 43, 96, 163, 165-168 Fundamentalism 73, 83 Gender/gender relations/gender roles/relations in family

Index 123, 148, 162, 164-165, 174, 179, 185, 195, 203, 206, 213 Globalization 1, 10-15, 20, 49, 129, 142 Globalized diaspora 22 labor 20 world 22, 127, 142 Global television networks 13 Globo 119 Going back/return to home 11, 19, 42, 86, 180, 186 Government-run TV 121-122 Hate crimes 4-5, 16, 73-74, 7778 Heartland News 127 Henry Kissinger 8 Hijab 4, 83, 103, 152, 155-157 Hip-hop 198-199 History, of Bangladesh 113 Home 91, 116, 131, 181-182 exoticizing 133-134 Home-country connection, of Bangladeshi-Americans 19, 26, 203, 207 Home-country television 137138, 208 Hunter College 107 Hybrid/hybridity 56, 142-143, 145, 150, 194-195, 200 Identity 139, 151, 179, 182-184 anchorage point 10, 15, 180 assertive 17, 21, 90, 157158, 161, 184, 187, 196198 Bangladeshi-American 15, 183-185

Index crisis 92, 96, 223 diasporic 10, 23, 187, 211 ethnic 15, 48, 145, 158, 189, 194, 211, 215, 221, 226 ethno-linguistic 8, 18, 156, 158, 216 gender 171 hyphenated 15, 191 Islamic/Muslim 134, 156158, 160-164, 194, 222 mixing, cultures/dimensions of life 197-198 multi-layered 10, 181, 186, 199, 201, 207 national 150 religious 3-4, 18, 25, 44, 87, 148-152, 155, 156, 198, 200, 212-216 switching 138, 186, 198 transnational 140 visual signifier/identifier 4, 155 Image of Bangladesh 8, 14, 59, 107109, 113-114, 123, 169, 205 Islam/Muslim 4, 5, 73, 83, 90, 148-149, 152, 199, 205 Imam 60, 78, 79, 95, 153, 158, 161, 174 Immigrants, from Bangladesh diversity 42 post-1990 32, 35 where settled 35, 38, 58 In-between-ness 200

239 Independence Day 31-32. See also Bangladesh Day Independent Press Association 144 India shopping 104 Indian Students Association 187 Indian subcontinent 186, 192 Indigenous culture 46 Informant 23, 58-61, 79-80, 100 International Organization for Migration 36 Interviews 64 in-depth 3, 25, 64-65 open-ended questions 63, 65 protocol 65 Investment 48, 51, 116, 204 Inward push 94 Islam 126, 148, 150-152, 155, 159-160, 181, 196, 215 American 160 as negotiated by Bangladeshis 149-150, authentic 160 Bangladeshi/Bengali 152154, 157-159, 173, mediated image 127, 149, 151, 210 new 158 pure 159 representation 197, 205 resurgent 158 revivalist 158, 159 transnational 158, 172-173 Islamic lesson 154. 158 Islamic text 160 Islamophobia 24, 75, 97 Islam vs. West 128, 149, 154, 205, 212, 214-215

240 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 149 Jackson Heights 60-61, 78-79, 81, 100, 102-105, 118, 146, 189, 193, 195 Jamat-e-Islami 109 Judgmental attitudes 156 Khaleda Zia 47 Kolkata 29, 106, 119, 125 Life style, Bangladeshi-oriented 46 Lived experience 55 Lottery visa 6, 31, 34, 35-37, 40 59, 84, 100 Mainstream media 5, 92, 131, 209 Marginalized group 57 Media as bridge 208 as daily routine 209 diasporic 24 executive 211 linking functions 130, 207 mix, Bangladeshis’ 129 online/forum 79, 125-127 US use 59, 96 Mediascapes 44, 119 Members of Parliament (MP) 12 Middle-class Bangladeshis 20. See also professional Bangladeshis Mixing, two cultures 185, 197198 Model minority 86, 199, 216 Modernity 56, 72, 159 Mosque 14, 42, 59, 73, 77-78, 82-83, 94, 102, 111, 154, 156-158, 160

Index Bangladeshi-run 60, 100, 153 Friday prayers 60, 153 gender separation 154 MSNBC 128 Munazat 153 Muslim good vs. bad 216 Middle Eastern 71, 73 moderate 113, 155, 157, 216-217 true 152 typical 83 National security state 213 Nazrul, Islam 121 Negotiation as Bangladeshi Muslims 205 cultural 206 in family 205 New York 3, 7, 25, 30, 32-37, 42, 46, 55, 58-59, 6165, 76-79, 81, 83-84, 87, 91,100-102, 105, 109, 119-120, 125, 127128, 130, 133-134, 140146, 153, 156, 158, 161, 165, 170, 173-175, 181, 183, 185, 193-195, 198, 204, 207-208, 215 New York Bengali newspapers 133 New York Community Media Alliance 82 New York Police Department 81 New York Times 5, 7, 8, 34, 78 113-114, 118, 133-134, 148 Nostalgia 188, 190, 192-193

Index NRB 50-53 NTV 14, 118, 121, 127, 134-136, 142 Number of Bangladeshis in the US 30-31, 34-37 Old home culture, of Bangladeshis in US 14, 43, 53, 96, 104, 130131, 141, 144, 147, 179180, 186, 205 Orientalism/Orientalist 71, 87, 149, 205, 212 Pakistan 7 Pan-Islamic unity 7 Parents’ (of second-generation Bangladeshis) culture 168, 171, 191-192, 196, 197 Participants/respondents 61-62 recruitment 105 Passive television viewing 93 PBS 127 Personal introspection 17, 86, 95, 211, 213 Place of settlement, Bangladeshis’ 35, 38, 58 Pleasure, television viewing 208 Political awareness 213 Politics of media 199 multicultural campus 206 Popular culture 15, 18, 71, 95 Popular media 207 Private TV channels 121-122 Priyo Bangla 125 Professional Bangladeshis 42, 108, 132, 146, 166, 174,

241 203-204. See also Middle class Bangladeshis Profile, Bangladeshi diaspora 37, 39 Prothom Alo 151 Public gaze 84 Pundits, television 5 Pull from Bangladesh 120, 208 RAB 138 Rabindranath, Tagore 107 Racialization, of Muslims 89, 210 Racial signifier 216 Racial thinking 89, 128, 211 Racism 10, 19, 89-91, 190, 216 Religiosity, in Bangladeshi Americans 86 Remittance 2, 23, 47-51, 147, 203 Rushanara Ali 12 Salwar kameez 79, 84, 100-103, 103, 162, 193 Samosa 104, 204 Sari 84, 100-103, 132, 162 Satellite TV 121, 127, 140 Saudi Arabia/Saudi 48, 111, 149, 160 Second-generation Bangladeshi Americans 93 Bangladesh connections 105 Muslim identity 157-158, 160 participation in ethnic association 97 Self-reflexive ethnography 22 September 11 Digital Archive 78 Shab-e-Barat 160

242 Sheikh Hasina 47, 111 Shopping 103 ethnic 104 in Jackson Heights 103 Skull-cap 4, 151-152, 156 Small town newspapers 123 Snowball sampling 23, 62, 188 Social network 188, 190 Sonarbangladesh 77 Sony (TV channel) 127, 134-135 South Asia/Asian 2, 20, 29, 30, 32, 42, 73, 85, 104-104, 123, 150, 160, 186, 192-193, 197, 206-207 217 Space 130, 133, 135, 143, 160, 164, 195, 207 claiming of 195-196 ethnic 102 private 95 public 16, 80-83 Tablig 154 Talibanization 110, 112 Target audience 121, 124 Targeted population 73 Taxi drivers, Bangladeshi 32-33, 83 Television/channels 14, 31, 42, 59, 67, 97, 120, 121, 123, 127, 130-133, 138146, 209-210 Bangladeshi 14, 59, 120122, 125-130, 134, 137, 140, 144, 207-209 commercial 144 critics 122

Index drama/play/serials 117, 120123, 125, 133, 134, 145, 209 industry 117 network 13 news 16, 72, 127, 135 programs 15, 67, 94, 118119 transnational 118, 145 Third space 22 Third world 21, 91 Transfer of knowledge/ skills/technology 2, 49, 51-52, 204 Transnational community 8, 10-11, 140141 connection/connectivity 1011, 13, 130 television 118 Turks and Kurds, in London 210, 212, 214 Turkish mental space 214 TV critic 120 Twin Towers 71, 75 United Kingdom/UK 12 Use of Bangladeshi television 136 US media 3, 7-8, 16, 25, 69, 72-73, 91, 94-95, 108108, 113, 130, 144, 146, 154 US State Department 113 US Television/TV 126 Victim diaspora 9, 11 War against terrorism 76 War of Independence (Bangladesh’s, 1971) 30

Index Washington Post 77 Weekly Thikana 74 Weekly 2000 127 West/Western 3, 70-72, 88, 112 culture 93 values 71 Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? 142 Women as the head of the government 7 Working-class Bangladeshis 18, 19-21 Zee TV 127, 134

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