Pftflft.4 - !kT^''. CANADIAN INJJiA TIMES -/'Od�li�e�- IIIIC 9, 119 (Published on Jhe first and third Thursday of 4very mob 161 DALHOUSIE ST. OTTAWA, CANADA, KIN 70 Phone: 235-2554 r '\\/\- "A..; Second Class Mall, Registration Ntambeirs 189�1 EDITOR: Mrs. T.J. Samwefl REPRESENTATIVES: TORONTO: Msnjula Das [Parakot] 633-7723 NEW DELHI: GEORGE MATHEW Subscribers and advertisers who wish to Contact no requested to write to Ottawa. mail are The views expressed through various articles, letters and news reports are not necessarily those of the editor. Subscription Rates. CANADA AND U.SA Six Months: $5.00 One Year: 8.00 Two Years: $14.00 OTHER COUNTRIES? One year by Air Mail * $15. FIRST CLASS ONE YEAR Canada $12;00 U.S.A. $13.00 An Ontario Government task force has come up with a set of recommendations to improve the lot of immigrant women. ^ Implementation of these recommendations will be a progressive and much-needed initiative in Ontario. However, the problems of immigrant women are not limited to Ontario. Perhaps one can also observe that women from India are not necessarily without problems in Canada. The story thai was printed in the last issue of the paper, �* A Youngj Bride's Lonely Bus Ride to Oblivion''. is an example of a certain type of problem which cannot by any means be ignored. The same issue is discussed in the article on South Asian women in Toronto ib the current issue. A combination of factors lead to such incidents and there is no point in isolating any one of them and attributing the entire blame to that source. Male domination is a basic characteristic of almost any society of humans and this is particularly so in India, despite being currently ruled by a woman. Add to it the preference for male children in that society, the saying attributed to the Indian law-given man **woman does not deserve freedom'', the economic dependence of the female on the male in a traditional society; the prevalence of the much-outlawed dowry system, the double standard whereby a mMe can get away with '*a- lot of things the female cannot, the relatively more emotional jnake up of women, etc.-, etc., the products of that society often fine) it difficult to adjust and adapt to an entirely new culture which, in some ways is ah antithesis of the Society in which one grew up; It seems quite vital, therefore, that Indo-danadians should do some soul searching even if they are not prodded by the feminists to, come up with ways of assuring fair treatment to alj its members, be they born with.their father's fixtures or mother's' I have read P.p. Mukhopadyaya' letter in your issue of the 1st. September, 1980. PBM appears to be giving cijedit where credit belongs, but that's what he does not want to do/, that's what we call politics or, ignorance of the country's past ! Replying to Richard Gorrance's Setter of the August 4th, PBM defended the Thughees and also the Pathans to justify himself of what he says. But who are those Pathans, Mughals, Turks and Tartars? Who inVited them into India? PBM didn't say that. Perhaps, he didn't know that. Those Pathans built their one-foot wide footpath *roads* only to carry oh their devastation campaign of the country all across India and to carry their loot in thousands of bags on the darnel-backs for years. Were they roads? i*Tio told, PBM that there were roads before the British came? \ � ! �;' After this length: of time it would be graceful on our part to acknowledge with gratitude the British rule as a mission of transformation of a rugged past to an enlightened progress and '�' modernity. Unfortunately we are born ten generations late, hut those men pf the time,: including the older 1 nationalists of India beginning from Ram Mohan Roy, Syed Ahmad Khan, Justice R. Rahade, Dkdabhai Naoroji* Phir-� ozshah Mehta and several others including Mahatma Gandhi have acknowledged the benefits of British rule in glowing terms and in their voluminous works. Jt is time |hat we of today appear fair and treasonable, PBM! Richard Corrance did hot say anything new in his letter. I may here add to what he said that if the British: had hot come to India in the .17trj century, the: whole of the tattered and mutilated subcontinent pf over 2,000 kingdoms and sultanates would all have been Islam jsed and the Hhy>* religion and" culture would *v>':i'-: been completely wiped out. , Don't be disheartened,' PBM. You and myself are all children of modern vknity who must have read very j wrong and perverted texts to gass bur/ examinations, hut to know what the British did to India read the books of those old eye-witnesses of the time who were as much proud East Indians as yoursejf. �� The Economist -Lahore, Pakistan. In a mood of frustration over its inconclusive war in Afghanistan, Russia last week turned on an unsympathetic spectator. Six Mi-24 helicopter gunships crossed the border of Ghakhai, north of the Khyber pass, and shot up, a Pakistani frontier post with rockets and cannons. Two days later, a post at Nawa, 24 kilometres.away, was similarly attacked. In battleground terms the casualties were not great - two Pakistanis dead and.a guriship downed. But the attacks may mark the start of an intensified Russian campaign of Intimidation against Pakistan. Since the Russian invasion of ianistan in December there have been; more than 200 incursions into Pakistan by Soviet and Afghan military aircraft. Some were merely the result of pilot i error but others were reconnai- j ssance missions of refugee camps 1 and bombing; attacks around)�-them. Until last week there had | been no deaths: Pakistan's j military ruler?. General Zia ul ! Haq. wary of the Russians, has j tried not to be provoked. Protests � have been lodged with the Afg- | han embassy in Islamabad, and I there the matter stops. | General Zia said after the first attack: 4> We have lots of patience and are not totally muscleless". That is not -entirely true., If tension escalated and Pakistan sent its fighters to police its air space along the border, they would have diffuculty dealing : with the superior Soviet rbuilt j aircraft. The. shorter end of the | stick does not appeal to the ; Pakistanis. On the ground they | are also weak. The- army has j always faced toward India and 4 has never fought a war on the,; western frontier .where there is a huge gap in I its military infras-J tructure and there are few all-weather roads. '����"X- feurope and Saudi Arabia. The jUnited States offered too little aid jwith too many strings, but; talks jare continuing. The Russian attacks may be a crude warning to* the general not to try to renew former defence links with the jUnited States. They could; have the opposite effect. ' Meanwhile, the Russians are gradually.being taught in Afghanistan the bitter lesson that the �Americans learned in Vietnam. jAn orthodox army needs huge jnumberS of men to contain deter-jmined guerrilla attacks - and then Isuccess is only partial.; j The province of Konar, in the north-jeast. in many ways reflects the Istatc of the whole Afghan war. f There have been at-least.- two j major Russian offensives to j sweep the main valley in Konar. Rebel tribesmen have been pushed back, and crops and ! settlements destroyed? but still the guerrrillas return. Then the it was to fill this gap that the ] Pakistanis sought military aid] from the United States, western � You say that Thughees were i never a problem. Yes, when the[ Brahmins themselves become the j master-dacoits and leaders of theT bands of Thughees in the whole of j Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pra-| desh jungles killing people and] destroying properties, a modern! upstart could see no problem at! all in such things. That's a joke of! our perverse vanity. ' �:'-. �'. i PBM says that the railways did]:' not help to banish famine iii! Bengal (as if we have no famine? and starvation in the whole of! India today with all those Pathan-! built footpath loads' in the; country where the camel-trains? moved all bVer). " ], PBM is exhibiting his mo&j nationalism when he says that R.f Corrance * forgot' to mention Ma-; hatma Gandhi's name as the one: who worked for the freedom of India. Even there PBM has failed to read the recent Indian history! arid evolution pf the British! liberalism that started to give up their hold oh India with a series of Reform Acts of 1909, 1919 and 1935. Later;what Gandhi, Jinnah and others did to serve their own ends, will be told by the late^ historians. \. }� j- A Well, well, do not try to convert myths into truths which cannot stand for long. Now is the time lor us to read history of the ill-fated medieval India betweeiji the lines. We don't need politics now. Politics is the game of the day but the correctly assessed facts will be history later on, and that should be an honest history and not the: kind of stuff that yota want us to know!!! i Russians and the defection-prone Afghan army lie low in their garrisoiTS. venturing put occasionally with an arniored patroiv lh the Pansjhiryancy north of Kabul there was a similar exercise last month, with heavy Russian casualties. ; V; Special battalions of mouritain- trained anti-guerrilla forces have been moved to Afghanistan during the past three months but there has; been no evidence* of their success: President Babrak Karjmal has sought to exploit differences between the tribes by buying one off against the other. Jaji and Shin war! tribesmen, who took the president's gold, have been used by the Russians but their existence is precarious. When captured by the rebels they are beheaded. Afghan conscripts tend to change sides whenever the chance offers. Russian setbacks do not necessarily mean rebel successes. The insurgents remain hopelessly disorganized. Divided by bitter rivalries, outgunned; often short of food and ammunition, they frequently fight for loot only. But their morale is high and they feel sure they can get rid of the Russians just as in the nineteenth century they defeated the British. Their belief in U holy war means that there will always be others to replace the martyred dead. Faced with a stalemate, the Russians and President Karmal blame Pakistan for their troubles, accusing General Zia of harboring and training the rebels.: But Afghanistan's insurgency is born and bred in the country. Film on Dr. I.M. Mnthannn Vsncovver, B.C. v Bv Ron Santana The National Film Board of Canada and the Ontario Educational Comnrunications Association have won the pniisc of a s ma 11 preview audio nee of Indians for the documentary 'VA Scivsc of FamilyV. mostly devoted to the Punjabi immigration (o Canada. Tlic 53-minutc film. describing three-gcjierations of a Punjabi family in British Columbia, at times sounds like reading Ted Ferguson's bookv;^;;:Whitemah,Ts; Country" aloud when it deals with the tribulations of the Punjabi passengers aboard the ship Koniagatarnaru and the denial of democratic rights to Punjabis in British Columbia in the past: Director Paul Lang, apparently, confuses Punjabi culture with those of others in Incli'a and presents a lop-sided view of India's diversity. This misunderstanding, reflected in the monologues by some participants in the drtray young Indian immigrants adopting Canadian ways by showing them disco-dancing. The ^makers of the dpeumentary seems to be unaware of the fact that disco is the product of the American Negro culture and is popular all over the world, not just in Canada. The bankruptcy of English Canadian culture comes out more vividly in the film than the rich cultures brought to Canada by immigrants from India. Clips about earlier immigrants to British Columbia and the speech made by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the Canadian Hojusc of Commons, sound like reading old newspapers while the real immigration from India, which started after the discriminatory laws were repealed, goes unexplained. Thousands of non-Punjabi immigrants, whose cultures arc totally different from that of their northern cousins, are ignored by the film-makers! lack of understanding of India's diverse cultures. Fifty-three minute minutes are not enough to do justice to all cultures of India, claims the researcher of the film who has confused Bombay and Delhi with India, a/sub-continent. If the film succeeds in helping native-born Canadians understand the interesting people coming to Canada from India, it would have served its purpose. However, through a lack of spontan- iety on the part of participants, the monologues explaining how they feel in an alien land do not add in any meaningful way as to why they should be accepted by others.. The narration sounds a little paternal as it expresses "amazement at the success of some Indian immigrants working for Statistics Canada while Indian immigrants doing pioneer research in the field of genetic cloning in Ottawa and others taking interest in federal politics are ignored. The National Film Board, nevertheless, deserves to be congratulated for trying to explain Indian immigrants to Canadians. By confusing the audience for the film namely, white, native-born. Canadians, with the immigrant audience, the message that Indian immigrants are as interesting as Italian or ' Ukranian immigrants, somehow gets muddled. If the National Film Board of Canada wanted to explain hidia to Indians in Canada, one would expect a deeper analysis and a more realistic presentation than the superficial one seen in "A Sense of family." On the other hand, if the film is aimed at native-born types, who seem to be a greater part of the problem faced by Indians in Canada, it should have involved the native-born Canadians in a bigger way than merely being physically present in the film; which smacks of amateurisniiv ]Jy, Fiona Connelly Lalita sits cross-legged on the Moot of her apartment in North York, a [suburb of Toronto. Young, vivacious, dressed casually in jekns and a T-shirt, Lalita is the mother of two school-aged children. r Eight years ago, when she was \ twenty, she and her husband emigrated to Canada from Tamil Nadu, their home in South India. "She is talking about her first months in Canada, and she jokes about how Sesame Street, the popular children's educational program, was her *guru\ 1 Watching the show helped her gain confidence in speaking I English, a language she had studied in high school, but had not had much practice speaking (a situation familiar to many Anglo-Canadians who have studied French in high school). Her husbandi a South Indian classical musician; and teacher, teases her about how much she has changed; now she never stops talking, whether Jn English or Tamil. Now that her children are school age, she holds a part-time job in a library, and helps out with a local school lunch program. The family maintains many Indian customs within their home, but dress in a Western; style most of the time. On occasions when her husband is involved in; a concert, or on other formal occasions, Lalita wears alsari. When I ask her if she misses India, she says that she misses her extended family and the Warmth and security they provided. She would like to live in India i again for that reason. Sylvia Fernandes is 22 years old. She was born In Kenya of Indian parents. When she was five years old he* family emigrated from Tanzania: to Canada. Both parents are educators. Her father comes | from Bombay, and his family is of the Muslim faith and of mixed British and Indian background. Her mother comes from Goa, a former Portuguese colony an India, and her family is Catholic and of Mixed Indian and Portuguese background. As a young \ woman Sylvia's mother was encouraged to travel, and thus ended up teaching in Africa before1 her marriage. A young Indian! woman travelling alone and parental acceptance of an inter-faith marriage such as Sylvia's parents are still not the norm in India today, although norms: are changing. Sylvia's background says a lot about:the rich blend of cultures that are possible among South Asiani people. Unfortunately, Sylvia^ herself feels *4out of touch' with this culture. Her parents can speak several languages, while she "has trouble trying to speak one other language - French". She is -crazy about" Indian sculpture and [painting, but has trouble relating to Indian music, dance,-v literature or philosophy. She wouljd have liked to have worn a sari to her recent graduation, but she felt too shy. � � V' " ' ' '.�',*. ��*�� " ; � - - ' The children of immigrants of many different nationalities often mention the conflict between tfheir'parents 'old world' values and. their own, especially regarding ; dating, staying out late and marriage. IaskedSylvia what her relations with her parents were. "Even though I live away from 'home, my father calls me every two or three days to see how lam, and I just accept this. Hell probably do it until I'm married . She consults them on most major decisions, but as friends and equals. She feels her close relationship with her parents to be supportive rather than stilling. She feels that her parents were the ones who made the breaJt from traditional India; that she is two generations removed. In ; Toront dresse and de for a daught and jo| room * womar from � India, twenty Englar she fin and da sion. 1 childre music re spec to it music) argue caste > The m and he man. Canad sing ar that w try to < accura The cc mothci ;4Iwisl would people that co , These origin, ted fa enviroi ones p assima expres degree The v these> thing Asian onto, Gener Aslant ~ It i$ preset South Metro of Sot that in India, Pakist Africi other South The inctu du, < faith: Lang coul< indij tinei Frei ton: whi rate{ Ken imp( sucl obst in'Cl som theil her gra Afrl se; orij br< Soi ad; i:. Brl ye| 2. a ai in w* o1 3. oi