An exhibition at The American Center examines the history of Indian Americans. Curator Masum Momaya speaks to Divya Kaushik about identity and the conflict of culture
Too many times have we discussed the lives of Indians settled in America. But efforts have been only far and between to highlight the contribution that Indian immigrants and Indian Americans have made in the shaping of United States. An exhibition curated by Masum Momaya and organised by The American Center, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and Delhi International Arts Festival does just that. The various photos with little text describe the contribution of Indian Americans in different fields. The exhibition has seven sections: Migration; Early Immigration; Working lives; Arts and Activism; Yoga, Religion & Spirituality; Cultural Contributions in Food, Music, Dance and Groundbreakers.
It took over seven years of research for Masum and her team to collect the photos and the information. She informs, “The Smithsonian made a specific commitment to this exhibition. It was approached by community members, local Indians living in Washington DC area who said we have been coming here for decades bringing our children and our grandchildren but we have never seen our own history on the walls of National Museum of Natural History. So we thought we should work on that and that’s how it was born. What you see here in India is a separate curation, something very specific to India.”
There was no book to consult for collecting information so Masum and her team met the scholars with university libraries, archivists and people who had founded Indian community organisations in the US. “We also met the individuals and families and it really was an organic process of continuing to dig and see what was out there — identify gaps, figure out how to fill them. All these photographs were procured for the purpose of the exhibition. None of them were in our existing collection,” says Masum.
The first section of the exhibition describes the history of early immigrants dating to the 1700 to the 1950s. “It looks at how those immigrants were instrumental in building the fabric of the US — everything from establishing the line of trade to building the rail road along the western coast to working in the farms and owning them. They were establishing the America that was founded in the 1700s and part of that establishment was also securing rights, not just for themselves but for others. Rights to become citizens,” says the curator.
The exhibition highlights the historical facts that are not known. “The exhibit has contributed to people’s understanding of a lot of new things. People may know something because they have been exposed to Indian food or movies or because they have an Indian neighbour, co-worker or a classmate but they didn’t necessarily know about certain things in depth. We wanted to give context to contemporary debate because citizenship rights can still not be taken for granted. We have an ongoing immigration debate in US and one of the things that we hope to do with this exhibition is to show how some of the questions that are currently being asked have come up over and over again. The questions are: Who belongs to the US, who is a foreigner, who deserves to be here; who gets to decide, what are the criteria that someone should get citizenship or not, should that be tied to economic contribution or not — these are not just contemporary questions but they have been debated throughout the history of the US,” shares Masum.
There is information about contributions that Indians have made through their participation in different professions including medicine, engineering, science and technology. “We are also looking at how Indians contributed as artists, activists, as labour organisers and as organisers for women and lGBT rights. The critical mass of Indian immigration began in the 1960s. The exhibition brings out some known facts, like the invention of hotmail and Pentium chip by the people of Indian origin and some lesser-known ones like securing rights for workers, especially those in the informal sector,” says Masum.
One thing that has always remained most moving for Masum is the relationship between the Independence movement and the Civil Rights movements in the US. “In our research we came across a group of letters which were exchanged by leaders during the Civil Rights Movement as well as those who were fighting for India’s freedom in the early part of the 1900s. To me that transnational influence is very powerful because I don’t think I would have been in the US without the Civil Rights Movement. That actually allowed my parents the passage to come to US and stay and build a life,” she says.
The title of the exhibition, Beyond Bollywood, was an obvious choice. “When we spoke to people about what they thought of India or Indians in America, Bollywood was one word that came up frequently. We needed the title that suggested that we are going beyond Bollywood,” says Masum and adds that they have so much information on each topic that they can come up with a book on each individual topic of the exhibition. “We hope to have some sort of publication, maybe in the form of a exhibition catalogue, which has things like essays. It is impossible to squeeze this history into one book and it is impossible to squeeze it into one exhibition,” she says.