Articles:Conference
paper abstracts on Indian diaspora all over the world Rahul
Patel habari@vsnl.com Mumbai, India.
Culture and economy in the Indian
diaspora: the British experience
Roger
Ballard, University of Manchester, UK
Although the
contemporary South Asian presence in Britain - currently between 1.5 and 2
million strong - is very largely a product of the processes of mass migration
generated by acute industrial labour shortages which emerged during the post
WW2 economic boom, its initial roots can be traced to the latter part of the
nineteen century. Nor has its growth been halted by tightening patterns of
immigration control: complex patterns of inflow (largely from the
sub-continent) and outflow (largely to North America) are now beginning to
emerge. Britain's South Asian population also displays a high level of
internal differentiation, by national and regional origin (Indian, Pakistani
and Bangladeshi, as well as Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati and Sylheti), by
religion (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Christian), and by caste and class of origin
in the subcontinent, let alone in terms of the additional forms of
differentiation that have emerged during the course of settlement in the UK.
The central
aim of this paper will therefore be to set out a brief account of the origins,
growth, and increasing diversification of the South Asian presence in Britain,
and in so doing to explore the differential trajectories of adaptation,
community formation, and of upward socio-economic mobility which each of its
major subsections have begun to display. Particular attention will be paid to
the precise character of the cultural and ideological capital on which each
group has drawn to fuel those processes of adaptation, and in that context the
ways in which the transnational links which members of each group are still
involved include - and seem likely to continue to include - some kind of
sustained involvement with their ancestral homebase in the sub-continent.
The final
section of the paper will turn the whole question around, and explore the
impact which emigration has had - and seems likely to have - on socio-economic
and cultural developments in the villages and towns of origin from which
members of this section of the South Asian diaspora have been drawn.
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Hinduism
in Kwazulu-Natal, South
Africa. (With special reference to Tamil religion and the centrality of the
Amman Goddesses)
Alleyn
Diesel
The language
groups represented among the immigrants who came from India to Natal, South
Africa, from 1860 onwards, are Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and Gujerati, with Tamil
people forming the vast majority. After the expiry of their indentures most of
these Indians moved to the cities, becoming established as a thoroughly urban
population. However, because of the apartheid system the majority tended to
remain poor, with few opportunities for improvement. The forced removals
programme caused great disruption and social hardship for Indian people. The
extended family system was largely destroyed, with negative consequences for
many, resulting in various social problems. Tamil people are, at present,
becoming increasingly aware of, and taking renewed pride in, their heritage.
This has resulted in concerted moves to recover knowledge of the vernacular.
The worship
of Dravidian "folk" deities is very prevalent in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal),
its popularity apparently increasing yearly. The Amman (Mother) Goddesses are,
for many people, the most popular and visible focus of worship, with
considerable emphasis placed on their healing powers. Over the 140 years of
residence in South Africa, the ritual of daily puja, and of festivals, has
been meticulously preserved, but knowledge of the accompanying mythology is
steadily being lost. Although many scholars, both Hindu and non-Hindu, tend to
ignore the Goddess phenomenon, I believe that Amman religion offers an
ancient, vibrant, and contemporarily relevant spirituality. The Draupadi
firewalking festival, which is very popular in KZN, consists of ritual and
mythology characteristic of most Amman religion. Participation in this, and
other similar festivals, brings devotees a valuable sense of identity and
solidarity, especially as members of a community that was marginalized and
discriminated against by apartheid. Loring Danforth (1989) has drawn attention
to the potential for healing and empowerment, especially for women, in the
ritual of firewalking. The mythology of the Amman Goddesses (including that of
Draupadi) recounts how women have gained victory over male intimidation and
violence, thus demonstrating their purity and strength.
I suggest that women
can find in the stories of these Goddesses powerful role models, and a
challenge to join the struggle against the violence perpetrated by patriarchal
domination. For many Hindus, a new awareness of their Tamil heritage could be
powerfully inspirational and healing.
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Media Culture
and Economy in the
Indian Diaspora
Marie Gillespie, University of Wales Swansea
This paper
will examine changing patterns of media consumption in the Indian diaspora,
and how communications technologies are being appropriated to sustain old and
forge new kinds of transnational communities.
General
issues of diaspora cultural politics will be explored through case studies in
media anthropology. We will look at how Hindi films and music may sustain
forms of 'diaspora consciousness' that transcend nationalist identifications,
and reinforce notions of Hindutva. The consumption of media in Indian
languages may play a role not only in religious education and language
maintenance, but also in the negotiation of meanings of 'home', belonging and
citizenship, as well as in performances of plural identities and communities
among British Indian families.
The impact of recent developments in communications technologies on the
availability and take-up of media produced in India and the diaspora, in a
variety of Indian languages, as well as in 'Hinglish' and English has scarcely
begun to be studied. We will explore the appropriation of 'new' technologies
to mobilise transnational spaces to sustain, promote or transform
political-religious affiliations.
One aim of the paper is to generate discussion about the development of a
media anthropology of/in the South Asian diaspora. The progress of this
sub-discipline has been impeded by the problems of sustaining dialogue between
hitherto
distinct and competing paradigms of social
scientific research. There is little productive dialogue between those working
on qualitative analyses of micro socio-cultural processes and those conducting
studies of macro structures from a political economy perspective. These
different perspectives can indeed and should be brought together if this
embryonic, patchy but growing field is to make a significant contribution to
studies of transnationalism.
What we need are more multi-sited, locally grounded ethnographic case studies
where the inter-relationships between cultural, political and economic
processes are analysed in non-mechanistic ways. It is only through such
comparative case studies that we will be able to grasp more fully the
contradictions that lie at the heart of contemporary cultural developments. In
India and its diaspora, as indeed elsewhere, the twin and simultaneous
tendencies towards global cultural homogenisation and fragmentation are being
played out against the backdrop of an increasingly complex relationship
between forces of secular cosmopolitanism and of ethnic/religious
particularism. Future developments are unpredictable but, especially in a new
era of 'symbolic poltics' the consequences of media representations,
consumption practices, and reconfigurations of audiences and publics for all
our political cultures are likely to be weighty.
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Changing
Factors of Indian Diaspora in East Africa
Anirudha
Gupta, Institute for the Study of Developing Countries, New Delhi
The
paper covers four major dimensions of Indian presence in East Africa: a)
demographic b) political – historical c) economic and d) cultural. It also
tries to raise issues pertaining to the future of Indians in East Africa.
Some
controversies that never die among Indians are: if India and not Britain, was
given Mandate to administer German East Africa, demanded by British India
government and Indian nationalists (Sashtri, Sarojini Naidu etc.) would it
have helped transplant a larger number of Indians into Tanganyika, and made
Tanganyika an Indian colony? Alternatively, would Indian presence in
Tanganyika have acted as a brake against white racism in Kenya and racist
policies of apartheid South Africa? Second, why did Indians play an important
role in the nationalist politics of pre-independent India? Why did it
disappear after India became independent. Could India have pursued any policy
other than the one charted out by its first Prime Minister? Third, How do new
Indians fair vis-à-vis Africans as compared with old Indians?
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Chota
Bharat, Mauritius: from myth
to reality
Vinesh Y
Hookoomsing, University of Mauritius
Among the
Indian diaspora scattered over the world, the Indo-Mauritians offer the
shining profile of what looks like the most successful overseas Indian
community. Hindus and Muslims together, they represent more than two-thirds of
the population of Mauritius, a demographic reality which is by itself of
considerable weight given the size of the island and of its overall
population. They have shaped the social, cultural and political life of modern
Mauritius, and provided political leadership ever since the emergence of their
elite in the 1930s. India, the ancestral motherland, is not very far, and the
same Indian Ocean baths the shores of the subcontinent and the island.
Mauritius thus seems to possess all the necessary ingredients that would make
it look like the ideal reference within the Indian diaspora. To what extent
that may be truly the case is a matter of appreciation. But the signs of the
Indo-Mauritian "miracle" are very visible, so much so that one is
tempted to go beyond appearances.
With this in
mind, I will examine the theme of my paper from a three-fold perspective,
namely:
- the
sunny post-card view from the seaside, depicting the colourful presence of
India in Mauritius;
- the
"cloudy" cane-field view from inland, unveiling the dilemma of
being and becoming experienced by the Mauritian of Indian origin as he
moves in the plural insular society created only three centuries ago as a
result of colonisation,
- the
hazy view from beyond the horizon, revealing progressively the threat and
challenge of modernity and globalisation, and making more and more elusive
the old concepts of cultural heritage, unity and identity."
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Culture and economy in an
"incipient" diaspora: Indians in the Persian Gulf Region.
Prakash C. Jain, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
This paper discusses the contemporary Indian Diaspora in the Persian Gulf
region, particularly in the six G.C.C. countries, namely, Saudi Arabia, Oman,
Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain which jointly host about 95%
of the about 3 million Indian immigrants. Large scale Indian migration to
these countries is a relatively recent phenomenon- less than 30 years old. Oil
economy and the scarcity of native workforce there largely determined the
patterns of this form of migration from India. Most migrants originate in
Kerala and other south Indian states and happen to be young, unmarried, less
educated and unemployed or underemployed. The migration is
"circular" in nature – migrants preferring to stay only for a few
years at a time and looking for an opportunity to migrate again.
Given the
stringent naturalization and citizenship laws prevalent in the Gulf countries
it is almost impossible for any immigrant to become a citizen of any Gulf
country. Lack of any political rights for non – citizens, vast gap between
host society and foreign workers, fear of cultural pollution on the part of
the ruling Arab elites and the patterns of dualism (Arab vs. non – Arab,
citizens vs. non – citizens etc.) rather than pluralism renders the Indian
immigrants as "separate and unequal" in all the Gulf Countries. It
may not be an exaggeration to describe these Indian immigrants as ‘social
pariah’.
On the
contrary, the economic relationship between the Indian immigrants in the Gulf
and the host countries can best be described as "symbiotic". The
Indians are always in need of those extra bucks and the Arab regimes find in
Indian immigrants a hardworking, disciplined and docile manpower. At the same
time the Indian Government is equally pleased to have in Gulf migrants a
secure source of remittances and some economic investment. Geographical
proximity as well as a degree of socio-cultural affinity characterized by
patriarchy provides enough room for the Indians in the Gulf countries to
transplant their socio-cultural habits and artifacts. Not surprisingly, Indian
movies, music shows, cricket matches and certain food items are exceedingly
popular not only among the immigrants but also the Arab masses. Gold being the
most favourite metal of Indians provides another reason for them to go to the
Gulf countries, which have emerged as major centres of Gold transaction.
In the mid –1980s Prof. Myron Weiner described the Indian labour immigrants
in the Middle East as "incipient diaspora". The situation probably
has not changed much since then and is not likely to change in the near
future. An overwhelming majority of Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries
would continue to remain as pure and simple " Non-Resident Indians".
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Culture and economy:
Tamilians on
the plantation frontier in Malaysia revisited, 1998-99.
Ravindra K.
Jain, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
This will be
a brief account of culture and economy largely among ex-estate Tamilians in a
region of West Malaysia whom I first studied in early 1960s and then revisited
during December 1998 to February 1999.My focus would be to outline
sociocultural changes at the micro-level and how these relate to changes in
Malaysian economy, society and polity during the last three-and-a-half
decades. I engage with those writers who describe Indians in Malaysia as 'the
poverty group' by presenting field-data which show forces of involution and
evolution that have been at work jointly in the Tamilian diaspora in Malaysia.
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The politics
of cultural
renaissance in the Indian diaspora: the case of Trinidad
N. Jayaram, Goa University, India
Over a century and a half, the descendants of the indentured immigrants from
India have emerged as a vibrant diasporic community in the Caribbean. The
experience of the diasporic Indians in the different Caribbean countries has
been obviously varied: From being marginalised in Jamaica, through bitter
ethnic confrontation in Guyana and Suriname, to a position of near dominance
in Trinidad. This paper seeks to locate the politics of cultural renaissance
among the Indo-Trinidadians in the context of their politico-economic
competition with the Afro-Trinidadians. It is divided into two parts: Part One
sketches the evolution of the Indian diasporic communities in the Caribbean,
and examines the factors and forces which have shaped their differential
socio-cultural situation and politico-economic positions vis-à-vis other
communities in different countries. Part Two focuses on the Indo-Trinidadians,
and analyses their
politics of cultural renaissance and contestation.
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India and contemporary
emigration:
retrospective culture, futuristic economy.
Binod
Khadria, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Abstract: This paper makes a distinction between the elements, which determine
the connection of culture on the one hand, and that of the economy on the
other, with contemporary emigration from India. Since ‘culture’ of a
community can be taken to be determined over a period of time and not
instantaneously, the ‘present’ culture of the Indian diaspora may be
attributed to its ‘past’ psycho-social characteristics. In contrast,
futuristic economic requirements or projections in the recipient-country
labour market determine the contemporary migration rather than get determined
by it. It is in this sense that culture here is a retrospectively determined
phenomenon whereas economy is a prospectively determining one. This perhaps
explains the segregation of culture from economy in the discourse on
contemporary Indian diaspora.
The paper begins with an attempt to understand what is specifically meant by
the term ‘contemporary’ in contemporary emigration from India in terms of
time and space: Post-mid-twentieth century emigration of Indian workers
(‘Service’ as well as ‘Knowledge’ Workers) to the industrial and/or
oil-rich countries of the west (including West Asia), particularly of the last
three decades. The trends in these emigrations are presented in considerable
detail. This is followed by a premise of the culture-economy segregation in
the Indian diaspora context. The culture of the contemporary Indian diaspora
– in terms of the structure of the cultural consumption patterns of the
non-resident Indians (NRIs) and the persons of Indian origin (PIOs)
abroad – is assumed to be taking perceptible shape with a lag following
migration. At the same time, it is asserted that contemporary migration itself
gets shaped by (i.e. lags behind) futuristic needs and requirements of the
labour markets of the evolving recipient economy.
Diaspora culture abroad thus remains linked strongly with the past
‘home-culture’ rather than present or future (evolving) culture in the
parent country. In a double-contrast, on the other hand, it is the
‘host-economy’, and the present as well as futuristically evolving
host-economy, which in terms of differentials with the ‘home-economy’
remains strongly linked with the members of the diaspora. Culture and
economy thus follow more or less separate and independent connections with the
diaspora. In other words, it is the ‘diverging’
home-culture-and-host-economy combination, which dominates the diaspora
life-style (rather than any other ‘converging’ combination). It is perhaps
this, which explains why contemporary Indian diaspora strives to establish,
revive, and maintain cultural contacts back home but leaves the economic
contacts to be initiated and nurtured by the Indian State. With the
second/third generation of native-born members of the diaspora growing up
amidst an assimilating culture, it is conjectured that the cultural bond
between the diaspora and the home country becomes weak enough to be lost sight
of. What remains on the Indian State side is a ‘brain drain’. Whereas the
consequences of brain drain are discussed and analyzed at length in the paper,
it emphasizes a need to analyze the causes and consequences of contemporary
culture of the Indian diaspora in a juxtaposing perspective.
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Indian
immigrants in the United States: transnationalism and the American dream
Johanna
Lessinger, University of New Hampshire, USA
The paper
outlines the socio-economic characteristics of the large, post-1965
immigration of educated, professionally trained Indians to the United States.
Professional success in the fields of medicine, engineering, finance,
manufacturing and business is important of an Indian immigrant "model
minority" within a multi-ethnic U.S. society. This group’s general
prosperity and integration into the American middle class tends to obscure the
sizeable fraction of the Indian immigrant population holding more humble jobs
in the service and manufacturing sectors, whose experiences more closely
parallel those of other new immigrants. These class divisions within "the
community" in the U.S. are only gradually gaining recognition.
The paper
goes on to outline some of the ways that Indians in the U.S. remain a
transnational population, still closely connected to "home" by a
constant interchange of people, images, consumer items and ideas between the
two countries. Within this configuration the NonResident Indian, or NRI, is an
important figure, returning to India as visitor and investor, seen as both a
cause and a symbol of unwanted social change. The demand of NRIs for the right
to hold dual citizenship in India and to have a political role there raises
issues of cultural identity and political autonomy.
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Imagining diasporas: a cultural
history of South Asians in Canada
Harjot
Oberoi, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
The South Asian community in Canada has an extraordinarily rich history of
settlement and expansion extending over a hundred years. This paper seeks to
locate and address the history of this community and its various ethnicities
primarily through its cultural production: novels, poetry, memoirs, and local
histories.
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Transnational
Linkages Between
India and Britain: An Exploration of Socio-Economic Ties Between Patidars of
Central Gujarat and Greater London
Pravin J.
Patel, University of Baroda and Mario Rutten, University of Amsterdam
The Indian
diaspora as it exists today gained momentum in modern times after the
abolition of slavery in the British empire, and the subsequent introduction of
the indenture system in 1834, followed in the 1920s by the kangani or maistry
system. Together with the smaller-sized ‘passage’ or ‘free’ migration,
these forms of migration resulted in the fact that between 1834 and 1938 about
30 million Indians left their country of origin. Most of them went to British
colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
Migration
from India to the west is a more recent phenomenon. By the end of the 20th
century, about 2 million persons from South Asian origin reside in Europe, the
USA and Canada. The majority of them, about 1.26 million, live in Britain.
Over the past four decades, a substantial number of studies have been
conducted on the Indian migrants in Britain. Together, these studies provide
us with insight into various historical and contemporary aspects of the
migration pattern of different Indian communities. With regard to their region
of origin in India, the Gujarati and Punjabi communities are by far the
largest Indian communities in Britain, each with about 260.000 persons. The
Patels constitute one of the largest groups among the Gujarati Hindus. Not
surprisingly "Patel" is one of the most famous Indian surnames
abroad along with the "Singh" surname.
In this
paper we examine the socio-economic linkages of the Patels from Central
Gujarat, also known as Patidars. It is based on fieldwork conducted in 1998
and 1999 in Central Gujarat and Greater London. After some introductory
remarks about the Patidars of Central Gujarat and their patterns of migration,
we highlight several aspects of the socio-economic ties between the Patels in
Britain and their relatives in Central Gujarat.
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Alterity and
cultural consumption
amongst British Indian youths.
Dhooleka
Sarhadi Raj, University of Cambridge, UK
The new
'People of Indian Origins card' solidifies the relationship of the 'homeland'
for Indian migrants. But what of the relationship of the children of migrants
to this putative homeland? How can we understand the nature of Indian youths
who were not born in India and have perhaps only visited once or twice in
their lifetimes, yet are identified as Indian in their countries of origin?
The experience of cultural difference is crucial to understanding how many
people relate to 'being Indian'. This paper examines two separate aspects of
the South Asian diaspora in Britain - Comedy and Hindu Activism. It uses both
frames to interrogate and contest the unitary Asian subject imagined as part
of the diasporic condition (i.e., one which privileges the displacement of
Migrancy). Youth culture, as such, provides ample examples of new patterns of
identity which claim an ongoing relationship with 'the homeland' while
responding to the alterity of difference required in 'multicultural' nation
states.
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Routes of Identity: Reading India
in the Invention of Minorities in Post/colonial Sri Lanka
Darini
Rajasingham, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka
The paper
critically examines the politics of naming diasporas in the South Asian
region. It will trace the constitutive discursive structure of "diaspora",
"minorities" and majoritarian nationalism in the language of the
liberal modern nation states of Europe and South Asia, and its refractions.
Drawing from the Sri Lankan case, I would argue that the notion of "diaspora"
though it seems to critique and challenge the notion of a mono-ethnic
nation-state in Europe, is still fundamentally part of the discursive
construction of otherness within the liberal nation states of Europe and
South Asia that places people within a "minority culture" box, and
their non-citizen kin as ethno-racial others. In this discursive logic a
history of sub-continental migrations, mixing, hybridity and diversity is
reconstituted and subordinated to the political discourse of modern nation-statism
that also enables the current universalizing Euro-American liberal discourse
on the role of post/colonial non-white immigrant or diasporic communities
within the national body politic. But naming diasporas in South Asia has other
effects.
Arguably all
Sri Lankans are of the Indian diaspora since they are historically immigrants
from India (except for a few adivasis). However, many Sri Lankans particularly
in the current armed conflict have great stakes in differeing/denying this. It
is dangerous to have relatively recent roots in India. Moeverover, we rarely
consider ourselves to be part of an Indian diaspora. In this scenario of
forgotton migrations and routes of identity there is the identifiable figure
of the Indian Tamil plantation worker - brought to Sri Lanka as indentured
labour in the mid-1800s, and
denied citizenship in 1948 due to post/colonial Sri Lankan state racism -
primarily on the grounds that they were Indian, rather than Ceylonese/Sri
lankan. These descendents of indentured Indian labour consider themselves to
all interests and purposes, Sri Lankan. In this context I would hesitate to
say that they belong to the Indian disapora. They are and should have all been
granted Sri Lankan citizenship. Clearly issues of identity, territory,
migration and citizenship rights conflate quickly in the naming of disapora,
and naming diasporas has significant political and legal implications. In
South Asia the question of diaspora is funadmentally tied up with
minority rights, and is somewhat different from that of diasporas in the
Euro-American world - a difference that I suspect might be invisible in a
post/colonial Europe concerned with its recent coloured immigrants from the
colonies. This difference however relates to the problem of cultural
translation which lies at the heart of the post/colonial and sub-altern
studies critique of anthropology and history. The paper might reflect upon
this issue.
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Culture and Economy
in the Indian
Diaspora: the Sikhs
Gurharpal
Singh, University of Hull
Of all the
social groups of Indian origin living overseas, the Sikhs, arguably, come the
closest to meeting the definition of a diaspora. In the last two decades the
relationship between culture and economy within the Sikh diaspora has come
under intense academic interrogation. The intertwining of community
narratives, developments in the global economy and events in Punjab, it is
suggested, has created a self-conscious, if somewhat essentialised (and
misguided) diaspora.
This
interpretation, which is becoming the new orthodoxy, lacks sound empirical
foundations. It overlooks the complex differences and variations within the
Sikh diasporic experience, the structural and cultural similarities with other
Indian communities, and the changing nature of Sikh religious and cultural
tradition. While political factors have introduced some degree of ambiguity in
relation to the "homeland", the Sikh diaspora today is neither the
"non-resident god of long-distance nationalism" nor the cipher for
influences from Punjab and India. The construction of a self-conscious
diaspora identity, it will be argued, despite assertions to the contrary, is
still sometime away.
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A Ticket to Write: Reading Indian
Diasporic Literatures
Sujala
Singh, University of Southampton
Much that
gets categorised as "diasporic" literature is expected to share the
common themes of travel, displacement, nostalgia and hybrid identities. While
my paper will use the gamut of such assumptions as a useful starting point, it
will focus on the dangers of curtailing a wide variety of genres, styles and
narratives under the inadequate umbrella of a recognisable "Indian
diasporic literature." The over-emphasis on themes runs into the danger
of reading literary texts as straightforward
sociological or historical documents -- what does Salman Rushdie's Satanic
Verses tell us about Thathcherite Britain, for instance? While such questions
are crucially
important, they must be asked through the rhetorical devices, points-of-view
and literary shenanigans that the text participates in and is produced out of.
Through the
use of examples, I explore the always complex and sometimes contradictory
mediations between history and literature and think of the challenging
possibilities that this opens up for reading the many varieties of Indian
diasporic writing.
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Comparative Patterns in the Hindu
Diaspora
Steven
Vertovec, University of Oxford
Within
today’s global population of over 755 million Hindus, over 12 million are to
be found outside South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka).
Leaving aside the 3.4 million of Indonesia (mainly Bali), where Hinduism has a
long history of cultural integration, there are almost 9 million Hindus
scattered across the world by successive processes of migration.
Following a
brief historical overview Hinduism’s transplantation and transformation in
various settings, in this paper I suggest some specific patterns of change
affecting Hinduism and Hindu communities throughout the world. These include:
a hardening of the distinction between official (or self-proclaimed
‘orthodox’) and popular practices, tensions between unitary or
universalist and specific or segmented (caste, regional, sectarian) traditions
of devotion, the heightening of religious-communal self-consciousness and the
growing distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘culture’. New forms of
media consumption and the use of new communications technologies impact upon
these trends. Each of these patterns or processes, it is concluded, play
significant roles in the differential reproduction of community organization
as well as personal and group identities in diverse settings throughout the
diaspora.
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Indian Communities
in the
Antipodes: A Diverse and Economically Successful Population
Carmen
Voigt-Graf, University of Sydney, Australia
Migrants
from India have been living in Australia and New Zealand for almost as long as
Europeans. In the last two decades, their numbers have increased considerably
as a result of the abolition of the 'White Australia Policy' in the early
1970s and three has been an upsurge in numbers of emigrants from Fiji
following the coups in 1987. For migrants from India, New Zealand is by far
not as important a country for settlement as Australia. Indo-Fijian twice
migrants, on the other hand, have settled in large numbers in both countries.
Today, the Indian population is very diverse in terms of migration history,
regional origin and cultural and religious background. Most migrants of Indian
origin share one characteristic that is their relative economic success. They
are involved in a variety of economic activities with the professions being
very prominent. A comparison of three groups of Indians in Australia, namely
Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians traces their different success in
Australia back to their pre-migration situation and migration history. Overall
not many Indian migrants are business-owners and, therefore, their
transnational networks are less of an economic nature and rather function as
migration and support networks in Australia and New Zealand respectively.
Again, differences between Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians are striking.
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There was a
time when most engine
drivers in East Africa were Indians.
By Jay Dubashi
Remember, software workers are
like engine drivers. They drive the trains
but have had no hand in the
design of the locomotive or the permanent way.
There was a time when most engine
drivers in East Africa were Indians.
But they did not take over East
Africa or any other part of Africa. They
were actually thrown out of East
Africa and had to take shelter in England.
They are doing pretty well in
England but nobody is saying that they have
taken over the country. All
western countries are being ruled by whites,
though there are some Indians
whom they allow to shine, just as the British
did in India and disbursed
knighthoods to their loyal subjects. But these
knights did not rule India when
the British left.
Let us have no illusions about
what we are and what we can become. India
will be a superpower not by
working for Americans and helping US
corporations make huge profits,
but by getting our own country right. There
is a great deal that remains to
be done in India and that can be done only
by Indians. The new computer
coolies cannot do it from thousands of miles
away.
Take the question of NRIs. We
expected such a lot from them. After all, they
are supposed to be our rich
cousins. What have they done? They have put
money in our banks because they
get better returns here than in their own
countries. They collect their
interest regularly and visit India from time
to time to send it. There are
very few industries in which they have put
money except through the stock
market, but that is speculation. Ofcourse
they make convenient noises just
to show off their patriotism, especially
anything to do with
fundamentalism, or seen as attacking the crazy mouthings
of some fanatics who are having a
field day under the right-wing
dispensation at the Centre,
wreaking trouble across India in the name of
`Swadeshi'.
We have had nearly ten years of
liberalisation but has it really made much
difference to the life of the
average Indian? The number of the poor has actually gone up since 1991.
There has been no great increase
in our growth rates and Indian industry has actually suffered.
Thousands of small and medium
industries have been closed down and millions
of workers have been thrown out
of jobs.
So we are in a peculiar
situation. While millions of Indians are without
jobs in India, a few hundred
Indians will be going to the US and other countries of the west in search
of jobs. Of course, they will earn more than what they did in India, but does
that mean that India will gain? India will gain only when Indians in India
have work and nobody is starving.
It is ridiculous to think that a
few hundred Indians or even a few thousand
Indians working abroad can change
the face of India. The so-called coolies - I hate the word - who went out of
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar a hundred and fifty years ago did not change
the face of these two states. They are still the poorest states of India. Why
should a few more collies, what other
word can I use for them, from
Mumbai or Delhi change the face of Mumbai or
Delhi ?
India has to be built by Indians.
Indians going out of India cannot do it
for us. I remain totally
unimpressed by the fact the head of McKinsey & Co is an Indian or a professor in a
business school in London or Harvard is an Indian.
They can contribute more to
India's development by working here than working
outside, just as Indian software
workers in India are more useful to us than
their counterpart in Microsoft or
anywhere
else.
India remains one of the poorest
countries of the world, no matter how many
Indians work for Microsoft or
head petty little airlines in the US. India is
so poor that the World Bank,
which considers itself an authority on poverty,
has been bringing out studies on
Indian poverty every year. And who writes
these studies? Indian economists,
of course.
And where do these economists
work? In American universities. These
economists have, of course,
become very rich by writing on Indian poverty.
(Source: Free Press Journal)
