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South Asians overcoming division in Queens

By Tara Kyle and Tahara Miah | Special to amNewYork

August 14, 2007

Tuesday and Wednesday mark the 60th anniversary of the partition that created modern India and Pakistan, an event that tore families apart, displaced up to 14 million people, and contributed to the deaths of at least 1 million.

For young New Yorkers in South Asian immigrant communities such as Jackson Heights in Queens, the historical tensions that embittered their forefathers are giving way to neighborhood friendships.

"We stay with Bengali, Paki, Indian," Taniya Mamun, 17, a Bangladeshi American, using a slang term for hanging out.

"We stay with all kinds of people," agreed Maya Mamun, 16, Taniya's sister.

For the most part, South Asian New Yorkers say that bad feelings stemming from past wars that created modern India, Pakistan and eventually Bangladesh melt away when they make friendships with people from other backgrounds.

The Mamun sisters said they are often mistaken for Indian-Americans at school and in other social settings.

"I don't mind, because they're like my neighbors and it's all good," Taniya Mamun said.

In contrast to their parents, "India and Pakistan fare much less in the lives and imaginations of today's South Asian youth," said Natasha Kumar Warikoo, a professor at the University of London who has studied social dynamics at multiethnic schools in Queens.

But other young people acknowledged that animosity lingers.

"I definitely think there's tension," said Raj Belani, 23, whose parents came from Mumbai, India.

"I have Paki friends who don't like Indian kids they tend to stay in cliques; and I have Indian friends who don't like Paki kids because they tend to stay in cliques," Belani said.

Jackson Heights is the epicenter of South Asian culture in New York. Along the blocks near the 74th Street-Roosevelt subway station, South Asians shop for the same clothes and music, and eat at the same restaurants.

New York's Indian-American and Pakistani-American communities have more than doubled since 1990. More than 200,000 Indian-Americans and 30,000 Pakistani-Americans now live in New York City, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. The population of immigrants coming from Bangladesh, which gained independence from Pakistan in a nine-month war in 1971, is growing at an even more rapid rate.

Despite differences in their heritage and native languages, one place that all the teens flock together is the Eagle Theater in Jackson Heights, which features Hindi-language Bollywood movies with English subtitles.

"You go to a movie theater and there's people from all cultures in there," Belani said. "If anything, Bollywood's most important for bringing everybody together."

Ties among South Asians of the older generation, however, are often more limited.

"Immigrant parents in urban areas have less opportunities to bridge these divides, because they often socialize and work with co-ethnics," Warikoo said.

Teens in Jackson Heights mentioned that language barriers are another reason parents stick to their own nationality.

But in the high schools and shopping districts of Queens, what brings young South Asians together isn't much different from what works for any other American teens.

"I'm not into politics that much; it's just about fun, basically," Taniya Mamun said.