Diaspora relations

[Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh]

On 7/22/2018 at 3:23 AM, MahadrasSingh said:

 

I think you nailed Canada pretty well. At this point its a cesspool of a long gone culture mashed with everything under the sun. Don't come here if you dont need to, we really don't  need more debt ridden panjabis buying up acres of large but empty homes. We have plenty to spread Sikhi here. As for Sikhs here we're starting to wake up and we do have a good reputation with the locals, more younger sikhs see through the gandh of ourselves and our elders, but we still have a lot to do. Hopefully we make something out of Canada.

You know, those are really good points, and not just regarding Canada, I think generally throughout the diaspora we are seeing a new younger generation who are beginning to open their eyes and seeing the large-scale gandh that pervails in much of the older generation...be it gambling, drugs, drink, fraud or sex. I have to tell you though, having lived in both Canada and England, there are things I saw in Canada among our people that just don't happen here in England. To me, the video below highlights this. This is how some of our old babe and bibian behave out in broad daylight in a public street in Canada, with families and children passing by. He says can I have a feel.....she says "yeah sure". Totally besharm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DapkjkILzmU

 

[Premi5]

On 7/16/2018 at 9:45 AM, Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh said:

I think inter-diaspora relations is a more interesting topic than inter-community relations within the diaspora and I will come on to that in a second. But first, regarding your question: There isn't really a generic 'diaspora community' within any country. We like to assume there is but there really isn't. For example it would be silly to assume that Sikhs living in stunning aestheticaly beautiful Vancouver have the same life as Sikhs living in what is arguably the world's ugliest, most boring and dullest city: Toronto. It would be silly to assume that the Sikhs that live in tight, compact and congested Vancouver, around Main and Fraser, live in the same type of houses and streets as Sikhs that live in the city of Surrey. But, when addressing other diasporas in other countries, we have a tendency to group them all as one. In the same way, Sikhs that live in the south of England not only have very different experiences with other communities than the Sikhs that live in the Midlands or north of England but we also have very different accents and dialects. Within London and the south of England there are really only 2 Sikh areas where Muslims dominate and there is some friction and that is East London and Luton. In the Midlands (Birmingham etc) and the North however, the Muslims not only have the large numbers but they also have the 'wrong' sort of Muslim in that they are jungle Mirpuri types. But, when a Sikh sitting in another part of the diapora hears stories from the Midlands Sikhs he or she will assume that it is the norm all over England.  Generally, in the UK, all the communities get along extremely well. There used be Sikh ghettos in the 1960s and 70s but now we all pretty much live and work alongside each other. With the Hindus, there is zero problems or friction anywhere.

With regards to inter-diaspora relations I think we'll have to wait a generation before many of the Canadian Sikhs get a little more educated and lose that unpadh mentality of equating better life on the basis of how big one's house is and how wide the road outside is. An extremely large percentage of Sikhs from the UK that emigrate to Canada do come back home within 6 months because it really is hard to leave a place full of culture, tradition, museums, the arts and life and move to a place with nothing more than identikit strip malls and a large house situated in a place the world has not only forgotten but doesn't know even exists in the first place. As the UK Sikhs are overwhelmingly an inner-city community there is a reluctance to move to the dead and boring suburbs anyway but that is made more difficult when it's another country. Also, in the UK, you have to understand that our houses are built to last 300 plus years, made of brick, the breeze block and then more brick. It's hard to move from a place where things are solid to a place such as Canada where the 'brick' is merely the illusion of solid when it is added to the front of the house as a false veneer. It's a hard to move from a solid brick house to a house in Canada where the houses are made out of paper and, in the case of BC especially, you don't even get to enjoy your own home because you have strangers living under your floorboards to the east, more strangers under the floorboards to your west and another stranger family at the back of your garden where your garage used to be. A Sikh moving from the centre of the world (London) to Canada is just like a Punjabi selling his property in Ludhiana and buying one in Uttar Pardesh instead simply because he gets one 5 times the size there and includes a swimming pool etc. The house might be bigger. But it's a backward step.

In terms of political involvement within the different diasporas, the Canadian Sikhs are at exactly the same level as British Pakistanis. If the number of MPs is a barometer for 'success' than one would have to say that British Pakistanis are an unbelievable success story, for they have multiple MPs, is the Home Secretary of the whole country and the elected Mayor of the most powerful and influential city on earth: London. But, as we all know, they are not a success story. They, just like Canadian Sikhs, operate by block voting their people in. They take over constituency memberships, get their man in and vote him or her in regardless of policies. The UK Sikhs should not be seeking to emulate this backwards method. In Canada, you also have to factor into the equation the extreme levels of inter-community jealousy and hatred within the various Chinese communities that ensure that a Sikh will always fill the void and get elected on the back of the split Chinese vote. In many instances in Canada, a Mandarin speaker will never vote for a Cantonese speaker, a Cantonese speaker will never vote for a Fujian speaker, a Fujian will never vote for a Vietnamese, a Filipino will never vote for the Hokkien etc. This infighting allows the Sikh candidate to fill the void and get everyone's votes. Not everything is black and white. There's a lot of issues at play.

It’s very interesting what you write about the Chinese. 

I would like to know more these divisions within China and the diaspora Chinese communities. 

[Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh]

12 hours ago, Premi5 said:

It’s very interesting what you write about the Chinese. 

I would like to know more these divisions within China and the diaspora Chinese communities. 

Hi Premi.

I'm really glad it interests you because in so many ways it mirrors our own history and how we perceive ourselves versus how others perceive us in the sense that we could stand on the rooftops and shout all day about how we Sikhs and Punjabis are totally different to and have a different history in the west to the man that comes from Bombay, Madras, Karachi or Calcutta but whatever we say will fly over the heads of white people and Chinese people because to them we are all the same people. I'll refer to the 'mirror image' in what I'm about to say below:

We've all seen movies, photographs and read things about the early Chinese in the late 1800s in places such as California and British Columbia - building railroads and Chinatowns etc. Although China, just like India, is a massive country, nearly all of those Chinese pioneer immigrants were Hoisan speaklers from a tiny stretch of villages in Guandong province. i.e. The Hoisan speakers laid the foundation of the Chinese diaspora but after the Cantonese / Mandarin influx since the 70's and 80's they have been marginalised and their sacrifices forgotten.  (Mirror Image: Although India is a massive country nearly all of the early Indian pioneers in places such as California and British Columbia in the late 1800s were Doabi speakers from a tiny stretch of villages in districts Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. However, since others from other areas and all over India have arrived since the 1980's their sacrifices have been forgotten and they have been marginalised.)

The next big phase of Chinese immigrants to North America were Cantonese speakers in the 70's, 80's and 90's. They came in such large numbers that the Hoisan language was virtually pushed out. The next big phase of Chinese immigrants since the 2000s has been Mandarin speakers and because their language enjoys an elevated status they have pretty much sidelined Cantonese. The bitterness, however, remains in the sense that the Chinese diaspora are the vanguards of the old Chinese traditions and dialects whilst mainland China itself steams ahead with what it calls 'modernity'. The new Chinese will however appropriate the blood, sweat and tears of the original Guandong immigrants and use their history in the west as their own history and sacrifices.(Mirror Image: Indians from other areas in Punjab, Gujarat, Bombay, Tamil Nadu have in the last 30 years poured into North America and have appropriated the blood, sweat and tears of the original Doabi pioneers and used their history as their own collective Indian history in the west.

So you see when it comes to the Chinese vote in Vancouver (other places too but especially Vancouver where the Chinese are so numerous) there is a mixture of resentment against each other coupled with a natural diaspora desire to cling on to and protect old ways and languages in the face of the massive advance of Mandarin in China itself. Diasporas always do that wherever they are in the world. I think the Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan is a good way of illustrating what I mean when I originally talked about fragmented politics and filling voids. Harjit represents a Vancouver constituency that was, in the 1970's, 80's and 90's the Southall of Canada. It was THE Sikh area of Vancouver. Since the early 2000s however, with many Sikhs moving out of Vancouver and into  neighbouring cities such as Surrey, a relatively small Sikh population still remains but power in numbers is with the Chinese. The Chinese however are too busy disliking each other because of regional / dialect differences so they won't vote for each other in an election. This creates a situation for a Sikh to fill the void and this scenario is repeated in areas all over British Columbia.

[puzzled]

My mum went Canada and didn't like it    she said apne are a lot more humble and cultured here in the UK

Haha I remember watching my Canadian cousins wedding movie and they were kissing ! The bride got drunk! and even the guests were dressed like slags and dancing inappropriately    my dad got angry and turned the movie off   hahaha    There were like middle aged aunties wearing saris with there massive bellies hanging, like the whole tedh flopping out.

The whole thing was an uncomfortable watch    I was shocked but my mum said she saw a lot of this over there .

People seem to like a lot drama over there    they want everything over the top and flamboyant 

 

[Ranjeet01]

1 hour ago, puzzled said:

My mum went Canada and didn't like it    she said apne are a lot more humble and cultured here in the UK

Haha I remember watching my Canadian cousins wedding movie and they were kissing ! The bride got drunk! and even the guests were dressed like slags and dancing inappropriately    my dad got angry and turned the movie off   hahaha    There were like middle aged aunties wearing saris with there massive bellies hanging, like the whole tedh flopping out.

The whole thing was an uncomfortable watch    I was shocked but my mum said she saw a lot of this over there .

People seem to like a lot drama over there    they want everything over the top and flamboyant 

 

It's a very boring country.

People have to entertain themselves somehow.

[puzzled]

We have relatives in Toronto and Montreal  they kind of act like goreh 

 

[puzzled]

1 hour ago, Ranjeet01 said:

It's a very boring country.

People have to entertain themselves somehow.

We had some Canadian relatives stay over for a few days when they were coming back from India and they just kept on going on about how everything is so small here lol  the houses, roads etc  

Another thing is they were very loud! Maybe it was just there accent lol 

[Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh]

2 hours ago, lostconfussedsingh said:

What city was it that she visted ? As i heard toronoto and vancoaver have different styles.

Vancouver is stunningly beautiful and has a distinct west coast hippy vibe to it.  It's a city of contrasts though because it's downtown area has pockets of deprivation, poverty and drug abuse that is truly shocking to European eyes.

Toronto on the other hand, is dull and ugly beyond comparison. There is a good reason why all those world-famous Punjabi YouTubers all come from the Toronto area. Apart from sitting at your computer making youtube videos there is absolutely nothing to do and see in that city. It's a city that has a very bizzare infactuation with itself. It keeps referring to itself as a world class city and it has told itself this so many times that it actually believes it to be true. It constantly compares itself to cities such as New York and London when it should really be comparing itself to places such as Geneva or Stockholm (although it has a laughable 4th rate subway transport system more akin to Glasgow or Newcastle).  

Calgary and Edmonton are nice places. The empty vastness of Alberta might not appeal to all but that surreal emptiness quite beautiful and fascinating. You're also just a relatively short drive away from the great outdoors and some truly breathtaking scenery such as Banff and lake Louise.

[Premi5]

54 minutes ago, puzzled said:

We had some Canadian relatives stay over for a few days when they were coming back from India and they just kept on going on about how everything is so small here lol  the houses, roads etc  

Another thing is they were very loud! Maybe it was just there accent lol 

Everything in general is small in the UK compared with N. America

[Ranjeet01]

1 hour ago, puzzled said:

We had some Canadian relatives stay over for a few days when they were coming back from India and they just kept on going on about how everything is so small here lol  the houses, roads etc  

Another thing is they were very loud! Maybe it was just there accent lol 

That's all they have, larger houses and bigger roads. 

Larger houses are mostly rented out.what they have left is not that much larger in their living space, compared to what we live in.

Maybe they use the larger everything to compensate for all their other shortcomings. 

Mainstream white Canadians are quite humble, Punjabi Canadians for some reason are brash.