KAMLA BHATT
You drive up the narrow road on Route 99, flanked
on either side by peach trees, and enter Yuba City
in Sutter
County, about 125 miles from San Francisco. This,
as you have found out, is the heart of the 'Rice Bowl'
and the
'Prune Capital' of California. But what you didn't
know and which you soon realise after driving around
in Yuba City
is: that you are also in a veritable 'Chhotta Punjab',
where a throaty Sat Sri Akal is the preferred form
of greeting;
where you can speak Punjabi and not be the odd man
out at the local gas station, at the doctor's clinic,
even at
the farms.There are more surprises in store. You come
across people strolling around nonchalantly in pathan
suits.
At the farm of Didar Singh Bains, counted among the
country's largest peach farmers, you find his hip
daughter
Daljit, a former model, speak to the workers in fluent
Punjabi. At the Freemont Medical Centre, Dr Jasbir
Singh
Kang's nameplate, believe it or not, is in Punjabi.
You drive around, you talk to people-you are told
Punjabi is
taught in the high schools, that Sikhs constitute
9 per cent of Yuba City's total population of 79,000,
that there
are three gurudwaras, a temple and a mosque; that
the prune capital of California reminds them of their
pind
(village) in Punjab; that every Friday, for an hour
beginning 8 pm, the residents huddle around their
TV to watch
their favourite programme, Apna Punjab.The story of
the Sikh community in Yuba City begins at the turn
of the
20th century, when early immigrants from the Punjab
province in erstwhile British India came down here.
The first
Sikh family to settle in the Yuba/Sutter area reportedly
was that of Puna Singh. The handful of immigrants,
over
the century, have burgeoned into a thriving community
of thousands of prosperous farmers, business owners
and
professionals. Even so, Sutter is still one of the
poorer counties in California.Male immigrants then
faced a peculiar
problem-the existing laws prohibited them from marrying
whites. They consequently entered into nuptial ties
with
co-workers, mostly Mexican women, as poor as they
(the laws also didn't allow non-whites to own land).
To them
were born the little-heard-of Punjabi-Mexicans. "There
were only four Punjabi women in California before
1947,"
explains 78-year-old Punjabi-Mexican Mary Singh Rai
of Yuba City. Her father Bishan Singh came to northern
California in 1909. "My father came to Oakland,
Stockton and then to Yuba City before moving to Phoenix,
Arizona. He worked for the railways in Yuba City in
the early years before becoming a farmer. He first
married
another woman, and then my mother Ernestina Zuniga
in Phoenix. She was his third wife since he had been
married in India too. They had a Christian ceremony
with all the trimmings," says Rai, who married
Lal Singh Rai
and moved to Yuba City in 1947."We were called
Hindoos," recollects 66-year-old Isabel Singh
Garcia, another
Mexican-Punjabi resident of Yuba City. "We went
to the church and the gurudwara. We spoke Spanish
and English
at home. My father spoke Punjabi, English and Spanish.
All the Punjabi men learnt Spanish since the women
found
it difficult to learn Punjabi. The Mexican women became
Indian women. They learnt Punjabi cooking and made
rotis
and curry, adding a tinge of Mexican flavour to it.
They mixed tomato sauce and made Spanish rice to go
with the
curry."Isabel Singh's father Memal Singh, typically,
had come to Yuba City in 1906 from Jalandhar.A few
years
down the line, he became a rice farmer leasing property
from the white people. Memal's fortunes resembled
those
of most immigrants of the time, with its highs and
lows. He lost his property in 1924, moved to New Mexico
where
he met Isabel's mother, Genobeba Loya. The Singhs
eventually returned to their 'pind' in 1939.
Hindoos to others, the Punjabi-Mexican considered
himself/herself half-Indian. "I was also called
eight annas to a
rupee since I was only half-Indian," says Guru
Deva Teja, an attorney and realtor, without any rancour.
He was
elected the district attorney in 1963, a post he held
till 1974. "Isabel and I went to grammar and
high school
together," reminisces Teja, sitting outside the
porch of Singh Garcia's house in Yuba City. Teja's
isn't a typical
immigrant story: his father Bachan Singh Teja didn't
rough it out in the farms; instead, he studied at
the
University of Arkansas where he met his bride, Delle
Fuglaar, who was of Norwegian, Dutch and Irish stock.
They
moved to Yuba City in the 1930s.
Between the first decade of the 20th century and
the end of World War II, the Sikh population didn't
grow rapidly.
The reason: a 1917 law banned entry of new immigrants
into the country. But the porous frontiers to Canada
and
Mexico did allow an odd Sikh to slip through. "My
father Lal Singh Rai came in illegally from Mexico,"
discloses Leela
Rai, 42, president/ceo of the Yuba-Sutter chamber
of commerce. "They left India in 1928 but it
took them five
years to reach California. A group of them walked
up from Panama and came to California via Mexico."
The trickle, however, turned into a flood after immigration
laws were relaxed post-WW II. Immigrants from Punjab
arrived in droves in the Fifties, gradually changing
the demography of the area. More important, they were
also
allowed to bring their Punjabi wives, consequently
spawning a culture in which the Punjabi element dominated
the
hybrid variety of the earlier generation.
The new denizens of Yuba City called themselves Indians
or East Indians. "As we grew up, we saw more
Indians
coming into Yuba City," says Alicia Singh Hitzfeld,
64, and younger sister of Singh Garcia. Adds Leela
Rai, who
studied at Yuba City High School and California State
University, Sacramento, "I remember it was a
close-knit
community in the 1960s. I was raised in three cultures-the
strongest was the Punjabi culture-and we called
ourselves Indians. We used to celebrate Republic Day
and Independence Day. These were huge celebrations
and
people would come from all over to Yuba City. We even
got movies from Canada."
These new immigrants too weren't well off, and had
to work as farmhands in the orchards that dot the
area. Even
the biggest of the peach farmers, Didar Singh Bains,
63, began as a manual labourer. "I came in 1958
from Nangal
in Hoshiarpur. I worked for different people doing
manual labour and bought my first farm with my father
in 1962.
We planted apples the first year," recollects
Bains, sitting in his office. Bains Farms now grows
prunes, walnuts,
almonds, grapes and winegrapes.
Today, Bains and many others own palatial houses
and drive flashy German cars. But they endured tremendous
hardship to realise their American Dream. "My
father, Gurbachan Singh Tatla, shared a room with
Bains when they
were at the labour camp," says Satnam Singh Tatla,
43, a farmer and orchard owner who came here as an
eight-year-old. "The farm labour camp had about
50-60 people and there was one cook and one
foreman.Sometimes there were 10 beds to a room. I
started at 70 cents an hour," recalls Bains who,
like many
early immigrants, took off his pagri (turban) and
became mauna (clean-shaven), but started wearing the
turban
again in 1980, perhaps because of the echo the Khalistan
movement had here.
In the early years, the community boasted of very
few professionals. Hari Singh Everest, 85, a Stanford
University
alumnus who came to Yuba City to teach in 1961, remembers,
"In 1961, most of the people from the community
were farmers. Dave Teja's family and Dr Gulzar Singh
Johl, an ophthalmologist, were the only two professionals
that I knew of at the time. At the elementary school
where I taught there were no Punjabi kids, only kids
from
mixed families. Today, about 10 per cent of the students
in Yuba City Unified District are Sikhs."
It was tough in the early years, we could not find
a job and we felt awkward. Now, it's different, we
have many
people who are professionals," recollects Sukhjit
Kaur Kang, 39, married to Dr Jasbir S. Kang, 38, a
physician. Dr
Kang is a relatively new immigrant who finished his
medical studies in Patiala before migrating to the
US in the late
1970s. He moved from Chicago to Yuba City and says,
"I felt right at home when I came to Yuba City
and decided
to stay here. We are different but we are also part
of the American community." Leela Rai comments,
"I think
there is an effort now to integrate and yet not. It
is their intention to integrate but people still wear
traditional
clothes and appear to maintain strong cultural ties
with India. Earlier, everybody wore American clothes."
It was in 1969, on the 500th birth anniversary of
Guru Nanak, that Yuba got its first gurudwara. Two
more have
been subsequently built.
There are also moves to integrate, one of which is
the Punjabi-American Heritage Society, founded in
1993 by Dr
Kang. Every May, they organise the Punjabi-American
Festival. "It helps to build bridges and minimise
misconceptions," Kang points out.
Yuba City has become an ersatz 'pind' which pulls
back those who venture out. Perhaps it is the ambience,
perhaps people don't feel culturally alienated, perhaps
it's the small-town charm. For instance, Leela Rai
moved
away from Yuba City and worked in southern California,
San Francisco and Sacramento before returning in 1988.
"I
am happy back in my little rural area although I had
said once that I'll never come back. My mother knew
better.
She always said, 'You'll come back'," says Rai.
Similarly, Daljit Bains, 32, daughter of Didar Singh
Bains, returned to her family business in Yuba City
after getting
two degrees (in business and planning and development)
at the University of Southern California and working
in
Los Angeles for a while. "Yuba City is conservative
and it has a small village feeling. Everyone knows
everybody.
People are old-fashioned and people keep their old
traditions," she says.
As their numbers grow, the community has tended to
diversify. In recent years, many Punjabis have turned
entrepreneurs, venturing into the trucking, commercial
property and development businesses. "There are
60 small
stores in this area and 56 are owned by people of
Indian descent," says Dr Kang.
But farming remains the core business. "Farming
is in our blood. There is something about Punjabis
and farming,"
says Singh Garcia. "Our fathers paved the way
for everybody else," adds Singh Hitzfeld proudly.
You can doff your
hat to that memory.