Indian Diaspora Studies

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.

This paper argues that the diasporic writings deal with the paradox of separation and connection with the homeland. While the diasporic connection with ‘past-home’ is revived by audio, visual, and verbal memories through photographs, albums, letters, videos, audios, and recordings, the connection with the ‘present-home’ is retained by a global communication network. Thus, modern communication and technology seem to bring diaspora nearer to home because of which they can retain their connections with the homeland in the host-land. However, it can be seen that modern technology and communication itself allure individuals in envisioning the idea of “would-be-homeland” resulting in their diasporic psychology. Consequently, the diasporic narrative can be divided into parts: In the first part, it is the ‘would-be host-land’ which becomes a place of attraction as it is represented in various media like television, cinema, magazines, internet, books, and anecdotes. An image of prosperity is created of “would-be-host land” which is filled with hope and opportunities for progress. The protagonist is thus already inclined to make a move to this new ‘host-land.’ The second half of the narrative deals with the experience of ‘the moved body.’ The person who migrates to a new place finds it difficult to adjust to a new identity and fails to assimilate in a new environment resulting in a nostalgia for the lost place. This paper attempts to deconstruct the causal aspect of media and means of communication.

ਭਾਰਤੀ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਦੀ ਰਲ-ਮਿਲ ਜਾਣ (Assimilation) ਵਾਲੀ ਪਰੰਪਰਕ ਸੂਝ ਸਦੀਆਂ ਤੋਂ ਹੀ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਮਾਨਸਿਕਤਾ ਵਿਚ ਬਹੁਤ ਡੂੰਘੀ ਬੈਠੀ ਹੋਈ ਹੈ ਤੇ ਇਸੇ ਕਾਰਣ ਹਰ ਵਰਤਾਰੇ ਜਾਂ ਸਥਿਤੀ ਦੇ ਅਨੁਕੂਲ ਆਪਣੇ ਆਪ ਨੂੰ ਢਾਲ ਲੈਣ ਦੀ ਰੂਚੀ ਇਸ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਵਧੇਰੇ ਉਘੜਦੀ ਹੈ। ਇਥੇ ਵਾਦ-ਵਿਵਾਦ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਅਦ ਸੰਵਾਦ ਉਪਜਦਾ ਹੈ। ਇਹੋ ਗੁਣ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਨੂੰ ਵੀ ਆਪਣੇ ਆਪ ਨੂੰ ਹਰ ਚੌਗਿਰਦੇ ਦੇ ਅਨੁਕੂਲ ਹੋ ਜਾਣ ਲਈ ਪ੍ਰੇਰਦਾ ਹੈ। ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਜਦੋਂ ਪਰਵਾਸ ਕਰਕੇ ਵਿਦੇਸ਼ਾਂ ਵਿਚ ਵੀ ਗਏ ਤਾਂ ਉਹ ਕਦੀ ਵੀ ਇਸ ਗੱਲੋਂ ਚੇਤੰਨ ਨਹੀਂ ਸਨ ਕਿ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਸਮਾਜ-ਸਭਿਆਚਾਰਕ ਤੌਰ ‘ਤੇ ਸੰਘਰਸ਼ ਦਾ ਦੌਰ ਵੀ ਵੇਖਣਾ ਪਏਗਾ। ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਤਾਂ ਪਰਵਾਸ ਵਿਚ ਜਾ ਕੇ ਉਥੋਂ ਦੇ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਵਰਗਾ ਬਣਨ ਅਤੇ ਉਸ ਸਮਾਜ ਵਿਚ ਰਲ਼ ਜਾਣ ਲਈ ਪੂਰੀ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ ਤਿਆਰ ਸੀ। ਪਰ ਪੱਛਮੀ ਸਮਾਜ ਜਿਸ ਸੰਘਰਸ਼ ਆਧਾਰਿਤ ਸਭਿਆਚਾਰੀਕਰਣ ਦੇ ਅਮਲ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਗੁਜ਼ਰ ਰਿਹਾ ਸੀ, ਉਥੇ ਵਿਅਕਤੀ ਕਿਸੇ ਨਵੇਂ ਸਮਾਜ ਦੀ ਉਸਾਰੀ ਵਲ ਰੁਚਿਤ ਨਹੀਂ ਸੀ ਸਗੋਂ ਆਪਣੇ ਪਰੰਪਰਕ ਸਮਾਜ-ਸਭਿਆਚਾਰ ਦੀ ਪਛਾਣ ਨੂੰ ਬਰਕਰਾਰ ਰੱਖਣ ਲਈ ਫ਼ਿਕਰਮੰਦ ਸੀ।

The word ‘diaspora’ etymologically pertains to Greek
language. Literally it is a compound of ‘dia’ means
‘across’ and ‘speiro’ means ‘scatter’. Therefore, the word
diaspora denotes the scattering of people en masse form
one place to other. It is the movement of the people being
away from their own country. There are various sorts of
diasporas in human history of the world. Almost every
country of the world has faced this movement of
population some way or other. Out of these some famous
diasporas are—Jewish Diaspora, African Diaspora,
Greek Diaspora, Italian Diaspora and Indian Diaspora.
There are various reasons behind the mass movement
of the people from one place to another. Some can be
counted as the result of colonialism, imperialism, and
quest of better livelihood. The leaving of the home
country was involuntarily or reluctantly and they had
desire to come back to their homeland. They had the
feeling of nostalgia and homesickness.

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’.

L’Italia viene spesso considerata come un paese che ospita o riceve migranti poco qualificati (per lo più illegali), così nel corso degli anni mi sono trovata a spiegare in più occasioni che anche migranti altamente qualificati sono attratti dall’Italia, e che addirittura vi giungono grazie ad accordi internazionali stipulati da paesi che sono tra loro in competizione ‘soft power’ per la ricerca di talenti, con lo scopo di aumentare il proprio potere a livello globale, ovviamente attraverso vie legali. Gli studenti internazionali costituiscono una categoria di migranti che fino agli anni duemila non ha ricevuto molta attenzione in ambito accademico [Piguet et al., 2017]. Tuttavia, la migrazione per motivi di studio si può far risalire al 1190, e, forse ancora più precisamente, al periodo coloniale tra il XVII e il XIX secolo [Leucci et al., 2018]. A questo proposito, la presente tesi ha evidenziato come il flusso di studenti indiani verso l’Italia sia largamente incoraggiato da politiche internazionali che rimangono per lo più sconosciute. Tra queste politiche figurano vari accordi bilaterali firmati dal Governo italiano per attirare studenti indiani di livello universitario che vogliano “investire il proprio talento” nelle Università italiane. La tesi riesce a coniugare, attraverso un case study sulla città di Padova – città di ‘media’ dimensione che sta guadagnando importanza nel panorama internazionale grazie alla sua Università, fondata 800 anni fa - due livelli di analisi (locale e globale) in un’unica discussione sulle interdipendenze tra l’andamento e la struttura dei flussi migratori degli studenti indiani e la loro spazializzazione in Italia quale nazione di destinazione. La tesi presentata contribuisce quindi ad evidenziare un flusso migratorio rilevante ma inesplorato dalla letteratura accademica in Italia: la migrazione degli studenti internazionali. Allo stesso tempo, un focus sugli studenti universitari indiani, considerati come studenti-migranti dotati di conoscenze e capacità intellettuali, aiuterà a delineare il variegato mosaico dell’attuale migrazione indiana in Italia. In effetti, l’analisi della migrazione degli indiani in Italia resta attualmente limitata a migranti con bassi o medi livelli di specializzazione come, ad esempio, gli indiani Sikh impiegati in agricoltura. In linea generale, la migrazione di lavoratori altamente qualificati e con alti livelli di istruzione non è stata studiata in modo approfondito né in Italia, né in altri paesi europei [Piguet, 2016; McGuill, 2013; King and Raghuram, 2013]. Pertanto, richiamo la necessità di definire un diverso modo di pensare, interpretare e agire che superi l’approccio limitante alla migrazione generalmente associato ai soli irregolari [Ambrosini, 2011, 2017; Panichella & Ambrosini, 2018]. La tesi colma inoltre un’importante lacuna, valutando gli impatti negativi del processo di studentificazione di una città come Padova che ricerca il proprio riconoscimento a livello internazionale, aldilà del suo patrimonio storico noto globalmente per la basilica di Sant’Antonio. In questo contesto, ci tengo a sottolineare come il ruolo illustre dell’Università e il suo spazio fisico fungano da “ponte”, o da crocevia e punto di convergenza dell’interculturalità della città. Nel complesso, la presente tesi di ricerca fornisce un quadro dettagliato e ricco di sfumature sui vari profili degli studenti indiani presenti in uno stesso territorio, cioè la città di Padova. Questa ricerca mira invece a portare il lettore ad una nuova visione di co-abitazione in uno spazio locale limitato, grazie all’esempio della città di Padova e del suo interessante desiderio di internazionalizzazione che coinvolge l’Università nel processo.  ​
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The thesis is interdisciplinary as the outcome of three years of Ph.D. with three different coordinators, each of those having a different ‘cut‘ in apprehending our program in Regional Planning and Urban Policies -namely: politics, sociology, urbanism. Considering this, my approach and theoretical frameworks have inevitably dived their roots in what was familiar to me: a political-sociological frame of analysis which apprehends the city as a space of social interactions where people are the co-protagonists of the city’s changes and evolution. Indeed, the purpose of my research was to show the link between migration and urban transformation in terms of urban policies and social practices within a specific local territory: the city of Padova.
The thesis analyses the question of Indian students-migrants in Padova through different angles generally difficult to tie together while keeping a strong sociological base.
In that regard, it should be also noted that the argument presented here has been treated according to the methods of urban sociology’s literature of the traditional ‘School of Chicago’ (Part 1). Furthermore, the thesis‘ analysis is bridging the international mobility policies between Italy and India, examining the educational policies which attract Indians to Italian Universities (Part 2). Lastly, the thesis assesses the sociological effects of a continuous flow of foreign students into a local territory, exploring the urban and social spaces of the city of Padova (Italy), a space of places working on the promotion of internationalization (Part3).
Therefore, coherently with my social-studies background and my major source of inspiration – R.E Park’s works (the 1930s)- the thesis has an ‘ethnographic cut’ which narrates the experiences of some Indian students in Italy and Padova, rather than a traditional academic one.  Indeed, I believe that the true output of a Ph.D. thesis is to produce knowledge – scientific first, of course- but in my view, that knowledge should also open a window to everybody interested in the topic, beyond the academic niche only.

Finally, I hope this work will be understood by future readers such as the participants to my research who helped me (re)constructing a scarcely explored story of migration by giving their time and their trust to a stranger who eventually has sealed forever their memories of the Paduan-experience along with the following pages: आपनी कहानिय.

“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.

This is the fourth endeavour of the Department of English, Hijl i College, after an unhappy lapse of two years , towards furthe ring the cause th at originated· the journal : the critica l ori entation of th e teachers an d students of our college as well as of the neig hbour institution s.

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.

Postcolonialism focuses on literature by the colonised people. It attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness. Postcolonial writings are attempts at reviving the ethnic cultures, traditions, beliefs and languages. It also aims at developing the national identity in the wake of colonial rule. Rohinton Mistry as a postcolonial diasporic writer has liberated Indian English Literature from the colonial yoke. Mistry tries to overcome the stigma of marginality. Mistry's writings project the Parsis as 'Other' by foregrounding the race as the believer in the traditional values, being conservative and ardent follower of religious rituals and customs amid the secular industrialization and modernization process. Mistry foregrounds the alternative history that challenges the official version of history and illustrates how the powerless have the potential to narrativise the nation. For Mistry language seems to be an important factor as it is tied up with issues of identity. Mistry's narratives are essentially a mode of postcolonial resistance which celebrates the Indian English by capturing the rhythms of the Parsi-Gujarati idiomatic expressions with the most distinctive phonetic and syntactic features. Mistry has also experimented with linguistic hybridity and celebrated the unique Parsi idiom in his writing. He has also experimented with linguistic hybridity and celebrated the unique Parsi idiom in his three novels. Mistry's writings are the history of displacement. This article analyses these postcolonial aspects of Mistry's novels in details.

The journey of Indian English Fiction since the appearance of Rajmohan’s Wife by Bankim Chatterjee paving through the trio of Narayan, Anand and Rao, finally rested on the writers like V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shashi Tharoor, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Shyam Selvadurai, Rohinton Mistry, Bharti Mukherjee and so forth. These writers articulated the diasporic sensibilities featured with Dislocation of people owing to indenture and settlement, Nostalgia, Alienation, Discrimination and quest of identity, survival, imperial dominance, Cultural change, identity and existential rootlessness. The enunciated themes by these writers gave rise to so called Expatriate or Diasporic Literature of which Amitav Ghosh is deemed to be the exclusive entity. The research paper accentuates the role of Amitav Ghosh in Indian diaspora with post-colonial attributes, highlighting the notable sensibilities in his debut novel the Circle of Reason (1986) and his sixth novel the Hungry Tide (2004). His method of historicizing multiple space of Indian diaspora with an exploration of life and suffering of humans heralds an amalgamation of anthropological and historical consequences against the backdrop of Post-Colonial and Post-Modern studies.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing and lockdown have caused the world to encounter various boundaries existing in the world. Most societies worldwide are experiencing a massive rise in psychological distress due to the uncertainty about the future, the lack of confidence towards the foreign, the unknown, the fear for economic welfare, isolation, and solitude. The borders and borderlands are deconstructed and reconstructed at the moment. Within such a conducive situation, the Indian diaspora could be one of the case studies beyond Indian territory to understand the definition of border and borderlands.
In her book Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza Gloria Anzaldúa defines intensively that the “Border es una herida abierta (an open wound). She argues that the “borders are set up to define safe and unsafe, to distinguish “us” from “them”.” Finally, she goes beyond the duality defined by the border and expands the meaning that “a borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants”(1987).
With this background, the paper will do a close reading of a blog article based on a survey of the Indian diaspora called “Spearheading a Survey of Caste in South Asian Diasporas” (2016). In the survey, young university students of different genders, from lower Caste, calling it Bahujan, speak out their experiences of facing discrimination within their Indian community due to Caste and gender differences. There is a revelation of layered borders, first being called strangers and immigrants on the land which they call theirs and then shunned by those who look like them. Hence, through this case study, the paper will review the existence of physical as well as metaphorical borders.

Spices play an important role in culinary fiction. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices and Preethi Nair's 100 Shades of White are interesting novels written in culinary genre. Usually, in Culinary writing food was given higher importance sometimes they were even personified. Both the novels very interestingly put forwards the properties and usages of spices in various dimensions. It vividly presents the role of spices as symbol in expressing the feelings and emotions, bringing solace to soul, curing physical illness etc. it also alludes to the mythical stories behind the spices. In the present study we are dealing with significance of spices in the novels. It analyses the origin of spices and its history. It also examines the part of colonization in the journey of spices. It also focuses on the medicinal values of spices. In addition to this importance of spices in the traditional and spiritual practices are also taken into study.

Diaspora has been a recent and growing field in literature. Indian Diasporic writer  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has tried to discuss various elements of both Indian and American cultures and has tried to make a comparison between the two. This paper is a detailed analysis of the novel in this perspective of culture studies.

The article maps the contours of Hinduism in
the two major antipodean nations, Australia and
New Zealand, highlighting some specific features
of the socioreligious history and experiences of
Sanatanis or adherents of the sanātanadharma
(eternal sacred law). The following profile is contextualized
in the background of South Asian
diaspora during the colonial period.

This paper aims at examining the specific identity of South East Asian Muslims within the
United Kingdom. Recent world events have brought Islam into the public eye and we shall
explore the effect these events have had on Islamic faith communities residing within Britain.
An affiliation with an internationalised Islamic brotherhood seems to be a comfort zone for
many disenfranchised Asian youths who proceed from a Muslim heritage, and we shall look
at how this identity may enter in conflict with an ideal of citizenship. The exclusion of these
minorities from the discourses of nation can be identified as part of the problem, but we shall
also examine issues of class as motivating factors. We shall be very careful to differentiate
between a small minority that embraces jihadism, the notion of jahiliyya and other radical
positions that are in fact distortions of Islamic faith, and a much broader based faith community
that feels trapped between secularism and an ever more polarised radical Islam. We
shall elucidate upon how this population of South East Asian Muslims find themselves caught
within a complex and sometimes incommensurable dilemma. On the one hand, they must
confront the radicals within their own community who are distorting their faith values for
their own ends, while on the other they must face an autochthonous community who will
not truly accept their faith as part of the national fabric. This disjunctive makes a finding of
their place in society more complicated as compared to their Hindu counterparts.

This paper engages with how cultural identity gets represented in Lahiri’s works through an exploration of the notion of home/homeland for a diasporic individual by tapping the transformative potential of the nuances attached to the conceptual understanding of ecotone – a concept from physical geography. At the centre of this is the idea that home/homeland is a space that treads multifarious paths, among which geography culture and memory stand tall. Ontologically, diasporic sensibility is defined by the poetics of exile, which inadvertently strive by acknowledging the shifting terrains of cultural systems vis-à- vis ecosystems. The resultant ambiguous space(s) is a fertile ground for literature, and could be approached through the concept of ecotone.

Increasingly, countries with extensive diasporas have sought to connect with these extended, transnational communities in order to tap into the resources and networks they offer for the domestic developmental purposes. The myriad of approaches adopted for such engagements, from raising awareness to offering incentives and providing mechanisms for members of the diaspora to engage or re-engage with the home country have become part of the development strategy of many emerging economies.  The South Asian region offers many examples of such practices.  By focusing on the manner and means by which the diaspora communities engage and contribute to their country of origin, the chapters in this volume seek to broaden the scope of diaspora studies beyond migration and settlement.  Rather than seeing the diaspora as an outflow of human resources, this volume shows how diaspora communities often serve as critical bridges that facilitate movements of capital and funds, sharing of know-how and generate useful transnational networks for various socio-economic initiatives.
This volume particularly addresses a relatively new approach to diaspora studies by shifting the focus from conventional diaspora studies, which has so far been dominated by questions of how various diaspora groups adapt to the social, economic and political domains in the countries of settlement while seeking to maintain their own traditions and cultures, to the ways in which diaspora communities engage with origin countries and contribute to these countries economically and socially over time. The current thinking by academics, policy-makers and donor-agencies is to foster diaspora engagement to stimulate development in origin countries. In line with this global thinking about diaspora engagement, this book addresses the engagement of South Asian diasporas and their implications on development in South Asia. While countries in the region face different development challenges and have different diaspora policies, questions of what roles their diaspora can play in the development of their origin countries and how to leverage diaspora engagement in development are now matters of concern. This volume deals with these concerns by exploring various forms of diaspora engagement and its implications on development in South Asia.

This paper offers a set of nuanced narratives and a theoretically-informed report on what is the driving force and motivation behind the movement of Hindus and Sikhs from one continent to another (apart from their earlier movement out of the subcontinent to distant shores). What leads them to leave one diasporic location for another location? In this sense they are also 'twice-migrants'. Here I investigate the extent and nature of the transnational movement of diasporic Hindus and Sikhs crossing borders into the U.S. and Australia – the new dharmic sites – and how they have tackled the question of the transmission of their respective dharmas within their own communities, particularly to the younger generation. Two case studies will be presented: one from Hindus and Sikhs in Australia; the other from California (temples and gurdwaras in Silicon Valley and Bay Area).

Very few people might be aware of the fact that racial discrimination practiced in Canada and United States in the early 20th century played an important role in the dawn of one of the fiercest nationalist movement in India. Gadar party was formed by the Indian immigrants, mostly Sikhs who believed that India's independence can be achieved only through armed rebellion. These Indian immigrants in North America were racially discriminated and abused. Soon they realized that British government would not address their grievances and the cause of their condition was the slaveryhood of their motherland by the British Empire. Despite of being in a foreign land, Indians were able to organize themselves. Initiative taken by them was special and rare. In fact the leaders of nationalistic movement in India first articulated their demand for the complete independence from British by establishing direct link between racial discrimination faced by Indians abroad and India's enslaved sovereignty. Thus Indians abroad played an important role in the rise of nationalism in India.

Migration of Indian people towards the first world countries especially to the US increasingly has become a symbol to signify their socio-economic upliftment. Their position as an immigrant or a transmigrant from a post-colonial country of the third world poses complications in framing their identities in the ‘new country’ or the country of their settlement. Thrity Umrigar’s novel If Today Be Sweet depicts how Indians in the US negotiate their identity as a ‘model minority’ and how their post-colonial identity and consciousness justify their chosen displacement. Tehmina and her son Sorab, the major diasporic characters of the novel face the same feelings of being uprooted, nostalgia, and identity crisis in their initial days of migration but eventually their nightmarish experiences are gradually overcome by their achievements and the feelings of being ‘at home.’ The novel juxtaposes the binaries of East and West; modern and traditional; India and America etc. The present paper aims at exploring the attitude of the new Indian diasporic people towards their homeland and their hostland. The paper, through the two Indian Parsi diasporic characters Sorab and Tehmina, also explores how their identities of being post-colonial and Parsi along with some other factors, affect the way they deal with the idea of home, identity, culture and consciousness.

Amitav Ghosh explores subjectively the people’s consciousness as regards culture, myths and existence. He embraces the fact that the myths and the ways of the seas/rivers purports the reality of culture, the creation of challenges, fabulation and skilful time shifts, sense of paranoia and hyperreality past the industrial age. His novels are reactions to the questions of the chaotic, pluralistic, or information-drenched aspects of postmodern society which depicts the theme of fragmentation and a metaphysically unfounded, chaotic universe of the people’s life on the banks of the holy river Ganges in Calcutta in context of trans-historical phenomena happened prior to the First Opium War/ Anglo-Chinese War during 1839-42. His novel exhaustively examines expeditions, encounters, exploitation and escapes of criminals/ indentured labourers/underclass off the coast of Canton, Hong Kong, Macao and Indian migrants travelling through ships to seek indentured labour for plantations in Mauritius and in British West Indies.  The present study proposes to study the seas/river symbolism as the creative power of nature and time. The study deals with the question how the interior reality is marginalized by placing the individual within a historical context i.e. exterior reality. Thirdly the study aims to observe the third world cultural texts and context in view of the writer’s historical and political dimension.

The objective of the study is to delve into the theoretical aspect of the phenomenon of immigration as well as the changing nature of global immigration with respect to four recent political events that have been noticed in the recent past in the Global North. The former would involve the two diverse philosophical strands of the communal argument signifying the importance of national boundaries (thus restricting immigration) and the other being the opposite strand of multiculturalism that would emphasise on the coexistence of cultural plurality. The study will try to answer questions related to patriotism and communal attachments (through Rousseau) and the moral significance of national boundaries (through Michael Walzer) in order to analyse why the citizens have obligations and special responsibilities to one another and not to other people in the world. This would help to understand the opposition for generous immigration policies (as is the trend in contemporary times). The parochial tendencies of such understandings will be countered by the ideas of Multiculturalism to be understood through the theory of scholar Bhikhu Parekh.

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I hope that you are doing well at your respective places. COVID-19 pandemic
has indeed made our lives more difficult, posing several challenges in front of
us. However, the pandemic has also reminded us to become more resilient by
reducing the vulnerabilities of the common people. Specifically, the vulnerability of the poor migrant population has to be reduced at any cost to achieve
sustainable development in all the countries. Walking on the same path,
GRFDT brings to you its organizational newsletter- “Roots and Routes”, for
February 2021, thereby attempting to contribute positively towards the migration discourse. Newsletter has incorporated various write-ups, including
the GCM webinar reports and movie reviews relating to the migratory theme,
which have been published in the GRFDT’s media outreach portalThe Migration News: People on the Move.

The paper is based on field research conducted among Tanzanian and Zambian university students. Its immediate aim was to find out their attitude to the colonialism-born non-African (European and South Asian) minorities. The evidence gives reason to argue that the level of tolerance among Zambian students is higher than among Tanzanian. The most significant reasons for that are those related to the two countries’ history since the pre-colonial time, the memory of it, and this memory’s use and abuse by the post-colonial states. The greatest difference between the two cases lies in the existence since pre-colonial time of the Swahili culture and language at minimal number of expansionist centralized polities as the background for autochthonous peoples’ unity in Tanzania and lack of such a background till colonial period in Zambia. The Tanzanian situation is generally exceptional for Africa, while Zambian is typical. The theories based on the European historical experience prompt that Tanzania has better prospects for nation-building. However, we admit that in the wake of multiculturalism and profound shift in comprehension of nation as social reality in contemporary world, Zambia’s position can be even more favorable for multicultural nation-building and creation of the postcolonial nation-state than that of Tanzania.

In this paper I discuss the results of a recent comparative research among university students in Tanzania and Zambia. In both countries the overwhelming majority of the population (over 99%) is formed by people of a great many of local ethnic groups who co-exist with compatriots of different non-African origins, whose communities, although small in numbers, are well visible in Tanzania and Zambia’s economic and social life. My goal was to study the attitude of the most advanced, educated and hence socially prospective part of the African youth to those non-African minorities that formed in the time of, and due to coloni-alism – the so-called “Europeans” and “Indians”. The particular problem I was concerned with is whether African university students see and want to see their compatriots with com-pletely different ethno-cultural backgrounds and group histories, as well as a specific posi-tion in contemporary society, as parts of the Tanzanian and Zambian nations. Thus, in the paper I trace not only how the minorities’ present position in the respective societies influ-ences the students’ attitude to them, but also the way the historical memory of the pre-colonial and colonial past, its image in the minds of the young people influence their atti-tude to the diasporas that hardly would have ever formed in a situation other than colonial.

Editor's Note
Dear Friends,
Thank you all for the overwhelming support for the Roots and
Routes. Your feedback to improve the contents, quality and design
of the Newsletter is highly appreciated. We will try our best to make the Newsletter more interesting for researchers and policy makers.
There are suggestions regarding special issues on region/country as well as other emerging issues. We will be very glad to work out on
the suggestions. We welcome scholars to contribute on various issues,
themes and country specific studies and would be covered by
the Roots and Routes after reviewed by the editorial committee.
The present issue has similar columns like the first issue. Apart
from the usual GRFDT activities, we have carried out a book review and interviewed eminent as well as emerging scholars. The news section covers the current development in the broad areas of diaspora, transnationalism, international migration providing food for thought for new research.
GRFDT is preparing a comprehensive database on scholars working
on the area of diaspora and transnationalism. The database will be
available both online and in print. The database intends to promote peer network and interdisciplinary research.
We are thankful to scholars who share wide ranging and relevant information with us through email, facebook and other social media.
This interactive space is important for cutting edge research on
diaspora and transnationalism.
Once again we request for your continued support and suggestions to improve the content, quality and presentation of the Newsletter
in the forthcoming issues.

Sadananda Sahoo
Editor

Steve Ouditt's Creole In-Site has the distinction of perhaps being the only truly post-structuralist text produced by a person living in the English-speaking Caribbean. This distinguishes Ouditt's work from that of the handful of Caribbeanist Social Scientists --anthropologists, sociologists, feminists, development theorists --who use postmodern and/or post-structural theory to inform their work. Creole In-Site is post-structuralist in the sense that it explicitly concentrates on its own words, their multiple meanings, associations, and their lack of ability to convey meaning fully and unambiguously. (This review, and that explanation, by definition, are not post-structuralist as they seek to achieve a measure of clarity rather than explore the ambiguity of language.)

This article examines Mohandas Gandhi’s writing on Indian masculinity in early twentieth-century South Africa which was a period of his life that was seminal for his political career. The author explores how, in the context of being removed from many personal and professional constraints that he encountered in India, Gandhi fashioned prescriptions that would transform the emasculated, effete and cowardly Indian man constructed by colonial discourses in nineteenth-century British India. Building on the scholarly literature pertaining to Gandhian bodily ascesis, I argue that Gandhi held the belief that Indian men would be able to face the hazards of anticolonial satyagraha once their masculinity had been restored, for which various practices of military training were indispensable. I suggest that Gandhi attempted to catalyse somatic and moral reform by encouraging South African Indian men to serve in the British army during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) and the Zulu Rebellion (1906). I explain how Gandhi viewed military service as a transformative disciplinary experience that would afford Indian men with the ability to endure physical duress, bodily strength and, lastly, knowledge in the use of arms. I illustrate how military service ultimately generated a masculine Indian subject, according to Gandhi, one who possessed mastery over his bodily senses, moral fortitude and fearlessness.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad (VS) Naipaul was a Commonwealth citizen extraordinaire. But from the unofficial side. He showed all of us what we can be on the world stage, even if we were born in its periphery. His advice to us was what his father gave to him when he left Trinidad: ‘Find your centre’. It is only then that we can find our way in the world.

Various proposals have been made with regards to stability, or conversely borrowability, of particular aspects of languages' lexicons and structures. In this paper, we investigate the stability and borrowability of forms and patterns of tense, mood, and aspect systems of the Surinamese creoles, Surinamese Dutch, sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese. Our investigation reveals that Sranan and Dutch tend to be the source language in the cross-linguistic transfer of forms and patterns in the Surinamese context, and that typological distance and socio-cultural factors play a role in determining contact induce developments in the languages studied. This suggests that,although our results loosely match various stability scales, language system external considerations so far largely preclude the construction of universally applicable stability and borrowability scales.

Migration studies is an interdisciplinary field that draws on sociology, anthropology, history, economics, law and post-colonial studies. The numerous causes of migration ranging from socio-political, economic to ecological nature, has enriched the discipline further. As the discipline is evolving, new debates are entering into the picture. One such debate is the lack of focus of political theory on the ‘migration’, which is directly related to its singular focus on state, citizens and stateless society. Even though various political philosophers have faced migration, such as Hannah Arendt, F.Nietzsche Theodor Adorno; yet the field is still far from being developed holistically. The political theory restriction in terms of stepping up statelessness resulted in its diversion from one of the most intriguing and mainstream issues of Politics and International Relations in 21st century- Migration.