Examines intermarriages patterned by gender (all men from one ethnic background & almost all women from another) that produce significant biethnic communities, drawing on fieldwork, interview, county record, & local historical data on Punjabi Mexican Americans in CA, whose fathers came from India's Punjab province & whose mothers were of predominantly Mexican or Mexican-American heritage. Punjabi Mexican Americans are compared to Filipino European Americans & to Mexican Japanese. Findings indicate that, in all three cases, members of the second biethnic generation evidence considerable ethnic identity flexibility; they also insist on cultural pluralism & claim the dominant national identity, particularly when confronted by new immigrants from their fathers' countries. Adapted from the source document.

T he end of British colonial rule in India and the birth of two new nations-India and Pakistan-was celebrated in California in 1947 by immigrant men from India's Punjab province. Their wives and children celebrated with them. With few exceptions, these wives were of Mexican ancestry and their children were variously called "Mexican-Hindus," "half and halves," or simply, like their fathers, "Hindus," an American misnomer for people from India. In a photo taken during the 1947 celebrations in the northern California farm town of Yuba City, all the wives of the "Hindus" are of Mexican descent, save two Anglo women and one woman from India.

THE relationship between business and politics in preindustrial societies has seldom been clear from historical records. I have argued elsewhere that the major banking firms of Mughal India were central to the imperial system. These 'great firms' were not parasites, passively supportive of the state because it preserved the law and order necessary for trade; they were not self-contained caste communities interacting with the government through the leaders of panchayats or guilds. Their functions were as important to the government as those of its official treasurers, and their desertion of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century helped bring about its collapse.

IMMIGRANTS FROM the Punjab province of India came to California at the turn of the twentieth century and settled in the state's major agricultural valleys. About five hundred of these men married Mexican and Mexican-American women, creating a Punjabi Mexican second generation which thought of itself as "Hindu" (the name given to immigrants from India in earlier decades). This biethnic community poses interesting questions about the construction and transformation of ethnic identity, and the interpretations of outsiders contrast with those of the pioneers and their descendants. These interpretations direct attention to the historical contingency of ethnic identity and to the many voices which participate in its definition.

The three largest groups of Muslims in America are the African Americans, the Arabs, and the South Asians. I have argued elsewhere 1 (Leonard 2004) that, reviewing the history and contemporary scene for Muslims in the US with respect to three key areas, constructions of race, religion, and the nation, these three groups have had experiences more similar than different, and experiences that engage them all deeply in processes of religious and political change in America. But in this panel, I am clearly expected to focus on South Asians (Muslims from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). 2 Let me delineate, then, the special characteristics brought by South Asian Muslims to the American Muslim community and the contributions they are making to both that community and the US.

Analyzed are the striking changes that have taken place in the position of women of the Kayasth caste in Hyderabad. The variables that give a reliable index of change for women are: (1) age of marriage, (2) amount & kind of education, (3) employment outside the home, both before & after marriage & motherhood, (4) naming patterns, (5) marriage across subcaste & caste lines, (6) marriage out of birth order, & (7) ratio of never-married women. Specific findings for the Hyderabad Kayasths demonstrate the usefulness of these variables to give a reliable index of social change, not only for women but also for the entire caste population. Since control of women at all stages of their life cycles is necessary for the continuation of traditional family & caste patterns, women constitute the single most sensitive index of social change in modern India. Comparison & generalizations await further studies of other castes using the same variables. AA.

The ^great firm' theory of Mughal decline relies on secondary sources for its comprehensive data base; it clarifies & extends existing economic theories of imperial decline. Most writers have treated bankers & other financial & merchant groups as segmental rather than strategic elites, but they were indispensable to the functioning of Mughal government, & the great firms' diversion of resources from the Mughals to other political powers in the Indian subcontinent directly contributed to the downfall of the empire. A working definition of great firms in the Mughal period is proposed, along with lines of further research to adequately test the theory. The advantages of this theory over others are outlined, & the bankers in Mughal India are briefly contrasted with those in imperial China. Modified AA.

GIVE ME YOUR ·soRROWS RAJINDER SINGH BEDI Translated from the original Urdu Apne Dukh Mujhe De Do, by Karen Leonard and G. C. Narang