Manila, Philippines – “Don’t treat this like a full dinner. Only take small portions,” a mom warns her son as he reaches for a second serving to of zarda – saffron-hued, sweetened rice topped with heaps of raisins and cashews – on the crowded buffet-style desk on the Khalsa Diwan Temple in Manila. “We must not waste anything.”
I overhear her whereas standing in line to pattern the completely different types of barfi, a dense, milk-based fudge laden with sliced almonds – a well-liked candy from the Indian subcontinent. The mom and son are among the many 100-plus members of the Metro Manila Sikh group who’ve gathered right here in late August to rejoice the Parkash Utsav of Guru Granth Sahib, a commemoration of the primary opening ceremony of Sikhism’s central spiritual scripture.
It’s a busy day for the group kitchen, the langar. Dozens of volunteers snake their means via the gang to serve rotis, contemporary off the tandoor. Sitting cross-legged in rows throughout the primary corridor of the gurdwara, or Sikh place of worship, attendees dip roti into shahi paneer, a creamy curry with pockets of exhausting cheese, or fortunately spoon up the gajar ka halwa, a aromatic carrot pudding, neatly portioned off inside giant metal trays.
Surveying the room, I momentarily neglect that I’m within the Philippines.
The delivery – and longevity – of moneylending in Manila
Based in 1929 by a small group of Punjabi migrants, Khalsa Diwan Temple is Manila’s oldest gurdwara. It marked the start of a budding Sikh group within the Philippines.
Punjabi migrants, who kind the majority of the India diaspora inhabitants within the Philippines (practically 82 p.c), started to trickle into the nation within the Twenties, explains Joefe Santarita, a professor on the Asian Heart on the College of the Philippines Diliman. First, they tried their hand at farming, then moved to small-scale companies.
“From that experience”, Santarita says, “they realised Filipino families needed money.” A shift in the direction of moneylending doubtless occurred throughout World Struggle II when there was an pressing want for capital amongst micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas, he provides.
Whereas monetary inclusion within the Philippines has improved dramatically since then, 44 p.c of Filipinos didn’t have entry to a proper checking account as lately as 2021, in keeping with the Philippine central financial institution, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The Punjabi migrants tapped right into a constant demand from this unbanked group, providing loans for small-scale entrepreneurs or micro-enterprises – and never asking for paperwork or collateral. To compensate, loans are supplied at a hefty 20 p.c curiosity.
Right now, the moneylending group is interwoven all through the Philippines, even when it largely sits on the fringes of the legislation. Moneylenders are actually an integral a part of the nation’s casual economic system, zipping via neighbourhoods on their motorbikes to solicit new purchasers and repair present ones. They function on an off-the-cuff foundation with none permits, typically cultivating new purchasers by providing varied items, reminiscent of small electrical home equipment, on instalments.
The returns are so profitable, many Indian migrants, principally from the state of Punjab, transfer to the Philippines to pursue moneylending.
Nevertheless, no enterprise occurs on the gurdwara, which capabilities as an anchor of the Sikh group. Right here, the moneylenders depart their work behind to carry out sewa (“selfless service” in Punjabi). A method is to assist maintain the massive group kitchen operating as a spot the place anybody, no matter spiritual denomination, can get a free meal.
Once I go to the gurdwara once more on a February afternoon, the langar is quiet. A small group of Indian medical college students sits cross-legged, dipping thick entire wheat chapati right into a mashed masoor dal. The dal is easy however flavourful, spiced with heaps of onion, garlic and purple chilli powder. The meals on the gurdwara is completely different from again residence of their state of Andhra Pradesh on India’s southeastern coast, however they’re having fun with it. The standard, they are saying, retains them coming again.
“It’s also free,” Vikram Seetak, the temple’s head, jogs my memory once I inform him the scholars love his meals. Seetak has been working within the gurdwara kitchen since 1999. In contrast to nearly all of his friends on the gurdwara, Seetak didn’t go into moneylending. After shifting to Manila from a small city close to Jalandhar in japanese Punjab, the place he labored at his household’s mithai (sweets) store, he took up a job on the close by South Asian grocery retailer. After a couple of months, he turned a full-time prepare dinner at Khalsa Diwan.
Seetak now heads a workforce of eight: a mixture of Indian-origin and Filipino cooks, one in all whom has labored with him for the previous 20 years. He likes being in control of the kitchen. “I have to do the mixing of the spices myself,” he tells me whereas straining a thick batter of gram flour and sugar syrup into a big deg, a thick aluminium pot.
He’s making badana, extra generally referred to as boondi – bite-sized, sharply sweetened, fluorescent orange balls – in preparation for the weekend’s festivities. Along with catering a marriage on the gurdwara, Seetak and his workforce are gearing as much as rejoice the delivery, in 1630, of the seventh Sikh guru, Guru Har Rai.
By late afternoon, the gurdwara is teeming with volunteers getting ready meals. They chop tomatoes and onions and type heaps of spinach to organize a gurdwara staple: palak pakoray (spinach pakora), which is spinach leaves dipped in a gram flour batter, spiced with roasted coriander seeds and purple chilli powder after which fried. There can even be vegetarian “mutton”.
“It has to be a full vegetarian menu,” Seetak says in response to my quizzical look. “So we get a mutton substitute made of soybean.”
Whereas Sikhism doesn’t mandate vegetarianism, all gurdwaras serve solely vegetarian delicacies to accommodate the dietary restrictions of individuals from completely different faiths in addition to members of their very own group. Even in Manila, some Sikhs select to be vegetarian of their properties regardless of the predominantly omnivorous tradition of the Philippines.
Contained in the gurdwara workplace, group volunteer Jagjit Singh, a first-generation Indian Filipina, is standing with the secretary at a laptop computer reviewing the components they should purchase to organize pancit, Filipino-style noodles. “Sesame oil, cauliflower, carrots, calamansi, Baguio beans,” she narrates in fluent Tagalog. As a result of pancit is often ready with sliced meat or seafood, the meat substitute shall be a vegetarian tapa (jerky), additionally made with soybeans.
A altering Indian meals tradition within the Philippines
Singh was born and raised in Manila and now lives along with her husband, Shomkor, a Sikh moneylender, in Cavite, a close-by province to the south. In contrast to a lot of her Sikh group members, Singh is a Philippine citizen and firmly identifies as an Indian Filipina. Her father moved to the Philippines from japanese Punjab on the age of 5 together with his mother and father. Each Singh’s father and grandfather turned moneylenders.
“I actually miss Filipino food when I go to India,” Singh tells me. “We like to have a mix of both at home.”
Within the morning, she and Shomkor begin with a Punjabi-style breakfast, reminiscent of aloo poori, a brilliant and spicy potato curry with puffy, deep-fried bread. For lunch, they change to Filipino meals: adobo, menudo or mechado – wealthy, Philippine-style stews ready with meat. And within the evenings, it’s a toss-up.
Singh and her husband are omnivores. “Even though my husband took Amrit [an initiation ceremony that comprises one of Sikhism’s four religious rites], he likes to eat meat,” she says, including that he “actually prepares Filipino dishes quite well”.
The observe of vegetarianism after taking Amrit varies. Some sects are vehemently in opposition to consuming meat and eggs whereas others aren’t.
Manor Singh, one other temple member and moneylender, and his spouse are strict vegetarians. Initially from Jalandhar in japanese Punjab, Manor Singh adopted his uncle in 1999 to Manila, the place he acquired his begin in moneylending. Regardless of having lived within the Philippines for greater than 20 years, Manor and his spouse eat vegetarian meals. This will embody the whole lot from cauliflower and peas in a spiced tomato-onion base to kadhi chawal, evenly spiced gram flour fritters nestled in a turmeric-hued yoghurt curry.
In what can be the winter in Punjab, the Singhs get pleasure from makki ki roti (stiff roti made with cornmeal) paired with sarson ka saag (slow-cooked mustard greens and spinach topped with sliced garlic tempered in ghee).
They can discover all the required spices at a South Asian grocery, which has six places throughout metro Manila. Earlier than the chain opened, Manor Singh remembers the proprietor promoting spices immediately from his van outdoors the gurdwara. Over time, many South Asian grocery shops have popped up within the neighbourhood.
“Oh, you get everything in the Philippines!” says Ritu Wasu, who runs the Indian restaurant Harishi along with her husband and daughter. She sits within the gurdwara workplace along with her good friend who runs a small Indian catering enterprise.
For the previous 5 years, Harishi has been serving up a mixture of North and South Indian delicacies to a clientele of Indians and Filipinos. “By the time we opened the restaurant, Filipinos were already familiar with Indian food. They especially ask for chicken biryani,” she tells me.
Some speculate that biryani’s reputation within the Philippines might be attributed to Filipinos’ publicity to Indian meals whereas working in Gulf states. “They go to Saudi Arabia and get a taste of biryani and come looking for it back in the Philippines,” a group member explains.
Rooster and rice are a well-liked pairing within the Philippines. What higher introduction to South Asian meals than richly spiced rooster layered into fluffy basmati rice?
“Filipinos have come to love Indian food,” Santarita says.
Acceptance and assimilation
Regardless of being a standard fixture for nearly a century, the Punjabi moneylending group continues to be seen by some with a degree of suspicion. Though the gurdwara group members establish themselves as “Bumbays” (derived from town Mumbai) or “5-6” (“you take five, pay back six” with curiosity), each are thought-about largely derogatory phrases in the remainder of the Philippines.
In 2017, then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte known as for the arrest of “Bumbay” moneylenders. Opinion items and editorials calling for an finish to “Bumbay loan sharks” additionally began appearing in main newspapers across the similar time.
Filipino youngsters, in the meantime, have at all times grown up listening to “Behave, or I’ll call the 5-6!”
Jagjit Singh, who feels well-integrated into the Philippines, believes there was a shift in perspective lately. “It’s not like that any more. Now children will instead tell parents they will send the Bumbays after them. … There is no longer that fear of us,” she says.
Some declare that Duterte’s marketing campaign in opposition to the 5-6 was profitable, largely as a result of launch of a competing lending scheme by the federal government’s Division of Commerce and Trade and the Securities and Change Fee’s broader efforts to control lending actions reasonably than perform wholesale arrests of small-scale moneylenders. Santarita believes Duterte’s orders for arresting “Bumbay loan sharks” was principally rhetoric.
“It’s difficult to stop the moneylending and from Bumbays conducting business because there is a dire need of capital among customers who are considered unbanked,” Santarita says. Along with an absence of entry to formal financial institution accounts, borrowing from formal establishments is expensive and cumbersome with excessive collateral and burdensome documentary necessities. The crucial operate of micro-financing partially helps clarify why Indian and Indian-origin moneylenders proceed to function with out permits.
Because of the excessive returns of casual moneylending, the dimensions of migration from Indian Punjab to the Philippines spiked on the flip of the twenty first century. In response to many Indian migrants dwelling undocumented within the Philippines from the Nineteen Forties to the Nineteen Sixties, the Philippine authorities made a powerful push to control their presence, forcing them to hunt residence permits or face deportation.
To keep away from being hassled, many Indian migrants, with assist from the Indian embassy in Manila, turned authorized residents, however few have sought citizenship. Out of an estimated 120,000 to 130,000 residents of Indian origin within the Philippines solely 5,000 have acquired citizenship.
Manor Singh thinks being a resident is simply positive: “We have most of the rights of Filipino citizens. We just can’t vote.”
Whereas the complete assimilation of Punjabi immigrants into the Philippines could also be gradual, extra refined integration is going on, like within the grocery outlets. “The arrival of speciality Indian grocery stores and restaurants stemmed out of the need of Indian migrants to be able to source ingredients for their food,” Santarita says.
That is additionally partly as a result of bigger make-up of the Indian and Indian-Filipino inhabitants, which incorporates rich (predominantly Hindu) businessmen from states reminiscent of Sindh (now a part of Pakistan) who moved to the Philippines after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Now, you could find South Asian components in mainstream grocery chains, and a rising variety of Indian eating places cater to Filipinos in addition to Indian-origin patrons.
Filipino delicacies comes residence
There are gradual adjustments going down inside Indian-origin kitchens as nicely. Whereas Jagjit Singh needs extra folks from her group would embrace Filipino meals, Indian migrants have begun to slowly incorporate Filipino delicacies into their meals.
Was it Jagjit’s thought, I ask, to serve Filipino pancit on the langar?
“It was actually ‘the guys’,” she tells me, referring to the committee that manages the gurdwara. “I’m just helping.”
Even Wasu, who typically prefers Indian meals, typically prepares Filipino dishes at residence. “Sometimes I make chop suey or Filipino-style pasta or buko pandan [a popular Filipino dessert of coconut, pandan leaves and sago pearls],” she says. Her youngsters particularly get pleasure from Filipino meals, she says, including: “They are not fussy. They will eat whatever is served.”
Again within the gurdwara kitchen, the place preparations for the weekend is in full swing, I ask Seetak what dishes he likes – Filipino or Indian? He shares Wasu’s youngsters’s sentiment: “With food, … you don’t play favourites.”