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Alisha Green
Anthropology Professor Yoganand Sinha, or Govind, as he likes to be called, grew up in the state of Bihar in India … in a palace … where he was technically a prince. The way he talks about it, though, these are all just facts of life. Govind first moved to the United States with his family at the age of three. His father was a math professor at MSU but did not like it, so they moved back to India when Govind was five years old. Three years later, his father took the job again and the family moved back to the United States permanently. During the time that Govind lived in India, there were some strong perceptions of Americans due to the political climate. “When I was a kid there were kind of two notions about America. One was this idea of modernity and something to be emulated. On the other hand, it was also the height of the Cold War, and India was considered like a Soviet puppet state, so there was a lot of mistrust of Americans, especially when I was going through elementary school,” Govind said. “There were a lot of agricultural extension professors from MSU doing the Green Revolution in India and things of that nature and we always thought of them as CIA spies.” Though this was the common perception of Americans who were in India at that time, Govind’s time in the United States allowed him a different perspective, and he “certainly had very different attitudes about what America was like,” he said. This, among other things, left him feeling a bit set apart. Even the way he spoke English as a result of having been here was different from the way people spoke it in India, which brought him into some trouble. “The elementary school system in India is quite harsh,” he said with a chuckle. “They do believe in hitting kids that are uppity, so if you correct your teacher’s pronunciation they tend not to like that.” And yes, he said, he was bold enough to try correcting the teachers. Besides being different as a result of his time in the United States, Govind’s family was part of Indian society’s elite. “Both my parents were very high caste individuals and that made a difference” in his life growing up, he said. He simply described the blatant caste divisions in India as “strange.” “People tend to try to play down class differences here, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. In India it’s all kind of up front,” Govind said. He added that being part of the high caste “didn’t make so much of a difference as much as the fact that my father came from an aristocratic household, so he was technically considered a prince, as am I for that matter. So the class thing was very significant in that when I was growing up it was in a palace.” Govind’s family mostly stayed at the university where his father was working, but in the summer and during vacations they returned to the palace. “Since it was an aristocratic household it was kind of an unusual situation for India in that all of my aunts and uncles lived in the same house,” he said, which meant that all of his cousins were there as well. “Crazy would be like an understatement,” he said, describing life in the palace. “We spent most of our time just chasing monkeys, trying to find mangos or guavas – just typical kid stuff.” They were certainly not typical Indian children in every way though, and from a very young age the children were made aware of their status among the elite. “Technically speaking, the aristocrats are supposed to be the second cast. The highest caste are the priestly caste, the Brahmans,” Govind said. “It was just a weird thing that in this particular region, both the aristocratic households happened to be Brahmans as well.” He said that since he was so young he does not really remember if any of the extended family was upset at his father’s decision to move his own family here, but “back in those days it was considered fairly prestigious to come to America and have a job here,” so it was most likely accepted. Besides his father’s job at MSU, another reason they moved to the United States was because Govind’s mother hated aristocratic life and living in the palace. Before marrying his father, Govind’s mother was high caste, but not an aristocrat. She grew up in a very small village, and marriage into the aristocratic household brought many changes that she did not particularly like. “There’s a real difference in India between every day rural life, which is laid back and people aren’t all that formal. This kind of situation where [as an aristocrat] whenever she went bathing in the Ganges [River], which is right next to our palace, she’d actually have to take four guards with her and they would be holding up a curtain all around her so she could go in the Ganges – she hated that sort of stuff,” he said. When his parents moved here, they brought along their Indian culture. His father was a Sanskrit scholar, so “people often called upon him to take on the role of priest in the local Indian community,” Govind said. His mother also established herself in the Indian community, but was even more traditional than his father. She never spoke English or learned to drive. But in other ways, his family was not so traditional. His father was not concerned with making his children have arranged marriages, which is what almost all of Govind’s friends in the Indian community had. “He was a very traditional guy in a lot of ways, but he was also part of that Gandhi generation of Indians that were really trying to promote modernity in the indigenous Indian kind of way,” Govind said. “In fact he was part of that movement. He was a Gandhi youth when he was a kid.” While attending MSU, the India Club provided a way for Govind to stay connected to other Indians in the area. The group met to watch Bollywood movies occasionally, and gatherings allowed them the chance to speak to others in their native tongue. As an undergraduate Govind was a psychology major, but was disillusioned with the universalistic approach that the studies took. But he was also taking many anthropology classes and decided to pursue that field, teaching at a variety of places before becoming a professor at MSU. Govind still keeps in touch with family members in India. Though he tries to go back to visit as much as possible, travel to India is expensive, as well as sometimes uncomfortable due to the weather. “The last time [I went to India] it was miserable because it was summertime. It was 45 degrees Celsius the whole time I was there,” he said. When he goes back to visit he can see his brother, who moved back to India in the early 1980s when Govind was finishing up his undergraduate degree. Explaining why he did not choose to go back as well, Govind said, “I didn’t feel as much of a connection as he did – especially to the palace.” He added that the palaces are “out in the middle of nowhere.” There are villages near the palace, “but villages in India are like nothing you’ve ever imagined.” “All of these places have electricity but the government electrical service is very irregular,” he said. “You can go days without electricity.” Most people buy a generator, but using one is very expensive because of the high price of gas and diesel in India. Living in India for part of his childhood, and being able to travel back there, has given Govind the opportunity to view things with a different perspective than those who do not have a multicultural background. “Certainly you think about issues, like globalization, or diversity, or these sorts of things in a different light because you have seen people living in the third world, living in very rural areas,” Govind said. “So the impact is a lot of these things you have seen in a very different light than people are presenting here in America.” Questions? Comments? Contact Alisha Green at greena11@msu.edu |
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