Indian Diaspora

Examines convict life when Singapore was a penal colony between 1825 and 1873 and the unusual convict system where prisoners were their own warders. The magnificent buildings and construction that still stand today are a legacy of their enduring contributions.

In The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), the geographer David Harvey articulated the concept of " time-space compression " to designate commodity production and accumulation as key-factors of a renewed relation between time and space. Harvey's condition of postmodernity is hence dominated by an alteration of spatio-temporal perceptions, but whereas globalized modernity has dissolved the borders of the nation-states, allowing for the emergence of global mobility of both human and financial capital, it has also turned hope into disillusionment. As Sankaran Krishna argues (2009), postcolonialism raises doubts about the inequalities and injustices of our contemporary liquid global world. Krishna's contention is that the interactions between West and non-West have not been egalitarian in cultural and economic terms, a dissatisfaction that Joseph Stiglitz had already expressed in his Globalization and its Discontent (2002). Pro-globalization policies, Stiglitz claims, can increase vulnerability and poverty when they enhance corruption, rapid change without cultural adaptation, and ethnic conflicts. The complex interaction of globalization, human mobility and cultural commodification can be acknowledged in the transnational turn of early twenty-first century Indian writing. Like a virus, Indian literature has percolated through Anglophone literary spaces. Not only have Rushdie's heirs, or midnight's grandchildren as they have been labelled, disseminated Indian literature. In their works, as Bill Ashcroft contends (2017), " India itself has put the traditional idea of the nation as imagined community into question ". In the wake of global mobility and spatio-temporal disarray, Indian writing has interrogated the idea of the Nation as it had been embraced in the aftermath of Partition. This year, India is celebrating its seventieth anniversary since independence and contemporary diasporic Indian writers ― Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai and Hari Kunzru, just to name a few ― still draw upon Rushdie's skepticism of nationalism but, disregarding his epic scale tones, they tend to privilege stories of ordinary displaced people. Hari Kunzru's Transmission (2004), for instance, is a tale of worldwide connections and disconnections, global strollers, neoliberal finance and cyberculture clash. A British writer of

This newspaper column from 2003 examines how Indians in Trinidad and Tobago are misled, guided by so many fears, the encouragement of feelings of victimhood, and smallness of vision. There is an important contribution for Indians to make to the building of this New World civilisation, which is still in its infancy and only half-made. What is needed is a vision, mission and leadership not griping about “discrimination”, but looking fearlessly to the future.

On the 25 th anniversary of the Air India bombings, June 23, 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered an apology at a commemorative ceremony in Toronto on behalf of the federal government to those who lost loved ones on Air India Flight 182. Yet even while pointing to an apparent crisis in multiculturalism, the text of the apology, which is analyzed here, does not put the Canadian state’s official multiculturalism policy into question. In seeking to offer redress, the official apology in effect functions as a tool of the state to manage the grief and grievance of racialized minorities, even as the state works toward increased surveillance of racialized minorities. Reading the apology in conjunction with two fictional remembrances of the Air India bombings, Bharati Mukherjee’s 1988 short story “The Management of Grief” and Anita Rau Badami’s 2006 novel Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? , this essay addresses the politics of official apology/official multiculturalism. Where the ap...

Description This book studies Indian diaspora, currenlty 20 million across the world, from various perspectives. It looks at the 'transnational' nature of the middle class worker. Other aspects include: post 9/11 challenges; ethnicity in USA; cultural identity versus national identity; gender issues amongst the diaspora communities. It argues that Indian middle classes have the unique advantages of skills, mobility, cultural rootedness and ethics of hard-work.

Diasporas have emerged as one of the agents of development in today's world. India's experience with the IT industry can be cited as one of the best instances of Diasporainduced development. The Indian Diaspora has shared a symbiotic relationship with the Indian IT industry, where both have reinforced each other's quantitative and qualitative growth over the decades. On the one hand, the Indian Diaspora brought a multi-layered gain to the IT industry in terms of enhanced skills; capital formation (human, social and financial); inward remittances; foreign direct investment flows; creation of networks/markets and a boost for India's image. On the other hand, the Indian IT industry created a strong incentive for the mobility of highly skilled professionals and provided the Diaspora with the much needed opportunity to engage with their motherland.

This paper challenges the widely-accepted view that politics in Trinidad and Tobago is driven by ethnic rivalry between the country’s Africans and Indians, or ‘ethnic politics’. The paper demonstrates how this interpretation distorts the historical and sociological record. It forwards a subtler and more historically consistent understanding of the place of ethnicity in politics and society, which is more complex, more fluid, and looser than the popular model posits. Finally, a suggestion for moving beyond the ‘African-Indian rivalry’ hypothesis is forwarded, distinguishing ethnic mobilisation from ethnic politics, and understanding ethnic mobilisation as a by-product of insecurity in a ‘half-made society’.

This dissertation examines Jhumpa Lahiri's representations of Indian immigrant femininity in her fiction. Exploring socio-historical constructions of Indian femininity, this dissertation demonstrates how Lahiri's early representations of first-generation female immigrants remain conventional while her second novel, The Lowland, radically breaks away from stereotypes through the complex character of Gauri, who crosses physical as well as ideological boundaries. Paralleling contemporary feminist and queer intersections within diaspora studies, which emphasise the importance of independent experiences, Lahiri depicts how individual female narratives rooted in specific socio-cultural contexts help to deconstruct homogenous and normative notions of diaspora and transnationalism.

This volume brings together researchers whose rich insights make for a comprehensive and upto-date account of Singapore's rich linguistic diversity. Applying a combination of empirical, theoretical, and descriptive approaches, the authors investigate not only official languages such as English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, but also minority languages such as the Chinese vernaculars and South Asian and Austronesian languages. The chapters in this volume trace the historical development, contemporary status, and functions of these languages, as well as potential scenarios for the future. Exploring the tension between language policies and linguistic realities in Singapore, these contributions capture the shifting educational, political, and societal priorities over time. Ritu Jain is a lecturer at the Language and Communication Centre at Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests lie in the areas of language policy and planning, and language and identity. In her work, she has examined the role of language education policy in the maintenance and promotion of minority and heritage languages, and the implications this has for language maintenance and shift. She is currently exploring the interplay of language and identity among the Indian language communities of Singapore.

De la caste marchande gujarati à la communauté religieuse fatimide : construction identitaire et conflits chez les daoudi bohras (ouest de l'Inde) JURY M. Gérard D. Heuzé (Directeur de la thèse) M. Michel Boivin (Rapporteur) M. Harald Tambs-Lyche (Rapporteur) M. Pierre Lachaier (Examinateur) Mme Aminah Mohammed-Arif (Examinatrice) Centre d'anthropologie sociale (CAS) Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Solidarités, Sociétés, Territoires Ecole Doctorale TESC 1

The discourses of contemporary transnational queer cultures and politics have become crucially important, especially in the contexts of multiplicitous conflicts and possibilities of reconciliations. This article critically contributes to understanding the dual problematic inherent in being ‘queer’ and being ‘diasporic’ in the Indo-Canadian context through an analysis of Farzana Doctor’s novel Stealing Nasreen. The novel portrays the apprehensions that the Muslim diaspora has to address, in a milieu where ‘Indian’ values and understanding of sexualities and familial relations get distorted and refashioned by Canadian (homo)sexual liberalism. This article interrogates such literary contestations and negotiations and provides a critical perspective on the conflicts that queer diasporans face and the reconciliations that they must arrive at so as to accommodate in the Canadian home-space. Furthermore, it argues that questions regarding the Canadian accommodation of queer diasporic Muslim women, like Salma, remain suspended in a contested trans-national space of palimpsestic conflicts and reconciliations.

Achtergrond
Geestelijk verzorgers in Nederland hebben vrijwel geen kennis van feiten en omstandigheden die van invloed zijn op de identiteit van hindoe patiënten. Bij een goede geestelijke verzorging komt een geestelijk verzorger met de hem of haar professioneel ten dienste staande middelen tegemoet aan  de  behoeften  van  de  patiënt.  Informatie  is  nodig  voor  passende  geestelijke  verzorging  van  hindoes volgens professionele normen.
Doel
Door gericht onderzoek bijeenbrengen van informatie die nodig is voor professionele geestelijke verzorging van hindoe patiënten in Nederland.
Methode
Informatie    werd    bijeengebracht    door    literatuuronderzoek,    participerend    veldonderzoek, observatie  en  interviews.  Bevindingen  in  de  praktijk  van  de  geestelijke  verzorging  werden  vervolgens  getoetst  aan  beschrijvingen  in  de  literatuur.  Nagegaan  werd  hoe  de  geestelijke verzorging van hindoes in Nederlandse zorginstellingen kan worden verbeterd.
Resultaten
Hindoes  hebben  in  Nederland,  binnen  een  dominante  andere  sociale  en  culturele  orde,  een  gemeenschappelijke  cultuur  en  historische
  achtergrond.  Tegelijk  beleven  zij  religie  steeds  meer  individueel. Er is een gevarieerde identificatie met India, Nederland en Suriname.
Hindoe patiënten hebben  in  de  geestelijke  zorg  behoefte  aan  gesprekken  waarin  zij  zichzelf  kunnen  zijn.  Soms  hebben  zij  behoefte  aan  spirituele  middelen  uit  de  eigen  traditie,  waaronder 
gebed, mantra-recitatie en lezing uit de heilige teksten.
Geestelijk  verzorgers  in  Nederlandse  zorginstellingen  zijn  universitair  opgeleid.  Zij  gaan  op  uiteenlopende wijzen met religieuze verschillen om. Wegens gebrek aan kennis over de cultuur en  religieuze  achtergrond  van  hindoe  patiënten,  verwijzen  zij  dezen  vrijwel  steeds  door  naar  ritualisten uit de hindoe-traditie. Als informatie over hindoes voor hen beschikbaar is, zullen zij naar verwachting meer het gesprek met hindoe patiënten aangaan en hen op professionele wijze
bedienen. Dit is mogelijk binnen een territoriale werkwijze.

“Troubled genius” was how Ivar Oxaal referred to Dr. Rudranath Capildeo in a sensitive essay portrait, “Fragments of a Life” published in 1968. The phrase seems fitting, but Rudranath Capildeo’s story, successes, and failures are more than simply personal, they illustrate his times and his circumstances.

Capildeo was indeed a great man, not only of Queen’s Royal College, but of Trinidad and Tobago. Yet his greatness must be qualified; for he brought great tragedy to this country. Much, but not all, was of his own making.

The anthology Immigration and Estrangement in Indian Diaspora Literature: A Critical Study attempts to study diasporic sensibilities in writings of Indian Diaspora writers. The book mainly focuses its study on the sense of displacement and dislocation rising due to immigration from homeland to hostland as found in writings of Indian Diaspora writers. Authors have tried to give their best outputs to reach this anthology to its intended goal. Hopefully this book will be helpful to both students and scholars alike.

A fresh and original translation from Sanskrit of the dashrajnya hymn (hymn 7.18 of Rig Veda) describing this defining battle between Aryan king Sudas and his Aryan as well as non-Aryan foes. The decisive battle led to the uprooting of many tribes from the Sapta Sindhu area.

Many existing beliefs are shown to be merely due to misunderstandings. Further, it is shown that the existing translations fall well short of the true meaning.
For example, no Matsya tribe was involved in this battle.

Language and communication are considered acquired behaviours that develop through a combination of nature and nurture, genetic predisposition and environmental stimulation. Human beings have different styles while communicating with one other. Style depends on a number of things such as where we are from, how and where we are brought up, our educational background, age, and gender. In recent years, communication styles of men and women have been studied scientifically. Linguists have documented these perceived differences. The primary purpose of these intensive investigations is not to determine which communicative style is best or to motivate others to change completely, but to identify differences for the purpose of understanding and adaptation.

The ever-increasing contagion of Novel Coronavirus has reached almost 200 countries worldwide and infected more than 2 million people by mid-April 2020. Knowingly or unknowingly, the crisis has significantly underlined the distinction between national and non-national at the global level, specifically in the case of migrant workers. The crisis has likewise affected India’s thirty-two million overseas community, one of the largest international migrant group in the world. Among these overseas Indians, workers living in Gulf Cooperation (GCC) countries are more vulnerable considering their temporary employment tenure and harsh working and living condition. Most of these workers staying in the six Gulf countries live within the lower strata and has limited access to healthcare and preventive mechanisms. In this context, this article looks into the status of Indian labour migrants living in GCC, in the wake of the ongoing global humanitarian crisis, i.e., Novel Coronavirus Crisis.

This paper seeks to problematize the current state of Indian classical dance and its relation to religion in the Canada-based Indian diaspora, with a special focus on Toronto and Montreal. Using data from the early stages of my PhD ethnographic research, this essay contrasts text and practice to demonstrate that the current state of dance in the diaspora has evolved: while the “classical” norms of aesthetics and ideas about religion/spirituality that have been mobilized in the discourse about and practice of Bharatanātyam since the late 19th century still have some salience to this day, a new discourse and approach are emerging from this “ideal” state of dance, allowing performers not only to redefine their own practice in their changing socio-cultural environment, but also to decide for themselves whether their practice is spiritual/religious or not.

Using the Indian diaspora in New Zealand as a case study, this thesis examines how state categorisation practices and nation building narratives have constructed and racialised migrant minorities, such as Indians, in particular ways. It does so through a review of the historical settlement narrative and census records that have tended to erase early ethnic minority presence from what is seen as a predominantly bicultural encounter.
Aotearoan colonial society has tended to render early Indian presence in New Zealand invisible. This pattern remains perceptible in the prolonged use of homogenising ethnic categories utilised throughout the history of the New Zealand census that obfuscate the extent of ethnic minority diversification with specific reference to the Indian community.
The thesis critiques state constructions of ethnic identity through (1) the presentation of alternative historical narratives that more appropriately demonstrate the presence of non-Māori non-European minorities at first contact; (2) an examination of minority reporting in the New Zealand census during the period of early European settlement; and (3) an analysis of data from a survey of the Indian community in New Zealand. The survey data on self-reported experiences of discrimination underscore the importance of ethnic self-identification and the use of more heterogeneous categories for appropriate minority recognition.
At a theoretical level, the thesis outlines a novel framework for diversity governance, known as deep diversity, which is informed by an interdisciplinary methodological and theoretical approach that draws on the disciplines of anthropology, demography, history, and policy studies. This framework rethinks current policy approaches that position minorities as beneficiaries of policies designed for their social uplift and integration into majority society, and instead places the onus of social integration on both minorities and majorities. The framework is applied to an analysis of qualitative data from historical sources that fundamentally question New Zealand’s existing bicultural settlement narrative; to quantitative data from both historical and contemporary census records; and to a self-administered predominantly web-based survey of 1,124 Indian respondents using a snowball sampling method.
This thesis presents an alternative historical settlement narrative that positions Indians as participating, along with Europeans, in first contact encounters with Māori in Aotearoa. Past and present census analysis also reveals the extent of historic Indian invisibility, and demonstrates continued state use of enumeration techniques that obscure and homogenise the diversity that exists within the Indian population. The survey results focus on the themes of identity and discrimination, the analysis of which offers insights about the importance of ethnic self- identification, the continued presence of discrimination, and the use of more heterogeneous categories for appropriate minority recognition. Specific survey results show that respondents, while identifying as ‘Indian’ on the census, favour terms that cite hyphenated nationality or ethnicity (e.g. Kiwi-Indian, Indo-Fijian) or regional, religious, linguistic and country of birth identifiers, as significant forms of self-identification. Results on discrimination demonstrate that 48.4% of survey respondents reported being the target of a discrimination event in New Zealand (86.9% of whom are migrants, while 13.1% were born in New Zealand). When queried about the presence of discrimination, 90.7% of respondents believe that racism and discrimination currently exist within New Zealand society, while only 9.3% believe that it does not exist.
Minority invisibility contributes to social discrimination, and helps perpetuate the shallow diversity management practices in use today. More attention to the importance of appropriate minority self-identification and accommodation, involving majorities in minority integration programmes, and institutional support for a shared national identity, could all help facilitate and promote vital social cohesion strategies in New Zealand. The deep diversity framework articulated in this thesis offers an alternative vision for diversity governance and social cohesion that is appropriate for western liberal democracies with highly pluralised societies such as New Zealand.

From "Area Impossible: Notes Toward an Introduction" (GLQ 22.2) by Anjali Arondekar and Geeta Patel: "Temporality, the promise and peril of area studies, then might provide an epistemic demeanor for the impossible nexus of area with sexuality. Each of the three long essays in this special issue is somewhat configured through time, in [Ronaldo] Wilson’s words 'capturing the patterns,' a 'poetics of asking what happens through improvisation, or in the gesture of writing about the scene, the area/arena where the story is experienced within time that folds through multiple modes of the event.' The essays translate time through area, as it were, in possibly incommensurable directions...Aliyah Khan ferries in the historical legislative record alongside the labor of desire to translate shipboard intimacies between men and between women into kinship. The nominalizations jahaji bhai and jahaji bahin (ship brother and ship sister) provide her leverage into both the racialized landscape of the Anglophone Caribbean and the more contemporary lesbian fictional narrative with which she sites the 'voyager who is not, however, a permanent exile.' Home, then, through the crossed chronologies of desire, of sexuality, of traffic across water, loosens its vantage, dropping area in its wake."

Some Hindu immigrants to America-those who subscribe to Hindutva values-desire full rights and recognition in their adopted homeland even as they simultaneously demand that so-called "migrants" to India (that is, Muslims and Christians whose communities have flourished in India for hundreds of years) acquiesce to their vision of India as a "Hindu state." In an American racial landscape that structurally privileges whites, I argue that the cultural categorization of Hindu immigrants into a "lesser-than-whites" minority has only served to fuel the growth of Hindu supremacist groups in the United States. In this article, I draw on fieldwork with two Hindu American summer camps in order to show that some Hindu immigrants misrecognize and repress their own current alienation in a manner that has subsequently aggravated latent antipathies towards Muslim and Christian communities in India.

by V.Jeya Santhi  & Dr.R.Selvam
Rohinton Mistry, a writer of Indian Diaspora reflects the crisis of self-identity and aspects of immigration in his writings. He belonged to Parsi community of Indian origin but migrated to Canada in his early twenties. As a Parsi-Indian and Canadian writer in the new social milieu, he faces many challenges. He carves out the pain and sufferings of immigrant writers who migrate from India for better education, career prospects and for other reasons which make them more and more strong through his characters in his writings. His first full-blown novel Such a Long Journey, which is shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, reveals his deep concern for the Parsi community in India and for the post-colonial India in general. The writer through the undisputed protagonist Gustad Noble, projects the moment when socio-political commotion in India under Indira Gandhi's regime spirals steadily into the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war and the ensuing succession of East Pakistan into Bangladesh. This paper examines the life of Parsi Indians in the turbulent early 1970's and the brilliant portrayal of Indian culture and family life against the backdrop of the subcontinent's volatile postcolonial politics.

This article attempts to provide a framework for understanding the Indian diaspora, which encompasses a diverse set of people living outside India. This diversity is not only a representation of the plurality of Indian society and heterogeneity in the phases and patterns of migration, but also emerges out of the host country variations. However, regardless of this diverse framework, the Indians in the diaspora derive a commonality from their Indian origin, thus making their identity a play between the divergences and the unifying Indian stamp

The Indian presence in Southeast Asia is set deep down in history. There are innumerable accounts of traders, preachers and adventurers who ventured into the high seas and influenced the eastern part of the world, to the extent of ‘Indianising’ it socially, culturally, religiously, and in many other ways. However, it was during the colonial period that government sponsored migrations in the form of labourers, officials and service providers started, which later resulted into permanent settlements. The diasporic consciousness emerged as the settlers became integral part of economic and political lives of the receiving societies, while continuing to be connected with the motherland. More recently, the migration of skilled and highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs and India’s opening towards South East Asia has given a new face and identity to the Indian communities in the region.  This paper aims to trace the presence of Indians in Southeast Asia from the early to the present times. The paper also makes an attempt to critically analyse the impact of India’s Diaspora and the Look East policies on ethnic Indians in South East Asia

This article is the first chapter in the edited volume "Indians and the Antipodes: Networks, Boundaries, and Circulation" edited by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Jane Buckingham, published by Oxford University Press. The article explores the very earliest South Asian presence in Aotearoa New Zealand beginning in 1769, ending with the earliest Indian settlements in 1850s. It rewrites Asian history in New Zealand, placing non-Māori and non-Pākehā minorities in Aotearoa at the dawn of Māori-European encounter.

This article examines the reconstruction and deconstruction of the concept of काला पानी or kālā pānā, meaning the ‘black waters’, which all Indians must cross when migrating overseas. From its origin as a Brahmanic text warning about the dangers of oceanic voyages, through its dissemination as a more generalised stricture against emigration and its use and abuse as a British colonial construction, to its recasting as a historical trope and a literary device, the ever-changing influence and meaning of kala pani is interrogated and assessed. Contextualising the kala pani trope against the setting of sepoy, convict and indentureship voyages, this study also evaluates its historical validity and importance in colonial and nationalist realities. Finally, the symbolic value of the kala pani and its reworking as a literary device are explored.

This paper explores the representation and misrepresentation of indentured Indian labour migration in the colonial archive and subsequent historiography, and offers some suggestions for alternate ways of viewing the origins of the South Asian labour diaspora. Drawing on ongoing research, it emphasises the need to move away from well-worn dichotomies of ‘slavery’ and ‘free labour’ and instead to re-centre the role of human agency and creativity, even in the face of structural opposition. By reflecting on the limitations of the colonial archive, and emphasising the role of pre- existing networks, returnees and recruiters in facilitating and informing patterns of migration, it suggests ways to move beyond the persistent popular misrepresentations of this process, and find alternative, subaltern perspectives on the indentured labour experience.

“ ‘I should probably warn you that I live with my parents’, she adds.
‘Oh.’ This unexpected piece of information deflates him, confuses him. He asks if her parents will mind his coming over, if perhaps they should meet at a restaurant instead.
But she laughs at the suggestion in a way that makes him feel vaguely foolish. ‘Why on earth would they mind?’ “
(“The Namesake”, 129)


Nothing is static in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”. Whether it is Gogol hesitating to meet Maxine at her house in the above extract, or his parents’ hesitant foray into an alien land three decades earlier, journeys rule. Journeys not only from Calcutta to Boston, but also journeys spanning hearts. “The Namesake” cannot be categorised only as a family saga. It is a story of love and deceit, of friends and loners. Of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’. The two generations of Gangulis--- Ashima-Ashoke and Gogol-Sonia--- share the joys and pains of discoveries as they undertake almost parallel journeys in terms of experiences. Their existence in America mirrors the dilemma faced by every member of the Indian diaspora settled abroad. Substitution becomes a game of one-upmanship, as Indian and American traditions vie for their acceptance. So, we find a pregnant Ashima trying to rustle up some jhalmuri using ‘Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts’, while Gogol’s lackadaisical attitude towards the idea of ABCDs (American-born confused deshis) indicates his own existentialist dilemma and his struggle to be accepted in society as Nikhil, the ‘American’ citizen. Gogol’s journey, thus, becomes a journey that the diaspora all over the world, goes through in search of that elusive and metaphysical place called ‘home’.

: It is said marriages are made in heaven but it is also true that for a successful marriage efforts from both husband and wife is necessary. In the modern age there is lack of patience, time and commitment. Life allures in many ways. There is a desire to reach the top with any opportunity that comes in the way. Money, power, pomp and show attract and are the means to weaken the relationship of husband and wife. Many crumble under this stress and it leaves a scar in the mind of associated persons, unfortunately the most vulnerable- children, in most of the cases.
This paper is based on one of the famous fiction of Manju Kapur  Custody where the battle of marriage and divorce creates havoc in the life of the two children – Arjun and Roohi. The parents separation and remarriage with other person ruins the children lives both health wise and psychologically. The writer is concerned with the fight of Custody of the two children between the father and the mother. While fighting for their custody the parents are least bothered about the adverse effects of their action on the minds of innocent children. This paper is an effort to analyse the trauma and turmoil of Arjun and Roohi who are the ultimate sufferers because of their parent’s deadly dogfight for their custody.