An Indian Thanksgiving

The Indian relationship with Thanksgiving is one of the more interesting cultural adaptations performed by the South Asian diaspora in America. The holiday is deeply American — rooted in a specific colonial history, organized around foods that have no equivalent in the subcontinent, and structured by a family-gathering ritual that maps awkwardly onto the different family structures that Indian immigrants bring with them.

And yet, within a generation, Indian American families have made it their own. The process of adaptation is visible in millions of households across the country in late November: a table that might feature turkey alongside biryani, green bean casserole sitting next to chana masala, pumpkin pie following gulab jamun. The American ritual of explicit gratitude maps surprisingly well onto South Asian cultural traditions of thanksgiving, hospitality, and the religious significance of food.

What Indian immigrants have found in Thanksgiving is a holiday with no religious content — a secular occasion for family gathering that does not require negotiation around Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian observance. In a diverse diaspora where interfaith families are common and religious observance varies enormously, a holiday about food and family offers a neutral space where everyone can participate.

The other thing Thanksgiving provides is a legible Americanness — a way of performing belonging to the new country while simultaneously adapting it to the family's own cultural logic. The first-generation immigrant who learned to cook turkey did so at least partly as an act of cultural claim: this country is mine, this holiday is mine, I will make it into something that reflects who I actually am.

The result, across millions of immigrant households, is a holiday that is neither fully American nor fully Indian but something new — a third thing that belongs to people living between two worlds.