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Thinking ‘Indian diaspora’ for our times

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Tracing an Indian Diaspora
Contexts, Memories, Representations

Edited by
Parvati Raghuram
Ajaya Kumar Sahoo
Brij Maharaj
Dave Sangha
 CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors

1. Thinking ‘Indian diaspora’ for our times

Parvati Raghuram & Ajaya Kumar Sahoo

Section-I
‘A New form of Slavery’: Indentured Diaspora
Introduction – Brij Maharaj

2. Positioning the Indian Diaspora: The Southeast Asian Experience

Rajesh Rai
3. Forgotten Malaysians? Indians and Malaysian Society
Carl Vadivella Belle
4. Indo-Fijians: Forever Marooned without Land and Power in a South Pacific
Archipelago?
Henry Srebrnik
5. Ethnicity, Class, State and Conflict: The ‘Indian Question’ in Natal, South Africa
Brij Maharaj
6. Indo Caribbean Political Leaders during the 20th Century
Sahadeo Basdeo & Brinsley Samaroo

Section-II
The New Indian Diaspora
Introduction – Dave Sangha

7. Citizenship and Dissent in Diaspora: Indian Immigrant Youth in the U.S. After
9/11
Sunaina Maira
8. The Indian Diaspora in the United States of America: An Emerging Political
Force?
Pierre Gottschlich
9. Immigration Dynamics in the Receiving State - Emerging Issues for the Indian
Diaspora in the UK
Parvati Raghuram
10. Indian Diaspora in the UK: Second-Generation Parents’ Views and Experiences
on Heritage Language Transmission
Ravinder Barn
11. Indian Diaspora in New Zealand: History, Identity and Cultural Landscapes
Wardlow Friesen & Robin A. Kearns
12. Transnational Analysis of Women in the South Asian Diaspora
Helen Ralston
Section-III
Doing Diaspora: Identifications
Introduction – Parvati Raghuram

13. The Chishtiyya Diaspora - An Expanding Circle?

Celia A. Genn
14. Hyderabadis Abroad: Memories of Home
Karen Isaksen Leonard
15. Moving Beyond, Moving Ahead: Possible Paradigms for Accessing Indian
Emigrant Subjectivities
Mala Pandurang
16. Immigrants, Images, and Identity: Visualizing Homelands across Borders
Cynthia J. Miller
17. Identity Dilemmas: Gay South Asian Men in North America
Geoffrey Burkhart

Section-IV
Representations: Contestations of/in the Indian Diaspora
Introduction – Parvati Raghuram

18. Re-domesticating Hindu Femininity: Legible Pasts in the Bengali American

Diaspora
Esha Niyogi De
19. Romancing Religion: Neoliberal Bollywood’s Gendered Visual Repertoire for a
Pain-free Globalization
Nandini Bhattacharya
20. Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Towards a Transnational Feminist
Aesthetic?
Sam Naidu
21. Memory of Trauma in Meena Alexander's Texts
Jaspal Kaur Singh
22. Meta-Mobilis: The Case for Polymorphous Existence in K.S. Maniam's Between
Lives
Bernard Wilson
23. Exilic Dispositions and Dougla Identity in Laure Moutoussamy's Passerelle de vie
(The Bridge of Life)
Brinda Mehta
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Ravinder Barn is Professor of Social Policy and Social Work at Royal Holloway, University of
London. Her research interests are in the areas of race, ethnicity, gender and welfare
provision. She has published widely on the situation of minority ethnic children in the public
care system. She is the author of four books – ‘Black Children in the Public Care System’,
'Black Youth on the Margins', lead author of 'Acting on Principle', and editor of ‘Direct
Work with Black Children and Young People’.
Sahadeo Basdeo is Professor of History and International Relations at the University of British
Columbia, Okanagan Campus in Kelowna, Canada and is currently a Visiting Research
Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International Relations, The University of the West
Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. Among his more recent publications include Labour
Organization and Labour Reform in Trinidad, 1919-1939 (2003); co-edited Canada, the United States
and Cuba: An Evolving Relationship (2002); co-authored The Foreign Relations of Trinidad and
Tobago 1962-2000: The Case of a Small State in the Global Arena (2001); and co-edited Foreign
Policy Toward Cuba: Isolation or Engagement (2005).
Carl Vadivelle Belle received his doctorate degree from Deakin University, Australia for his thesis
entitled Thaipusam in Malaysia: A Hindu Festival Misunderstood? He is the author of Towards
Truth: An Australian Spiritual Journey (Pacific Press, 1992). He served the Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs and also served in the Australian High Commission, Kuala
Lumpur. His research interest includes Hinduism, Indian Malaysian politics and society. He
has delivered lectures in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and India. For several years he was
the Australian Correspondent for the journal Hinduism Today.
Nandini Bhattacharya is Associate Professor, and Chair, Department of Women’s and Gender
Studies, University of Toledo, USA. Her research is on diaspora and film, globalization and
women’s studies, and eighteenth-century British literature, gender and postcolonial
discourses. Her recent publications include Reading the Splendid Body: Gender and Consumerism in
Eighteenth-century British Writing on India (University of Delaware press, 1998), and The
Aesthetics of TransNation: Slavery, Gender, Connoisseurship and Collection in Late Eighteenth-Century
British Literature (Ashgate press, forthcoming).
Geoffrey Burkhart is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, American University,
Washington, DC. His central research focuses on India (and South Asian countries in
general) and in its global diasporic populations. His early fieldwork in India focused on caste,
domestic organization, descent, marriage, ritual and local-level politics in rural areas
(particularly in Tamil Nadu). He is now conducting ongoing research among gay South
Asians living in the U.S. and Canada, with emphases on identity, stereotyping, discrimination
and racism and community activism in North America.
Esha Niyogi De teaches Women’s Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the
Co-Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women Faculty Research Project,
‘Migrating Epistemologies: Feminist, Postcolonial, Transnational.’ She is the co-editor of
Trans-Status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia (Duke University
Press, 2002). Currently, she is completing two books, Decolonizing the Individual: Autonomy
Against Nation in Indian Dramatic Imaginations and Shakespearean Humanism in India. She has also
published on Indian, British, and Singaporean literature and film in a variety of journals
including diacritics and Screen.
Wardlow Friesen is Senior Lecturer, School of Geography & Environmental Science, The
University of Auckland, New Zealand. His areas of interest include Economic and
Population Geography, Development Studies, Migration and Ethnicity, Globalisation and
Urban Change.
Celia Genn is Lecturer in Asian studies at Griffith University and in Religious Studies at the
University of Queensland. Her research focuses on Sufism and the sociology of Asian-origin
religious movements in South Asian and Western societies. She received the Dean's
Commendation for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Theses for her PhD dissertation,
Exploration and analysis of the origins, nature and development of the Sufi Movement in Australia (2004).
She is also the author of ‘The Development of a Western Sufism’ (2006).
Pierre Gottschlich is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Chair of
International Politics, University of Rostock, Germany. His research interest includes:
History, Culture and Political System of the United States of America, Indian Diaspora,
International Peace Studies, European Integration.
Robin A. Kearns is Associate Professor at the School of Geography and Environmental Science,
University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Karen Isaksen Leonard is a historian and anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine. She
has published on the social history and anthropology of India and on Punjabi Mexican
Americans, South Asian Americans, and Muslim Americans. Her recent publications include
Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad (forthcoming Stanford University Press); Muslims in the
United States: the State of Research (Russell Sage Foundation, 2003); Social History of an Indian
Caste: the Kayasths of Hyderabad (University of California Press, 1978); Making Ethnic Choices:
California's Punjabi Mexican Americans (Temple University Press); South Asian Americans
(Greenwood Press, The New Americans series, 1997).
Brij Maharaj is Professor of Geography at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was
previously Head of Geography, University of Durban-Westville. His primary interest is in
urban politics and his research has focused on the transactional relations between the state,
municipality and local community over urban geographical organization. He presently serves
on the editorial board of Geoforum and Antipode. In 2005 he was appointed consulting editor
for the Journal of Immigration and Refugee Studies.
Sunaina Maira is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis.
She is the author of Desis in the House: Indian American Youth Culture in New York City (2002).
She co-edited an anthology, Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America (1997),
which received an award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and co-edited Youthscapes:
Popular Culture, National Ideologies, Global Markets (2005, UPenn Press). Maira has published
numerous academic articles in addition to writing fiction and has made many presentations
and invited lectures.
Brinda Mehta is Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Department of Modern Languages
and Literatures, Mills College, Oakland, California. She is the author of three books, Corps
infirme, corps infame: la femme dans le roman balzacien. Diasporic (Dis)locations: Indo-
Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani; Rituals of Memory in Contemporary
Arab Women's Writing (forthcoming); a co-edited issue of the CLR James Journal on Indo-
Caribbean/Afro-Caribbean Thought; and numerous articles on postcolonial African and
Caribbean literature. She is currently completing her fourth book, Framing Diaspora in
Francophone Women's Writing: Dougla Textuality, the Violence of Memory and Expanded
Creolizations.
Cynthia J. Miller is a cultural anthropologist, specializing in urban studies and popular culture. She
is a faculty member in the Institute for Liberal Arts at Emerson College (USA). Her research
has included studies of the social impacts of film and television on rural communities in the
Yucatan and South India, as well as explorations of immigrant communities' uses of cinema
to recreate homelands and maintain cultural identity. Her writing has appeared in Women's
Studies Quarterly, Human Organization, ISLE, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television,
Film & History, and Anthropologica, as well as in a number of edited volumes.
Sam Naidu is Lecturer at the Department of English, Rhodes University, South Africa. Her
teaching & research interests include: Oral-Written Interfaces in the South African Colonial
Era, Postcolonial Feminist Theory and Creative Literature.
Mala Pandurang is Associate Professor, and Head, Department of English, Dr B.M.N College of
Home Science, SNDT University, Mumbai.
Parvati Raghuram is Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research interests focus on
the ways in which the mobility, of individuals, goods and of ideas is reshaping the world.
Much of her more recent work explores the migration of skilled and lesser skilled women,
particularly those moving from the Indian subcontinent. In a series of papers she has been
exploring the intersection between the family, labour markets and immigration regulations
and how these influence 'integration' in Europe as well as migration strategies and impacts of
migration in sending countries. She has also published widely on ethnic minority women in
business.
Rajesh Rai is Associate Professor of South Asian Studies Program, National University of
Singapore. His research interest includes South Asian Diaspora(s), Hindutva Nationalism
and contemporary Indian politics. He is the co-editor of The Encyclopedia of the Indians Overseas,
(with Brij Lal and Peter Reeves). He has contributed several articles in International Journals
and edited books on Indian Diaspora.
Helen Ralston is Professor Emerita of Sociology, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada. Dr. Helen is formally retired from teaching regular courses. She works actively as a
researcher, writer, and advocate for anti-sexist and anti-racist social justice. She offers
students directed studies and thesis supervision in areas of her research.
Ajaya Kumar Sahoo is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora,
University of Hyderabad. His research interests include migration, diaspora, religion, ageing,
and social movements.
Brinsley Samaroo is a Professor and distinguished Caribbean scholar. Since 1969 he had been
teaching at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and
has published extensively in the field of Caribbean history. He is an authority on the Indian
Question in the Caribbean. Among his most recent publications include India in the Caribbean
(1987); Across the Dark Waters (1996) both co-edited with David Dabydeen and published by
Warwick University; Art of Garnet Ifill: Glimpses of the Sugar Industry (Hansib, 2005); and co-
edited Making of the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (University of West Indies Press, 2006).
Dave Sangha is Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern British Columbia,
Canada. His research interests focus on human rights, antiracism, social policy and diasporic
communities. His work has been published in the journals such as Currents, Rural Social Work
and Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Social Work.
Jaspal Kaur Singh is Assistant Professor, English Department, Northern Michigan University,
Marquette, MI. Singh teaches classes on African and South Asian literary and cultural
studies, African and South Asian diaspora studies, as well as multicultural and feminist
literary and cultural theory. Singh's articles have appeared in Michigan Academician; An
Anthology of Africans in India; Rethinking Modernity; South Asian Review: Globalization and Diaspora;
In Other Words and Journal of Contemporary Thought. Her book project is entitled, Comparative
Postcolonial/Transnational Poetics: Madness as Resistance in South Asian and African Women's
Literature.
Henry Srebrnik is Professor of Political Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island,
Charlottetown, Canada. His research examines the impact of nationalism and ethnically
based political conflict, especially in island societies and among diaspora peoples. His recent
publications include Small Island Nations and Democratic Values (World Development 32 (2),
2004); Full of Sound and Fury: Three Decades of Parliamentary Politics in Mauritius (Journal of
Southern African Studies 28 (2), 2002); Ethnicity, Religion, and the Issue of Aboriginality in a Small
 Island State: Why Does Fiji Flounder? (Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of
International Affairs 364, 2002). He is also the associate editor of the Canadian Review of
Studies in Nationalism.
Bernard Wilson is Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of
Tokyo. He specializes in postcolonial theory, comparative literature, film, Orientalism and
Southeast Asian cultural studies. An Australian who has lived in Asia for the past decade, he
is the co-editor of Lee Kok Liang’s London Does Not Belong To Me and the author of many
internationally published essays and articles dealing with literature and cultural theory. He
has held lectureships in Australia, Singapore, Japan and the University of Hong Kong, where
he is also an honorary Professor.
 1
Thinking ‘Indian diaspora’ for our times
Parvati Raghuram
&
Ajaya Kumar Sahoo

This collection of essays traces some of the plurality within the Indian diaspora, a plurality
which takes many forms: geographical dispersion, historical contexts, temporal frames,
authorial positions, political affiliations. It is thus an assemblage, not a narrative. And it is
purposefully so. This volume does not attempt to produce a new boundary around diasporic
identifications but rather to unsettle diaspora by loosely juxtaposing a set of essays that
provide complementary, sometimes competing perspectives on diasporic locations,
identifications and representations. In this introduction we aim to briefly outline the thinking
behind this strategy and an outline of the volume.

Unsettling diasporic thinking

Diaspora has become a key trope in the humanities today. The launch of the journal
Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies in 1991 by Khachig Tololyan testifies, not only to
the importance achieved by the concept as an instrument of analysis, but also to the desire to
do away with the sharply defined borders of the nation state. Sociologists, anthropologists,
cultural critics and historians have in the last decades put to the test essentialist definitions of
culture and nation. Contemporary ethnography, to give but one example, has rejected
reductive notions of culture as dwelling in favour of a wider definition of culture as multi-locale.
The concept of nation as an unalterable homogeneous entity has been seriously questioned.
Although the idea of the nation should not be completely cast aside —after all, nations are
still powerful important political, administrative and cultural units— new historical changes
demand that the nation-state should recognise the limits of its territoriality. To put it
differently, nations are urged to reconsider and transcend old concepts of boundaries and
frontiers so that they can become just one site in a new transnational culture. And diasporic
thinking has arguably become one tool in these boundary transcending analysis.

The concept of ‘diaspora’ and its geographical and territorial dimensions have all been
subject to various interpretations (Braziel and Mannur 2003). According to Vertovec (1997:
277) the term ‘diaspora’ is often applied to ‘describe practically any population that is
considered “deterritorialized” or “transnational” - that is, which has originated in land other
than that in which it currently resides, and whose social, economic, and political networks
cross the borders of nation-states or, indeed, span the globe.’ It is therefore evident that
geographically, ‘diaspora involves a radical ... redefinition of place. To the ancient Greeks,
diaspora was associated with migration and colonisation’ (Cohen 1997: ix). However, for
Jews, Africans, Palestinians and Armenians the term had a more ominous connotation:
‘Diaspora signified a collective trauma, a banishment, where one dreamed of home but lived
in exile’ (Cohen 1997: ix).

For others such as Paul Gilroy (1994) and Stuart Hall (1990) diaspora is defined not by
biographical connectivity across geographical areas or political boundaries but is created by
and through differentiation. It is the contradictory emotions, the ambivalences in the
diasporic's notions of belonging, their identification with and against territorial social and
cultural formations, especially as they are shaped through processes of exclusion that they
highlight in their work on diaspora. They root diaspora in its effective dislocations between
‘locations of residence and locations of belonging’ (Gilroy 2000: 124) in order to expose the
political possibilities of this rupture.

A more categorical definition of diaspora has been adopted by writers such as Safran (1991),
Sheffer (1993), Bruneau (1994) and Cohen (1997). For them migration can be defined as
producing a ‘diaspora’ if four conditions are met: firstly, an ethnic consciousness; secondly,
an active associative life; thirdly, contacts with the land of origin in various forms, real or
imaginary; fourthly, there should be relations with other groups of the same ethnic origin
spread over the world. This is perhaps best captured by Judith Shuval:

A diaspora is a social construct founded on feeling, consciousness, memory, mythology,

history, meaningful narratives, group identity, longings, dreams, allegorical and virtual
elements all of which play an important role in establishing a diaspora reality. At a given
moment in time, the sense of connection to a homeland must be strong enough to resist
forgetting, assimilating or distancing (Shuval 2000: 43).

It is this categorical similarity, based on affective and symbolic relations with a homeland,
real or imagined that marks this second definition of migration. Diaspora is thus marked by
similarity rather than disjuncture.

A much more critical take on the trope of diaspora is offered by Floya Anthias (1998; also
see Soysal 2000). She centres her criticism of the ubiquitousness of ‘diasporic thinking’
around its failure to move beyond attachment to ‘primordial’ connections expressed through
notions of ethnicity and nationality or to provide a meaningful basis for an intersectional
analysis that takes gender and class differences within and across the diaspora seriously.
These are serious concerns that have never been fully addressed by those working in this
field.

One partial response to her criticisms of diaspora come from Sökefeld (2006) who counters
the accusation of primordialism by arguing that diaspora may be analytically treated as akin
to social movements: they occur in response to triggers, require agents to actively imagine
and produce a diaspora through a set of mobilizing practices. Diaspora is defined here as
intersecting sets of imagined transnational communities.

The assumption of a shared identity that unites people living dispersed in transnational space
thereby becomes the central defining feature of diasporas. Rejecting ideas of migrants’
natural rootedness and belonging to places of origin, I argued that diaspora identity and the
 imagination of a diaspora community is also an outcome of mobilization processes. The
development of diaspora identity is not simply a natural and inevitable result of migration
but a historical contingency that frequently develops out of mobilization in response to
specific critical events. Diaspora is thus firmly historicized. It is not an issue of naturally felt
roots but of specific political circumstances that suggest the mobilization of a transnational
imagined community. The focus on mobilization in the formation of diasporas effectively
counters essentializing concepts of diaspora (280).

In autumn 2006, as we write this editorial the force of diaspora as a tactic for connecting
people to a place of origin has only gathered force. The sites and means through which
diasporic identification is mobilised and where diaspora is represented and contested have
also multiplied. A number of important players have entered this field - most notably
national governments. There has, for instance, been a re-imagination of the relationship
between domicility, citizenship and belonging in India from one that is exclusive and
coterminous to one that recognises that deterritorialised populations may be mobilised to
invest in the territories they and their ancestors left behind. With a population of more than
twenty million, spread across a hundred and ten countries, the numbers involved are vast.
This re-imagining of territoriality is done through the emotional register, through an
evocative call to feel the love and affection you can find in Mother India. But not all Indians
are recalled in the same way. The Indian government itself distinguishes between the PIOs
(People of Indian Origin) who profess their allegiance to India while relinquishing
citizenship rights and the NRIs (Non-Resident Indians), those who are (at least for the
moment) sojourners - Indian citizens living in other countries. The designation ‘NRI’ in
particular has always had strong economic connotations. The government has for long called
upon its diaspora to help ‘develop’ the territorially located nation-state, indeed encouraged it
through offering attractive investment packages and financial concessions. This reverberates
through the ‘development machinery’ with diasporic development becoming a key strategy
for various bodies under the umbrella of the United Nations, international development
agencies and non-governmental organisations. PIOs on the other hand are often re-called
through the language of cultural continuity and affect, but an affect that too has economic
potential for the mother country. The financial demands on the diaspora, it appears, are
increasingly becoming dispersed across the different categories of migrants (sojourners,
NRIs, PIOs) who originate from India.

Moreover, the politics of belonging, which occupies centre-stage in the troubled territories
of nationalism and citizenship, has become even more contested in the post 9/11 landscape.
The question of belonging is increasingly being territorialised, securitised and penalised. In
the polarised discussions of belonging diasporics are continuously being asked to display
how and in what ways ‘you are one of us, not one of them’. Multiple identifications and
contested affiliation are to be muffled; congealed into a publicly expressed singular narrative
of belonging. In the countries of origin too diasporas are being used to strengthen both
economic and cultural nationalism (Dirlik 2004).

As diaspora becomes the new engine for igniting sluggish economies and for professing
exclusive emotional and political affiliations, it is time to return to the work that the trope of
diaspora is being required to perform. This volume contributes towards this effort and in
doing so it deploys many of the different understandings of diaspora that we have outlined
above. Intertextually, these different versions of the diaspora can unpack, perhaps even
destabilise the notion of diaspora.

We emphasise the ability of diasporic thinking to play with boundaries - on their,

maintenance, reconfiguration, unsettling and on boundary conflicts and negotiations. The
types of boundaries traversed may be physical, political, social, cultural and emotional.
Writings on diaspora often call upon a heady concoction of these to create a particular
imaginary of diaspora. Importantly, these border crossings also bring up unexpected alliances
and collisions with the politics surrounding other markers of identity such as race, ethnicity,
gender, class and sexuality, especially as they relate to nationality, nationalism and
transnationalism. It is in these spaces where the diaspora politics weaves through and across
other vectors of difference that the most interesting intellectual conundrums and challenging
political questions are posed.

Producing the volume

The volume and its assemblage has its own history. It is the brainchild of academics working
at the Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora, Hyderabad who decided to mark the first
decade of the establishment of the centre by issuing a commemorative volume on the
subject. The annual Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas celebrations, which mark the achievements of
the Indian diaspora, was also held in Hyderabad in January 2006. This volume was originally
envisaged as celebrating both events.

Until the early 1990s, interest in the diaspora was largely filtered through the economic lens
with the Non-Resident Indian being used by the Government of India largely as a code
name for economic investment. Social concerns with the situation of diasporic Indians was
fairly limited (Lall 2001). In academic debates in India too the notion of diaspora was rarely
deployed. In 1989 for instance, Sociological Bulletin, the official journal of the Indian
Sociological Society, brought out a special issue on the theme ‘Indians Abroad’ (Vol. 38,
No.1, March 1989) in which eight out of nine papers special issue focused on Indian
communities abroad, but not a single paper referred to them as diasporic. Rather, scholars
used the words like ‘Indian Immigrants’ (see Sharma 1989; Buchignani 1989; Mehta 1989) or
‘Overseas Indians’ (see Jain, R.K. 1989; Jain, P.C. 1989).

In 1994, an ‘International Conference on Indian Diaspora’ was organised by the University

of Hyderabad with an objective of opening up of a Centre exclusively for the study of Indian
Diaspora. It was in this conference that terms such as ‘diaspora’ and 'transnational Indians’
came to be used (Nadarajah 1994). The demands for organised study of ‘Indian Diaspora’,
their expectations, their contributions and scope of collaboration in various sectors of
society, resulted in the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora under the
Area Studies Programme of the U.G.C. in 1996 at the University of Hyderabad. The idea of
creating the ‘Centre’ exclusively for Indian diaspora studies was particularly taken up by
Professor Chandrashekhar Bhat - the founder and also the Director of the Centre - who was
inspired by his mentor Professor Adrian Mayer of School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS) at the University of London, during his visit to carry out research on Indian Ethnic
Associations in London.

The Centre today is one of the exclusive Centres all over the world devoted to the study of
‘Indian Diaspora’ through its teaching and research modules. The Centre envisages research
on the historical context of the Indian Diaspora during the colonial and post-colonial
phases, cultural heritage of diasporic communities, continuities and transformation in
culture, economy and political life, besides promoting communication and linkages between
India and the Indian diaspora. In other words, the Centre is involved in the study of social,
cultural, linguistic, economic, political, geographical, literary and other aspects of the Indian
diaspora in its global context. The Centre has so far organised three international
conferences and two national workshops on ‘Indian Diaspora’.

In order to commemorate a decade of its existence, to mark the Centre as an International

Centre for Study of Indian Diaspora that would facilitate further research on Indian Diaspora,
scholars from all over the world were invited to contribute a paper for a edited volume that
focuses on Centre’s broad objectives. The collection of papers and its organisation largely
reflects the choice of writers identified by academics at the Centre. Reflecting the Centre's
multidisciplinary approach to the study of diaspora a range of academics: sociologists,
anthropologists, historians, economists, demographers, geographers, and management,
educational and policy researchers from different parts of the diaspora were invited to
contribute to the volume. The editors were then subsequently identified by the Centre and
so have only minimally shaped the discussions in the volume. Contributors in this anthology
examine (directly or indirectly) issues such as labour, migration, gender, religion, ethnicity,
identity, globalisation, and transnationalism. This book is thus divided into four main
sections, which accommodate and structure interconnected viewpoints on the Indian
diaspora.

Reading the volume

The volume is divided into four sections. The division of chapters into these sections is not
wholly clear-cut. Broadly, the first two sections emphasise the migratory movements that
have led to the formation of the Indian diaspora. They unpack the geographical scope of the
diaspora and highlight the different processes, opportunities and constraints that the Indian
diaspora faces in its different locales. In the second half of the book we move towards
thinking of diaspora not so much as dispersed people but as associational activities. Diaspora
here is what diaspora does. It is not based on historical connections enacted through
migrations, but practised through travel, rituals, film, literature and online as cyber-diaspora.
One could read the chapters in Sections 3 and 4 contrapuntally against those in Sections 1
and 2; juxtaposing them for understandings of how the authors themselves tell the stories of
the diaspora, how they represent the diaspora. Equally Sections 3 and 4 may be read through
the historical lens that the chapters in the first two sections offer, making us read Indian
authors for authorial positions, contexts and the histories and conditions of their migration.
Sections 1 and 2 are divided up through a broadly historical periodization. Section 1 focuses
primarily on diasporas created through migrations during the colonial period - the chapters
are all ‘haunted by empire’ (Stoler 2006).1 They have their history in the imperial legacy of
British colonialism and the uneven social and cultural landscapes that the populations whose
movements were so forcefully shaped by British policies then inhabited. Located in far-flung
parts of the empire, occupying a range of roles but often still held together by the conditions
of their dispersal - the terms of indenture. Indenture placed physical and cultural constraints
on identifying outside of one's diasporic origins.2 Imperial machinations forced diasporic
identifications through racial classifications. People were often required to perform their
diasporic affiliation, to be marked through their migratory trajectory, to submerge other
vectors of difference and to play out the imagined markers of diasporic culture. To be Indian
was therefore to perform an imagined version of Indianness. It was therefore also as much
about not being White, African, Sinhalese, Fijian or West Indian, although the extent and the
ways in which the racial classification operated clearly varied. In an environment where a
number of races were closely juxtapositioned, Indian diasporics often occupied an in-
between space between the coloniser and the territorially based colonised. They formed for
instance, a middle strata between the British and the Black Africans in many parts of Africa.
This liminality however also disrupts the bodies and the boundaries of those who are to be
kept apart - as Mehta (this volume) explores in her analysis of mixed-race dougla identity. As
such the specificity of the indentured system in shaping old migration receives much
attention amongst diasporic thinkers writing from these regions. Moreover, it forcefully
shapes diaspora and diasporic thinking in these territories.

For much of this diaspora decolonisation marked a point at which their (hi)stories grew
further apart as they came to be influenced by the policies and practices of postcolonial
governments.3 The world that diasporic Indians inhabited were inalienably and differentially
altered through decolonisation. Social changes such as the rewiring of religion and caste and
gendered subjectivities were played out in a range of contexts, from the individual through
the family and to the state both in the old empire and in India (also see Wilson, Leonard, this
volume). The basis for citizenship and belonging, the right to work, access to public sphere
and opportunities for political activism were also therefore realigned. More recent migrations
from India have produced a new set of issues for the old diaspora. For instance, as Rai
suggests new migration streams, primarily of the educated middle-class professionals in
global industries are leading to a complex reconfiguration of pre-existing stratifications
within the Indian diaspora in South East Asia.

Some of these emerging differences are evocatively outlined by Padayachee et al. (2004) in
their analysis of cricket in KwaZulu-Natal 1994-2004. They point out the ways in which
struggles over race still mark the game despite the official end of apartheid. Attempts at
better representation of 'Black cricketers in effect opened up space for Indians who played
the game both because of lobbying, and due to the increased access they had to the white
middle and upper class spaces where cricket was fostered. As a result in 2000/1 the category
Black had become virtually synonymous with Indians. At the same time increasing Black
African consciousness of these new vectors of inequality has led to an unravelling of the
political affiliations around Black identity forged between different (non-white) races in the
struggle against apartheid. Moreover, the category Indian too is fraying as caste and class
affiliations find expressive space. These narratives of strategic identifications with majority
ethnic groups during colonial era, followed by a jostling for power among some Indian
diasporics in the post-decolonisation phase is a tale that is repeated in all the chapters in this
section.

Given the weak links that such early migrants have with the Indian subcontinent it might be
worth asking a common question about the fate of Indians in the old diaspora. Many of
these people (often encompassed within the term ‘PIO’) have tenuous links with India.
When faced with racialised targeting they have migrated again, but often not to India
(Srebrnik, this volume). This story of further migrations by the old Indian diaspora is picked
up most notably by Srebrnik and Friesen and Kearns who focus on the political fallout of
indigenisation politics and the ways in which this has sparked new migratory streams. The
presence of diasporic populations from older migration streams in new countries of
settlement actively destabilises the boundary between new and old diaspora. It asks questions
about where exactly the divide between the old and the new diaspora lies, questions that
should not be allowed to go away.

Unlike in Section 1, the migratory imperatives that shape the diaspora in chapters in Section
2 emphasise the agency of migrants within the context of unfolding opportunities that they
are faced with. The agentic approach to diaspora suggests that diasporic belonging is much
more of a matter of choice. The multiplicity and diversification of migration beyond the
remit of the old empire, the increasingly middle-class nature of migrants and the new issues
that arise for diasporic politics are all raised here. Asking ourselves what makes the new
diaspora 'new' also reminds us that it is not the sites that are new but the conditions of
mobility and the processes whereby there is a ‘selection of migrants’ that is new (also see
Raghuram, this volume). Moreover, some countries, as for example New Zealand, have
become countries of destination for both ‘old’ Fijian diasporics and new (often skilled)
migrants directly from India. A close look at such spaces can point to the complexities of the
claims to the ‘jargon of authenticity’ (Goswami 2005: 223), to some essential ‘Indianness’. It
also points out the possibilities for new coalitions as well as emerging fissures within the
Indian diaspora.

This section explores how diasporic affiliation is produced in a context where racial profiling
is subtler and the diversity amongst migrants from India more marked. The chapters move
between offering narratives of continuity and expressing a desire to construct identity
through national affiliation and religious and cultural symbols to those that question the
nation, recognise that affiliation is constructed and spatio-temporally contingent. It must be
said here that like Sarker and De (2002) we find that the division between sections 1 and 2
are porous. Very often the subjectivities that are scripted in postcolonial migrations draw
upon hierarchies and privileges produced through or at least during the colonial era. Thus,
very often (but crucially, not always) the educated postcolonial migrant leaving Indian shores
in the 1960s and 70s was an unequal beneficiary of (Western) education and capital
(financial, human, social, cultural) accrued across generations during the colonial period. At
the same time the postcolonial nation also constructs its own hierarchies and propels its
population to mobility in new and interesting ways.

Section 3 begins to move the discussion of diaspora away from the social and economic
contexts of diaspora formation to diasporic practices. It focuses on the ways and means of
remembering and enacting diasporic belonging and the sites and spaces where such
narratives of belonging are performed. The chapters explore these issues as they are played
out through texts, rituals such as pilgrimages, through building temples and over the
Internet. Pandurang also suggests that these forms of identification are already in motion
before migration, produced in the social and cultural contexts of an ever-changing India.
Importantly for this volume, this section also begins to unpack various normative
assumptions that are at play in some readings of the 'Indian diaspora' by seeing diasporic
belonging as constructed, contested and contradictory. It forcefully reminds us that the
notion of an ‘Indian diaspora’ is itself problematic because as Mallapragada (2006: 225)
reminds us 'it is an uncritical descriptor of diverse communities with varied and overlapping
histories of connections to, and interests in, India' and the many other geographical spaces
over which the diaspora is dispersed.

Section 4 moves on to explore some representational tactics taken up on, by and for the
diaspora. It explores the mediated nature of diasporic affiliations through a range of media -
performance of plays, film and literary texts. Some chapters explore the authorial and
directorial strategies involved in producing texts while others offer a close reading of the
texts for how they present, produce and displace diasporic thinking. In both sections 3 and
4, the patriarchy and heteronormativity of dominant constructions of the diaspora are
carefully unpicked. Focusing on the experiences and the imaginaries of these subaltern
diasporics, those whom Jamil Khader (2003) recognises as lacking ‘a genuine sense of home
as women, colonials, and second-class citizens in both insular and metropolitan spaces’ can
perhaps help to transform diasporic thinking. She argues that these subaltern cosmopolitans
can use their marginality and appropriation within hegemonic versions of nation and
community to interrogate their meanings and to ‘reintegrate them within transnational and
transethnic communities of struggle, rather than within the exclusive borders’ of diaspora
(63).

Shuffling the papers can produces a different thematically arranged reading of the volume.
In particular, the traumatic turf on which religious politics is played out appears repeatedly
through the different sections of the book. One form of religious diaspora which is centred
around religion is explored by Genn in her chapter on the Chishtiyya diaspora. But a much
stronger theme in this volume is the power of resurgent Hindu nationalism and the
minoritisation of Muslims in India that is echoed, sometimes amplified abroad. The Indian
diaspora seems on such occasions to slip into or to be performed as a Hindu diaspora.
Building temples (Miller, this volume) and celebrating festivals (Vadivella Belle, Friesen and
Kearns, this volume) are events for performing Indianness but this can be an exclusionary
India, which is produced through selective traditions, imperfect memories and overvalorised
auratic values. The politics of such a re-versioned Hinduism is both transported across
borders (through film as Bhattacharya shows us) and appropriated in the diaspora (see De,
this volume) reconfiguring religion across diasporic space (Vadivella Belle, this volume).
However, increasing Islamophobia in the U.S. has also opened up the space for new types of
political engagements which cross-cut origin, religion or ethnicity as Maira explores. This
hopeful vein is also reflected in Vadivella Belle's reading of the cross-class possibilities of
affiliation as expressed in the celebration of the festival thaipusam.

The complexities of identification are also picked up through other vectors in several of the
chapters in this volume. Geoffrey Burkhart explores the complexity of gay positioning
among South Asians living in the United States. The heteronormativity of the imagined
nation state spills out (and is often reinforced) in the diaspora so that gay South Asian men
have limited possibilities for affiliating with the diaspora. Public discourses of the diaspora
also too easily posit the Indian diaspora as a patriarchal formation. Yet, Ralston's essay, for
instance, offers us glimpses into the lives of women with very different territorial
identification in India, migratory trajectories and destinations in the countries of settlement
(also see Mehta, Raghuram, this volume). The women have moved alone, set up businesses,
worked as professionals, brought up their daughters (and sons) and lived middle-class lives
that in so many ways resemble those of Indians in India and nationals in the countries where
they have settled. Sam Naidu and Jaspal Kaur Singh, focusing on the writings of women
authors similarly offer a challenge to any simplistic notion of female agency in the diaspora.
Some chapters highlight the subtle processes whereby patriarchal values are being produced
in the diaspora through (mis)appropriations of classical texts (De, this volume) while others
show how complex femininities are represented through diasporic texts (Wilson, Mehta this
volume) and in pre-migrant contexts (Pandurang, this volume). And the significance of
women in producing a sense of home through their socially reproductive actives such as
teaching language (Barn, this volume) too are aired here. Together they begin to unsettle
many of the ‘melodramatic postures’ (Puwar 2003) that have been adopted in writings
around South Asian women in the diaspora. They point to how those who fall beyond ‘the
patriarchal and heterosexual configuration of both nation and diaspora’ (Gopinath 2003:
265) make and remake the diaspora.

The agency of diasporic individuals in shaping the diaspora is also taken up by Gottschlich and
Basdeo and Samaroo. They explore the contextual and structural conditions that have
enabled the emergence of charismatic individuals and political groups who have actively
produced an Indian diaspora through their interventions in the politics of the region as well
as their diasporic political engagements (also see Maharaj, Vadivella Belle, this volume).
Diasporic affiliation then becomes (at least partially) an outcome of individual and collective
agents, who have ‘identities and histories inevitably bound up in diverse fragments of culture
and place’ (Gandhi 2002: 359) rather than an expression of primordial connections. These
chapters also attempt to explore the contexts in which these individuals and organisations
have emerged, so that their agency is not overburdened. In the context of Malaysia,
Vadivella Belle pays attention to the ways in which diaspora politics only provided a route to
political gain for a few, particularly upper-class people and the contestations over leadership
that this sometimes provoked. This is crucial because as Yuval-Davis (2006) argues:

It is important to recognize, however, that such political agents struggle both for the
promotion of their specific projects in the construction of their collectivity and its
 boundaries and, at the same time, use these ideologies and projects in order to promote their
own power positions within and outside the collectivity. The politics of belonging includes
also struggles around the determination of what is involved in belonging, in being a member
of a community, and of what roles specific social locations and specific narratives of identity
play in this. As such, it encompasses contestations both in relation to the participatory
dimension of citizenship as well as in relation to issues of the status and entitlements such
membership entails (205).

These contestations are also significantly shaped by the state and its policies and politics. The
forms of citizenship offered to Indian diasporics is rapidly multiplying with domicility
conferring differential rights both in countries of settlement and in India (Raghuram, this
volume). Transnationalism is however unsettling the definitions of domicility as exemplified
in the case of Indian migrants to the Gulf, so that citizenship is becoming territorially
sensitive to the conditions of settlement in countries of destination. Claims to citizenship
and belonging are also being played out in new sites - cyberspace, being one such site for
enacting emerging ephemeral collectivities.

Unsurprisingly memory is a strong basis around which these collectivities are imagined and
therefore a reoccurring theme throughout the volume. Auratic memories of smells (Miller),
of buildings and landscapes (Genn, Miller, Wilson), of rituals (Vadivella Bella), of texts (De)
and of everyday socialities played out in schools (Leonard) and in families (Mehta, Singh) are
selectively remembered, valorised and reconfigured in producing the Indian diaspora. To
sum up, the multiple meanings and theoretical takes on diaspora that are outlined in the first
part of this introduction are displayed in the volume. Diaspora is analysed through a range of
lenses from migration, to ethnicity, citizenship, cultural continuity and conscious political
affiliation/disaffiliation, reflecting the diversity of viewpoints of authors who work in this
field.

Moving on
The volume is not and cannot be comprehensive so the lacunae in it are many. In this
section we briefly pick up a few issues/questions that would have interested us from our
own positionings and investments that we feel have not found space in the volume.

First, in our take on the Indian diaspora, the book leaves unexplored other entangelements
that 'do' and 'undo' India. How do questions of diaspora look when the homeland does not
exist except through diasporic struggles. It asks difficult questions such as how are diasporic
funds and support deployed at home to fight for a homeland. And there may be no
agreement amongst those involved in the struggle as exemplified by the case of the Kashmiri
diaspora caught between a secularist independence movement and those who seek
independence under the aegis of Pakistani protection or for Islamic rule. These troubled
stories of diasporic affiliations that unsettle the boundaries of India are left unexplored here.

These boundaries are also disrupted through flows of communication and the Internet has
played its part in shaping diasporic thinking. At best it has produced a comfortable space for
diasporic belonging (Mitra 2005), at worst a space for a novel Internet Hindutva (Rajagopal
2000). The Information Technology engineers that sojourn and settle in the US have also
participated in producing ‘cybershakas’ or electronic networks of revivalist Hindu
organisations that wipe out any secular narratives of India but rather posit ‘India’ in a
reinvigorated Hindu historicism. However, reading the diaspora is most politically
productive when embedded in the reality of its production, circulation and appropriation.
The shape of these imagined communities is influenced by who actually gets online because
cyberspace reflects, reproduces and refracts inequalities in the ‘real’ world, unsettling the
divide between the virtual and the real through the continuities and discontinuities between
these two media. Many of the vectors of inequality that are being played out on the Internet
have their routes in colonialism and access to English as this language has become the
preferred medium for producing the Internet. However, these inequalities are not simply
mapped on from real communities to virtual communities. New forms of stratification are
also emerging. The processes of selectivity that shape diasporic notions of belonging, a
theme that reverberates across the volume, are visible in the Internet diaspora too. For
instance, some of the techno-savvy English educated Indian diasporic elite in the U.S. have
used the cyberspace to reproduce and circulate texts in some Indian languages, reconfiguring
keyboards and facilitating online reproduction as well as translation of regional texts. These
texts have been a part of, as well as have led to, a complex revivalism of regional diasporas,
around which cyber-identification has become increasingly important. Digital knowledge is
producing new versions of elitism but this is also being contested from diverse spots within
cyberspace. The tension between the construction of particularistic belonging and
transnational affiliation as played out in the new digital media has not been adequately
addressed here.

Religious identification and its role in constructing the imaginary of India receives some
attention in this volume. Less fully explored is the role of religion in the Indian diaspora in
shaping politics within India. In particular, each religion is treated separately rather than
together. Moreover, religion too gets rescripted through its travels abroad. These are
pressing issues for the Indian diaspora as a ‘powerful diaspora Hindutva ethnic nationalist
discourse of the homeland, and an equally powerful Hindutva ethnic nationalist discourses
of minorities within both the homeland and in the West’ jostle for space (Bhatt and Mukta
2000: 438). As Bhatt and Mukta go on to argue the ‘unequal power geometry of globalization
that is concentrated in the West can create significant advantages for diaspora Hindutva
movements in their relationships with India. The formation of absolutist religious identities
by claimed representatives of some minorities in the West is a will to power from which
they thence have a privileged stake in deciding the future of absolutely less powerful
minorities in the homeland’ (438). Within these conditions we must ask how beleaguered
religious identifications such as those of Islam should be folded into thinking the ‘Indian
diaspora’ (see for instance, Bal and Sinha-Kerkoff 2005).

Another set of issues that interest us but are not fully explored here is how does the diaspora
influence and shape place-based subjectivities in India. For instance, section 4 of the volume
focuses on writers from the Indian diaspora but there is little here on the relationship
between diasporic authors and authors in India writing about the diaspora. As Lisa Lau
(2005) suggests ‘It is ironic that these articulate diasporic South Asian women writers may be
so much more effective than their South Asian counterparts in marketing their ideas and
ideals, that they almost consign the home South Asians to the position of subalternism.’ So
we may well ask how do diaspora stories configure the immobile? How do they become
emplaced and what forms of displacement do they feel as diasporic money, goods and
people flow in and through their spaces (Chu 2006). What are the dangers of overvalorising
stories of mobility and diaspora? How do we unsettle the increasing privileging of
metropolitan diasporic writers and the siting of the metropolis as the place where we can be
‘properly postcolonial’? (Donnell 2005: 479).

A number of chapters pose questions about the refashioning of land in the construction of
identity amongst migrants - the role it played in legitimising their presence and how this is
disrupted by new narratives emerging after decolonisation. Writing about internal migration
of Syrian Christians in Kerala, Varghese (2006) suggests that the ‘metamorphosis of the
landscape of Malabar was the narrative locus on which the production and delineation of the
migrant identity was made possible. The fashioning of such a common collectivity was also
realised through the binary exercise of homogenising all internal divergences within the
migrant community and a systematic othering of the indigene. The indigenous people were
most often viewed by the migrants as un-enterprising, un-civilised and foolish. They are
portrayed as untouched by the capitalist logic of rational investment and accumulation’
(246). Yet most of the chapters in this book stop short of exploring how the migrants and
the indigenes were discursively constructing each other in the complex matrix of colonial
and postcolonial nations into which Indians moved as part of indenture. Identifying the
bases for these dis/identifications might be one route to producing a politics that cuts across
and reworks these differences, to help migrants and indigenes imagine a new shared
relationship with land.

This volume addresses but also hopefully leaves open many questions: What is going on in
the Indian diaspora? How do we imagine it? How should we imagine it? Is diaspora a useful
category for bringing together such an assemblage? Is there an overdetermination of origin
as a marker of identity? These questions may be encompassed within a broader one: ‘whither
an Indian diaspora’? We believe that these questions are and should always be left open, in
suspension for each generation to reinterpret for their own time. It should be left unsettled,
open to circulation, dialogue, critique.

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to acknowledge the authors for their contributions to the book. Ajaya would
particularly like to thank them for responding swiftly to his often urgent requests during the editorial
process. He would also like to thank the Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora for providing
infrastuructural facilities. Parvati would like to thank the Geography Department at The Open
University for providing an intellectually stimulating and supportive environment.

Notes
1. The Indian government's own report of the high level committee (Ministry of
External Affairs 2001) recognises the long historical tradition of movement and
 counter-movement that shaped the economies and polities of some of the kingdoms
in the Indian subcontinent. Pre-colonial movements to South East Asia, to East
Africa and to the Persian Gulf were not uncommon and the effects of these
movements on local cultural practices may still be traced, especially in South East
Asia. This theme is briefly picked up in Rajesh Rai's chapter (2) on the Indian
diaspora in South East Asia.
2. However, not all the migration that formed the old diaspora was under the terms of
indenture, nor were they all labour migrants. Moreover, for many of the migrants,
even indenture offered opportunities to escape social and economic disadvantage in
India (Satyanarayana 2002).
3. For a discussion on colonial and postcolonial policies of Indian government towards
Indian diaspora (see Bhat 2003).

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 Section-I
‘A New form of Slavery’: Indentured Diaspora
 ‘A New form of Slavery’: Indentured Diaspora -
Introduction
Brij Maharaj
The Indian diaspora may well be regarded as an international phenomena - it has a presence
in more than 100 countries globally. The chapters in this section discuss the roots of the
contemporary Indian diaspora that can be traced to the colonial domination by the British
and the exploitation of cheap indentured labour from the Asian sub-continent in different
parts of the colonial empire. In the nineteenth century the British instituted indentured
labour - a ‘new form of slavery’ (Tinker 1974). The ‘indentured “coolies” were half slaves,
bound over body and soul by a hundred and one regulations’ (Joshi 1942: 44). In 1884 the
British consul in Paramaribo stated that ‘the Surinam planters … found in the meek Hindu a
ready substitution for the negro slave he had lost’ (Emmer 1986: 187). The chapters discuss
the multiple forms of migration that accompanied indentured labour and the political social
and economic effects of such migration in order to explore the historical production of what
Bhat (2006) calls the ‘old Indian diaspora’.

In chapter two Rajesh Rai analyses the socio-political factors that influenced the Indian
diaspora in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Burma). The Indian and Hindu influence in
this region was evident from the 3rd century, largely through traders and religious
missionaries. However, it was during the British colonial era that indentured Indians became
visible in Southeast Asia because of the need for labour in the plantations and in port cities
such as Penang and Singapore. The indenture, kangany and maistry labour systems ‘ensured
that the Indian community remained poor and exploited with meager wages and harsh
working conditions’. In contrast to free Chinese labourers, there was no opportunities for
indentured Indian for upward socio-economic mobility. Therefore, Indians have largely
remained as ‘minions of colonialism’ in the region.

In his chapter Carl Vadivella Belle focuses on the experiences of indentured Indians in the
plantations of Malaysia. In common with the South African experience, the Malaysian Indian
community was divided in terms of language, caste and ethnic origin, but the main fissure
was class-based between the minority professional, business and civil service occupations
and the masses in the plantations. A numerical minority, Indians have also been relegated to
the margins of Malaysian society, both in terms of culture and religion, and their ‘economic
insignificance’. An indictment against the Indian middle class was their failure to support or
assist the ‘forgotten Malaysians’. The celebration of the festival of Thaipusam is used to
illustrate a resurgent Hindu identity with global diasporic connections.

In his chapter Henry Srebrnik focuses on the trials and tribulations of Indian indentured
labourers in Fiji. As in South Africa access to land, was responsible for a great deal of
conflict between the Indians and ethnic Fijians. Henry Srebrnik refers to colonial Fiji as ‘a
‘three-legged stool,’ in which indigenous Fijians provided the land, Indians the cheap labour
and Europeans the capital’. Politically the ethnic Fijians were opposed to sharing power with
the Indo-Fijians. Both groups remain largely socially and spatially segregated, even after
living in the same country for more than a century. The Indians were viewed as outsiders,
and under conditions of ‘bipolar competition, religion, ethnicity and “race” have become
salient markers of power or powerlessness.’ An interesting issue that he raises is whether
indigenous rights supersedes individual human rights.

In chapter five Brij Maharaj depicts the limited political spaces available to Indians who
came to South Africa through the indentured labour system. However, Indians were not a
homogeneous group, and experienced various divisions and tensions, particularly between the
traders and the working class. The commercial, merchant and professional Indian class were
perceived as an economic threat to white South Africans in the province of Natal, and this
was reflected in racial prejudices, which were transformed into policies limiting their access
to land, housing, and trading opportunities. But the Indian traders enjoyed a relatively
privileged position compared to the indigenous Africans and to working class Indians. There
was increasing evidence that political organisations were used to articulate merchant interests,
sometimes at the expense of the working classes. The latter also competed with Africans in the
urban labour market, especially in secondary industry, where there was a huge demand for
unskilled labourers. Indians had a comparative advantage over Africans in that they were
more highly urbanized (even compared to the rest of the indentured diaspora).
Consequently, the incipient conflict between these two groups resurfaced episodically.

In their chapter focusing on indentured Indian labour in the West Indies, Sahadeo Basdeo
and Brinsley Samaroo trace the life trajectories of four Indo-Caribbean political leaders in
the twentieth century. In the colonial and post-colonial eras there were tensions between the
colonial rulers, as well as people of Asian and African origin in the West Indies. The
different leaders tried to reduce these tensions, drawing from eastern and western cultural
and educational experiences. However, the ‘fear of a united protest movement galvanized
the colonizers into repressive action’. The authors argue that the ‘Indo-Caribbean leaders
were among the first to break the barriers of political isolation imposed upon the people of
Indian origin by colonialism and indenture’. Subsequently, these leaders also enjoyed the
support of some of the local African population. Rather than developing a ‘blind loyalty to
India’, there was an attempt to get the indentured labourers and their descendents to identify
with their ‘new janam bhoomi’.

There are certain common themes evident in all these chapters. The South African Indian
experience is symptomatic of the indentured experience in countries such as Mauritius, West
Indies, Fiji and Malaysia in the 19th century. In the different colonies the indentured Indians
came as isolated individuals, not in family units, and men were in the overwhelming majority.
The labourers were housed in shacks and huts, with no privacy. There was no documentary
proof of ‘legal’ marriages. Yet the indentured Indians were able to develop stable families and
recreate some of social and cultural values from the Indian context. Their economic
achievements have also left them in contradictory positions with reference to indigenous
populations at whose expense the indentured system encouraged them to sometimes
prosper.
It is evident from the different chapters that the Indian diaspora is heterogeneous in terms
of religion, education, language, and regional origins. In spite of their different backgrounds
and their multiple spatial locations, diasporic Indians also have some common features. As
pointed out by Jain (1993:45) this includes the extended family, as well as ‘sharply defined
family roles and status based on patriarchy, gerontocracy and the subordination of the
individual to the interests of the family’, although these features are also constantly changing.
The influence of religion and culture is very dominant. In the complex dialectic relationships
between migration, religion and nationalism, it has been contended that migration, since it
challenges identity, often exacerbates a certain nationalism expressed by religion (Van der
Veer 1994; Mohammad 1998).

Indians in the indentured diaspora have had varying fortunes. The different chapters
illustrate that Indians have had little political influence in the different colonies. Although
‘they have not lacked initiative and have sometimes resisted pressures, the history of the
Asian communities is largely one of accommodation to the prevailing historical situation’
(Ghai and Ghai 1971: 5). As they attempted to adjust in an alien and hostile environment
they encountered conflict sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially with the
colonial rulers and the indigenous majority.

The different chapters in this section reveal that the nature of colonial social organisation
was largely based on racial lines with nascent conflict between different groups resurfacing
periodically. This inevitably generated practices and outlooks which were antagonistic and
opposed to any form of interracial interaction. The Asians were especially isolated from
other indigenous groups (Ghai and Ghai 1965). Asian ethnic identities were influenced by
segregation, economic competition and through cultural ties in a variably hostile
environment (Clarke et al. 1990). According to many Indians feared losing their cultural
identity, and were inclined to be ‘over religious, rigid, conservative, orthodox, close and
restrictive ...’ (Motwani and Motwani 1989: 3). Rather than engaging with the indigenous
majority, the Indians often retreated into their cultural and religious cocoons in the highly
racialised environment. However, racism was clearly not the preserve of one community. If
Indians were prone to withdraw into their own culture, other communities are just as much
swayed by racial considerations, and the case of Fiji is instructive.

By the time the colonies attained independence Indians were a significant force in the
economy (with the exception of Malaya), but were often insulated as a community and
marginalised politically. While the colonial state fostered a collective Asian identity from
above, this was reinforced by impulses emanating from within the Asian community itself.
Caught between an antagonistic colonial minority government and fear of the indigenous
masses, the Asians confirmed their cultural identity (Desai and Maharaj 1996). This cultural
detachment of Asians from the mainstream has ‘indirectly invited or contributed to racial
discrimination by the natives against Indians, which has later turned into racial atrocity in
several countries after their independence’ (Motwani and Motwani 1989: 3). In the post-colonial
era Asians ‘stood out as discordant, unassimilable citadels of exclusiveness’ (Bhatia 1973: 18).
A major challenge for the survival of Asians in the different diasporas in the post-colonial era
was to reduce and transcend this cultural divide (Bhushan 1989). In the colonial, post-colonial
and contemporary eras, the indentured Indians have primarily played the role of middle-man
minorities, often being portrayed as scapegoats and villains in times of economic and
political crisis. According to Blalock (1967) the distinguishing feature of middleman
minorities is the economic role they play. Unlike most ethnic minorities, they occupy an
intermediate rather than a low-status position. They are generally found in certain
occupations, mainly trade and commerce, but also as labour contractor, rent collector,
money lender, and broker. They play the role of middleman between producer and
consumer, employer and employee, owner and tenant, elite and masses.

The nature of colonial social formation which resulted in the differential incorporation of
the various racial groups, enjoying different levels of rewards, set the stage for seeking a
scapegoat and revenge for long-suffering misery. After independence, the colonial racial
divisions and the associated and perceived advantages accruing to Asians were challenged in
various ways. There were also various tensions and divisions, relating to class, caste, religion
and language, and associated changes with the passage of time and isolation from India.

References
Bhat, C.S. 2006. ‘Continuity and Change in the Perception of “Indianness”: Issues of
Identity among Indians at Home and in the Diaspora’, in: Martina Ghosh-
Schellhorn (ed.), Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries: India and its Diaspora(s),
pp. 243-250. Berlin: Lit Verlag.
Bhatia, P. 1973. Indian ordeal in Africa. Delhi: Vikas.
Bhushan, K. 1989. ‘Indians in Kenya’, in J .K. Motwani and J. Barot-Motwani (eds.), Global
Migration of Indians: Saga of Adventure, Enterprise, Identity and Integration, pp.53-55. New
York: First Global Convention of People of Indian Origin.
Blalock, H. 1967. Toward a theory of minority group relations. New York: John Wiley.
Clarke, C., Peach, C. and Vertovec, S. 1990. ‘Introduction: Themes in the study of the South
Asian diaspora’, in C. Clarke, C. Peach, and S. Vertovec (eds.), South Asians Overseas -
Migration and Ethnicity, pp.1-29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Desai, A. and Maharaj, B. 1996. ‘Minorities in the Rainbow Nation: The Indian Vote in
1994’, South African Journal of Sociology, 26: 118-125.
Emma, P.C. 1986. ‘The meek Hindu: the recruitment of Indian indentured labourers for
service overseas, 1870-1916’, in P.C. Emmer (ed.), Colonialism and Migration: Indentured
labour before and after slavery, pp.187-207. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Ghai, D.P. and Ghai, Y.P. 1965. ‘Asians in East Africa: Problems and Prospects’, The Journal
of Modern African Studies, 3:35-51.
Ghai, D.P. and Ghai, Y.P. 1971. The Asian Minorities of East and Cantral Africa. London:
Minority Rights Group.
Jain, R.K. 1993. Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature. New Delhi: Manohar.
Joshi, P.S. 1942. The Tyranny of Colour - A Study of the Indian Problem in South Africa. Durban.
Mohammad, A. 1998. ‘Les musulmans du sous-continent indien à New York: le religieux,
marqueur ultime de l'identité?’, in La Transmission du Savoir dans le Monde musulman
périphérique. Paris, Groupe de Recherche CNRS/EHESS, n°19.
Motwani, J.K and Motwani, J.B. 1989. ‘Introduction’, in J .K. Motwani and J. Barot-Motwani
(eds.), Global Migration of Indians: Saga of Adventure, Enterprise, Identity and Integration,
pp.1-5. New York: First Global Convention of People of Indian Origin.
Tinker, H. 1974. A New System of Slavery - The Export of Indian Labour Overseas. London:
Oxford University Press.
Van der Veer, P. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
 2
‘Positioning’ the Indian Diaspora: The Southeast Asian
Experience
Rajesh Rai

Indians abroad have, of late, received widespread publicity in the Indian media. Since 2003,
the Indian state has joined the fanfare, organizing the annual Bharatiya Pravaasi Divas to
honour its diaspora. It is now commonplace for Indians to remark on how well they have
done abroad. Others observe that NRIs are the ‘new Brahmins’
the veracity of which is
easily verifiable through internet marriage sites where grooms from the diaspora are most
favoured. Yet such celebratory views have been shaped by the success of Indians in the
United States and other western countries. Needless to say, the Indian diaspora in the US,
while heterogeneous in itself, reflects only one facet of the diaspora, formed primarily from
the movement of professionals in the latter decades of the 20th century. Elsewhere the
Indian experience has been shaped by vastly different trajectories, and in some cases is the
outcome of contact spanning many centuries. The position of these communities within
their host societies may differ considerably from that of Indians in the west. Accordingly,
this study analyses the socio-historical forces that have shaped another silhouette of the
diaspora
that of Indians in Southeast Asia.

The presence of Indians in Southeast Asia has a long history extending to the period before
the Christian era. It is one of few regions, if not the only outside South Asia, where
the journey of Indians has continued
from the pre-modern, through the colonial and into
the contemporary age of globalization. The Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia is thus the
outcome of many movements. Initially comprising merchants and traders, the advent of
colonialism saw the arrival of Indian labourers, ‘convicts’, imperial auxiliaries made up of the
colonial militia and administrators, teachers and medical personnel. From the last decade of
the 20th century, Indian professionals in the IT and communications sector have added to
this heterogeneity, particularly in Singapore and to a lesser extent in Malaysia.

While Indian communities can be found in all parts of Southeast Asia, their presence is
especially important in Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma) and Singapore where they form
significant minorities, and have played a crucial role in the development of this region from
the 19th century onwards. The vast majority of Indians arrived here as labourers and
auxiliaries linked to the colonial enterprise, which in turn constructed the framework upon
which they functioned in these societies. This had repercussions on Indians
in terms of
their relationship with the land on which they laboured, and in the way they were perceived
by other communities. Colonialism also left important legacies, most clearly in the form of
its unintended by-product
nationalism
which would have a bearing on the postcolonial
relations between communities in the host society. Since independence, however, the
approach of each of these states towards minorities, nation-building, and economic
development
have been marked by considerable difference, all of which have left an imprint
on the diaspora.

What follows is an overview of the early relations between India and Southeast Asia prior to
the arrival of Europeans, an analysis of the socio-historical conditions relevant to the
establishment of Indian diaspora(s) in Malaysia, Myanmar and Singapore under colonial rule,
and an examination of the development of these communities after independence with a
focus on the political, economic and social position of Indian minorities in these states.

Contact in the Age of Merchants

Although the exact location of Kautiliya’s Suvarnabhumi is a subject of academic debate, many
scholars are of the view that the locus of this abode, mentioned first in the 3rd century BC,
was within the geographical matrix of what is today, Southeast Asia (Lochan 2006). While
evidence of the Indian presence in the region in the pre-Christian era is scarce, the historical
imprint of India on Southeast Asia in the early centuries of the first millennium AD is more
conspicuous. The cultural and religious significance of Indian merchants was evident in three
‘Hinduized’ kingdoms (Funan, Champa and Kambuja) that ruled large areas of present-day
Cambodia and Vietnam from the 1st to the 13th centuries AD (Pairaudeau 2006).

Itinerant merchants and traders formed the mainstay of the Indian presence in the region,
although they were not the only arrivals. Drawing from the Chinese annals Nan-chou I-wu
Chih, the T’ai-ping Yu Lan and the Wen-hsieh T’ung K’ao, Amarjiva Lochan speaks of immigrant
brahmanas who ‘falsifying the notion of taboo in sea crossing’ (Lochan 2006: 189) settled in
various locations in Thailand from the 3rd century AD onwards. In addition to their
considerable role in the courts of isthmian Thailand, many natives in the region allowed the
marriage of their daughters to these brahmanas in an effort to induce them to settle
permanently (Lochan 2006). Indian communities comprising traders and religious
‘missionaries’ were also evident in Myanmar from the second century AD (Than 2006).

The Indian imprint was not limited to the countries that make up mainland Southeast Asia.
During the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD, Java and Sumatra were inspired by
Indian political, cultural and religious ideas. While South Indian traders were particularly
prominent, Gujarati merchants were also prevalent in these parts. Kernial Singh Sandhu
writes that references of Gujarati contact with Southeast Asia can be found in ancient folk-
tales such as the Jatakattavannana, the Ras-Mala and in old Gujarati ballads and legends dating
to the 5th century AD which tell us that:

Te Jae Jave, te kadi nahi ave

Ave to, sath pidhi baitke khave.
Who goes to Java,
Never returns.
If by chance, he returns,
Then for seven generations to live upon
Money enough, he brings back (Sandhu 1981: 49-50).
Indian scripts, Hinduism and Buddhism affected the development of language and religion
in Java and Sumatra and the ‘continued popularity of the epic Ramayana and the
Mahabharata…, the magnificent stupas in Borobudur and the Prambanan temple in
Yogyakarta, and the persistence of Hinduism in Bali represent compelling testimonies of
early India’s connection with the Indonesian archipelago’ (B. Singh 2006: 195).

An outcrop of the growth of Islamic power in the Indian sub-continent in the early second
millennium A.D. was the spread of Islam to Southeast Asia. The popularity of Islam in
coastal regions and amongst mercantile communities in South India and Gujarat provided a
spur to the movement of Indian Muslim traders abroad. Further relieved of religious and
social constraints to long distance travel, and drawing from the concomitant aims of
fostering material gain alongside the spiritual mission of spreading their religion, these
Muslim traders ventured in greater numbers to Southeast Asia. Marco Polo who passed
through the region in 1292 recorded that Ferlac (Perlak) in northeastern Sumatra ‘was so
frequented by Muslim merchants that they converted the natives to Islam’ (Sandhu 1981:
52). Following the power vacuum in the Straits of Malacca after the fall of the Buddhist Sri
Vijaya empire in the 14th century, the pattern that had resulted in the conversion of ‘Ferlac’
to Islam was repeated in many parts of Southeast Asia. Particularly important was the role of
Gujarati and Tamil Muslim traders in the conversion, in the 15th century, of the international
port of Malacca to Islam. Here the prominence of Indians was reflected in the appointment
of the Tamil Muslim trader, Raja Kassim, as Mantri. From Malacca, Islam spread to other
parts of the Malayan Peninsula and to the Indonesian archipelago.

From Portuguese sources1, it is clear that Indian movement to Southeast Asia at this time
was certainly not limited to Muslim traders. Toma Pires for example informs us that in
Malacca, Hindu merchants of South India
labeled Klings
controlled the bulk of trade and
had an important say in fixing the dues paid by merchants. Sandhu further argues that it was
the Chettiar Hindu trader, Naina ‘Chetu’ who aided the release of Portuguese prisoners in
Malacca in 1511 and that non-Muslim mercenaries made up an important component of
Alfonso de Albuquerque’s militia that captured Malacca in 1511 (Sandhu 1981).

British colonialism and the Indian Diaspora in Myanmar, Malaya &

Singapore
Although India’s influence on Southeast Asia was considerable prior to the arrival of the
Europeans, Indians in the region were largely transients, moving to and from the sub-
continent to trade their wares. Permanent settlement, while evident, was exceptional, on a
small scale and limited to key ports. Of those who settled prior to colonial rule, many
married local women and their descendents
known as Jawi Pekan in Malaya
were largely
assimilated into the local culture. It was only after the advent of colonialism that substantial
numbers of Indians arrived in Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaya, Myanmar and
Singapore
all of which were British colonies
where they came to form distinct diasporas.
The British were relative late-comers in establishing colonies in Southeast Asia. Their desire
to acquire strategic ports in the region, particularly the Straits of Malacca, was aimed at
securing the British East India Company’s (EIC) trading interests on the India-China trade
route. These strategic outposts were also intended to safeguard their position in India vis-à-
vis other European powers that had either established bases in Southeast Asia or were
seeking to do so. Of particular concern in the region were the Dutch who from the 17th
century onwards had established a formidable presence in the East Indies (contemporary
Indonesia). Likewise, there was a need to counteract the French, who were seen as the main
European adversaries to British aspirations in India in the late 18th century.

Although the British had, by the early 18th century, established an outpost at Fort
Marlborough (Bencoolen), this settlement was not financially viable because it was distant
from the main trading routes in the region. The establishment of Penang as a colony in 1786,
however, marked the beginning of a formidable British presence in the Straits of Malacca.
Further attempts at finding a base closer to the centre of the trade route led to the founding
of Singapore by Stamford Raffles in 1819. The British position on the eastern flank of the
Straits was secured following the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 which saw the exchange of
Bencoolen for Malacca. Singapore, Penang and Malacca formed the Presidency of the Straits
Settlements from 1826 and were administered as the ‘Eastern Presidency of the British-
Indian Government’ until 1867 when its administration was transferred to the colonial office
in London.

British attempts at ensuring the supply of raw materials such as tin from the Malay states on
the peninsula led to growing intervention in local affairs. By the early 20th century, Britain
had taken over direct rule of the Federated Malay States through British Residents and
instituted indirect rule in the Unfederated Malay States through ‘advisors’. The British
expansion in Myanmar meanwhile was triggered by the growing conflict on her frontiers
with British India. Following three wars, in 1824, 1852 and 1885, Britain was able to gain
control of all of Burma, making it a province of British India with the capital at Rangoon.

The need for cheap labour for the resource-based economy in Malaya and Myanmar resulted
in the colonial authorities ‘assisting’
through the indenture, kangany & maistry systems
in the
migration of Indians to these parts. The bulk of Indians (approximately 80 per cent) who
arrived during the colonial era were labour migrants used for work in plantations or as
coolies in ports such as Singapore and Penang.

Although the primary source of migrants to Malaya and Singapore was from Southern
China, the British were cautious in ensuring that they did not depend on a single ethnic
group for labour. While this created multi-racial societies, the colonial perception that ‘racial’
communities possessed a group loyalty, ensured that stringent efforts were undertaken to
divide these groups. British employers were advised:

To secure your independence, work with Javanese and Tamils, and if you have sufficient
experience, also with Malays and Chinese, you can always play the one against the other… In
case of a strike, you will never be left without labour, and the coolies of one nationality will
 think twice before they make their terms, if they know you are in a position that you can do
without them (Kaur 2001: 189).

The vast majority of Indian migrants were from the Madras Presidency as the Indian
government refused to allow the emigration of Indian labourers to Singapore and Malaya
from other parts of the subcontinent (Walker 1994). Lower-caste Adi Dravida labour from
these parts were also preferred in British plantations as colonial discourse in Malaya
constructed the myth of the ‘docile’ and ‘malleable’ South Indian:

Of the people of the subcontinent the South Indian peasant, particularly the untouchable or
low caste Madrasi, was considered the most satisfactory type of labourer, especially for light,
simple repetitive tasks. He was malleable, worked well under supervision and was easily
manageable… He was not [as] ambitious as most of his Northern Indian compatriots and
certainly nothing like the Chinese (Sandhu 1969: 56).

The ineffectual economic and political position of Indians in Malaya can be traced back to
the systems of migration ushered by colonial rule, chiefly the labour structure of the
overlords. The indenture and kangany system of labour recruitment that was implemented in
Malaya ensured that the Indian community remained poor and exploited with meagre wages
and harsh working conditions (Kaur 2006). Colonialism effectively ‘deprived the community
of the economic foundation necessary for a politically significant role’ (Muzaffar 1993: 212).
The decline in status was particularly stark when compared to the Indian position prior to
the advent of colonialism when they were respected as traders and harbingers of religion and
culture.

These ‘assisted’ systems of migration revealed clear features of slavery, viz. the absence of
free market mobility and even a psychological if not real sense of subservience that the
labourer had towards his employer. The control mechanisms existent within these systems,
alongside the meagre wages that encouraged the accumulation of debt created a web that
deprived Indian plantation workers the opportunity for upward mobility, a pattern unlike
that observed in free labourers like that of the Chinese in Malaysia who were allowed to
exercise some degree of influence over their livelihood.

Nonetheless, not all Indian emigrants to Malaya and Singapore during the colonial period
were labourers. The period also saw the arrival of the imperial auxiliaries to Malaya and
Singapore. While small numbers of militia from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were to be found in
Fort Marlborough, Penang and Singapore in the late 18th and early 19th century, from the
1870s, the Sikhs undertook a key role in law enforcement (Dusenbery 1997: 740). In
addition, the British also encouraged the immigration of educated Sri Lankan Tamils and
Malayalis to function as administrators, teachers, technical and medical personnel (Rai 2006).

The stream of Indian commercial migrants also continued to arrive to the peninsula.
Prominent amongst these were the Chulias (Tamil Muslim traders) and the Nattukottai
Chettiars who had an extensive network through Malaya, Burma, and Sri Lanka. Other
commercial migrants included the Gujaratis, Bengalis, Parsis, and Marwaris, who carved a
niche in the commercial sector. In the first half of the 20th century, Sikh and Sindhi migrants
were able to establish themselves in the textile industry, another sphere with a wide network
extending to Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Bombay (India), and Japan (Rai 2006).

The proportion of commercial migrants and imperial auxiliaries in Singapore was far greater
than in Malaya and this to some extent accounted for the differences in the development of
Indians during the colonial period. Comprising approximately 30% of the total Indian
populace, their sizeable number had an impact on the position of Indians in the city-state.
The upper strata was able to provide leadership to the community and spearheaded the
formation of various Indian organizations and institutions by the early 20th century. In
addition representatives drawn from these groups were able to influence, albeit in a limited
fashion, the views of the colonial government vis-à-vis Indians.

Burma’s case differs from that of Singapore and Malaya in that whereas the Indian
government placed some restrictions on labour migration to Singapore and Malaya, it placed
no constraints on the flow of Indian labour to Burma as it was considered a province of
British India after annexation (Than 2006). The arrival of large numbers of Indian labourers,
imperial auxiliaries and commercial migrants added to the rift between Indians and the
native Burmese, which had grown from the Burmese royal army’s defeat in the First Anglo-
Burmese War of 1824 by Indian troops under British control
an event that Tin Maung
Maung Than suggests could very well be placed as the beginnings of Burmese prejudice
against Indians (Than 2006).

Table 1: Indian Occupational Categories in Colonial Myanmar (1931)

Sector Percentage of total
Indian workforce
Industry, Transport & Trade 51.5%
Raw Material Production 30.0%
(mainly agriculture)
Miscellaneous (including domestic workers) 9.5%
Public Administration, arts & professional services 6.5%
Minerals Exploitation 2.5%
Total 100%
Source: 1931 Census of Burma quoted in Than, Tin Maung Maung. 2006. ‘Myanmar’, in Brij
V. Lal, Peter Reeves and Rajesh Rai (eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora, p.169,
Singapore: Editions Didier Millet.

The Indian migrants in Burma comprised a vast array of occupational categories, in the
industrial and agricultural sectors (Table 1), although most were labourers and temporary
residents from states such as Bengal, Madras, and Uttar Pradesh and belonged to a range of
linguistic groups. While Indians played an important role in transforming Burma’s
subsistence economy to a commercialized export economy, their presence was resented by
many local Bamars who felt that they were excluded from the benefits of economic
development. Indians took up jobs in the unskilled and semi-skilled sectors and had a strong
presence in the commercial sector and amongst imperial auxiliaries who were viewed as
agents of colonialism. Resentment was particularly rife in areas of Indian concentration such
as the capital Rangoon. Antipathy towards Indians was not limited to the economic realm
and ‘the practice of their religious (especially Islam) and socio-cultural customs, though
tolerated by the mainly Buddhist majority, alienated many conservative Bamars’ (Than 2006:
169). Notwithstanding such sentiments, the majority of Indians were not well off, living and
working in miserable conditions and heavily indebted to the labour contractors
the maistries.

In addition to competition from Indian labourers, Bamars were concerned with the
dominant position of Indian businessmen. The Chettiars who had an extensive money-
lending network in Myanmar were particularly demonized. While Chettiar credit had fostered
both urban and rural economic development in Myanmar, hatred for Chettiars grew
markedly after the great depression in the 1930s. Many Bamars, unable to furnish their loans
following the depression, saw their agricultural land
used as collateral
taken over by
Chettiar money-lenders. By the late 1930s about one quarter of the total agricultural land in
Burma was in Chettiar hands, further intensifying Bamar xenophobic sentiments towards
them (Landon 1943).

The Second World War & Immediate Post-war Developments

The British defeat in Singapore in February 1942, and the Japanese ascendancy in the region
was crucial in providing the space and impetus for the growth of a pan-Indian nationalist
consciousness amongst Indians in Southeast Asia. The Indian National Army (INA) and the
Indian Independence League led by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in Southeast Asia sought
to achieve a free India by launching an attack on British India via Burma in the hope that
this would lead to widespread rebellion in the ‘homeland’.

While the INA failed to achieve its intended purpose, it did foster, albeit temporarily, greater
unity amongst the diverse Indian groups in these states. However, that this sense of unity
was forged in the struggle against imperialism in India and not in Burma, Malaya and
Singapore further affirmed notions amongst some native groups that Indians in these states
considered themselves only as temporary residents. Reflecting on Indian transience, Khin
Maung Kyi noted that even after a lapse of seventy years from the first wave of migration,
the Indian community remained a foreign settlement which had little in common with the
Bamar in terms of political ideals, economic interest, or cultural life, and social intercourse
between the two communities was confined to economic transactions (Khin 1993).

As expected, after the war, aversion towards Indians remained strongest in Myanmar. While
the Myanmar independence movement led by the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League
(AFPFL) did share a cordial relationship with Indian leaders in the country and was itself
strongly influenced by the Indian national movement, antipathy towards Indians remained
strong on the ground. In spite of the nationalist leader Aung San’s promise of equal
opportunities to Indians in independent Burma, his untimely death in 1947 ensured that this
would not be carried out when Burma gained independence in 1948. The loss of their most
important ally, accelerated the exodus of Indians from Burma, with the ominous prospect of
‘political power being transferred to the Burmese, many Indians particularly those holding
clerical, technical and administrative positions chose to leave Burma’ (Khin 1993: 643).2
In Malaya, the upshot of Indian participation in the INA was the growing politicization of
the Indian minority. Indians came to be involved in local nationalist organizations seeking
independence from British rule, and numerous political parties formed in the aftermath of
the war saw significant Indian participation. These included the Malayan Indian Congress
(MIC) and the All-Malayan Council of Joint Action (AMJCA). The MIC, formed in 1946,
was later incorporated into a political umbrella with two other communal parties
the United
Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA)
that
formed a united front called the Alliance (Kaur 2006). While the MIC initially drew from
Indian professional and business groups in urban areas, the overwhelming numeric
dominance of Tamil labourers, resulted in the ascendancy of the political elite closely tied to
plantation labour.

Influenced by the Tamil Reform Association in the post-war period, the MIC’s top brass
emphasized the Tamil language and Tamil cultural practices. The alienation of north Indians
from the MIC, and ‘the polarization between the political elite and the professional elite [in
the Indian community] resulted in the distancing of the latter from the MIC… [and their]
increased participation in multiracial opposition parties and the formation of sub-regional
communal parties’ (Kaur 2006: 166). Unsurprisingly, the scramble for power between the
three main ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese and Indians) in the wake of Malayan
independence, saw the MIC, the weakest link in the Alliance, receiving a paltry share of
political power (Kaur 2006).

Post-Independence Developments
Since independence, the political paths taken by Singapore, Malaysia and Myanmar have had
varying effects on the Indian communities’ political, economic and social status in these
states. In Singapore, the city-state adopted an approach of meritocracy and equality for its
citizens. In Malaysia, Bumiputra (literally ‘sons of the soil’) policies secured numerous
advantages to the Malay community that in various areas have had a negative impact on the
Chinese and Indian diaspora. Similarly, Myanmar’s post-independence policies have been
bent on securing the privileges and rights of the Bamar at the expense of minorities.

Indians in Myanmar
The four decades following Burma’s independence in 1948 have seen a decline in the
population of Indians. Essentially, they have, through the course of recent Burmese history,
been categorized as an alien ethnic minority, a designation that has stemmed from colonial
times (Steinberg 1990). The initial years of independence left the Indians disappointed at the
state that they found themselves in as Burma became a hot spot for insurgency by ethnic
minorities, and other domestic disturbances. Due to spiraling insecurities, many left Burma
to distance themselves from the increasingly unsafe conditions (Bhattacharya 2003).

Since independence, Indians have lost the social, economic, and political clout that they
possessed during the colonial period (U. Singh 1982). This can be attributed to various laws
that have effectively disenfranchised the community. For example, the Myanmar
Constitution of 1947 failed to recognize Indians as an ethnic minority in the state, and hence
made no apologies for the lack of provisions or representation for them. Indeed, even
among people of Indian descent who acquired citizenship, there existed a perception that
they were second class citizens in a state that sought to uphold the interests of the majority.

Their difficulties were exacerbated by the policy imperatives of Nehruvian India which
placed diplomatic ties between India and Burma at a premium before the interests of her
diaspora. Their situation was made worse by the ideological congruence between the two
nations that sought economic development based on socialist principles. Indian business
interests in Burma were thus relegated to a secondary status. The Burmese government
spearheaded nationalization policies that shattered the Indian economic position in the
country. Land that the Chettiars had acquired during the colonial period was nationalized
and they received little compensation for these acquisitions (Suryanarayan 2003).

In the 1960s, renewed nationalization measures further undermined Indian economic

interests. The Burmese government, under the leadership of General Ne Win, took hold of
Indian petty retail shops and Indians were prevented from remitting their savings to India.
The military rule of 1962 effected the eviction of over 200,000 Indians to purge the Burmese
economy of Indian influence. To date, those Indians who lost their shops have not been
compensated (U. Singh 1982).

The 1974 Constitution that brought scrutiny of the Citizenship Act of 1948, once again
conjured fear and apprehension within the Indian minority (U. Singh 1982). Their
trepidation resurfaced in 1980 when reforms to the citizenship laws were being considered in
an attempt by the government to deal with the alien minorities. The new law proposed that
the native people were to receive complete privileges and rights, whereas ‘others’ were to be
granted only limited citizenship. This meant that the non-Burmese would be largely left out
from participation in the military, politics, and the civil service (Silverstein 1980).

The 1988 coup and deteriorating relations between India and Burma in the 1990s have
added to the vulnerable position of the Indian community (Steinberg 1990: 598). These
fragile bonds coupled with decades of political insecurity has ensured that the Indians who
remain in Burma, after 1988, have adopted a strategy of maintaining a ‘low profile’ in terms
of political participation, while channeling their energies largely towards economic pursuits.

The opening of the Burmese economy in the 1990s, however, has brought some cheer to
sections of Indian society in Burma. The growing economic opportunities have resulted in
the emergence of a new group of Indian businessmen who have profited from the opening
up of the private sector. On the social-cultural front, the current Indian situation has
improved somewhat as Indians are able to observe religious rituals and ceremonies with
fewer restrictions than in the past (Than 2006).

In spite of recent improvements, the Indian position under the junta government remains
precarious. Their status as citizens remains delicate and they continue to be haunted by the
spectre of possible repatriation and nationalization policies that have been a feature since
Burmese independence. When possible, Indians in Burma have taken the opportunity to
leave the country. This, alongside prejudiced citizenship policies, has reduced the proportion
of Indians in Burma to between 3 and 4 per cent of the total population in the mid-1990s
(Than 2006). Indians in Burma today remain a segment of the minority population whose
voice has been lost in the crowd of ethnic insurgencies that have figured prominently in the
Burmese socio-political landscape, rendering them a forgotten people who at one point in
Burmese history helped to shape the development of the country.

Indians in Malaysia
While the constitution of 1957 gave citizenship rights to the ethnic minorities in Malaysia,
this was considered significant enough a concession on the part of the majority. Thus even
as the constitution accorded citizenship to minorities, it confirmed that ‘all symbols of the
state would be quintessentially Malay and that Islam would be the state religion and that
Malay would become the national language after sharing equal status with English until 1967’
(Ganguly 1997: 246). Of particular importance was the recognition that Malays would be
given a special position through the ‘Bumiputra’ policy as the original inhabitants of the land.
In addition, these policies would compensate for the relative economic backwardness of the
Malay community in contrast with the Chinese.

A defining moment in Malaysia’s political bearing was the 1969 racial riots between the
Malays and Chinese. The call for ‘public policies to be fashioned to deal with these
underlying sources of tension and discord’ (Ganguly 1997: 256) resulted in the promulgation
of the New Economic Policy (NEP) that endeavored to improve the economic and political
position of Malays. The resulting policies in turn affected the political, economic and social
position of the non-Malay communities in the country namely the Chinese and the Indians.
It appears however that Indians have been the biggest losers: unlike the Chinese they do not
hold economic power, neither do they possess the political strength of the Malays (Spaeth
2002).

The NEP’s attempts at disassociating with the pattern of ethnic division of labour present in
the country resulted in the government taking steps to ensure that quotas were set for the
employment of Malays in the private sector as well (Ganguly 1997: 260). Thus firms were
expected to formulate plans for the training and promotion of Malays to more skilled and
higher management standings. This has allowed for the gradual emergence of a Malay
economic elite, and a decline in poverty rate at the national level, although Malays have been
the primary beneficiaries.

One upshot of the NEP has, however, has been decline of the economic position of Indians
vis-à-vis the Malays and the Chinese in the country. A study done by Sivalingam, showed
that the share of Indians in skilled jobs such as that of professional and technical workers
decreased from 1970 to 1980 (Sivalingam 1993)3 while the number of Indians engaged in
blue-collar work, such as in the agricultural and production sectors have increased. These
conditions have had a demoralizing effect on the Indian community in Malaysia, the majority
of whom belong to the working class.

While the MIC has maintained its ties with the National Front (Barisan Nasional) led by the
United Malays National Organization (UMNO), it has remained the weakest partner (Kaur
2006). With the exception of Samy Vellu
general secretary of the MIC
Indians have largely
been absent in the Malay and Chinese dominated Cabinet. The bureaucracy is also
increasingly dominated by Malays. As the ‘third race’ in Malaysia, their clout has been further
eroded by the gradual decline in the number of Indians and they now constitute less than 8
per cent of the total population (Table 2).

Table 2: Malaysia-Ethnic Groups as a percentage of total population (2000)

Ethnic Groups Percentage (%)
Malaysian Citizens 94.1
Bumiputera 65.1
Chinese 26.0
Indians 7.7
Non-Malaysian Citizens 5.9
Source: Malaysia Department of Statistics. 2000. ‘Population and Housing Census’. Available
from http://www.statistics.gov.my/english/census/pressdemo.htm

One of the measures to improve the social and economic opportunities of Malays in the
country included the conversion of English language schools into Malay language schools.
This change has affected the position of upper class Indians in the country as their
competence in the English language was an advantage prior to the change. While the
Chinese and Indian minorities have both suffered from these ethnic preferential policies, the
latter has seen a distinct decline in the performance of their student body. In 1991, only 19
per cent of Tamils at the end of six years of schooling passed the composition test in Bahasa
Malaysia—the national language (Ganguly 1997). The poor performance of Indians has
made their ability to pursue higher education more difficult. Needless to say, this has
negative long-term effects on the community’s propensity towards upward socio-economic
mobility.

According to a l995 study, almost two-thirds of Malaysia’s total population of Indians

remained caught in the doldrums of poverty (Ganguly 1997). As a result, and quite
unsurprisingly, most of the Tamil language schools in the country remain highly
underdeveloped due to a lack of resources and under-funding. Racial quotas that favour the
Malay majority also exist in local universities and in getting scholarships to study abroad. As
a result, even though Indians have traditionally fared well in the fields of medicine and law,
they face immense hurdles in achieving their career ambitions even in these sectors. To
exacerbate matters, Indians are not a homogeneous community. Divided in terms of
linguistic backgrounds, this has compounded factionalism within the community preventing
them from uniting under a common ethnic banner.
As the preferential policies of the Malaysian government do not seem likely to abate in the
near future, the situation of the Indians in Malaysia continues to be marked by a
considerable level of dissatisfaction. However, the advent of Indian IT migrant professionals
in recent years, and the success of business tycoons like Ananda Krishnan and Warren
Fernandez
in trying circumstances
has marginally improved the image of the Indian
community. Whether this will have a bearing on the future Indian community in Malaysia
remains to be seen.

Indians in Singapore
The constitution of Singapore enshrines the principle that there shall be no discrimination
against any citizen of Singapore on the grounds of religion, race, descent or place of birth.
Since independence in 1965, Singapore has been governed by a single party, the People’s
Action Party (PAP), which has established a dominant hold on political power in the city-
state
often resulting in the characterization of Singapore as an autocratic state in
international media. However, with the backdrop of communal tensions manifest in the
1964 racial riots, the party, and hence the government, has sought to ensure non-
discrimination against minorities (Malays and Indians). Indians have thus been well
represented in parliament and in the cabinet where they have held various portfolios.
Similarly, Indians are to be found at all levels of the civil service. Independent Singapore has
had two Indian Presidents (although the President has nominal powers) including the
current President Mr S. R. Nathan. In the cabinet one of its present Deputy Prime Ministers
and two other ministers are of Indian descent.

During the immediate post-independence period, Singapore took a ‘melting pot’ perspective
as it geared itself towards building a cohesive national identity while subverting ethnic goals
and values. In the 1980s, however, the government adopted various measures to ensure the
representation of minority ethnic groups in parliament. This was evident in the ruling party’s
political initiatives, the most prominent of which was the formation of the Group
Representation Constituencies (GRCs) in 1988. The scheme, refined in 1991, stipulated that
each GRC would consist of three or more members of parliament of whom at least one had
to be drawn from a minority ethnic group (i.e. Malay, Indian, or Eurasian). The government
argued that this step was essential to its commitment to promote multi-ethnic representation
in politics (Ganesan 1996).4

Singapore’s desire to forge a sense of national identity among its ethnic groups led to policies
to strengthen national loyalties while at the same time emphasizing the need to retain one’s
cultural identity (Mutalib 1995). 'Ethnic' values and cultures have thus been allowed to
flourish, although the heterogeneous populace has been streamlined into four categories
known commonly as ‘CMIO’ (Chinese, Malays, Indians and ‘Others’). The state, by
typecasting ethnic differences into the CMIO classification, has, as PuruShotam argues,
sought to manage the diversity of the populace by ‘disciplining’ differences within these
categories (PuruShotam 1998). As far as Indians are concerned, while there exists
considerable diversity, in terms of origins, religion, and language, they have been projected in
official discourse as a homogeneous group.
Policies to retain cultural diversity have been institutionalized in education through
‘multilingualism’. The education curriculum emphasizes that students at public schools
would have to learn English and their own mother tongue. Streamlining Indians as a
homogenous category ensured that Tamil, included as one of four official languages, came to
be recognized officially as the lingua franca of the Indians (Siddique 1989). However, such
streamlining while favourable to Tamils, received lukewarm response from minority sections
within the Indian community many of whom rejected the view that Indians should be
represented under the Tamil umbrella.

Until the early 1990s, minority Indian groups (made up of Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu
and Bengali speakers) resisted calls to study Tamil by adopting Malay as a second
language
deemed to be easier to learn and useful for inter-ethnic interactions. The
downside, however, was that many non-Tamil Indian students fared badly in Malay, while
their own mother tongue faced attrition. In 1990, responding to appeals from these
communities, the government made a provision recognizing Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu
and Bengali in the curriculum. This has considerably alleviated their difficulties and resulted
in the re-emergence of these languages in Singapore.

In economic terms, the position of Indians in Singapore has shown considerable

improvement. At independence, the majority of Indians were ‘blue-collar’ workers although
they did have a significant presence in the legal and medical professions. Since then, the
state’s commitment to meritocracy allowed Indians to secure jobs in the government sector.
However, even until the early 1990s, they remained underrepresented in managerial and
executive positions in the private sector. Private businesses, dominated by the ethnic
Chinese, were often able to circumvent the official line, emphasizing the need for ‘Mandarin’
speakers in recruiting higher level management staff.

From the 1990s, however, the focus on developing a ‘knowledge-based economy’, alongside
the need to counter a rapidly aging population, has ushered the advent of large numbers of
migrant Indian professionals. The upshot has been a change in the occupational profile of
Indians in the private sector. Government figures suggest that the number of Indians in
professional, managerial, executive and technical occupations has doubled between 1990 and
2000 from about 22 per cent to 43 per cent of the total Indian workforce. From 1990 to
2000, the average Indian income has grown by some 125 per cent from US$860 to US$1935
per month, although this remains slightly below the average of US$1950 (Leow 2001). The
late 1990s onwards has also seen a growth in the number of Indian entrepreneurs setting up
businesses in Singapore
a marked change from the period prior to the 1990s when educated
Indians vied primarily for government jobs.

The advent of large numbers of Indian migrant professionals has had considerable bearing
on the position of the Indian community in Singapore. Children of new migrant Indian
professionals have done exceptionally in the public schools, the number of Indian residents
has grown steadily as a percentage of the population
from approximately 6.4% in 1980 to
8.7% in June 2005 (Table 3) (Singapore Department of Statistics 2005)
and Indian popular
culture is increasingly evident in the public arena. This is most clearly manifest in the local
‘Little India’, which, in recent times, has shown unprecedented vibrancy. The number of
Hindi speakers has also escalated, not only because of government policies from the 1990s
and the coming of Indian professionals, but also due to the advent of Indian cable television.

Table 3: Singapore Residents by Ethnic Group (June 2005)

Ethnic Groups Total (thousand) Percentage (%)
Total 3,553.5 100
Chinese 2,684.9 75.6
Malay 484.6 13.6
Indian 309.3 8.7
Others 74.7 2.1
Source: Singapore Department of Statistics. 2005. ‘Singapore Residents by Ethnic
Group’. Available from http://www.singstat.gov.sg/keystats/mqstats/mds/mds22.pdf

Not all sections of the Indian community, however, revel in the coming of the ‘new’
diaspora of Indian professionals. It is clear that some in the ‘old’ diaspora feel alienated from
the recent transformations in the Indian community. For one, the Tamil umbrella has
become increasingly tenuous given that few ‘new’ Indian migrants identify with it (Rai 2004).
Notably, while official statistics paint a rosy picture for Indians both in terms of income and
education, analysts argue that these statistics conceal the considerably weaker position of the
‘old’ diaspora. This becomes evident, for instance, when one considers the education level of
Indians. While official statistics show a phenomenal increase in the percentage of Indians
with tertiary education
from 4.1 per cent in 1990 to 16.5 per cent in 2000 (Leow 2001)
this
escalation is not representative of all Indians and can be largely attributed to the higher
education levels of recent migrants, amongst whom the vast majority have a college degree.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that specific historical and social factors have left many Indian
communities in Southeast Asia marginalized and subject to discrimination. Notwithstanding
the pre-colonial position of Indians in the region, the arrival of the vast majority as minions
of colonialism has had far-reaching consequences. Colonial structures ensured that most
Indians would be subjugated through systems of exploitation, buttressed by instruments of
control that ruthlessly prohibited opportunities for social and economic mobility. Imported
tools in the machine of empire, Indians would live with a persistent sense of impermanence
in the land in which they laboured. Their ephemerality, born of exile was amplified by a
sense of marginalization perpetuated by the colonial master who saw in their estrangement
an instrument to secure his own protraction.

The position of Indians during colonialism had long-term effects, not only in terms of their
economic position and political marginalisation but as well in the way in which they were
perceived by host societies. Colonialism thus influenced the constitution of postcolonial
interactions between Indians and the host society. In Myanmar and Malaysia, where there
existed a numerically dominant majority with strong claims to being ‘sons of the soil’,
independence witnessed the implementation of majoritarian policies, that added to the
vulnerable position of Indians. In the former, long standing hatreds stemming from Bamar
perceptions that Indians were handmaidens of colonialism, alongside post-independence
policies of nationalization have at many times come close to decimating the Indian minority
there. Preferential policies by host governments continue to privilege the majority
community in Malaysia and Myanmar.

In Singapore, the Indian position is more secure, in part because in a predominantly migrant
population few can claim to be ‘sons of the soil’. Electoral reforms in the 1980s have
ensured minority representation in politics. Possibly of even greater significance to the
Indian community here has been the recent arrival of Indian professionals. While this has
added to the heterogeneity within the community and may not be appreciated by some from
the ‘old’ diaspora, they have strengthened the Indian socio-economic and numerical
position. This alongside the rise of India as an economic power has had a bearing on the way
India and Indians have come to be perceived in the city-state.

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the help and advice of Professor Peter Reeves, Dr Assa Doron,
Ms Rajini and Mr Kevaljit Singh.

Notes
1. See the Suma Oriental of Tome Pires, an account of the East, from the Red Sea to
Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515, and The book of Francisco Rodrigues,
rutter of a voyage in the Red Sea, nautical rules, almanack and maps, written and drawn in the
East before 1515. Translated from the Portuguese in the Bibliotheque de la Chambre
des deputes, Paris, and edited by Armando Cortesao, London, Hakluyt Society, 1944.
2. Reforms were made by the Burmese government in the economic sphere so that the
nationals would play a larger role, with nationalization programmes of some major
industries including timber, transport and oil. These policies had the effect limiting
Indian businessmen as importing and trading had been the foundation of Indian
business in Burma.
3. The percentage of Indians as professionals and technical workers was 12.7 per cent
in the year 1970 but decreased to 11.4 per cent in 1980 whereas the percentage of
production workers increased from 8.6% to 11.4 % during the same period.
4. While the policy ensures ethnic minority representation in politics, many political
analysts are of the view that the main purpose of the GRC was to weaken the
opposition.

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 3
Forgotten Malaysians?: Indians and Malaysian Society
Carl Vadivella Belle

In 1957 the Federation of Malaya Census Report summarized the history of Indian
immigration to British Malaya in the following terms:

The important characteristics to note about Indian migration are that firstly, the great bulk
of this movement has been of an ephemeral character, with approximately 4 million entering
and 2.8 million leaving the country between 1860 and 1957. Secondly, much of the 1.2
million net immigration appears to be have been wiped out by disease, snake-bites,
exhaustion and malnutrition, for the local population of Malaya in 1957 number only
858,615, of which 62.1 per cent was local born.

The bland language merely hints at the appalling brutalities and prolonged oppression of
working class Indians throughout the colonial period.

Because of the deprivation of the colonial past, most Indian Malayans welcomed Merdeka
(independence) as an opportunity to participate as fully enfranchised citizens of a relatively
prosperous country, and to share in the educational, social and economic advancement that
post-colonialism would offer (Mahajani 1960: 287-288). They were assured that their political
representatives enjoyed close and influential relations with the powerful ruling parties of the
governing Alliance, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan
Chinese Association, and that the inter-ethnic bargain negotiated within the Alliance would
guarantee the interests of all citizens, irrespective of ethnic background or class (Cheah 2002:
54; Nair 1999: 92).

But the so-called Malaysian economic miracle, the high rates of wealth creation and the
social mobility which have benefited many other sectors of Malaysian society, have largely
by-passed the Indian community. Indeed, the Indian working classes, constituting about 80
per cent of the total Indian community (Ramachandran 2002), itself comprising a mere 7.7
per cent of Peninsular Malaysia’s population of 20 million (Hwang 2003: 4), formed an
oppressed and marginalized underclass, burdened with an array of negative social indicators,
and seemingly invisible to Malaysia's policy makers.

This chapter will provide an overview of the social, political and economic development of
Indian society in Malaya/Malaysia from the colonial era through to post-Merdeka Malaysia.
This will focus upon the emergence of the ‘plantation culture’ of the Indian underclass, a
worldview permeated by failure and defeatism. This chapter will also examine the
significance of the Hindu resurgence in a communal society dominated by Malay-Muslim
powerbrokers, and suggest that this phenomenon not only represents the persistence of
communal identity but also signals allegiance to, and membership of, a broader Indic-Hindu
civilization.1

Colonialism and Indian Immigration

The establishment of British control over the Malay Peninsula throughout the late 18th and
19th centuries was accompanied by the rapid development of a full colonial economy based
on plantation agriculture and extraction industries and supported by an ambitious
programme of infrastructure development (Parmer 1960: 7-9). The profitability of this
economy was dependent upon ready access to a pool of cheap, pliable and easily managed
labour (Sandhu 1969: 78). Having made an early decision not to incorporate the Malay
masses into the emerging colonial economy (Abraham 2004: 51-57), the British settled upon
the importation of coolie labour from China, India and to a lesser extent from Java (Parmer
1960: 7-9).

The overwhelming majority of Indian workers who arrived in Malaya between 1840-1910
were recruited under a system known as indenture (Sandhu 1969: 75). In many respects
indenture emulated the recently abolished system of slavery it had supposedly superseded.
Indeed, the legislative framework which governed Indian indentured labour, enacted by the
British Parliament as Ordinance 6 of 1838, was modelled upon and incorporated the residual
elements of the laws which had hitherto regulated slavery (Tinker 1974: 193-195). Indenture,
in theory defined by a mutually negotiated contract between employer and employee, and
signed by the labourer prior to departure from India, in practice worked almost exclusively
to the benefit of the planter (Potts 1990: 64). The contract was an inflexible document which
placed the employee under rigid and enforceable obligations and simultaneously stripped
him/her of almost all personal freedoms for a stipulated period of time, often several years
duration (Jain 1984: 161). Any actual or alleged breaches of the contract were subject to
prosecution under criminal law and were ruthlessly pursued through the legal apparatus of a
colonial administration which invariably sided with planters and often resulted in an
extension of the term of indenture (Tinker 1974: 193-195).

In his study of Indian migration to Malaya, K.S Sandhu estimates that a total of 250,000
indentured labourers were recruited to work in Malaya between 1840-1910 (Sandhu 1969:
81). Apart from a few hundred labourers from Bengal, the vast majority of this workforce
was of South Indian origin and were largely Hindu (Sandhu 1969: 82). The colonial
preference for South Indian labour was driven by British perceptions and constructions of
the ‘Madrassi’ as inherently docile and thus easily managed (Sandhu 1969: 56). Indeed, the
supposedly ‘cringingly servile’ South Indian was portrayed both as an alternative and as a
counterweight to the potentially ambitious and assertive Chinese worker (Sandhu 1969: 57-
58).2

In the main Indian indentured labourers consisted of adult males aged between 15 and 45
(Arasaratnam, 1970:82). The overwhelming majority were drawn from the ranks of those
agricultural workers and rural wage earners who had been severely disadvantaged or
displaced by structural economic changes, especially land reforms, introduced by the British
authorities.3 The fear or experience of famine and prolonged privation provoked the greatest
flows of indentured labourers, and there was a strong correlation between times of want and
recruitment peaks (Sandhu 1969: 65; Kumar 1965: 59; Tinker 1974: 118).4 Women and
children comprised only a small percentage of this migratory flow, rarely constituting more
than 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively of the annual intake, and frequently totalling
significantly less (Sandhu 1969: 82).

Because of the extreme poverty of their backgrounds, the ‘coolies’ often commenced their
period of indenture under the severe handicap of heavy personal debt, and throughout their
working life were poorly fed, housed in substandard accommodation, medically neglected,
and subject to unremitting and brutal discipline (Jain 1984: 164-167; Tinker 1974: 199,208;
Selvakumaran 1994: 57). The stringent regime endured by the indentured workforce helped
spawn a plethora of social problems which included alcoholism, drug abuse, and
uncontrolled gambling (Tinker 1974: 208-209). Unsurprisingly, many indentured labourers
succumbed to premature death; as late as 1905 the average death rates on all estates
registered at 11.6 per cent (Tinker 1974: 199).

In the early years of the twentieth century the harsh treatment of Indian indentured
labourers, throughout the British Empire (and European empires) became a major political
issue among Indian nationalists (Tinker 1984: 83). However, despite political pressures,
indentured recruitment was superseded by the huge demand for labour engendered by the
rubber boom of the opening decades of the early twentieth century. Quite simply, indenture
was unable to respond to the needs of the new labour market, and was increasingly replaced
by kangany recruitment which was more flexible and better equipped to meet the immediate
requirements of the plantation industry (Parmer 1960: 50). In 1910 the Colonial Office
announced the termination of all schemes of indentured recruitment to Malaya, with all
existing contracts expiring in 1913 (Tinker 1974: 315).

The recruitment of labour under kangany auspices had commenced before the cessation of
indenture. Basically a kangany was a field foreman, a ‘coolie of standing’, a man who enjoyed
a good reputation, and was of a ‘clean caste’ who was not only charged with the task of
recruiting labour to work on estates, but was required to supervise those whom he had
engaged. The kangany recruited within his own district (taluk) of origin in India, thus
selecting a workforce of people whose customs and traditions he understood (Parmer 1960:
52; Arasaratnam 1970: 18-19). The colonial authorities regulated the kangany system of
recruitment with the passage of the Tamil Immigration Fund Ordinance of 1907, which
dealt with the exigencies of emigration and repatriation of Indian labour (Parmer 1960: 38).

Kangany recruitment produced a far greater flow and more consistent supply of labour than
that achieved under indenture. On the basis of available official data, Sandhu estimates that
between 1865 and 1938 1,186,717 Indian immigrants arrived in Malaya under kangany
auspices. This figure represents 62 per cent of the total Indian assisted labour migration,
nearly 44 per cent of all labour and almost 28 per cent of total Indian immigration to Malaya
up until Merdeka (independence) in 1957 (Sandhu 1969: 115; Parmer 1960: 55). Unlike
indentured migration, recruitment of kangany labour proved responsive to actual labour
demand in Malaya, and appears to have functioned far more independently of social and
economic conditions within India (Jain 1984: 172). Moreover the personal approach adopted
by the kangany in recruiting and his good standing within source villages in India lead to a
significant rise in the percentage of labourers who were prepared to migrate with their wives
and children. This resulted in the relocation of whole families to the estates of Malaya
(Selvakumaran 1994: 59).

The kangany system produced a far more socially diverse workforce than that recruited
under indenture. While approximately one-third of kangany labourers were drawn from Adi-
Dravidar castes, the remainder represented the general spread of Tamil caste groups below
Brahman level, including members of higher castes (Arasaratnam 1970: 24-26). Kangany
recruitment thus produced a more variegated Indian community within Malayan estates and
towns, and a greater spread of social behaviour and belief structures than that which had
prevailed throughout the period of indenture. However the most notable outcome of the
kangany system was the development of estates which were discrete and self-enclosed sub-
cultural units constructed around the remembered mores of ancestral villages (Stenson 1980:
24-25). This resulted in the fragmentation of the plantation workforce into socially as well as
geographically isolated component units, fissured by primal loyalties of caste, village, regional
and linguistic origin (Stenson 1980: 26).

Although in theory the welfare of the Indian worker was regulated by the colonial
government, in practice the relationship was one of planter domination and exploitation of a
subordinate and largely acquiescent labour force. The plantation economy was wholly
structured on the demands of capital, and in particular the maximization of returns for
owners and shareholders (Selvakumaran 1994: 99,107). As an instrument – one of several –
utilized toward achieving that objective, the Indian worker was accorded secondary
consideration, and his/her needs and general welfare were of nugatory consequence (Jain
1984: 174-175).

The Indian workforce continued to suffer from an array of seemingly intractable social and
health problems, the result of low pay, a harsh working environment and substandard
accommodation (Tinker 1974: 208). Morbidity and mortality rates remained excessive, and
were often exacerbated by constant malnourishment, unhealthy housing, the close proximity
of estates to known malarial regions, and high rates of alcoholism, frequently linked to the
ready availability of toddy upon estates and government controlled worksites (Parmer 1990:
178-185; Sastri 1937; IOOR 1926-1940; Arasaratnam 1970: 63-64,69-70). Suicide was
common, especially among male labourers (IOOR 1926-1940).

Kangany recruitment finally ceased in 1938, when the Government of India, alarmed at
reports of a threat to reduce the wages of the Indian workforce, placed a ban on the
emigration of assisted labour to Malaya (Selvakumaran 1994: 68; Sandhu 1969: 108).
Although the Malayan Government made several attempts to have the ban rescinded,
negotiations continually foundered on the central issue of wages to be paid to plantation
labour (Parmer 1960: 213-215).
Throughout this period there were other streams of Indian migration to Malaya. Both
government and commercial sectors required the support of a trained English-speaking
workforce which possessed a range of specialist skills, not immediately available (or indeed
sought) in Malaya, either among the indigenous Malays or the immigrant labouring
communities (Sandhu 1969: 67,122). The expansion of the Malayan economy attracted other
groups – merchants, financiers, skilled labour – who saw personal and professional
advantages in working in colonial Malaya. These groups included Ceylonese Tamils, who
were recruited by British officials to serve as clerical personnel within the Government
service and on the estates (Arasaratnam 1970: 33), educated Malayalees and young
professional Tamils, Nattukottai Chettiars, (a Tamil caste who came to be seen as notable for
their business and financial expertise), Sikh and Punjabi Muslim police and security
personnel, and various traders of both North and South Indian background, and including
Parsis, Hindus and Muslims (Sandhu 1969: 117-129; Arasaratnam 1970: 30-35).

Indian Political Development to 1941

By 1939 there were approximately 700,000 Indians resident in Malaya. Of these only 28,000
(or 4 per cent) were occupied in trade, business or professions, while approximately 70,000
(10 per cent) were employed in skilled or semi-skilled jobs. The remainder, ‘illiterate coolies’
(Mahajani 1960: 95), were absorbed in unskilled or menial work. Approximately three-fifths
of Indian workers were employed upon plantations, while the remainder were mainly
engaged in low skilled occupations either in government utilities or municipalities
(Arasaratnam 1970: 37-39).

The political and social isolation of the Indian labouring classes was the most striking feature
of Indian ‘society’ in pre-war Malaya. This was the result of several factors. The most
obvious was the determination of the Indian middle class to comprehensively distance
themselves from the despised ‘coolie’ workforce. In general, Indian middle classes were
more than willing to echo the vociferous European condemnation of the putative inferiority
of the Indian labourer in human as well as vocational terms.5

The social impotence of the Indian working class was further compounded by a series of
deep and self perpetuating schisms based upon the tendency of labourers to identify
themselves primarily in terms of the narrow allegiances of the village of origin, caste and
sub-ethnicity. This largely parochial worldview of the Indian labourer was significantly
shaped by the plantation subculture and found its initial impetus within the kangany system,
in which the kangany recruited labour solely from his own district of origin. Within the
confined plantation setting, the labour force tended (and was encouraged) to reproduce
social relations based on known and shared beliefs, and remembered mores and behavioural
patterns learned in ancestral villages (Stenson 1980: 24-25). Indeed, the ‘kindreds around
kanganies’ was to remain a salient feature of the plantation labour force well into the post-
war era (Jain 1984: 177). This insularity was immediately and consistently reinforced by the
culture of dependency induced by the enclosed and socially isolated world of the plantations.
The harsh and incessant regulation created psychological and personal barriers that not only
limited freedom of movement and action, but also vitiated employee confidence and self
worth, and instilled a self restricting ethos of subservience and lack of ambition (Stenson
1980: 25-26). Finally, ‘coolie’ labour was directly managed by administrative and field staff
consisting mainly of ethnic Malayalees and Ceylonese Tamils, with whom the largely Tamil
workforce was unable to forge bonds based on shared identity (Arasaratnam 1970: 79).
Under these circumstances it is unsurprising that Indian labour failed to develop a sense of
shared class consciousness, and on the rare occasions when a workforce proved
troublesome, employers found it a simple matter to manipulate one sub-group against
another (Arasaratnam 1970: 78-79).6

The disparateness of the Indian population worked against the formation of wider political
allegiances, and impeded the development of any conception of a pan-Indian communal
identity (IOOR 1926-1940). The first effective Indian political organization was the Central
Indian Association of Malaya (CIAM) which was formed in 1936. Although membership
was available to all Indians irrespective of ethnic origin, language or religious affiliation, the
leadership was firmly captured by middle class English educated North Indians and
Malayalees (Selvakumaran 1994:227)7. Most Tamil educated Indians tended to be distrustful
if not actively hostile to the CIAM (Stenson 1980: 44; Parmer 1960: 200).

The ideological disposition of the CIAM was deeply influenced by the rise and consolidation
of metropolitan Indian nationalism, and concomitant transformation of Indian politics,
especially the increasing power of Congress and the growing ability of its leaders to wring
concessions from a reluctant British Raj (Arasaratnam 1970: 98-102). Consistent with the
inclusive ideology embraced by Indian nationalism, the CIAM made determined efforts to
represent the entire community, in particular to forge links with Tamil and Telugu estate
workers (Selvakumaran 1994: 227; Parmer 1960: 258-259). The CIAM claimed as their
greatest triumph their intervention in 1938 to ‘persuade’ the Government of India to ban the
assisted migration of Indian labour to Malaya (Parmer 1960: 213).

Until the growth of labour militancy in the late 1930's, the most potent political influence
among plantation Tamils was the so-called ‘Dravidian’ ideology propounded by the Self
Respect Movement (Dravida Munnetra Kalagam) headed by E.V. Ramasami Naicker. This
second strand of activism combined Tamil cultural exclusivity, a fervent enthusiasm for an
imagined autochthonous Tamil culture which had existed prior to the supposed ‘invasion’ of
Northern ‘Aryan’ Brahmanism, with a programme of broad social reform (Arasaratnam
1970: 127). Within Malaya, Self Respect's relentless and visceral anti-Brahmanism, its
profound hostility toward North Indian and ‘Sanskrit’ influences, tended to drive the politics
of the Indian labouring classes into the narrow channels of sub-communalism (Stenson
1980: 79).

The third strand of an emerging Indian political consciousness consisted of the stirrings of
industrial activism among the Indian working classes and concomitant impulses towards the
organization of labour. The seeds of discontent and resentment had been sown among
Tamil workers by the traumatic and unsettling experiences of the Depression years when
large numbers of labourers had been summarily retrenched, and others had suffered
substantial wage cuts (Parmer 1960: 73; Selvakumaran 1994: 65-57; Arasaratnam 1993: 196).
The tentative growth of worker assertiveness was supported in the late 1930's by the CIAM
which had resolved to improve the living and working conditions of Indian labour (Gamba
1962: 4; Parmer 1960: 258).

Gathering labour discontent, the product of worsening hardship on estates, culminated in a

series of strikes in the Klang district of Selangor in 1941. In response to Malayan
Government assertions that the disturbances had been wholly fomented by irresponsible
adherents of the CIAM acting under the inspiration of Congress propaganda, the British
authorities sanctioned the use of force against the ‘subversive elements’ (IOOR, May 1941-
June-1942). The strikes, which had spread to other estates, were crushed by armed forces
including Indian troops. During these confrontations five labourers were killed, and sixty
received severe injuries. A wave of mass arrests and deportations followed (IOOR, 1939-
1942; Selvakumaran 1994: 232-233).

The Japanese Occupation: The Indian Experience

The most immediate impact of the Japanese occupation on the mass of the Indian
workforce was widespread economic dislocation and hardship. The colonial network of
waged labour collapsed under Japanese administration and was not replaced with any
alternative form of regular or guaranteed income. Workers and their families were denied
any obvious means of subsistence and most experienced an acute struggle for survival
(Arasaratnam 1993: 208; Selvakumaran 1994: 233-236; Jain 1970: 229; Arasaratnam 1970:
102-103; Ramasamy 2000: 93). Disease, more easily spread and contracted as a result of
chronic malnutrition and the breakdown of sanitation and health services, starvation,
especially among the young and very vulnerable of the community, and Japanese labour
schemes took a very heavy toll of Indian life. Throughout these years the Indian population
fell by over 100,000 or approximately 14 per cent (from 700,000 in 1939 to 599,000 in 1947)
(Stenson 1980: 90), and the Indian component of the overall population declined from 14
per cent in 1940 to 10 per cent in 1947 (Ramachandra 1970: 236).

The Japanese invasion was followed by the establishment in Malaya of the Indian
Independence League (IIL), a political body devoted to the liberation of India from British
colonial control, and the Indian National Army (INA), the League’s military wing.8 Early
organisational and political divisions in the IIL and INA were overcome by the appointment,
in July 1943, of prominent Indian nationalist, Subhas Chandra Bose, as President of the
League (Ramachandra 1970). Bose undertook a series of far reaching reforms, and in
October 1943 announced the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India
(Fujiwara, 1983:105-106; Fay, 1995:202), complete with its own administrative apparatus.9
His dynamic leadership spurred a continuous flow of recruits to both the IIL and INA. By
July 1944, IIL membership stood at 350,000 while the INA had achieved a total strength of
50,000 of whom 20,000 had been drawn from Indians resident in Malaya (Ramachandra
1970: 215).10

Participation in the IIL and INA had profound ramifications for the Indian population of
Malaya. Under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose, Malayan and Singaporean Indians
believed they had been propelled from the periphery of metropolitan affairs to the very
forefront of those struggling against the might of the British Empire for the liberation of the
Motherland. The idea that the community had a significant role to play in the establishment
of a free India captured the imagination of Indians of all classes and backgrounds. Indian
nationalist ideology emphasized pan-Indian identification and the unity of struggle regardless
of caste, ethnicity, language or religious adherence (Ramasamy 2000: 98; Sandhu 1993: 183).
The experiences of the war years were to engender a renewed and persistent interest among
Malayan Indians in their cultural heritage and their links to metropolitan India which was to
inform all aspects of Indian political and social life in the post-war era (Arasaratnam 1970:
109). The IIL/INA associations also impressed upon Malayan Indians the value of political
organization and activism as vehicles for mobilization of community resources and as
agencies for inducing and negotiating change (Arasaratnam 1993: 210).

Malayan Indian Politics and Society 1945-1957

The re-establishment of colonial rule was accompanied by sustained British hostility towards
those who had participated in the Indian nationalist movement, which in turn provoked
sharp and pronounced political responses within the Indian community (Selvakumaran 1994:
239). Indian activism took expression in four generic and overlapping movements; the
Thondar Padai campaign, the politics of trade unionism, the Malayan Indian Congress, and
Tamil revivalism.

(i) Thondar Padai

The Thondar Padai (or Volunteer Corps) (Nadaraja 1981: 96) initially established on the
Harvard Estate in Kedah, was a militant reform movement, which aimed at the ‘socio-
economic, cultural and moral uplift of estate labourers’ (Selvakumaran 1994: 242). Thondar
Padai drew inspiration from three main sources, namely the intensifying independence
movement in metropolitan India, Gandhian principles of social reform especially as these
related to issues of caste and personal discipline, as well as the politics of Tamil radicalism
(Nadaraja 1981: 97). British alarm increased as Thondar Padai evolved into a quasi military
organization, resorted to occasional violence in support of its objectives, and successfully
enrolled members on adjoining estates (Nadaraja 1981: 97-102). Between February-April
1947 a series of confrontations with the colonial authorities spiralled into demonstrations,
strikes and riots. The police reaction was swift and uncompromising and resulted in a loss of
life, injury and a wave of arrests and deportations. Thondar Padai was subsequently banned in
March 1948 (Selvakumaran 1994: 242-244).

(ii)Trade Unions
The immediate post war years were characterised by widespread and sustained industrial
unrest. Indians were active in the formation of trade unions and by 1947 comprised an
overwhelming majority of the membership of the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions
(Selvakumaran 1994: 238-240; Ramachandra 1970). In general, they remained aloof from the
Malayan Communist Party which was construed as a Chinese dominated organization, and
thus largely irrelevant to Indian labour (Arasaratnam 1970: 139). This did not prevent the
colonial authorities from detaining approximately 800 Indians – members of a range of left
wing organizations with no known associations with the MCP – in the general suppression
of the moderate left which followed the outbreak of the communist insurrection known as
the Emergency in June 1948. These detainees were not released until September 1949
(Mahajani 1960: 203).

Following the declaration of the Emergency the government introduced measures to

severely curb the power of trade unions. Henceforth the colonial authorities would register
only those unions regarded as both ‘responsible’ and ‘moderate’ (Selvakumaran 1994: 244-
246; Gamba 1962: 128-129,137-138; Muzaffar 1993: 219). Most of these officially vetted
unions were under Indian leadership. Indians continued to play a pivotal role in Malayan
unionism well into the early years of independence (Arasaratnam 1970: 153).

(iii)The Malayan Indian Congress

The Malayan Indian Congress (MIC) was formed in August 1946 (Arasaratnam 1971:/72: 2).
For nearly a decade the party consciously modelled itself upon the Indian National Congress,
and as far as possible attempted to reproduce Congress philosophies, policies and
organizational structures within the Malayan context. This rendered the MIC increasingly
incongruous in a Malaya dominated by the politics of communalism (Arasaratnam 1971: 4).
During this period crucial opportunities to engage with either the colonial authorities or the
representatives of other communal parties were forsaken or lost. Moreover the party's rigid
adherence to a Congressional platform limited its effectiveness within its own community.
The middle class, English educated and Westernised membership, especially the leadership,
tended to overlook or at least downplay the political and economic imperatives which
shaped the attitudes of the Tamil working class who comprised the majority of the Indian
population of Malaya (Arasaratnam 1970: 124-126).

Continued electoral failure finally impelled a comprehensive reassessment of MIC policies

(Arasaratnam 1971/72: 5). The leadership recognized that the party faced extinction unless it
sought patronage through partnership – albeit junior partnership – within the dominant
Alliance structure (Arasaratnam 1971/72: 5). In December 1954 the MIC became a full
member of the Alliance, which now comprised a coalition of the United Malay National
Organisation, (UMNO), the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and the MIC, representing
the three major ethnic communities of Malaya (Arasaratnam 1971/72: 5; Amplavanar 1981:
191-192). The party also set out to recruit the Tamil educated into its ranks, and to ensure
their elevation to responsible positions at regional and district levels (Selvakumaran 1994:
302; Stenson 1980: 175-177). Participation within the Alliance structure dictated MIC
compliance with the conservative agenda set by the two larger and more powerful parties.
The ideological repositioning of the MIC estranged many Indian intellectuals who
subsequently transferred their allegiance to non-communal parties (Arasaratnam 1971/72: 5;
Amplavanar 1981: 172-175; Muzaffar 1993: 219; Mahajani 1960: 214-215).
As a member of the Alliance, the MIC broached a number of concerns in the negotiations
leading to Merdeka. These included the potential impact of Malay special rights, the
constitutional enshrinement of Islam as Malaya's official religion; and UMNO insistence that
Malay would become the sole official language. The Party gained few concessions. Apart
from the fact that the MIC was the smallest and most junior party in the Alliance, it was
additionally handicapped by UMNO-MCA awareness that it did not command the full
support of the Indian community (Amplavanar 1981: 199).

(iv)Tamil revivalism
The MIC was constantly challenged and influenced by the politics of Tamil revivalism.
During the approach of Indian independence, movements which emphasized the distinct
cultural, linguistic and religious traditions of Tamil society began to gain wide currency
within the Madras Presidency. The ideas and concept which animated these movements
were widely reported in the Malayan Indian press, and began to circulate among the local
Tamil population. The Tamil movement spawned a number of organizations concerned with
the exploration and nurturing of Tamil culture (Arasaratnam 1970: 128-129).

Indians-Post Merdeka
The Indian population entered Merdeka as a minor community, sandwiched between Malay
political dominance and Chinese economic strength. Since Merdeka its trajectory has been
one of increasing political, economic and social marginalization. From the outset the Indian
community lacked the economic foundation necessary to develop capital intensive
enterprises or provide the level of entrepreneurial opportunities which would assist in
alleviating widespread Indian poverty (Muzaffar 1993: 212). Government support for
measures involving Indian social and economic uplift has been both restricted and grudging,
and has had little impact upon the ever widening cycle of indigence and underachievement.
Politically the community has remained profoundly divided, its support fragmented between
the increasingly ineffectual MIC, a series of opposition parties, and an emasculated trade
union movement.

In the years since the attainment of Merdeka the MIC has operated from a position of
weakness and marginality. The MIC, as a small and junior party within a ruling coalition
composed of various ethnic parties, has limited influence in determining policies likely to
deliver favourable outcomes to Indian voters (Selvakumaran 1994: 322-323). Moreover, the
Party has largely been shunned by non-Tamils, intellectuals and trade unionists (Amplavanar-
Brown 1993: 238).

The MIC's weakness and inability to affect political outcomes was starkly revealed by two
major crises which impacted upon its core constituency. The first of these was the so-called
fragmentation of estates in the 1950s and 1960s, and the second, the issue of citizenship in
the 1970s.
The fragmentation of estates began during the 1950's when some sterling companies decided to
sell their properties and repatriate their capital. The process of divestment triggered a chain
of speculation, and between 1950 and 1967, 18 per cent of the total estate land area was
subdivided (Muzaffar 1993: 222). The MIC and Indian dominated National Union of
Plantation Workers (NUPW) repeatedly urged the government to intervene to halt
fragmentation or at least to regulate the process. However, despite a 1963 government
report which recommended the prohibition of further subdivision, UMNO refused to
intervene, erroneously contending that fragmentation encouraged the emergence of small
scale (Malay) peasant production (Arasaratnam 1970: 155). An estimated 50,000 Tamil
workers were affected by the subdivision of estates. The hereditary occupations of many
were lost, and those who managed to secure employment on the fragmented properties
endured 'dismal' living and working conditions (Wiebe & Mariappen 1978: 38).

The citizenship crisis reflected a manifest failure of both political and industrial leadership.
Following the imposition of emergency rule, the governing National Operations Council
announced that all employment, whether in public or private sectors, would be restricted to
Malaysian citizens. Many Indians, including approximately 20 per cent of the plantation
workforce, most of whom met all the pre-conditions necessary for obtaining citizenship,
were affected by this measure. Up to 10,000 Indians made application to the Indian Labour
Fund which had been directed by the government to offer cash inducements and a free
passage for those prepared to accept ‘repatriation’ to India (Selvakumaran 1994: 304;
Stenson 1980: 206). The MIC's representations on the issue were rejected by the UMNO
leadership. The mass exodus of Indian workers was forestalled only by the spectre of severe
labour shortfalls within the plantation sector, combined with extreme employer pressure
which finally resulted in government agreement to the granting of temporary employment
permits (Selvakumaran 1994: 305).

The introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1971, and the initiation of an attendant
suite of pro-Malay affirmative action policies, has resulted in further social and economic
marginalization of the Indian community. From 1969 onwards, Indians have recorded, in
relative terms, higher unemployment rates, lower levels of educational attainment, and
significantly less participation in the corporate sector than either the Malays or the Chinese.
However, throughout this period Malays have been able to rely upon intense government
patronage, while many Chinese have been able to draw upon a wealthy and influential
commercial sector (Sandhu 1993: 187). Although one of the Government’s primary aims in
implementing the NEP was the elimination of poverty among all communities, few
resources have been targeted at the Indian indigent (Selvakumaran 1994: 307).

Since the end of the Pacific War, there has been a continuous migration of labour from the
estate sector, a movement which accelerated in the 1960’s especially among younger Tamils
Oorjitham 1993a: 102-105). There were several factors which expedited this mass rural-
urban migration. Firstly, structural changes in the economy, in particular the development of
export-oriented industrialisation, provided openings for Tamil labour (Oorjitham 1993a: 102;
Rajoo 1993: 485). Secondly, changes in the agricultural sector, including a major decline in
the importance of the rubber industry, reduced overall levels of employment within the
estate sector. Finally labour shortage within manufacturing and service sectors, and
concomitant increases in ‘real’ wages attracted many younger Tamils from the estate sectors
into urban occupations (Barlow 1990: 43). The rural-urban migration of Tamil labour
occurred against the backdrop of the NEP which closed many traditional avenues of
employment to urban based Tamils (Amplavanar-Brown 1993: 250; Puthucheary 1993: 348-
357).

The rural/urban migration did not result in any improvements in the economic standing of
the Indian working class, nor did it promote intergenerational social mobility. Indeed, some
observers maintain that over the past 30 years the conditions of the Indian indigent have
actually worsened (Muzaffar 1993: 227-228). The migration created a large pool of minimally
educated and low skilled Indian labour, which was compelled to occupy positions that were
basic, repetitive and poorly remunerated, and which offered little or nothing in the way of
vocational advancement. Indian workers found that in most instances their wages did not
keep pace with inflation and were inadequate to maintain a family. Financial pressures forced
most to rent shoddy housing, often slum and squatter dwellings (Oorjitham 1993a: 102;
Rajoo 1993: 497-502).

Plantation culture: The Worldview of an Underclass

Professor S. Arasaratnam has argued that the shared experiences of working class Malayan
Indians from the time of indenture and kangany recruitment have crystallized into a
‘plantation oriented culture’, which in the context of Malaysian Indian society became ‘one
of the most significant evolutions of the twentieth century’ (Arasaratnam 1993: 193). This
‘plantation culture’, characterised by stasis and underachievement, and a pronounced
absence of intergenerational mobility, represents the worldview of an oppressed and
marginalized underclass. Moreover this culture has developed its own paradigmatic impulses
which threaten to lock Indian labouring families into permanent underclass status
(Jeyakumar 1993: 419-420).

This plantation culture had its genesis in the early conditions of Indian labour immigration.
Workers recruited under indenture or kangany auspices were subject to extreme regulation
and exploitation. As noted, both systems established total legal domination over the labourer
and treated him/her as nothing more than component of production. The rigidity of
contractual obligations and the willingness of employers to enforce them, stripped the
labourer of all but the bare minimum of personal rights, denied him/her even basic
occupational mobility, and firmly placed him/her under the control of those who paid
his/her wages (Muzaffar 1993: 212). The Indian labourer was enclosed in a self contained
and isolated world, and subject to a regime of permanent impoverishment, and physical and
psychological brutalization; a regime which discouraged initiative, independence of thought
or any sense of personal integrity (Jeyakumar 1993: 419-420).

Despite the major rural-urban migration since World War II, the essential problems
confronting the Indian labouring classes remain little changed and largely resolved. The
plantation culture of chronic underachievement and social stasis, forged over the years and
generations of subjugation, of subordination to rigid and unyielding controls, of physical and
psychological oppression and demoralization which robbed the Indian worker of the
qualities of initiative and independence, has merely been transferred to and reproduced
within an urban setting (Jeyakumar 1993: 419-425; Oorjitham 1993a: 105).

Nor have working class Indians been able to look to their more affluent compatriots for
leadership and support. The social gulf between middle and upper class Indians of those of
the underclass remains as wide as it has been throughout the entire history of the modern
Indian presence in Malaya/Malaysia (Ramachandran 2002). Many better off Indians continue
to feel shame and disgust at the wretched state of the Indian underclass, and ‘often feel
impatient and angry with the Indian poor caught within this sub-culture of poverty’
(Jeyakumar 1993: 419).

Hinduism in Malaya/Malaysia
Hinduism has been established as a significant minority religion in Malaysia as an outcome
of the waves of Indian migration which followed the British colonization of Malaya. Hindus
comprise 84.1 per cent of the total Indian population in Malaysia (Saw 2006: 18-20).

During the colonial era, Hinduism remained fragmented between the extensive and zealously
guarded array of localized village traditions, and the minority Agamic institutions and patterns
of worship. The earliest Indian migrants had no authoritative points of reference, and
initially tended to automatically reproduce remembered practices and mores of the Hinduism
of their home regions (Ramanathan 1995: 75-76). The deities worshipped and the rituals
associated with that worship tended to revolve about sub-communal norms of behaviour
and the caste variations of their village of origin. Over time these practices were in some
cases reinforced, in others modified, in many more supplemented by other regional and caste
influences introduced to the estates, workplaces and cities of Malaya (Jain 1970: 276).
Temples were built either on or near most workplaces, whether plantation or urban. As well
as providing a symbol of shared Hindu identity, temples became a focal point for
community life, allowing the commemoration of all life cycle markers, as well as the staging
of festivals in accordance with the Hindu calendar (Gamba 1962: 307).

Agamic or ‘great tradition’ Hinduism was imported to Malaya/Malaysia by middle and upper
class Hindus, in particular the Chettiar and Ceylonese Tamil communities (Belle 2004: 368,
374-380). The initial burden of temple constructions fell disproportionately upon these
communities, though contributions towards the establishment of temples were also received
from the professional and commercial classes. Both the Chettiars and Ceylonese Tamils
established exemplary models of Agamic temple construction and maintenance and worship
which adhered to scriptural injunctions, rituals, festivals and prescribed observances learnt in
their respective countries of origin (Ramanathan 1995: 299).

The unifying experiences of the Indian nationalist movement of World War II encouraged a
renewed interest in all facets of culture including religion, thus foreshadowing a
comprehensive revival of Hinduism within Malaya. This upsurge among the bulk of the
Hindu population was deeply influenced and ultimately shaped by Dravidian ideologies
(Arasaratnam 1970: 165). The preponderance of Tamils within the Hindu population
inexorably lead to the ‘Tamilization’ of Malaysian Hinduism with the concomitant
absorption of other religious forms, especially the minority Vaishnavite traditions, within the
overarching fabric of the majority popular Saivite traditions (Ackerman & Lee 1988: 97).

Over the past 30 years, a process of Sanskritization and/or Agamicization has had a major
impact on the overall structures of Malaysian Hinduism. Within the Indian context,
Sanskritization implies the disposal of lesser deities and localized customs and patterns of
worship and their subsequent replacement with recognized practices and deities drawn from
‘higher’ tradition Agamic Hinduism (Rajoo 1984: 158-159). However, within Malaysia the
processes of Sanskritization/Agamicization do not result in the loss of cherished village and
tutelary deities. Instead these are retained, redefined and accoutred with new and higher
attributes which fuse their identities with those of selected Agamic deities, and are
subsequently offered an honoured position within the received Hindu pantheon. This
celestial uplift, as it were, is accompanied by a corresponding upgrading of the rituals and
modes of worship, the refurbishing and remodelling of temples according to Agamic
precepts, and the widespread veneration of former village gods and goddesses within the
context of great Agamic festivals and calendrical rituals (Rajoo 1984: 158-159; Ramanathan
1995: 81).

Although Malaysian Hinduism remains a weakly integrated and potentially fissiparous

collocation of caste, sub-ethnic and tradition based discourses, the creative dialogue between
different forms of Hinduism has encouraged the emergence of a series of ‘hybrid’
syncretized belief structures, and has promoted a tenuous sense of generic unity among
Hindus.

The issue of religious identity has been rendered urgent by the post-1969 Islamic resurgence
in Malaysia. Despite some anomalies the fault lines of ethnicity and religion in Malaysia are
largely coterminous creating a clear dichotomy between Malay/Muslim and non-Malay/non-
Muslim (Muzaffar 1987: 1). Islamic assertion among Malays has been paralleled by a
sustained renewal in all other religions (Ackerman & Lee 1988: 60). Viewed at this level,
religious adherence may be perceived as a continuing public declaration of communal
identity and ethnic authentication, one which avoids the most obvious dangers of direct
political challenge, but which nevertheless signals resistance to dominant Malay/Muslim
cultural and ideological paradigms (Nagata 1984: 214).

The specific ‘Islamic’ catalyst for Hindu renewal in Malaysia was the so-called Kerling
Incident of 19 August 1978 when a violent clash between temple guards and a gang of young
Muslim extremists who had been responsible for a string of temple desecrations resulted in
the deaths of four of the perpetrators (Ramanathan 1995: 240-241; Belle 2004: 397). The
perceived laggardly and unsympathetic official response to this episode helped mould a
wider view that the Malaysian Government could not be relied upon to guarantee the
security and preservation of the Hindu heritage. The Kerling Incident thus served as a
warning to Hindus that the future of their own community was wholly dependent upon their
own efforts (Ramanathan 1995: 243; Belle 2004: 398). Hindu renewal has been evident in a
sustained surge of temple reconstruction, increased participation in festivals, and a greater
emphasis in exploring the philosophical foundations of Hinduism (Belle 2004: 398).
Malaysian Hindus have also sought interactive engagement with the wider world of Indic-
Hindu civilization, embracing both metropolitan India and the many sites of the global
Tamil Hindu diaspora (Belle 2004: 6-7).

Nowhere are all the processes described in the preceding section more visible than the
Hindu festival of Thaipusam, held on or near the full moon day of the Tamil month of Tai
(January-February).

Thaipusam is a Saivite festival dedicated to the deity Murugan, son of the Supreme Mahadeva
Siva, who in pre-modern and modern India has been increasingly identified as a Dravidian
and specifically Tamil deity (Clothey 1978: 110-116). Within Malaysia Murugan worship is
widespread among Tamils of both Indian and Sri Lankan descent (Belle 2004: 7-8).

Thaipusam in Malaysia is consciously formulated upon the mythology, traditions and modes
of worship celebrated at the great Murugan centre of Palani, in Tamil Nadu, and the festival
is marked by individual acts of devotion involving austerity and sacrifice, and the bearing of
kavadis (or ritual burdens) (Belle, 2004:7-8). In recent years the crowds have continued to
annually increase (press estimates indicate that since 2000 crowd attendances at Batu Caves
have exceeded one million people, while greater than 300,000 have gathered at the Penang
Festival), the number of kavadi pilgrims has more than doubled, the publicity surrounding
the festival has gained greater prominence, and Thaipusam has been declared a public
holiday in several states. Thaipusam at Batu Caves has become the largest single religious
festival of any type of Malaysia, and is popularly believed to represent the most significant
Hindu festival staged outside India. Moreover the festival attracts devotees from almost the
entire spectrum of the Hindu community, as well as Sikh, Sinhalese, and Chinese
participants. While Thaipusam is dedicated to Murugan, kavadis are borne for nearly all
Hindu deities worshipped in Malaysia, including those belonging to non-Agamic and
Vaishnavite traditions.

Thaipusam is thus not only the most powerful assertion of Hindu identity in Malaysia but
also reflects an inchoate and gathering sense of unity. The festival accommodates a
bewildering array of competing discourses structured upon a multiplicity of sects ranging
from village to Agamic, but also gives expression to the catalytic impulses which are
reformulating Malaysian Hinduism. It is significant that worship at this festival is offered
within the generic paradigmatic framework associated with that quintessential symbol of
Tamil religiosity, the deity Murugan, identified not only with the Tamil metropolitan
heartland but also with the broader Tamil diaspora.

Conclusions
The large-scale migrations to Malaya during the colonial era have produced a distinctively
Malaysian society. While the community remains fissured by ethnicity, caste, and linguistic
origin, the main cleavage is horizontal and class based. The schism between the minority
upper classes – the middle professional and business classes - and the large working class can
be traced to the differing circumstances of migration. Thus the descendents of ‘labour’
recruitment - those who were employed under contractual labour schemes to work in
plantations and in unskilled positions in government utilities – now make up an underclass
which continues to fill labouring and unskilled labouring and unskilled occupations in
modern Malaysia. The middle and upper classes have their origins in ‘non-labour’ migration;
that is, their forebears were those Indians appointed to clerical or technical positions or who
established themselves in professions and businesses in colonial Malaya (Ramachandran
2002). As noted, in general ‘non-labour’ Indians endeavour to maintain their social distances
from ‘labour’ Indians.

The history of the Indian poor in Malaya, a history of continual marginalization and
oppression, has extended well over a century and has thus enclosed six successive
generations of working class families. Throughout the colonial era the few impulses towards
reform and self-organization, which may have resulted in the uplift of the entire community,
were met with immediate and comprehensive retaliation. While the coercive brutality of
colonialism may not have been replicated in post-Merdeka Malaysia, the condition of the
Indian poor has not improved. In a country driven by the politics of communalism, the
numerical and economic insignificance of the Indian community, ensured that the plight of
the Indian poor would remain submerged and thus ignored (Muzaffar 1993: 219). Official
indifference to the Indian indigent and the powerlessness of the Indian political leadership
was imprinted upon the collective Indian consciousness by the processes which
accompanied estate fragmentation, and the post-NEP citizenship crisis. Moreover the 1971
implementation of the NEP markedly restricted social, vocational and economic
opportunities for Indian workers (Amplavanar-Brown 1993:250). Indian labourers,
possessing limited financial and social resources, have accomplished next to nothing in the
way of inter-generational vocational and social mobility (Oorjitham 1993b: 504). Many of the
Indian poor, reduced to political and social irrelevance, and neglected by the better off in
their own community, regard themselves as ‘forgotten Malaysians’, second class citizens in
land of their birth (Muzaffar 1993: 228).

Within the context of a Malaysia dominated by Malay and Islamic power brokers, a society in
which both the Indian community and Hinduism are relegated to the margins, the renewal
of religious adherence suggests several possibilities. At one level the dynamics of reform and
syncretization hint at modes of communal negotiation and an emerging, albeit incipient unity
which has eluded Malaysian Hindus in social, political and economic spheres. But the
intensification of religiosity also sends other messages. First, it underscores the
determination of Malaysian Hindus to retain their cultural and religious identity, while
simultaneously affirming, agonistically, resistance to perceived pressures which threaten
religio-ethnic authenticity. Second, it also confirms active membership of a wider community
incorporating both metropolitan India and the global Hindu diaspora.

These statements are clearly enshrined in the festival of Thaipusam. While worship coalesces
around the quintessentially Tamil deity, Murugan, the festival accommodates, however
tenuously, the public contributions made by all segments of the Hindu population, including
both high and low status groups. Over the years Thaipusam has generated its own
paradigmatic impulses which have stimulated the expression, aggregation and re-negotiation
of the contested and often paradoxical concatenation of discourses which collectively
comprise Malaysia Hinduism. The festival mobilizes the cumulative symbology and religious
values which both articulate competing visions of a fractured ethnicity, and adumbrate the
permanence and validity of an evolving and inchoate Hindu identity within Muslim Malaysia,
thus signalling a range of wider allegiances to the broader politico-cultural world of an
imagined, immeasurably rich and enduring Indic-Hindu civilization.

Notes
1. Hinduism is the religion of the overwhelming majority of the Indian population and
thus comprises a significant ethnic ‘marker’ in modern Malaysia. In 2000 84.1 per cent
of ethnic Indians in Malaysia identified themselves as Hindus. Minority religious
traditions among Indian Malaysians included Christianity (7.8 per cent) and Islam (4.1
per cent) (Saw 2006: 18-20). Apart from the sections specifically dealing with
Hinduism, this chapter attempts to trace formative developments within the broader
Indian community in Malaya/Malaysia.
2. The overwhelming majority of indentured labourers consisted of Tamils rather than
other South Indian ethnic groups. The largest labour flows were drawn from the
districts of Tanjore, Trichinopoly and Madras, with lesser streams from Salem and
Coimbatore (Arasaratnam 1970: 15). The colonial partiality for Tamil labour was to
continue throughout the period of kangany recruitment when approximately 90 per
cent of those contracted were ethnic Tamils. At peak periods of demand, especially
throughout rubber booms when demand could not be met from Tamil sources alone,
recruiting extended to other parts of the Madras Presidency (Arasaratnam 1970: 24;
Sandhu 1969: 99). At independence, Tamils constituted 80 per cent of the total Indian
population in Malaya, while Malayalees and Telegus made up 7 per cent and 4 per cent
respectively (Arasaratnam 1970: 46).
3. Throughout the latter half of the 19th century major structural changes in the Indian
economy produced a large underclass which was perennially faced with
impoverishment and destitution. India was now in the process of being forcibly tied to
the structures of a London based ‘global economy’, a liberal capitalist regime dictated
by the imperatives of free trade (Davis, Mike 2001: 297-304). The reform of Indian
landholdings consistent with the principles of English law, especially the joint
sinecures of land ownership, ground most harshly upon agricultural labourers,
sharecroppers and poorer peasants (Jain 1984: 167). In the years subsequent to the
Mutiny, the traditional system of household and grain reserves, which had been
regulated by networks of patrimonial obligations was largely obliterated by the forces
of an open market economy (Davis 2001: 26). From 1875 onwards the wages of the
poor tended to decline precipitously in real terms, which the price of rice increased
sharply. The new economy, based on the retail and export of grains, meant that
throughout famines and periods of scarcity, the price of foodstuffs was pushed
beyond the reach of those who had been marginalized by structural economic reforms
 (Kumar 1965: 161).
4. While there was no instance of severe or widespread famine throughout the period
1834-1865, intense and far reaching famines occurred in 1865-6, 1876-8 (this was the
worst famine of the 19th century and covered the entire Madras Presidency), 1896-7,
and 1898-1900 (the latter had an especially punitive impact upon the Telegu districts
(Kumar 1965:109).
5. The Indian labouring classes occupied the lowest rung of the colonial socio-racial
hierarchy. The Indian middles classes were generally anxious to proclaim their inherent
‘difference’, their total lack of any commonality with the wretched ‘coolie’ classes who
laboured in the plantations and public utilities (Parmer 1960: 258). Many non-labour
Indians tried assiduously to avoid any overt criticism of the colonial regime; indeed
appointed Indian representatives on legislative councils and other official bodies were
distinguished only by their relative ineffectiveness, their indifference to issues affecting
working class Indians, and their pronounced reluctance to pursue any matter which
might have produced conflict or even open disagreement with the colonial authorities
(Arasaratnam 1970: 87-88).
6. During the course of fieldwork in Malaysia in 1995, older workers, mainly union
officials, recollected several incidents where British managers used labourers of
different ethnic backgrounds to cut wages and conditions of the existing workforce.
7. Although North Indians and Malayalees were minority communities, both contained a
substantial number of professionals and traders who were in touch with political
developments in India. Within the tightly controlled colonial structure, only groups
such as these could operate with a modicum of political independence (Selvakumaran
1994: 227-229; Arasaratnam 1970: 98).
8. The Indian Independence League (IIL) and the Indian National Army (INA) were
established as follows. Prior to the Pacific War, Japanese Intelligence became aware of
the existence of a ‘shadowy’ organization known as the Indian Independence League
(IIL), a secret society of revolutionary Sikhs working for the liberation of India, with
branches in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, San Francisco and Berlin (Fujiwara 1983:
5). Negotiating as an emissary of the Japanese Government, Major Fujiwara conferred
with representatives of the IIL in Thailand. Fujiwara promised that as the Japanese
Army progressed through Malaya, the IIL would be authorized to absorb all Indians
who wished to join the struggle against the British. The IIL would also be charged
with the task of organizing a volunteer army which would consist of personnel drawn
from captured members of the British Indian Army (BIA) as well as the Indian
population resident in Malaya and Singapore (Allen 1977: 260; Corr 1975: 64). The
first Malayan Headquarters of the IIL was established in Kota Bahru, capital of the
northern state of Kelantan, shortly after the successful landings on 8 December 1941
(Chin 1976: 122; Jessy 1957-58: 7). Subsequent discussions with the Japanese led to the
formation of the Indian National Army (INA), under the provisional command of
Captain Mohan Singh, an erstwhile BIA officer (Fujiwara 1983: 90). The INA was to
be accorded the status of an allied army (Corr 1975:93). The Japanese installed Rash
Behari Bose, a veteran of the Indian independence struggle as leader of the IIL (Fay
1995: 90-91,108). A conference held in Bangkok in June 1942 brought together
representatives of Indian communities from all countries under Japanese control, and
 formally established the IIL as the overarching vehicle for attaining independence,
with the INA as its military wing (Lebra 1971: 77).
9. The reforms instigated by Subhas Chandra Bose included the establishment of an
administrative support structure of 13 departments within the Provisional
Government, each headed by its own Cabinet Minister (Jessy 1957-58: 41-46; Netaji
Subhas Bose 1992: 193); a comprehensive overhaul and revitalization of the INA
including the formation of a women’s volunteer unit known as the Rani of Jhansi
Regiment headed by Dr Laksmi Swaminathan who entered the Cabinet as Secretary of
the Women’s Department (Jessy 1957-58: 41, Chatterjee 1947: 85); and the
organization of a system of internal taxation to fund the civilian administration and to
acquire equipment required by the Army (Fay 1995: 214-215).
10. The defeat of the British and Commonwealth forces left the Japanese in control of
65,000 BIA prisoners of war. The majority of INA personnel were drawn from among
these soldiers (Allen, 1977:261).

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 4
Indo-Fijians: Marooned Without Land and Power in a South
Pacific Archipelago?
Henry Srebrnik

Introduction
The theoretical literature addressing issues of ethnicity, national identity, and diasporic
consciousness is now enormous, and is dealt with elsewhere in this volume. This chapter
therefore makes no attempt to summarize this large body of work. My aim is to provide a
detailed and concrete account of the history and current condition of the Indian community
in Fiji. Following a brief introductory section on the ethnic Fijian social structure, I provide
an overview of the Indo-Fijians in the archipelago. This is followed by an examination of the
land question, which has proven to be the main point of contention between the two groups
and remains an issue that successive Fijian governments have been unable to resolve. The
very political organs of the state, as a result, have been threatened; in 1987 and 2000, coups
d’état led by ethnic Fijian nationalists overthrew democratically elected governments, and the
danger of extra-legal action against legitimate rule remains very real. The chapter concludes
with a section that ponders the fate of Fiji and particularly that of the Indo-Fijian community
and addresses the question of whether Fiji can survive as a bicultural state.

The worldwide Indian diaspora is extremely large and influential. The Fijian Indians are thus
part of a much larger transnational community. Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi and many other
Indian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people; Hinduism, Islam and the Sikh
religion, all carried to Fiji by immigrants from India, are world faiths; and the cultures of
India can now be found around the globe. Indigenous Fijians, on the other hand, do not
have an extensive diaspora or another ‘mother country.’

Rival ethnic groups have found it advantageous to solicit support from kith and kin abroad,
in particular from those compatriots now living in diasporic communities in countries such
as Canada, the United States and Britain. As Mary Kaldor has observed, ‘Many nationalist
movements rely on diaspora support, especially in North America and Australasia, where
ethnic immigrants have retained and indeed reinvented their identity’ (Kaldor 1999: 208).
The fact that Indo-Fijians can seek such support from abroad, while ethnic Fijians have no
equivalent support system, may have contributed, as Robin Cohen has noted, to the
‘troubled and often hostile relationship’ between the two groups (Cohen 1997: 60-65, 79-80).

We might also keep in mind Fredrik Barth’s hypothesis that ethnic solidarity and continuity
‘depends on the maintenance of a boundary’ in opposition to another group (Barth 1969:
14). Mehran Kamrava cites religion, kinship and tribe, all of which may serve as a strong
base of heritage, identity, and a source of protection for its members, as being ‘the prime
focus of social interaction and cultural expression’ in countries such as Fiji, and thus
instrumental in undermining the growth of a unified political culture. A regime may be
accepted on the surface, but in reality may not be able to compete with ideologies that give
pre-eminence to religion or ethnic nationalism. Since a supportive political culture is the
‘transcendental link that binds state and society together,’ Kamrava remarks, a mismatch
between the formal political institutions and the underlying culture of a society may result in
a ‘soft’ or unstable state, which typically fails to provide a framework for good governance or
sustainable economic development (Kamrava 1996: 43-48, 71, 175-180). And, as Joel Migdal
has noted, where ethnic and linguistic fractionalization remains high, state institutions find
themselves ‘at loggerheads with kinship and ethnic groups’ (Migdal 1988: 3, 32, 37, 40).
Certainly, this has been the unhappy history of Fiji.

After all, one basic definition of nationhood is the notion that a people share at least a
minimal sense of common fate and destiny, and that when one part suffers, others
empathize. Where loyalty to the state and the ethnically based group are perceived as being
in irreconcilable conflict, ethnic nationalism typically proves the more potent. Robert
Cooper and Mats Berdal remind us that the ‘voluntary acceptance of majority decisions
implies a strong sense of common destiny,’ which presupposes a political community to
which everyone belongs (Cooper and Berdal 1993: 119). It remains to be seen whether such
a state of affairs will eventually prevail in Fiji.

The Ethnic Fijian Social Structure

Fiji is a South Pacific archipelago of more than 300 islands, with a total land area of 7,056 sq.
miles. The majority of its 900,000 people live on the two largest islands, Viti Levu and Vanua
Levu. Ethnic Fijians account for 54 percent of the total and Indo-Fijians 38 percent.
Chinese, Europeans and Pacific Islanders make up the remainder.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, ethnic Fijians were organised in small kinship units that
were organised into progressively larger sociopolitical ones. The primary unit is the extended
family group known as the i tokatoka; several of these combine to form a larger group, the
mataqali. In turn, several mataqalis comprise a yavusa, a clan that claims descent from a
founding ancestor, and yavusas in turn combine to form a vanua, the largest patrilineal group.
Each level has at its head a chief; the larger the unit, the more powerful the chief.

By the early 1800s, four major centres of power, all in eastern Fiji, vied for control of the
islands. Aided by Tongan chieftains, Bau, on Viti Levu, emerged as the pre-eminent Fijian
power. The Tongans, already Methodists, forced Cakobau, the king of Bau, to accept the
Wesleyan faith. Fearful of the encroachments of European settlers and traders, and unable to
subdue the western Fijians, Cakobau and the eastern chiefs asked Britain to assume control
of the islands. A Deed of Cession accepting British rule was signed by 12 high chiefs on
March 20, 1874, and the islands were united under one government.

The first governor sent to the islands, in 1875, was Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon. That same
year, a virulent measles epidemic killed one-quarter of all natives, leaving only 100,000 alive;
they were, according to the fashionable Social Darwinism of the day, thought to be a dying
race, of not much use as generators of revenue, to be protected until their demise.

Though chiefs had existed long before the arrival of the British, the chiefly class in its
modern form was the construction of the colonial order. Gordon’s paternalistic system of
benevolent protectionism and indirect rule through the chiefly families, including the
formation in 1876 of a Bose Levu Vakaturaga, or Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), empowered
those who would serve as British allies. Impressed with the fact that they had so quickly
embraced Christianity, Gordon used this native aristocracy to codify the local customs and
to control social life; in effect the ratus (chiefs) became his regional, district and village
officers, which enabled him to dispense with a costly colonial administration.

Partly due to the influence of a leading chief of the time, Ratu Sir Lalabalavu Sukuna, who
had stated that modern values and western education were not suitable for Fijians, a Fijian
Administration was established in the first years of British rule. It was reorganised in 1944 to
include an autonomous body, the Fijian Affairs Board (FAB), within the general framework
of Fijian government. A government within a government, it was mandated to oversee the
social, political and economic well being of the native Fijians.

Though Fiji was now a crown colony, the British treated the Fijians as a sovereign people
and allowed them to retain their pre-contact forms of government. The ethnic Fijian system
became a state within a state, and in effect there existed a form of ‘dual power’ in Fiji--a neo-
traditional chiefly order alongside a colonial structure. Fijian society resembled a hierarchical
pyramid starting with commoners and leading up to chiefly families, with all groups relating
to each other as superordinates and subordinates; the chiefs exercised leadership, and were
in turn accorded loyalty, authority, privilege and respect.

Indians in Fiji: An Overview

Gordon at the same time solved the problem of making the colony self-sufficient through
the development of commercial agriculture, by allowing the creation of a plantation system
with Indian wage labourers, a policy decision which would eventually result in the plural
divide that is today’s Fiji. The Indians would arrive as labourers with no prior territorial
affiliations within Fiji; they were regarded as colonial subjects, with no rights to internal self-
governance. The colonial project was imagined as a relationship between the European and
Fijians, with the Indians merely a means to an end: the protection of Fijian society.
Indigenous Fijians would provide the land, Indians the cheap labour and Europeans the
capital and expertise. Much of the history of Fiji in the 20th century came to be a struggle on
the part of Indians, who were considered nothing more than ‘labour units,’ for political
parity in the face of claims of paramountcy for Fijians and privilege for Europeans.

Although Britain took control of Fiji, ‘Whitehall effectively sub-contracted Fiji’s economy to
Australian financial interests,’ including the Bank of New South Wales, and to Australian
companies such as the Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR) Co. (Suter 1987: 180). The CSR
needed a labour force, and Gordon introduced the indenture system in Fiji, having already
become familiar with the practice when he was governor of Mauritius and Trinidad. Between
1879 and 1916, 60,965 Indians came to Fiji. The Indians brought with them, in microcosm,
their languages, castes, provincial identities and, most importantly, religions. Most came from
northern India: 80 percent from Uttar Pradesh, 13 percent from Bihar and another 13
percent from Bengal. The rest were from southern India. They spoke Hindi, Urdu, Tamil,
Telugu, Gujarati and Punjabi. To this day, Hindi remains a written and spoken language
among Fiji Indians (the spoken Hindi is based on the Bhojpuri dialect). These workers, of
which 85.3 percent were Hindus, 14.6 percent Muslims, the remainder Sikhs and Christians,
were able to maintain a diasporic consciousness, based on the reconstitution of Indian family
life and the reimposition of their traditional Hindu and Muslim belief systems. They retained
their link with a past migration history and a sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar
background. Even today, fewer than 5 percent of them have become Christians; about 76
percent are Hindu, 16 percent Muslim, and the rest Sikhs. However, the elaborate principles
of the caste system proved untenable: the very crossing of kala pani, the oceans, and the
sharing of food, sleeping quarters and clothes with other castes (or non-Hindus) in the new
surroundings resulted in loss of caste. Many Fiji Indians today have no knowledge of their
caste backgrounds.

The Muslims crystallised into a separate community. Although few had emigrated from what
are now Bangladesh and Pakistan, their separation from Hindu Fijians became more
pronounced after the division of India in 1947. ‘During indenture Hindus and Muslims
considered themselves Indians first and foremost, but subsequently loyalty to the respective
sub-culture became more important’ (Ali 1979: 11). Scarr has noted that ‘much of the sub-
continent’s own history lives on in Fiji’ (Scarr 1998: 46). The Indian Muslims had formed
their own Fiji Muslim League in 1926 and insisted that they were a different community, in
terms of history, culture and religion; many of their leaders demanded the teaching of Urdu
in schools attended by Muslim children. There was little interaction, outside of work,
between Muslims and Hindus and intermarriage was ‘fiercely condemned’ (Jayawardena
1980: 436). The Muslims were, in general, ‘a very conservative force in Indo-Fijian society,
and Muslims leaders tended to side with the colonial authorities against what they perceived
to be Hindu interests’ (Howard 1991: 47).

If the Fijians could point to the Deed of Cession to justify their claims to political
paramountcy, then the Indians could refer to the so-called Salisbury Despatch of 1875, in
which Lord Salisbury, then British Secretary of State for India, in order to encourage Indians
to migrate to the colonies as labourers, had assured them that once their term of indenture
was over, they would enjoy ‘privileges no whit inferior to that of any other class of Her
Majesty’s subjects’ (quoted in Lawson 1991: 129-130). Yet these promises were largely
unmet. ‘Proud of their ancient heritage and civilization and resentful of their enforced place
at the bottom of the colonial hierarchy, the Indo-Fijians had no choice but to resist the
European-dominated colonial order,’ writes Brij Lal. ‘Membership in the British Empire was
no badge of honour’ (B. Lal 1992: 106, 123). When Indian cane workers went on strike for
higher wages after World War I, British officials simply exiled their leaders. Not surprisingly,
therefore, Indians continued to regard themselves as a diaspora of India and Gandhi’s
movement for political independence and cultural renewal was popular with Indo-Fijians.
In 1904, Fiji’s Legislative Council was enlarged to include non-Europeans. But while
indigenes were granted two seats (whose members were picked by the GCC), Indians got
none. (There were six elected European members.). Only in 1916 did Indians obtain a seat.
In 1920, a government Commission looked into the matter of Indian representation in the
affairs of the colony, but the colonial authorities in Fiji continued to resist demands that
Indians be granted elected representatives on the grounds that the Indians might yet return
to their homeland. Finally, in 1929 Indians were allocated three seats--on separate rolls,
rather than, as they had sought, on a common electoral roll with the Europeans. Power
continued to rest with the Europeans and Fijians; together, they resisted the introduction of
a common electoral roll, which to them spelled Indian domination.

When indenture ended in 1920, Indians formed 38 percent of the colony’s population. Even
so, no system of government was devised for the Indians, who were no longer under the
control of the CSR. As Chandra Jayawardena has written, the Indians were in ‘a kind of
limbo where they were left to their own cultural devices, and were relatively ignored by the
colonial authorities’ (Jayawardena 1980: 445). Indeed, the British colonial authorities had
failed to provide even basic educational needs, since the planters, who were interested only
in their labour, opposed the idea, while the Christian missionaries worked mainly with the
ethnic Fijians. In 1932, 109 Fijian schools received some form of financial assistance from
the government compared with only 43 Indo-Fijian ones. As late as 1930, no Indians had
risen through education to professional levels. The Indians were forced to set up their own
school committees to maintain schools--one reason why Hindi remained a living language
among them (B. Lal 1992: 85-86).

The Indian community began to organise, especially around their disadvantaged position as
tenant farmers in the sugar industry. One organization was the Kisan Sangh, formed in 1937
in order to negotiate with the CSR from a position of strength; two years later its
membership included three-quarters of the farmers in western and central Viti Levu. A rival
group, formed in 1941, was the Maha Sangh, which led bitter strikes against the CSR in 1943
and 1960. But the two rival unions also demonstrated the divisions within the Indian
community: the Kisan Sangh obtained its support from the more established north Indian
community, many of whom held decent land leases from the CSR and were relatively
prosperous. The Maha Sangh represented the more recently-arrived South Indians, who had
fewer good leases and were poorer; many of these newer arrivals were wage-earning cane-
cutters without land.

By 1945 the Indians had become a demographic majority in the colony. When India gained
its independence in 1947, some Fiji Indians envisaged a Fiji that would become ‘virtually an
independent Indian state with Fijian, European and other minorities; or something like a
Dominion, attached to a new Indian Union’ (Scarr 1984: 149). Yet most Indo-Fijian public
figures did not espouse a Hindu nationalism to counter the ethnic nationalism of indigenous
Fijians; rather, they ‘called for a new emphasis on being fully Fijian’ (Kelly 1995: 65). At
independence in 1970, 98 percent of Indo-Fijians elected to become citizens of the new
state.
Though they started out as a rural proletariat, Indo-Fijians are now predominantly urban.
Prohibited from owning land, many Indians had no choice but to embrace capitalism; they
invested in education or used their earnings to start business enterprises. This Indian labour
diaspora has, through education and hard work, as well as religious, cultural and political
organization, gained considerable economic power and political leverage in Fiji. As well,
many of Fiji’s most prominent Indian retail and wholesale merchants and artisans are
Gujaratis who emigrated to Fiji after the 1920s and were never cane cutters to begin with.
This is also true of most of the Sikh population from the Punjab, who entered the trade and
transport sectors of the economy. These two groups, who arrived later and retained closer
cultural and personal ties with their communities of origin in India, some even owning
property in their ancestral villages, formed separate segments within the Indo-Fijian
community. Their greater wealth occasionally aroused hostility from other Indians. Quite
often, ‘when a Northern Hindu refers to an “Indian” he may exclude Gujarati, and to a
lesser degree Muslims and Southerners’ (Jayawardena 1980: 437). A classical ‘middleman
minority,’ the Gujaratis comprise about 10 percent of the Indian total but own most of the
shops in the towns and cities.

Most Indians live in the cities and in the ‘sugar belt’ along the north and west coasts of the
two large islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Suva is largely an Indian city, its Hindu and
Muslim population a microcosm of India itself. Lautoka, the second largest city, is also
predominantly Indian, while Nadi is the centre of South Indian population in Fiji. The outer
islands have relatively few Indians, and are about 85 percent ethnically Fijian.

The Land Issue

The main area of contention between Fijians and Indians throughout the last century has
been the land question. Gordon considered it his duty to safeguard Fijians from the
exploitation of rapacious white settlers in the islands, who wanted easy access to Fijian land
and labour. He declared that all land still remaining in native hands was to be collectively
owned by the Fijian tribes and would henceforth be inalienable; nor could it be divided
among the members of the tribal unit. The collective land-owning unit would be the mataqali,
and a Lands Claims Commission was created to record titles to Fijian lands through the
mataqalis. To qualify for inclusion within this landowning system, every Fijian at birth had to
be registered as being descended from a specific group resident in a particular village.

The CSR began the large-scale cultivation of sugar cane in Fiji in 1880 and would remain a
major presence for almost a century. It required a large work force, and the solution was to
import indentured Indian labour. Alien to Fiji, the Indians were entirely dependent on the
employer, had no other obligations, and had no refuge to which they might flee. This made
them ideal for plantation labour. The indentured labourers, who contracted to work
overseas, usually for five-year periods, called themselves girmitiyas (from the word agreement,
in reference to the labour contract). Since they were not entitled to free passage back to
India for a further five years after their contract came to an end, most stayed on in the
colony and went into farming or trade.
When Indian indenture came to an end, most of the land was under native or government
control: 82.16 percent of the land remained in inalienable indigenous Fijian ownership;
another 9.45 percent was Crown or state land; and only 8.39 percent freehold, or private (B.
Lal 1988: 24). Crown land was broken down mainly into two categories: Schedule A land
consisted of land that was appropriated by the government after the extinction of a mataqali
land-owning unit; Schedule B land was land expropriated by the state in cases where native
title was unclear at the time of the findings of the Lands Claims Commission of 1875 and
the passage of the Native Lands Ordinance in 1880. The Indians owned outright a mere 1.7
percent of the land. They were regarded as intruders for whom only short-term leases could
be considered, at first for periods of 21 years, later for 30.

Land could be leased only from the Fijian clan leadership--an often complex and expensive
procedure requiring decision-making by four native Fijian and colonial bodies. The chiefs
got anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of the rental fees, the rest going to the government
and the Fijian heads of households. The land question became the touchstone of Indian-
native relations, and, to the Indians, symbolic of their status as less than full citizens of the
country.

In 1922, 80 percent of Indo-Fijians worked in agriculture, mainly as sugar-cane growers,

either directly for the CSR or by leasing land--usually units of eight to 12 acres--from the
company itself or from indigenous Fijians, and selling cane to the company, which after 1926
monopolized sugar refining in Fiji. The company increasingly moved out of direct
production of the cane, relying instead on purchases from the growing number of small
Indian planters. It divided its extensive holdings into ten-acre parcels, which it leased out to
Indo-Fijian tenants, thus creating a rural peasant stratum. This marked the birth of the small
leasehold cane farming system. By 1941 97 percent of all cane acreage was in smallholdings,
with CSR tenants accounting for 52 percent of the total and independent contractors
accounting for 45 percent. The CSR itself, and European planters, had been reduced to a
tiny fraction of sugar growers (B. Lal 1992: 60-61).

Almost every Indo-Fijian political or social organization appealed for more secure leases,
compensation for improvements made to the land when expired leases reverted to Fijian
ownership, and better rules governing landlord-tenants relations. Much of the political
leadership of the Indo-Fijians would come from the Kisan Sangh and the Maha Sangh and
their successors, the Fiji Cane Growers Association and the National Farmers Union; these
would form the core support for both the National Federation Party (NFP) and later the Fiji
Labour Party (FLP).

The British reformed and regularized leasing procedures with the passage of a new Native
Lands Ordinance in 1937. A statutory body, the Native Land Trust Board (NLTB), was
established under the Native Land Trust Act (NLTA) in 1940, as the sole agency for leasing
and administering Fijian lands. Fijian landowners surrendered their rights to control and
administer their own land and vested these in the NLTB, which would control all native land
not required for immediate use, administer such land on behalf of the ethnic Fijians, and
collect and distribute, on behalf of the 7,000 or so mataqalis, the rents paid by the Indians.
The NLTB, an agency of the Fijian native administration rather than the government, was
given the right to terminate leases when necessary so as to create ‘reserves’ for future Fijian
use--though in reality much of this land reverted to bush.

In 1966 the Agricultural Landlords and Tenants Ordinance (ALTO) was introduced as a
mechanism by which to adjudicate and mediate (Fijian) landlord-(Indian) tenant disputes.
Most of the leases negotiated under its provisions would run for 30 years. But the machinery
failed to satisfy either the Indian desire for greater security of leases or Fijian grievances
regarding the amount of good agricultural land that was in the hands of Indians. In 1976 a
new Agricultural Landlord and Tenants Act (ALTA) replaced ALTO; ALTA provided for
30-year periods for new leases and 20-year renewals of older ones, with no possibility of
further extensions. Most of the old ALTO leases negotiated in 1966 between Fijian landlords
and Indian tenants in the sugar cane fields were by 1996 in the process of renewal under
ALTA. These renegotiations, involving roughly 16,000 leases, would become an explosive
political problem.

In the general election of 1987, the hold of nationalist Fijians on government was broken for
the first time. A Labour Party coalition led by an ethnic Fijian, Timoci Bavadra, and backed
largely by Fiji’s Indian population, defeated the Alliance Party, which had ruled since
independence in 1970. The vanquished Alliance leader was paramount chief Ratu Sir
Kamisese Mara, the very embodiment of Fijian ethnic nationhood. A minor chief, indeed
little more than a commoner, Bavadra was not part of the chiefly oligarchy and was
considered a ‘front man’ for the Indians. He became prime minister on April 13, but on May
14, he was ousted by the Fijian military under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni
Rabuka, the third-ranking officer in the armed forces. Ethnic Fijian nationalists justified the
coup d’état as a necessary means of preventing the erosion of native Fijian land rights by an
‘Indian-dominated’ government. The military government failed to resolve the land issue,
and the insecurity of the leasing system remained ‘a disincentive for the Fijian Indian
farmers...to improve productivity’ or make improvements (Prasad and Tisdell 1996: 68).

By the mid-1990s, Fiji was stagnating economically. Many Indo-Fijians had emigrated, taking
with them capital and skills, and under Rabuka the country had been suspended from the
Commonwealth and subjected to intense international pressure. The military-dominated
regime reluctantly allowed for the resumption of civilian rule. A new constitution
promulgated in 1997 returned political rights to the Indian population; the name of the
country was changed to the more neutral ‘Republic of the Fiji Islands,’ all its citizens to be
known as Fiji Islanders.

In May 1999, a general election was held under the new constitution, and a ‘People’s
Coalition’ led by the Fiji Labour Party won power. Its leader, Mahendra Pal Chaudhry,
became the first Indo-Fijian prime minister of the country. The coalition promised to help
mend the ailing economy and deal with the issue of ALTA land leases.
Chaudhry set about trying to improve the bargaining power of Indo-Fijian farmers, who
were the core of his political support. He wanted to provide greater security of tenure for
Indian tenants or, where that would prove impossible, to resettle those being evicted on
vacant available native and state land within the cane growing areas. He also hoped to pass
legislation to provide financial compensation for each farmer forced off the land and unable
to secure a new farm.

Chaudhry recommended that those ALTA leases that were expiring be renegotiated for a
further 30 years. He was willing to modify ALTA, a state creation, by amalgamating it with
the NLTA, supervised completely by the NLTB. Landlords viewed ALTA as unfair because
the fixed rents it prescribed were, in their view, extremely low, whereas under the NLTA’s
provisions, rental rates depended on the productivity of the land in question, with no
minimum lease term or rent fixing formula. This would provide more incentive for
landowners to lease their lands. Such a compromise would regulate the conduct of both
tenants and landowners more equitably, provide a rent that would be fair to both parties, and
set in place a dispute-resolving mechanism. Chaudhry wanted to present this plan to the
GCC for ratification by the end of 2000.

His political enemies, however, portrayed his programme as threatening ‘the core values and
interests of indigenous Fijians’ (Fry 2000: 297). Landlords and the GCC suggested ALTA be
scrapped altogether and the NLTB be made sole trustee over all native land, with all leases
to be issued under its authority. (The NLTB administered almost 30,000 leases of which
around two thirds were under the NLTA while one third were under ALTA.) The NLTB
wanted all freehold Schedule A and Schedule B Crown or state land shifted to its control and
turned into native land, for allocation to land-poor Fijian mataqali. However, this was
rejected by the Chaudhry government, which introduced legislation in October 1999 making
cabinet approval necessary for the transfer of Schedule A and B land from the state to the
NLTB. Resentment grew on both sides.

Many chiefs who had been supportive of the military regime were punishing the new
government by refusing to renew ALTA leases. There were a series of bomb explosions in
Suva in August 1999; in September ethnic Fijian nationalists who had been defeated in the
election denounced the government at an emotional meeting of the Foundation of the Fijian
Indigenous People in Suva, at which calls to abrogate the constitution were heard. A few
days later, the GCC, which through its veto powers in the Fijian Senate could scuttle any
legislation affecting land issues, itself rejected the government’s proposals; Sitiveni Rabuka,
now the GCC chair, said that ALTA would die a natural death. He added that with land
reverting to ethnic Fijians, Fiji would become less attractive to the Indian population. He
hoped in such circumstances ‘that Indians will migrate’ (‘Rabuka’s Warning’ 2000). The
NLTB reminded the government that it alone had legal powers over native land.

But Chaudhry held firm. In February 2000, the government tabled a motion to amend the
constitution. Under the proposed amendment, the authority of the NLTB to advise the
president (who was the old Alliance leader Ratu Mara, an ethnic Fijian) on land issues would
be transferred to the cabinet. This was seen as evidence that Chaudhry was preparing to
weaken the entrenched rights of indigenous Fijians and undermine bodies such as the GCC
and NLTB.

Opposition to the government also came from disaffected middle-class Fijians who worried
that Chaudhry would hamper their easy access to government-backed loans, civil service
jobs, and various preferential programmes. Ethnic Fijians in top positions in the Fiji Trades
and Investment Board, the Fiji Sugar Corp., and the Fiji Development Board, among other
institutions, feared they would be replaced by Indians. But the land issue was certainly the
prime factor in the coup of 2000.

The 2000 Coup and Beyond

Ethnic Fijian frustration came to a head on May 19, on the first anniversary of Chaudhry’s
assumption of office. As an anti-government march of almost 20,000 taukei (native Fijian)
nationalists wound its way through the streets of Suva, with placards calling for the
deportation of Indians, Chaudhry found himself facing armed men who declared an Indian-
dominated government illegitimate--even if democratically elected. George Speight, a
businessman of part-European/Fijian descent, and six accomplices took Chaudhry and most
of his government ministers hostage. Speight proclaimed himself prime minister and
demanded that the 1997 constitution be abrogated so that all high offices could once again
become the exclusive preserve of ethnic Fijians.

The Chaudhry government during its year in power had presided over an improved
economy. A recovery in sugar production, robust growth in the gold, copra and garment
industries, and a strengthening of the tourism sector, where earnings and investment had
grown by more than 20 percent over the previous two years, had resulted in economic
growth of 7.8% in 1999, according to the Reserve Bank of Fiji (‘Economy Grows’ 2000).
But none of this had mollified ethnic Fijian nationalists.

Speight’s attempted takeover and the declaration of a state of emergency by President Mara
triggered a period of political chaos. While troops surrounded the parliament buildings,
numerous instances of ethnic violence against Indo-Fijians went unpunished (See picture-1).
In Suva, riots ensued, mobs roamed the streets, and scores of Indian shops were looted;
police commissioner Isikia Savua estimated damages of at least F$30 million (Phelan 2000).
Looting, arson, and the destruction of Indian schools and places of worship, both Hindu
temples and mosques, occurred in rural towns such as Nausori in the Rewa River delta.
Indo-Fijians fleeing the area were housed in displaced persons’ camps established in Lautoka
on Viti Levu and in Labasa on Vanua Levu (‘NLTB Promulgates’ 2000).

When the GCC met on May 23, it decided to accept the need for a revision of the 1997
constitution, though it balked at having the constitution completely abrogated. The GCC
also resolved that the president should establish an interim administration and requested a
pardon for Speight’s hostage-takers. But it refused to accede to Speight’s demand that Mara
step down as president, and so the hostages remained in captivity. Still, both Mara and
Rabuka appeared to give tentative support to the aims of the coup -- in May 2006 Rabuka
was in fact finally charged with inciting mutiny (‘Rabuka in Court’ 2006). Mara was himself
forced to resign as president by the armed forces on May 29 and Commodore Voreqe
(Frank) Bainimarama took control of the country. On July 9, Bainimarama hammered out a
deal with the rebels in which it was agreed that the GCC would be allowed to name the
nation’s next president and that the hostage-takers would receive immunity from
prosecution. In return, the hostages, including Chaudhry, were finally released on July 13.
The powers of government were transferred to an interim administration, with no Indo-
Fijian representation, appointed by the military. The new regime was headed by president
Ratu Josefa Iloilo, who had been vice-president under Mara. The new prime minister was
Laisenia Qarase, who came from the Lau archipelago. Qarase presented his 10-year
‘Blueprint for the Protection of Fijian and Rotuman Rights and Interests, and the
Advancement of their Development’ to the GCC (‘Blueprint’ 2000).

Picture-1: Fijian government soldiers push back a crowd during the coup in May 2000.
Source: Associated Press photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk

The GCC at the end of August accepted the government’s recommendation to form a
Constitutional Review Commission, which would begin the process of drafting a new
constitution based on the paramountcy of indigenous Fijians. In contrast, Hindu
organizations, the Sikh Society of Fiji, and the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) were
angered that little thought had been given to the role of Indo-Fijians in this new order. The
two major Indian parties refused to participate in the drafting of a new constitution. The
interim government finally selected four Indo-Fijian members (all Christians) to serve on the
12-member commission, but they were denounced as ‘puppets’ and ‘traitors’ (‘Indo-Fijians
Branded Traitors’ 2000).

The legality of the new regime was also challenged in court. On March 1, 2001, the five
judges of the Fiji Court of Appeal held that the 1997 constitution remained in force and that
the interim government was therefore illegal. Defying the court, the cabinet did not step
down until asked to do so by the GCC. On March 13, the GCC met and elected Ratu Epeli
Ganilau to replace the mercurial Sitiveni Rabuka as chair. The chiefs also reconfirmed Iloilo
as president.

Iloilo formally removed Chaudhry, stating that in his opinion the deposed prime minister did
not have majority support among the elected members of parliament, so that Qarase could
be appointed by Iloilo as a ‘caretaker’ prime minister who would prepare the country for
new elections to take place August 25-September 1, 2001. This ploy enabled Iloilo to
circumvent the Court of Appeal verdict, by asserting that Qarase was now the head of a new
and therefore constitutionally valid government. However, the 1997 constitution was not
abrogated.

The interim regime had appointed the fervent ethnic nationalist Apisai Tora as minister of
Agriculture, Fisheries, Forests and ALTA. He announced that he planned to scrap ALTA;
the NLTB would take over responsibility for negotiating ALTA leases. It was hoped that
more native Fijians would move into cane farming as Indian-held leases expired. The Land
Use Commission would be discontinued (‘Blueprint’ 2000). In December 2000 the
ownership and management of all Schedule A and B state lands was handed over to the
NLTB.

Picture-2: Preparing for the voters at a polling station in the general election, May 2006
Source: Reuters photo: http://swissinfo.org

In the elections held in 2001, Qarase’s newly-formed Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL)
or United Fiji Party emerged victorious, with 32 of the 71 seats in the House of
Representatives, five more than Labour’s 27. The electoral system allocates 23 seats to ethnic
Fijians, 19 to Indo-Fijians, three to minority groups, and one to Rotuman Islanders. The
remaining 25 are ‘open’ seats, with candidates of all races competing for votes cast on a
common voters’ roll. Labour won all 19 Indian communal seats, while the SDL took 18 of
the 23 Fijian ones; but the SDL won 13 open seats, while the FLP took just eight. Qarase,
with the support of smaller parties, formed the government. He sought to achieve two
political ends: to implement affirmative action programmes for indigenous Fijians, and to
ensure that the Labour Party and Indo-Fijians did not gain control of the government.
Despite a constitutional provision requiring that any party receiving more than 10 percent of
the seats in parliament be offered inclusion in the Cabinet, the Qarase government excluded
Chaudhry’s FLP.

Since the events of 2000, thousands of displaced Indo-Fijians have moved to urban centers
to look for jobs, and 35 percent of the land has been taken out of production. The Qarase
government pressed strongly for changes in the existing ALTA structure to accommodate
landowner concerns and offered 50-year leases to Indian farmers if they would allow ALTA
to be replaced, but the FLP wanted ALTA retained (‘MPs Must Solve’ 2005). New bills to
alter the NLTA and to abolish ALTA were introduced in parliament by the government in
September 2005; they required a two-third majority to be passed and, given FLP opposition,
were defeated. The vast majority of ALTA leases come up for renewal by 2011. But the 90
percent of Fijian land under the ownership of Fijian clans can now be leased only through
the NLTB, which wants ALTA abolished and replaced by the NLTA structure.

A general election was held in May 2006 (see Picture-2). Qarase and Chaudhry, who
remained bitter enemies, again led their respective parties. In its manifesto, the SDL
continued to maintain that all agricultural land should be managed under the NLTA, in
accordance with the wishes of the landowners, the NLTB and the GCC, while the FLP
stood by ALTA. The outcome, with the SDL besting the FLP 36 seats to 31, demonstrated
anew the tremendous polarization between the two groups. Qarase won all 23 Fijian
communal seats, Chaudhry every one of the 19 Indian seats, and so the outcome rested on
the ‘open’ seats, which the SDL took, 13 to 12. With the support of two independents,
Qarase managed to form a government.

‘It is sad to see that despite all the talks and efforts made by our leaders towards promoting
national reconciliation, unity, racial harmony and integration, the two races move to opposite
poles,’ noted the Fiji Times following the 2006 election. ‘The two leaders have pulled their
own people to their camps leaving the middle ground deserted’ (‘Ethnic Division’ 2006;
‘Fiji’s Challenge’ 2006).

Conclusion: Can Fiji Survive as a Bi-Cultural State?

In the post-independence period, Indians have suffered extensive political discrimination at
the hands of the Fijian political elite. There have even been periodic threats of expulsion and
‘ethnic cleansing.’ In 1975 a fervent nationalist, Sakeasi Butadroka, denounced democracy
and equality as western values and proposed a motion in parliament to repatriate all Indians
back to India--causing a furor in the Indian community. His aim was ‘to prevent Fijians from
succumbing to competition, as the North American Indians, Hawaiians, and Maoris had
done’ (Milne 1981: 97). The 1987 and 2000 coups shook Indian confidence and many
expressed anger at their treatment by a regime that considered them little better than aliens
and thieves. Since the coups, more than 100,000 Indians have left, in particular professionals;
by some accounts, 2/3 of the islands’ lawyers and more than half its doctors have left, along
with many teachers, accountants and civil servants.

Fiji is a classical plural society, one in which several communities ‘form economically and
socially identifiable segments, yet are linked in the over-all social structure of the country’
(Mayer 1963: 1). The native and Indo-Fijians have different cultural, religious, racial,
economic and linguistic identities, with little common ground; they are also constitutionally
distinct. There is a cultural division of labour, so that each economic sector becomes the
preserve of a particular group, resulting in ethnic enclaves. The economic system inherited
from the colonial state compartmentalized the two ethnic groups. Indians continued to
dominate the sugar industry, as farmers and workers, while Fijians were involved in gold
mining, copra production, and fish canning. This ethnic division of labour meant there was
little interaction between the two workforces. Such separateness hindered the formation of
class alliances across ethnic lines; Jayawardena remarked in 1980 that within both
communities, ‘social elites dominate class interests in the operation of the power structure in
Fiji’ (Jayawardena 1980: 446). Fijian chiefs ‘had long assisted British efforts to suppress
radical labour unions or commoner-led cooperatives’ (Chappell 1990: 187). Following strikes
and disturbances in 1959 led by Apisai Tora and others in the Wholesale and Retail General
Workers’ Union, which united Fijian and Indian workers, the Fijian chiefs, fearful of their
hold on urban Fijians, encouraged the growth of separate trade unions for Fijian workers
such as stevedores and mineworkers. There were two different unions for schoolteachers,
the Fijian Teachers’ Association for natives and the Fiji Teachers’ Union for Indians.

The two communities are also spatially compartmentalized and segregated. In colonial times,
non-Fijians were forbidden by law from settling in Fijian villages, while, conversely, Fijians
could be forced back to their villages if found in urban areas. Fijian and Indian children
attended separate schools, even in areas of mixed population. ‘Even after more than a
century of living together, few know more than a few words of each other’s language’
(Harrison 1998: 130). There has been little in the way of cultural borrowing or adaptation
and virtually no intermarriage between the groups. As a result, and in contrast to more
integrated countries such as Mauritius or Trinidad, no ‘creolized’ culture has developed.

To the Fijians, Indians remained kaisi (slaves or ‘coolies’) and vulagi (outsiders), guests rather
than co-owners of Fiji. On the other hand, Indians often condescendingly referred to Fijians
as jungali, people of little culture. The two groups viewed each other ‘through a prism of
prejudice, reinforced by contrasting life-styles, cultural attitudes and historical experiences’
which have bred mutual distrust and suspicion (B. Lal 1992: 304). The colonial system
imposed by the British was, in the words of Victor Lal, ‘one of benevolent apartheid’ (V. Lal
1990: 115).

In such conditions of bipolar competition, religion, ethnicity and ‘race’ become salient
markers of power or powerlessness. Such societies ‘lack an underlying consensus of basic
values and are perennially exposed to strife stimulated by ethno-nationalism,’ and social
equilibrium can be easily disrupted by ‘outbidders,’ nationalists who disrupt the fragile
political order by manipulating stereotypical inter-ethnic fears (Premdas 1995: 9). The
election process itself, instead of evolving into a mechanism of unity and legitimacy,
becomes a ‘battleground of interethnic strife and the forum through which one group sought
to dominate the other’ (Premdas and Steeves 1995: 23).

Should collective indigenous rights trump individual human rights? How can a state balance
the principle of indigenous paramountcy with the imperative to shape a multi-ethnic nation
for which non-native contributions have been crucial? How ought self-determination for the
entire nation be squared with the special claims of a native people? Fiji’s experience has not
been a positive one in this regard and its image of a ‘balanced, racially harmonious society’--
which was never really true—‘seems to have been irretrievably shattered’ (Hannum 1996:
432). Indeed, the clash between the values that are attached to the equality of individual
rights of citizens, and those values that emphasize group rights, makes ‘intense ethnic
conflict...almost inevitable’ (Carroll 1994: 321).

An autochthonous people like the Fijians regard the Indians as outsiders, even those Indians
born there. They are ‘symbols of foreign imperialism’ and ‘reminders of collective [Fijian]
peripheralization’ (Chappell 1990: 172). The Indians remained aliens ‘whose real home was
somewhere else and who could not justly claim parity of status with those who occupied the
country before the arrival of immigrants’ (Horowitz 1985: 208). For Fijian nationalists, the
nation was defined by its original inhabitants, with others living there on sufferance. Only
for the Fijians were the Fiji islands a ‘homeland.’

The arguments for a right to territory based on indigenousness and prior ownership of the
land, as articulated by ethnic Fijians, should perhaps not be sufficient to overcome ‘rival
arguments based on equity or equal treatment,’ writes Margaret Moore. After all, non-
autochthonous people may feel just as strong an attachment to where they live, and none to
the country from which their ancestors emigrated. Certainly they cannot be deprived of
political rights simply because they were not the original inhabitants of the land (Moore
1998: 141-145). Richard Mulgan has stated that, while the situation of the descendants of
precolonial peoples can be improved upon, ‘the guiding principle for the present and future
must be justice and equality for all citizens.’ He asserts that reserving the concept of
indigenousness for precolonial peoples implies, ‘wrongly, that descendants of settlers can
never put down roots in a new land, and that all subsequent settlement is but a continuation
of the original colonization’ (Mulgan 1989: 381, 388). Legal scholar Ved Nanda, too, has
argued that ‘no valid distinction exists under international human rights law for such
distinction between earlier and later arrivals’ (Nanda 1992: 577).

Even now many ethnic Fijians refuse to consider the possibility of an Indo-Fijian leader.
‘Government spokespeople often make stirring speeches about democracy, without seriously
intending to reform the ethnic political structure, much less lessen ethnic Fijian
paramountcy’ (Anderson 2003: 43). During the 2006 election campaign, Qarase stated that
Chaudhry ‘is not a Fijian’ and warned of the possibility of another coup should Labour win
(Wilson 2006). He broached the possibility of an amnesty for George Speight, who received
a life sentence for treason in 2002 (‘Fiji Military Chief’ 2005).
The last two decades have spawned a culture of lawlessness, civil conflict and intimidation in
Fiji. Many in the Indian community wondered whether the Fijian state should be accorded
any legitimacy if it continues to exclude them from meaningful political power. However,
there has been one positive development: in contrast to the refusal of the Qarase
government, in 2001, to include members of the FLP in the cabinet, in 2006 Qarase did
offer Chaudhry positions in his cabinet, and the FLP leader accepted. Nonetheless, the land
issue remains a stumbling block to the full economic and political liberation of the Indo-
Fijians of the archipelago. Meanwhile, Indo-Fijians continue to emigrate, and their
percentage of the Fiji’s population, which was at 51 percent in 1966, had fallen to 38 percent
by 2005 and continues to drop.

References
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Experience, pp. 3-25. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press.
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Social Organization of Culture Difference, pp.9-38. Boston: Little, Brown.
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Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington
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Harrison, David. 1998. ‘The World Comes to Fiji: Who Communicates What, and to
Whom’, Tourism, Culture & Communication, 1 (2): 129-138.
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der Veer (ed.), Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, pp.
43-72. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lal, Brij V. 1988. Power and Prejudice: the Making of the Fiji Crisis. Wellington, NZ: New Zealand
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University of Hawaii Press.
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Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity, pp. 113-130. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Moore (ed.), National Self-Determination and Secession, pp. 134-157 Oxford: Oxford
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 5
Ethnicity, Class, State and Conflict: The ‘Indian Question’ in
Natal, South Africa
Brij Maharaj

Introduction
There is a significant degree of coalescence between race, class and ethnicity in South Africa,
where the apartheid state had defined and maintained ethnic categories, and structured inter-
ethnic relations through discriminatory regulations and institutional practices. The subject of
ethnicity, however, has generally been avoided in South African scholarship. This neglect can
be partly ascribed to the attempts of the apartheid state to manoeuvre ethnic groups in order
to reinforce white domination. Hence, scholars were concerned that analysis of ethnicity was
likely to legitimise state agendas (Bonner and Lodge 1989; Bozzoli 1987). Moreover, the
most acute differences were between whites and non-whites so that this difference became
the main vector along which political activism and academic agendas were mobilised. There
was also a tendency among South African scholars to view the experiences of ethnic
minorities as ‘mere appendages, worthy of mention but really peripheral to the mainstream
of historical developments’ (Bhana 1985: 3). However,

[e]thnic cultures and identities possess a reality in South Africa which it would be myopic to
ignore ... Ethnic identities ... need to be confronted and understood, both as instruments of
manipulation from above and as modes of accommodation and adjustment from below
(Bonner and Lodge 1989: 11).

However, the collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the resurgence of
ethnicity in these regions, forced even the African National Congress to reconsider the
significance of ethnicity in South Africa (The Leader 4/10/91) and to integrate minority
experiences ‘in the mainstream synthesis’ (Bhana 1985: 3). With this in mind, this paper
focuses on the Indian ethnic minority and its experiences prior to the formal ending of
apartheid rule in the early 1990s. The ‘Indian community’ in South Africa can be viewed ‘as
the product of state definition as well as the manner of accommodation and resistance to the
state and its agenda’ (Singh and Vawda 1988: 3). This paper attempts to present a historical
perspective on the nature of conflicts experienced by Indians in Natal in their quest for
recognition as South African citizens. While racism is traditionally associated with the
Afrikaners, Indians experienced rabid forms of discrimination at the hands of the English in
Natal. ‘It was in Natal, not in Bloemfontein, that as late as 1946, European clubs carried the
sign “Indians and dogs not allowed”’ (Reddy 1986:3).

For the purposes of this paper ‘ethnicity refers to a subjective perception of common
origins, historical memories, ties and aspirations’ (Chazan et al. 1988:102). An ethnic group
is defined as a ‘community conscious of sharing similar characteristics such as a distinct
language, a religion, a culture, or a historical experience of its own and is conscious of its
differences with other communities by virtue of these same characteristics’ (Harik 1972:303).
The formation of ethnic identity is, however, always influenced by struggles. Firstly, there is
struggle within the ethnic group for control over its ‘material and symbolic resources’. This
will determine the groups boundaries, and the conditions which will ascertain inclusion or
exclusion. Secondly, there is struggle between ethnic groups as they compete for resources,
rights, and privileges. Finally, there is struggle between the state and the groups which
dominate it, and the other ethnic groups in the country (Brass 1985:1). Moreover, the
negotiation of ethnic identities is influenced by historical and geographical specificities, and
is therefore dynamic and changing (McAllister and Sharp 1993:9).

About three quarters of the Indian population in South Africa live in Natal, with two thirds
living in the Durban metropolitan region. Although generally perceived as a homogeneous
ethnic group, the Indian community is stratified on the basis of class, religion and language.
About 70 percent are Hindus, 20 percent Muslims and the remainder Christians. Although
English is the first language of the present generation, Tamil, Hindi, Telegu, Gujerathi and
Urdu are the dominant vernaculars. In spite of high levels of urbanisation and
modernisation, Indians have maintained their cultural identity, and this has been facilitated
by apartheid regulations that required Indians to perform their ethnicity. This has been read
by other South Africans as ‘proof of their “unassimilability”, and by Africans as their being
racist and discriminatory against the indigenous population’ (Moodley 1975:256). For more
than a century Indians were also regarded as aliens in the country of their birth. A consistent
policy of all South African governments during this period was that Indians should
ultimately be repatriated to India. Indians thus constitute a vulnerable ethnic minority,
‘sandwiched’ between the dominant white1 ruling class, and the African majority.

This paper is divided into six sections. It commences with a brief analysis of the indentured
labour system in Natal, followed by a discussion of the emerging class cleavages in the
Indian community. In the third section the white response to Indian prosperity in Natal is
examined. The interaction between the central and local states in imposing segregation
measures upon Indians is discussed in the fourth section. This is followed by an analysis of
the Indian response to repression and segregation. In the fifth section the nature of Indian-
African conflict is explored. The final section briefly reflects on anxieties in the post-
apartheid era.

Indentured labourers - coolies and half-slaves

The origin of South African Indians can be traced back to the agricultural labour
requirements of colonial Natal in the mid-nineteenth century. 2 During this period sugar cane
had been identified as the most profitable commercial crop suited to the climate of this
region. However, a major shortcoming was an apparently unsatisfactory labour supply.
Successful cultivation of sugar cane required a high labour per hectare ratio. Furthermore,
the labour had to be semi-skilled, especially for harvesting and milling activities. Indentured
labourers were vital to the economy of Natal because they could be exploited with long
working hours, and low wages which were further reduced through massive penalties for
petty offences. By the 1880s, when unskilled wages in the country was between 3 to 4
pounds, Natal continued to have cheap labour, still only paying between 10 shillings and 1
pound per month for men and 5 shillings for women, a fair proportion of whom were skilled
(Meer 1985:46).

The local state of Durban supported the local sugar planters in their motivation for
indentured labour because the success or failure of the colonial economy depended ‘solely
on the constant supply of labour’ (Natal Mercury 25/7/1855). The first batch of Indian
labourers arrived in Natal in 1860, and they continued to arrive until 1866, when
immigration was temporarily halted because of the economic depression and the glut in the
world sugar market. During this period Indian labourers contributed significantly to the
wealth and prosperity of Natal. In 1863 sugar worth 26 000 pounds was exported, and in
1864, 100 000 pounds (Joshi 1942:46). By 1866, 6445 Indian men, women and children were
in Natal (Brain 1985:202).

The initial period of indenture in Natal was 5 years. At the end of this period they received a
certificate of discharge which they had to always carry with them. They could return to India
at their own expense or remain in the colony as free labourers.3 However, at the end of the
first five years most labourers had accumulated numerous fines for petty offences which
could only be repaid through another period of re-indenture (usually another 5 years). Re-
indentured labourers toiled under more arduous and formidable conditions, as employers
drew up their own contracts, which offered no protection to employees (Meer 1985). At the
end of 10 years of continuous residence in Natal the Indians were entitled to a free passage
to India. In terms of Law 2 of 1870 passed by the Natal Government this could be
exchanged for a free grant of Crown land valued the same as the cost of the return trip.

The first batch of repatriates arrived in India in 1871 and informed the government of the
abuses and exploitation in Natal e.g. flogging, inadequate medical treatment, excessive fines
for minor offences, and pay deductions for absenteeism.4 The Indian Government
responded by prohibiting further recruitment of indentured labour until employment
conditions improved. Meanwhile, in Natal, by 1871 there was an increased demand for
Indian labour. During this period Natal planters were experiencing severe labour shortages
which was affecting productivity and profits, and many estates were liquidated (Brain 1985).
In order to allay fears of the labourers and appease the Indian Government, the Natal
Government established the Coolie Commission of Inquiry, which reported in 1872 that
except in isolated cases, Indians had not been subjected to ill treatment or persecution by
their employers. 5

However, the Commission recommended that a Protector of Indian Immigrants, who

understood Indian languages and culture, be appointed. Also, labourers who had completed
their period of indenture should be offered land grants6 in lieu of a free return passage to
India because ‘the advantages of retaining in this country a race of men of individual habits
and skill can scarcely be doubted’ (Thompson 1952:63). In 1874 the Indian Government
sanctioned the continuation of indentured labour to Natal under the new, improved working
conditions. The Indian population in Natal increased from under 10 000 in 1875 to about
100 000 by the year 1900 (Davenport 1987:117). By 1885 the Indian occupation structure
was more complex. The majority (95 percent), however, remained working class indentured
labourers, who were controlled by laws which encouraged massive exploitation by
employers. There was also an emerging petty bourgeoisie, comprising the passenger Indian
and the ex-indentured (Ebr-Valley 2001; Vahed 2001; 2002; 2003).

Class cleavages - the development of petty bourgeoisie Indians

An emerging group was the ‘free’ Indians, who played a key role in the economy of Natal.
Although the law permitting the exchange of the free passage to India for crown land was
cancelled in 1890, many enterprising ex-indentured Indians purchased or rented plots of
land, and through their industriousness, soon became successful cultivators (Freund 1991).
In 1877 the Protector of Indian Immigrants reported that all the ‘fishing and nearly all the
market gardening and hawking of fruit and vegetables are in the hands of Indians’ (Brain
1985:211). Little or no capital was required for engaging in such petty enterprises (Swan
1984:241). At the turn of the century Indians were also engaged in skilled and semi-skilled
activities in industry and commerce. In fact by the time indentured labour was stopped in
1911 all sectors of the economy of Natal were dependent to some extent on Indian labour. 7

Another group, which was very evident by 1910, was referred to as the ‘new elites’. These
were the offspring of indentured or ex-indentured labourers, who were differentiated from
their class roots in terms of their superior positions in the occupational hierarchy, made
possible by their advanced educational qualifications. They included highly trained
professionals such as lawyers, accountants, teachers, bookkeepers and clerks (Kuper 1956;
Swan 1985).

The late 1870s saw the arrival of a new class of Indians - the so called ‘passenger’ Indians
(because they paid for their own passage), who were mainly traders, and were often referred
to incorrectly as Arabs. They differed in terms of caste, occupation and linguistic groups
from the indentured Indians. This group was relatively homogeneous, comprising mainly
Gujarati Muslims who had similar economic interests (Swan 1984; Padayachee and Morrell
1991; Hansen 2003). They made every effort to distinguish themselves politically, socially
and economically from the indentured labourers, and regarded themselves as part of a
commercial bourgeoisie rather than the working class or peasantry (Ginwala 1974).

Initially, the passenger Indians were primarily engaged in supplying the consumer needs of
the Indian community. Gradually they began to diversify, and also served white and black
customers in Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State. Their success was phenomenal, and
can be attributed largely to their determination to work hard and succeed; business acumen;
ability to identify markets, which ranged from the urban to rural trading outposts; maximum
exploitation of their connections with India; and utilisation of family labour. These factors,
cumulatively, contributed significantly to the ability of Indians to compete successfully
against white traders, and lead to increasing conflict between the two groups.
Anti-Indian Imbroglio - Ethnic or Class Conflict?
The general economic success and prosperity of the immigrant group, generated a great deal
of envy, bitterness and anti-Indian sentiments amongst whites. The whites in Natal were
more concerned about the ‘Asiatic menace’ than the ‘Native problem’. Natives were
perceived as a passive threat, but Indians were regarded as a ‘sophisticated and active menace
to their own position in colonial society, competing for space, place, trade, and political
influence with the imperial authority’ (Swanson 1983:404). Whites displayed racial prejudice
against Indians, feared their economic competition, and were also concerned about their
rapid population expansion which was perceived as a political threat. Additional complaints
against Indians were that they did not pay income taxes or do military service; small white
farmers were being displaced by market gardeners; and that they were displacing blacks and
whites in the labour market (Henning 1989).

The emerging Indian bourgeoisie also appeared to pose an increasing threat to white
domination of capitalist enterprise. ‘Editorials declared the “Asiatic trader” a “parasite”
“dangerous and harmful”, “the real cancer that is eating into the very vitals of the
community”’ (Wyley 1986:16-17). The conflict between white and Indian capital thus
provides at least part of the explanation for the tension that was usually expressed in racial
and ethnic terms. During this period trade was a significant economic activity of local white
South Africans, and was also a symbol of social status. Indian merchants challenged white
economic hegemony and status. Durban whites retaliated to this threat in racial terms,
treating wealthy Indian merchants ‘in the same way as other racially distinct groupings in
colonial Natal, the African and Indian labouring poor’ (Wyley 1986:46).

As the anti-Indian imbroglio increased, the Government was forced to appoint a

commission of inquiry in 1885 to investigate the various allegations. The Indian Immigrants
(Wragg) Commission reported that the overwhelming white opinion was that Indians should
remain under indenture for the duration of their stay in Natal. However, the Commission
concluded that the competition offered by the free Indians was legitimate, and had been
welcomed by the general community. The Commission was also keen to protect the vested
interests of agricultural capital, especially to ensure that there was an abundant supply of
cheap labour. The evidence presented by prominent whites to the Commission
acknowledged the contributions of Indians to the economy of Natal. Sir Henry Binns
(former Chairman of the Indian Immigration Trust Board and Prime Minister of Natal)
stated that if Indian immigration was permanently stopped, it would lead to unemployment
among whites as tropical cultivation would be impossible without these labourers (Joshi
1942).

In spite of the findings of the Commission, the anti-Indian agitation continued and
culminated in a three-fold legislative programme which was chiefly conceived to curb the
economic and political force of the Indians, and ultimately to promote their repatriation to
India (Meshthrie 1985). The first part of the programme was an attempt to disenfranchise
Indians in terms of the Franchise Act of 1896. Interestingly, only 3 Africans and 251 Indians
had the vote in Natal (Meer 1961). Secondly, in terms of Law 17 of 1895, a poll tax of 3
pounds was imposed on all Indian head of households who did not reindenture or return to
India. Failure to pay the tax could result in deportation or imprisonment. In 1903 this tax
was extended to all members of the family (Bradlow 1970).

Finally, in terms of the Dealers Licenses Act No. 18 of 1897 local authorities could refuse
trading licenses to Indians without fear of them having recourse to the courts.8 This Act was
passed in response to the ‘strong public feeling which was being expressed, both through the
local press and in the form of public demonstrations, at the ease with which increasing
numbers of Asiatic could obtain licences in Durban’ (Gabriel 1938:21). This resulted in an
absolute decline in the number of Indian traders. In 1897, licensed Indian traders comprised
55 percent of the total in Natal (523 out of 941). In 1900 they were 27 percent, (472 out of 1
578) (Swanson 1983:416). The Licensing Officer for Durban was to later remark:

I use my discretion as to whether an Asiatic should trade in any particular street or area ... A
European licence is granted almost as a matter of course; whereas the Indian licence is refused
as a matter of course. 9

These constraints on the economic activities of Indians were underpinned by a consistent

policy of residential segregation, pursued most vociferously by the local state in Durban,
which often went against central state initiatives.

Segregation and apartheid - the Role of the Local State

The local state of Durban, representing the white ruling class, was at the forefront of calls
for segregation of Indians. In 1871 the Durban Town Council adopted a policy to create
separate Indian locations. It represented the ‘first concerted attempt at group area
segregation in Durban and one of the first in a major South African town’ (Swanson
1983:405). The scheme failed because the Governor refused to consent to it.

Local agitation for the segregation of Indians continued into the twentieth century.
However, in 1920 the state-appointed De Lange Asiatic Inquiry Commission stated that
‘indiscriminate segregation of Asiatic in locations and similar restrictive measures would
result in eventually reducing them to helotry’ (Joshi 1942:104). Rather, it advocated a system
of voluntary segregation, which, if possible, should be mutually agreed upon. The central
state attempted to facilitate this via the Lawrence Committee and the Pretoria Agreement
(Maharaj 1995). This process would have been facilitated if municipalities laid out suitable
residential and commercial areas, with satisfactory public services and amenities to attract
Indians. However, the Durban City Council (DCC) continued to neglect Indian areas. This
resulted in professional and business class Indians moving into white areas, and a resultant
white outcry against ‘penetration’. Following the outcome of two state appointed
commissions into penetration, 10 the central state was forced to respond to the mass hysteria
of Europeans in Durban, who ‘threatened racial riots if Indians were not restricted from
acquiring landed properties’ (Choudree and Pather 1946:6). Furthermore, the Natal Post-
War Works and Reconstruction Committee had reported that the ‘Indian of the labouring,
peasant and employee class is serving a useful purpose, but the Indian of the more affluent
classes is a menace to European civilisation in Natal’ (Cooppan and Lazarus 1955:7).

The state response came in the form of the ‘Pegging Act’ (Trading and Occupation of Land
-Transvaal and Natal - Restriction Act, No. 35 of 1943) which ‘pegged’ the racial pattern of
land ownership in the Durban municipal area for three years as determined by the Second
Penetration Commission as at March 1943. However, the central state conceded that Indians
in Durban had convincing and justifiable demands for improved housing and civic amenities
(Daily News 4/4/43).

Three years later, pressure from the whites and the local state of Durban for statutory
segregation had increased. Smuts announced on 21 January 1946 that the Asiatic Land
Tenure and Indian Representation Act would replace the Pegging Act (Singh 1946). Prime
Minister Smuts, previously sympathetic to the complaints of the Indian community, now
revealed that he had been swayed by local white agitation in Natal:

The Europeans of Natal were very restless and there was grave disquiet. They feared that they
were going to be undermined. They were afraid of the Indian's economic competition. The
Government had to face the facts and therefore these proposals were going to be enacted as a
matter of policy.

Unlike the Pegging Act, this new legislation (dubbed the ‘Ghetto’ Act by the Indian
community) was to apply to the whole of Natal and Transvaal, permanently. The Act created
two kinds of areas - uncontrolled and controlled or exempted areas. In the uncontrolled
areas there were to be no restrictions on ownership and occupation of property. These areas
were generally owned and occupied by Indians. The controlled areas were reserved for
European ownership and occupation only. Predictably, the DCC claimed that this Act
represented a sincere attempt to solve a perplexing and intricate endemic problem, ‘and to
provide a means whereby two races fundamentally different in character and tradition may
dwell together in peace and harmony’.11

Following the ascent to power of the National Party (NP) in 1948, the Ghetto Act provided
the foundation for the Group Areas Act (GAA) of 1950, which exercised nation-wide and
comprehensive controls over urban land with respect to ownership, occupation, residence
and trading. During this period there was a collusion and close collaboration between the
NP and the DCC with regard to the planning of the group areas legislation. The NP claimed
that the GAA was a response to the calls from Durban, Pietermaritzburg and practically the
whole of Natal to act against Indian penetration and expansion (Maharaj 1992; 1997). The
Mayor of Durban, Percy Osborne, stated that the GAA was the ‘life-line whereby the
European City of Durban will be saved’.12 The DCC's collaboration with the government
resulted in the group area proclamation of 6 June 1958, in terms of which Durban was
zoned a ‘white’ city. As a result, about 75 000 Indians and 81 000 Africans were uprooted
from settled communities.13

Indians, however, largely resisted attempts by the state to dispossess them. They were
opposed to any form of statutory segregation and measures which denied them their rights
as law abiding citizens. As a disenfranchised and voiceless group, Indian aspirations were
articulated at different times by the various political organisations.

Protest and resistance - accommodationists versus confrontationists

The development of political consciousness among Indians is normally associated with
Mohandas Gandhi, a barrister, who arrived in Pretoria in 1892 to represent an Indian
merchant in a lawsuit. After experiencing personal racial insults, and spurred by a concern
about the plight of Indians, he stayed on for 21 years, fighting for the rights of his fellow
Indians.14 Gandhi was responsible for the formation of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) on
22 August 1894 and served as its first secretary (Swan 1985; Bhana 1997). Gandhi was well
known for his policy of passive resistance or ‘Satyagraha’ (Keiser 1981; Bhana and Meshthrie
1984).

The NIC, however, served the interests of, and was controlled by, the affluent merchants.
Furthermore, with a membership fee of three pounds per annum, only the wealthy could
afford affiliation. The various restrictions in Natal curbed the expansion of the bourgeoisie
and threatened the very existence of the petty bourgeoisie. Therefore, although the
merchants sometimes included the complaints of the working class in their political
representations, they were primarily concerned with their own problems (Ginwala 1974:183).
The working class was thus not regarded as an important constituency. In fact, the only
tangible associations between the elite and the ‘underclasses were the essentially exploitative
patron-client relationships formed by money lenders, shopkeepers and the owner-operators
of the Durban produce market’ (Swan 1984:244).

Since the 1930s it was evident from participation in the Colonisation Commission, Lawrence
Committee and the Pretoria Agreement, that the moderates were prepared to accept some
form of voluntary segregation, as long as their vested commercial interests were not
adversely affected (Pahad 1972; Bhana and Meshthrie 1984; Maharaj 2003). Working class
Indians would be most affected by residential segregation, and the moderates were prepared
to offer this group as the ‘sacrificial lamb’ (Ginwala 1974:418).

The Colonial Born and Settlers Indian Association (CBSIA) was formed in 1933 to oppose
the elite ideology of the NIC (Padayachee et al. 1985). In 1939 a new generation of more
militant political activists began to contest leadership positions in the NIC. As a result the
majority in the NIC and the CBSIA merged to form the Natal Indian Association (NIA).
However, the more conservative elements continued to operate under the NIC banner, lead
by A.I. Kajee.15

In an atmosphere of increasing hostility and intolerance these organisations utilised peaceful

measures, which included recourse to the law, passive resistance and appeals to India and the
United Nations, to expose the injustice and violation of human rights in South Africa
(Haines 2001). However, although they claimed to represent the Indian community, there
was very little evidence of mobilisation of the working class. Political action mainly
‘consisted of constitutional protest: letters, petitions and deputations’ to government officials
in South Africa or India (Swan 1987:192). The major players in Durban, the NIC and NIA,
had access to central state structures, and both adopted accommodationist strategies of
negotiating with the state to protect their commercial, residential and investment interests.
Hence, political action was determined by economic status and the extent to which specific
interests were threatened (Ginwala 1974). The NIA had served on the Lawrence Committee,
and the NIC was party to the abortive Pretoria Agreement. Significantly, both attempts at
voluntary segregation and co-operation were destroyed by the local state (Maharaj 1995;
2003).

After a great deal of grassroots mobilisation of working class Indians, ‘there was a distinct
shift in the predominantly accommodationist, merchant dominated class politics of the pre-
1945 NIA/NIC, to ostensibly more militant, aggressive and less accommodationist politics
of the post-1945 period’ (Padayachee et al. 1985:156). With a more radical leadership, the
NIC embarked on a massive passive resistance campaign to protest against the Ghetto Act.
The campaign was launched on 13 June 1946 and suspended on 31 May 1948. Resistance
took the form of occupying properties in defiance of the Act. The state responded by
arresting the resistors, and many prominent Indian leaders were sent to prison. The state also
auctioned the properties of passive resistors to defray fines. 16

However, there was very little evidence of mass working class support for the passive
resistance campaign, as this group was not immediately affected by the Ghetto Act. The
Ghetto Act seriously affected ‘those Indians capable of purchasing land in white areas for
either residential or investment purposes. It did not immediately affect the majority of less
affluent Indians who had no plans for either living or investing outside existing Indian
ghettos’ (Johnson 1973:78). In fact the question of housing for the underclasses ‘living in
shackland settlements was not raised with any force by either the NIC or NIA, since
elements within the Indian merchant class were extensively involved in rack-renting to the
Indian and African working class’ (Bailey 1987:48). However, there were repercussions for
the working class as rents and property prices escalated in predominantly Indian areas. The
poor were forced into high density ‘slums and near slums’, and landlords demanded
outrageous ‘key money’ or ‘goodwill’ for the right to rent a single dilapidated room (Swan
1987:191).

By 1945, political organisations had barely attempted to address working class problems such
as low wages, shoddy working conditions, and housing shortages. Under such circumstances
it would have been unreasonable ‘to have expected any greater empathy or committed
support for these political struggles from the newly proletarianised and poorly educated
working class’ (Padayachee et al. 1985:156). The main reason for this was because
segregation affected different classes of the Indian community in different ways. It reduced
opportunities for investment and commercial expansion for the wealthy, and there was also a
possibility of financial losses. The less affluent of the elites faced the possibility of moving
into working class neighbourhoods. Segregation represented a double edged sword for the
underclasses - with increasing rents and slum clearance some would become homeless, while
others could possibly be rehoused in municipal housing schemes (Swan 1987).
The accommodationists, under the leadership of A.I. Kajee, formed the Natal Indian
Organisation (NIO) in 1947. Divisions between the NIC and NIO were directly related to
class. Membership of the NIO consisted largely of businessmen, attempting to obtain
concessions from the Government by ‘constitutional’ and ‘legitimate’ means (Johnson
1973:68). While opposing segregation, it was also against the more militant strategies of the
NIC. Although the NIO was more acceptable to, and entered into dialogue with, both the
central and local states, it was unable to obtain any major concessions (Maharaj 2003).

Although the NIC had greater grassroots support, it failed to effectively mobilise this
support. Leadership was sterile, and it often resorted to rhetorical slogans when there was a
need for immediate action. This was partly due to the fact that leaders were frequently
arrested and harassed by the police. The majority of Indians were low income labourers who
were afraid of being arrested, and the consequent loss of jobs, earnings and family support
associated with political activism. A telling indictment against the political leadership of the
period was the failure to mobilise across racial barriers:

A study of the working class areas of Durban would surely reveal that even by the 1930s there
was a considerable intermingling of African and Indian workers. Much of this was superficial -
on the race track, in the cinema, or in the bus - but some was more durable, in terms of worker
or home relationships. This urban intermingling might have become the basis for a political
movement, if the Indian leaders had not remained so completely middle class, whether they
were moderates or radicals in their ideology (Tinker 1973:525).

Ethnic conflict - Indians versus Africans

It has been conventionally argued that the abundant indigenous Zulu labour in Natal was
inadequate and unsuitable for sugar plantations. However, on the contrary, the local Zulus
comprised a proficient labour force and were ‘by no means disinclined to labour, or
unwilling to render it to the planters, but upon their own terms and at their own times’ (Daily
News 13/11/60). There is adequate evidence which reveals that while Natal was arranging for
the introduction of indentured labour, the Zulus were working diligently in both the skilled
and unskilled sectors of the economy (Meer 1985; Richardson 1986; Dhupelia 1982). So the
difficulty facing the planters was not a shortage of labour, but rather a lack of a plentiful
supply of cheap labour. The cost of Indian labour was high, especially in terms of costs of
recruiting and travel to Natal. This had the effect of lowering the wages paid to Africans,
which was one of the reasons for introducing indentured labourers (Ginwala 1974). The
indenture system was compared with attempts to control African labour (Ginwala 1974):

The indenture system also had much in common with methods of controlling African labour
that were in the process of evolution elsewhere in South Africa - such as the pass laws and
compound systems for general African workers and mine workers. Workers were regarded
as transients requiring to justify their presence outside the confines of their place of
employment, they were not entirely free to choose employers or type of work. They were
housed in compounds and their movements were controlled (46).
 The anomaly arose when an Indian sought a place within the established pattern, and
unencumbered by an indenture contract was not subject to the special labour laws, either
because he was a passenger Indian or because he had completed his indenture. Had the
system of control of African labour been worked out and established prior to the arrival of
Indian labour, then it is arguable that free Indians would have bee placed into that system as
was foreign African labour. African labour control grew on an ad hoc basis and by the time
mineral discoveries and exploitation brought into being its distinctive and more rigid pattern,
the indenture system was already established for Indian labour in Natal (47).

For the first twenty years after the introduction of indenture, Indians constituted one of the
poorest section of the Natal population. During this period Africans were the main suppliers
of basic foodstuffs such as maize, vegetables and kaffir corn. However, by 1882 these
products were being produced almost entirely by Indians in the Natal coastal region. Hence,
as the relative material circumstances of Indians improved, the African population became
more impoverished. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century Africans replaced the
Indians as the most indigent at the bottom of the economic hierarchy (Ginwala 1974). As a
result of the relative advantages enjoyed by the Indians and their relative material progress
vis-à-vis the Africans, Indo-African relations in Natal were characterised by incipient tension
and conflict.

The wealth and business interests of the trader group was envied by whites as well as
Africans. The limited number of African traders in urban areas resulted in Indian traders
becoming very conspicuous. African leaders argued that preference should be given to
African traders in African areas. Ethnic differences between Africans and Indians became
more evident as Africans believed that all Indians had more privileges and opportunities than
them (Kirk 1983).

However, what was often obscured was the fact that the majority of Indians belonged to the
working class. Surveys revealed that over 70 percent of the Indians were desperately poor.
Being semi-skilled and unskilled workers, their wages were low. In addition, many of them
had a large number of dependents (Kirk 1983). Hence, a significant proportion of Indians
did not benefit directly from the comparative advantages enjoyed by Indians as an ethnic
group. Their economic conditions were not much different from those of African workers
(Ginwala 1974). In addition, there were various institutional factors which limited the
employment opportunities of Indians and Africans.17

Indians and Africans competed for jobs in the urban labour market. The main area of
competition was in secondary industry, were there was a large demand for unskilled
labourers. Indians had a comparative advantage over Africans in that they were more highly
urbanised. With their experience, Indians dominated in the semi-skilled and supervisory jobs
which whites rejected. However, except in the area of employment, the benefits which
accrued to Indians were mainly in the interest of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois groups
(Kirk 1983).

Both Indian and African political organisations did not do much to foster inter-group
relations. However this began to change in the post-1945 period. In 1947 a pact was formed
between the South African Indian Congress (SAIC)18 (lead by Dr Y. Dadoo), the NIC (lead
by Dr G.M. Naicker), and the African National Congress (lead by Dr Xuma), to form a
united front in opposing segregation and oppression. The pact did not receive much
support, especially from the African petty-bourgeoisie. Selby Msimang, executive member of
the Natal ANC stated that the ‘pact reflected a spirit of co-operation only at leadership level’,
and that to the best of his knowledge, Dr Naicker had not done anything to promote co-
operation (Mesthrie 1989:42).

The tensions and conflicts which characterised Indo-African relations were vividly played
out in Cato Manor.

The 1949 Cato Manor Riots

Cato Manor, an evocative name in Natal, has powerful connotations with the history of the
dispossessed in South Africa, and represents ‘a living monument to the heartbreak and
destruction wrecked’ by apartheid (Herald 27/4/88). After completing their period of
indenture, many pioneering Indians settled here and began developing the area. With the
passage of time the area grew by leaps and bounds. This was not unrelated to the fact that
being located outside the jurisdiction of the DCC, they were able to erect substandard
dwellings at low cost. With the extension of the city's boundaries in 1932, Cato Manor was
incorporated into Durban. However, it remained a chronically neglected area in terms of
services and facilities, with overcrowding, inadequate health and sanitation services, and
rampant disease (Edwards 1983; 1989).

In addition to Indians, the area had a large African population. Africans began to move into
Cato Manor in the early 1940s as they were ejected from areas like Overport and Puntans
Hill by the DCC. Many Indian farmers realised that they could make more profits by
allowing Africans to build shacks on their lands, and many of them became ‘shacklords’
(Edwards 1983; Maharaj 1994). Often Indians would let a huge plot of land to an African for
a nominal site rent. The tenant would then sub-lease to hundreds of others who would build
shacks and pay rent. As a result a large class of African ‘tenant-landlords’ came into being,
who had a vested interest in the continued existence of Cato Manor. This group also
operated ‘shackshops’ in Cato Manor, and experienced a great deal of insecurity and
competition:

They lead an insecure, harassed existence squeezed by the authorities on one side and by
competition with Indian traders on the other. These illegal traders and `tenant-landlords' form
the social soil for the anti-Indian attitudes that one finds in the area (Fighting Talk August
1959:3).

However, while the interaction between African workers and the Indian petty bourgeoisie
was primarily exploitive, Indian businesses in Cato Manor provided opportunities for
African workers and their families to escape from the austerity of direct local state control:
 Indian traders provided the basic infrastructure of the squatters' slums: the bus services and
retail outlets - the services which could be provided because of the particular position of Indian
people as a `buffer group' in the racial hierarchy of urban segregation (Hemson 1977:103).

The incipient conflict between Africans and Indians in Cato Manor burst into the open with
the January 1949 riots.19 Africans sacked and looted Indian stores. After two days of bloody
rioting 50 Indians and 87 Africans were killed, and 503 Indians and 541 Africans were
injured. Thousands of Indian stores and dwellings were destroyed or damaged (Ladlau 1975).
The state viewed the violence as a racial conflict between Indians and Africans, and argued
that this justified its policy of racial separation.20 This view was reinforced by evidence
submitted by individual Africans to the Van Den Heever Commission of Inquiry:

They all expressed a deep and widespread resentment of the Indians, complaining of being
overcharged in Indian shops, of ill-treatment on Indian buses, [and] of rack-renting Resentment
was expressed at the virtual Indian ... monopolisation of those branches of trade and transport
serving African areas, while complaints with regard to the superior position of the Indian in
industry and in the trade-union movement were also voiced (Ladlau 1975:18-19).

However, while there was Indian-African tension, the riot was a ‘complex phenomenon, fed
by white prejudice and Government policy as well as by the aspirations of an embryonic
African bourgeoisie’ (Ladlau 1975:19). While the riots appeared to be unplanned,
structurally, they were predetermined by the nature of the South African social formation:

The differential incorporation of the various racial groups, enjoying different levels of rewards,
set the stage for seeking a scapegoat and revenge for long-suffered misery. Indians were
perceived by Africans as most obviously benefitting from this situation precisely because they
occupied a ‘middleman’ role. These stereotypes provided a focal point for quick mobilisation of
Africans (Moodley 1980:231).

Hilda Kuper, a social anthropologist, argued that like Jews in other countries, Indians were
being used as ‘scapegoats’ by the dominant ethnic groups:

Sufficiently wealthy to serve as a bait for greed, too few to be feared and, in the main,
ideologically opposed to counter aggression with physical violence, their ethnic difference and
cultural diversity serve as excuses for discrimination and oppression (The Star 4/6/79).

It was rather unfortunate that prominent African leaders in Natal have from time to time
attempted to threaten Indians by referring to the 1949 riots (Moodley 1980). Indo-African
tensions burst into the open again in 1985 with the Inanda riots. The prevailing
circumstances and causes of the riots were somewhat similar to that of the 1949 riots.
However, there were also important differences: the state used the 1949 riots to justify its
ideology and policies of segregation. ‘The conflict of 1985 is an end product of that process’
(Hughes 1987:354).
Anxieties in the Democratic Era
As the momentous democratic elections approached in April 1994, historical events
coalesced with the more immediate to reinforce the feeling of vulnerability and fear so
characteristic of middlemen minorities, especially in periods of political change. The Indo-
African riots of 1949 in Cato Manor and 1985 in Inanda, continued to weigh heavily on the
memories of Indians. This was reinforced by the expulsion of Indians in post-colonial Kenya
and Uganda. The Natal region also created its own insecurities with the area through much
of the 1980's, convulsed in internecine violence between Inkatha and the United Democratic
Front (Desai and Maharaj 1996).

In the immediate build-up to the elections, many in the Indian community were unsettled
when Africans invaded 779 houses earmarked for Indian occupation in Cato Manor. Media
attention around the occupations was intense, and the fact that it happened in Cato Manor
served to heighten anxiety (Johnson and Zulu 1996). The ANC approach only served to
exacerbate fear and suspicion. Mandela initially appealed to the African squatters to move
out, but subsequently appeared to backtrack (Gigaba and Maharaj 1996).

These developments highlighted feelings of vulnerability especially in the large working class
Indian townships of Phoenix and Chatsworth, which are contiguous to African residential
areas, Kwa Mashu-Inanda and Umlazi, respectively. Over the past few years, African
squatters from Inanda have sporadically entered Phoenix and looted households. In some
areas of Phoenix that border Inanda and Ntuzuma, houses have been abandoned after
consistent attacks. In recent times, African squatters have taken to occupying vacant land in
Indian suburbs, producing new sources of tension. It is these perceptions which appeared to
gain currency as the elections approached. Fear and vulnerability became the pervasive
phenomenon. As much as physical security was an issue, security at the level of the job
market was a major concern for Indians. Affirmative action was seen as a major threat.

Though a large proportion of Indians belong to the lower classes, their average socio-
economic situation is above the South African one. Some Indian entrepreneurs succeeded in
taking advantage of the post-apartheid black-empowerment deals. It has been argued that
‘affirmative action policies in the 1990s have expanded the commercial and professional
opportunities available to (Indians), resulting in their slice of national income expanding
exponentially in the decade after 1994’ (Habib and Naidu 2004:2).

However, the poorest sections of the Indian community have been adversely affected by the
‘simultaneous application of an affirmative action policy with a neo-liberal economic
programme’ (Habib and Naidu 1999:189). Those Indians with low levels of skills and
training are vulnerable and can be easily replaced by Africans when companies are forced to
change the demographic profile of their employees (Habib and Naidu 2004). The
government response was that Indians also ought to be favoured by affirmative action, and
that any attempt to exclude them from such programmes was a deliberate misinterpretation
of the legislation.
In terms of their economic status by the end of the 1980's, Indians had come to occupy what
has been referred to as an in-between character (Freund 1995). There was a general tendency
for Indians rather than Africans to move upwards into skilled occupations (Bell 1983). An
important factor in the Indian propensity for upward mobility was that the level of
educational attainment of the economically active Indian population was substantially higher
than that of Coloureds and Africans, facilitated at least partially by community education
projects initiated by the Indian community.

However, there is also a proportionally large Indian working class (60 percent) in South
Africa (Desai 1996:124). Many of these workers have little in common with affluent Indians
as far as life-style is concerned (a function of vastly different consumer capacities) - yet they
too identify and are identified with middle and high income earners. Many Indian workers
are singled out as a minority in the middle because of the semi-skilled or supervisory
positions inside of the factory plant assigned to them by the white bosses. Often Indian
workers also enjoy dissimilar access to education and training inside the company (Desai and
Maharaj 1996). While those in the business and professional sectors thrived in the post-
apartheid era, working class Indians increasingly feel disillusioned and marginalised in the
rainbow nation.

Conclusion
The main theoretical proposition of this paper was that the formation of ethnic identity was
influenced by struggles within groups, between groups, and between the state and its various
ethnic populations. In this context this paper presented a historical perspective to the
struggles of Indians, a major ethnic group in Natal, in their quest for recognition as South
Africans. In this process they engendered tensions and conflicts among themselves, with the
white ruling class and the African majority, as well as the local and central states. In any
society where racial discrimination is predominant, racist ideology will be enunciated by the
state and economic structures at a number of levels (Sarre 1989). Indians struggled against
discrimination, poverty, and lack of political and civic representation. Given their initial
indentured status, they were regarded as ‘temporary sojourners’ in the land of their birth for
the greater part of a century. 1n 1961 they were accepted as South African citizens, albeit
second class.

Indians managed to survive the economic and political onslaught primarily because of some
locally specific configurations, along with a consciousness of themselves as an ethnic group
based on some kind of identification with what they considered a rich cultural heritage. The
ability to mobilise this ethnicity helped. According to Chazan (1988:102) ‘ethnicity as a
subjective basis for collective consciousness gains relevance to the political process when it
spurs group formation and underpins political organisation.’ However, Indians were not a
homogeneous group, and experienced various divisions and tensions, particularly between
the traders and the working class. There was increasing evidence that political organisations
were used to articulate merchant interests, sometimes at the expense of the underclass.
Certainly, it was only in the post-1945 period that working class issues became more
prominent in Indian political agendas. This tradition of non-co-operation with the apartheid
regime continued into the 1980s when more than 80 percent of the Indian community
rejected participation in the tricameral parliament.

Indian labour contributed significantly to the economic development of the Natal region.
However, the commercial, merchant and professional groups were perceived as an economic
threat to whites in Natal, and this was reflected in racial prejudices which were transformed
into policies limiting their access to land and housing, as well as trading opportunities.
Initially, these policies were confined to the local state, but as the pressure from the white
electorate mounted, the central state was forced to introduce sweeping legislation which
culminated in the Ghetto Act of 1946. Hence, the social and economic prejudices of whites
against Indians was sanctified by legislation, and adopted as state policy.

Indians enjoyed a relatively privileged position compared to that of the African majority
both because of community survival strategies and the relative privileges they enjoyed
compared to Africans. In addition to dominating the trading sector, they also competed with
Africans in the urban labour market. The nascent conflict between these two groups burst
into the open with the 1949 riots, and has resurfaced periodically. The riots reflected a
complex interaction between race, ethnic, political, economic, and social forces.

With the current political changes taking place, there has been concern that the cultural,
religious and interests of Indians may be jeopardised. At least for some the Indian
contribution to the socio-political transformation in South Africa should be the ‘satyagraha’
tradition, to ‘demonstrate to the country and to the world that the principles of non-
violence, democracy and racial tolerance will have a home in a future South Africa ... and a
vigorously protected one at that’ (The Leader 18/9/91).

Notes
1. The category 'whites' like the category 'African' is not a singular racial or ethnic
group. Differences mark these categories too however, space precludes a longer
discussion of the interpellation of these differences alongside the differences in the
category 'Indian'. Moreover, the period for this study, the late 1800s until 1994 (the
dismantling of the apartheid government), was marked by a relative consolidation
and marking of racial difference along the major categories.
2. For an in depth analysis of the arrival of Indians in South Africa, and their historical
development, see Waiz 1927; Joshi 1942; Stein 1927; Calpin 1949; Joshi 1952;
Thompson 1952; Palmer 1957; Pachai 1971; Pachai 1979; Bhana and Brain 1990; Desai
1996; Ferguson-Davie C.J. (n.d.).
3. Section 9 of Law 14 of 1859, cited by Ferguson-Davie, (n.d.), p. 11.
4. For some vivid examples of problems experienced by the indentured labourers, see
Bhana, and Pachai, (1984) Meer, (1980); Sannyasi and Chaturvedi (1931).
5. Cited in Thompson (1952:63).
6. Only 50 plots of land were granted out of 13 000 applications (see Ginwala, 1974:426).
7. Report of the Protector of Indian Immigrants, 1901, cited in Brain, 1985, op. cit., p.
228.
 8. A good analysis of the trading restrictions imposed on Indians is provided by Gabriel
(1938) and Pachai (1978).
9. ‘The Truth about the Indian in South Africa’, a reply to `Meet the Indian in South
Africa', (The South African Government's Illustrated Brochure), issued by the SAIC,
n.d., p. 11.
10. U.G. No. 39-1941, Report of the Indian Penetration Commission; U.G. No. 21-1943,
Report of the Second Penetration (Durban) Commission.
11. ‘The Indian in Natal - is he the victim of oppression?’ Pamphlet issued by the DCC and
the Durban Joint Wards Committee, 1946.
12. Minutes of Council-in-Committee Meeting of the DCC held with the Technical Sub-
Committee on Race Zoning, 15/8/51.
13. Hansard, col. 1472, 5/8/58.
14. For a critical analysis of Gandhi's role in South Africa, see Swan (1985) and Naidoo
(1989).
15. United opposition to the Pegging Act in 1943 saw the merger of the NIC and NIA as
the `newly formed' Natal Indian Congress in 1943.
16. Report of the Passive Resistance Council. Source: NIC Agenda Book, 1947.
17. These included restrictions on movement between provinces; the Colour Bar;
Apprenticeship Act of 1944; and the `Civilised Labour' Policy. See Naidoo and Naidoo
(1955).
18. The SAIC was formed in 1923 and comprised the NIC, Transvaal Indian Congress
(TIC, established in 1927) and the Cape British Indian Council. See Mesthrie (1989).
19. For different views on the riots see Meer (1969); Ladlau (1975); Kuper (1965); and
Webster (1978).
20. UG 36-1949. Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Riots in Durban. Pretoria:
Government Printer.

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 6
Indo-Caribbean Political Leaders during the 20th Century
Sahadeo Basdeo
&
Brinsley Samaroo

Introduction
During the period of Indian indentureship to the British, French and Dutch Caribbean (1838
– 1920) approximately 500,000 girmityas (agreement signers) made the long journey of just
over 10,000 miles across the kala pani. Most of the labourers remained in the region after the
end of their bondage. About 25% returned to India after fulfilling their five or ten year
contracts. Today the descendants of the indentured workers are spread over the whole
Caribbean space, forming a majority in Guyana and substantial minorities in Trinidad and
Tobago as well as Suriname. In the other smaller Caribbean states, East Indians form groups
in populations which are predominantly Afro-Caribbean. The table-1 gives a breakdown of
spatial distribution, compiled from statistical information in West Indian census reports
during the last fifty years.

Table-1: East Indian Immigration to the Caribbean, 1838 – 1917

Colony Arrivals Current% Total Population

Guyana 238,909 51 940,000
Trinidad 143,939 40 1.2 million
{Guadeloupe 42,326 16 660,000
{Martinique 25,404
Jamaica 37,027 1.3 2.7 million
Suriname 34,404 35 450, 00
French Guyana 8,500 4 191,309
Grenada 3,200 3.2 95,343
St. Vincent & The Grenadines 2,472 6 117,793
St. Lucia 4,354 3 164,213
St. Kitts 337
St. Croix 300
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The question of numbers in the Caribbean scenario is important in that the larger the
numbers of East Indians, the greater has been the tendency to maintain an Indian identity.
In places such as Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname the presence of substantial
numbers has made cultural cohesion possible. This in turn has contributed to the creation of
what Archbishop Desmond Tutu has described as ‘a rainbow culture’ which brings together
the majority of the world’s ethnicities, each adding its own uniqueness towards the creation
of the a greater Caribbean civilization.

In areas of smaller East Indian settlement, the presence of South Asians is less noticeable.
Indian names are more the exception than the rule; Rasulan has become Rosalind, Kismet is
now Kenneth and Amar is Andy. Devali and Phagwa celebrations or the observance of
Mohurram is a rarity. Some of the Indians have migrated over the last century to the larger
settlements in Trinidad and Guyana, and then, to North America where substantial pockets
of Indo- Caribbean people exist in New York, Toronto and Miami. In these latest areas of
settlement they have recreated an attenuated Indo- Caribbean culture complete with temples,
satsangs, yagnas, mauloods and Q’uran khwani.

This paper focuses on the political careers of four major Indo-Caribbean leaders in Guyana
and Trinidad & Tobago; both former British colonies which gained their independence in
1966 and 1962 respectively. One of these leaders is Ranjit Kumar (1912 – 1982) who was
born in the Punjab and educated in England. In 1935 he migrated to Trinidad where he
spent the rest of his life. The other Indo-Caribbean leaders considered are Adrian Cola
Rienzi (1905 – 1972), Mitra Gokhale Sinanan (1910 – 1983), and Cheddi Jagan (1918 - 1997).
Rienzi and Sinanan were born in Trinidad and like Kumar, were educated in England. Jagan
on the other hand was born in British Guiana and unlike the others was educated in the
United States of America. All three spent their adult years in the politics of nation building
and the 'Indian' cause in the British Caribbean.

The Indian presence in the larger areas of their Caribbean settlements did much to create a
plural society in the region, albeit one where each group rather holds to its own culture,
existing side by side with other groups, coming together when necessity arises, for example
in the work place or the market but not effectively eroding its boundaries. Thus Trinidad
and Guyana Jamaican anthropologist M.G. Smith (1974: 14) points out, the Indian segment
is clearly differentiated from the remaining population with the divisions that are deeper than
those among the white, black and coloured populations in the rest of the region (Smith 1974:
12-13).

At crucial points in these plural societies political leaders of the two major races (African and
Indian) tried to forge joint action and sought to unite around common, shared problems.
Rienzi, Jagan and Sinanan for example, used class solidarity as their rallying point but in
most cases the colonizing powers (Britain and the USA) intervened to block attempts at
unification. The fear of a united protest movement galvanized the colonizers into repressive
action. We have to understand, secondly, the manner in which the Westminster system of
government created in the United Kingdom and imposed on the colonies, underwent
considerable subversion, becoming instead an agency for perpetrating divisions among
colonized peoples. Characterized as it is by the encouragement of political parties and the
formation of Government and Opposition along party lines, the Westminster model lent
itself to the formation of parties and factions based on ethnic, communal and cultural
differences. In Cyprus it encouraged separation along Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot
loyalties, in Nigeria among Yorubas and Ibos and in the Caribbean between African and
East Indian and between black and white.

Similarly the politics of Trinidad and Guyana are premised on African/Indian differences
and ideology has played a minimal role in the contest for power. As the prospect of
Independence increasingly appeared a reality from the fifties of the last century, the groups
that formed around racilised differences sought to position themselves as the inheritor of the
colonial mantle, to the exclusion of the other. This consideration dominates the politics of
these now Independent nations up to this time. A final general consideration has been the
wariness with which elite Caribbeans (black and white) have viewed Indians. Even white
Europeans who had served in the colonies shared a similar suspicion of Indians. In the
colony of British Guiana both the British police commissioner and the American Consul
supported the exclusion of Indians from the police force on the basis of their physical and
educational inferiority (Rabe 2005: 127).1 And in neighbouring Trinidad a British–appointed
Commission set up to arbitrate among West Indian territories, each wanting to be capital of
the proposed West Indian federation, had this to say as the Commission rejected the claims
of Trinidad & Tobago:

A disturbing element in the political life of Trinidad, to which importance is attached in the
other islands, is the presence of a large East Indian population. Thirty five percent of the
population is of East Indian descent. East Indians it is alleged have ideas and loyalties
differing from those to be found elsewhere in the Federation and they exercise a disruptive
influence on the social and political life in Trinidad which would vitiate the social and
political life of the capital if it were placed on that island (Federal Capital Commission Report,
Trinidad, 1956: 20).

The rulers even viewed the activities of the Indian High Commissioners to the Caribbean
with deep suspicion. In the post–1947 period the recent bitterness of the Indian
independence struggle could not be forgotten. In 1954 Trinidad’s Colonial Secretary Maurice
Dorman, on a visit to the Colonial office in London expressed his anger at the way in which
Shri Nanda, the Indian High Commissioner to Trinidad was ‘having a unifying influence on
the Indian political leaders’. He was accused of encouraging the East Indian community in
opposing the proposed federation and he demanded with Colonial Office support, Nanda’s
recall from Trinidad.2 Nanda did in fact leave quietly after this Colonial Office discussion. As
events turned out, the East Indians of Trinidad did not oppose federation. What they
demanded were guarantees of their freedom and security. Having been promised these
requests, their political leader Bhadase Sagan Maraj (1920 – 1971) accompanied the Chief
Minister Dr. Eric Williams to the meetings which chose the Federal Capital site. Trinidad
and Tobago won the contest and a grateful Chief Minister publicly thanked Maraj for this
crucial role in these federal negotiations.

Ranjit Kumar (1912-1982)

It is against the background of pitfalls and challenges that we will now consider the
particular activities of Caribbean East Indian leaders. Ranjit Kumar was a most unusual
Indo-Caribbean political leader. Born in Rohtak in the Punjab, Kumar lost his father Shadi
Ram when he was only ten months old. From that time, the young Ranjit started a
wandering life which finally brought him to Trinidad in 1935. First he was taken to his
maternal grandparents in Lahore from whence he was taken to London in 1919, supported
by an uncle. In 1930 at the tender age of 18 the young student obtained his BSc (Eng) from
Imperial College London University. After writing the Indian Civil Service exams, he was
posted as an officer cadet in the Punjab Police Training School at Phillaut near Ludhiana. He
remained as an assistant police superintendent in the Punjab until 1933 when he grew bored
of the work at Attock and began to look for other employment. It was during this period
that he met a Muslim from Trinidad who had gone to India in search of an Islamic Leader
for Caribbean Muslims. In 1934 Kumar left India for London en route to Trinidad where he
arrived in 1935. Not only did Kumar find such a leader but he realized that Indian films were
not being shown in the Caribbean. Here was an entrepreneurial opportunity that could not
be missed!

In the Caribbean Kumar lived many lives, all at the same time. As a promoter of Indian films
he introduced early Bombay movies to packed houses in Trinidad and Tobago as well as
British Guiana: Bala Joban, Afzal, Jungal Ka Chavan, Cyclewali, Midnight Mail and many others.3
Whilst engaged in promoting these films, Kumar obtained employment as an Engineer in
the oil industry and later with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. In these situations
he was a pioneer in the establishment of the oil industry as well as in the development of
Trinidad’s capital city of Port of Spain. At yet another level Kumar became a leading force in
directing Indian cultural revival during a period of re-construction after the de-construction
which had taken place during the trauma of indentureship in the century up to the 1940s. He
founded the Trinidad Maha Sabha which he allied to the All India Hindu Maha Sabha and in
1938 he invited Dr. Parashuram Sharma, a leader of the India-based body, to the Caribbean.
Here Dr. Sharma spent nine months travelling extensively and expounding on the principles
of Sanatan Dharma. Together, they founded the monthly Hindu Maha Sabha Bulletin in March
1940, which became the major agency for the promotion of religious and secular
information about developments in India and in the Indian diaspora. As Kumar plunged
into journalism he wrote also for the general public of the islands. The purpose of his
journalism, as he puts it, was to educate the ‘bare-footed man’ and his style, he claimed, was
based on that of the 19th century essayist/administrator in India, Thomas Macaulay whose
‘writing was crystal clear, precise, using the simplest words, leaving no room for ambiguity’.
His many articles appeared in the Caribbean Herald, The Challenge as well as the Trinidad
Guardian which remains currently a major Caribbean daily.

Kumar also emerged as one of the island’s leading politicians. What is special about his
career was the fact that unlike most contemporary East Indian politicians, his political
activism was not confined to the East Indian sector of the population. He was able to bridge
the divide between the two major races in the colony. Kumar’s initial foray into politics was
in the capital city of Port of Spain which was predominantly black. The Port of Spain
municipality, created in 1845, had never had an East Indian Councillor until 1943 when
Kumar won an election; here he remained for two years before entering national politics,
winning a seat in the Legislative Council in 1946. Whilst a member of the legislature, he
returned to municipal politics, winning a seat in Port of Spain in 1947. After the completion
of this second term in the Port of Spain City Council, he returned for a third time as
Alderman from 1950 to 1956. From 1946 to 1956 he remained in the national legislature,
winning two elections (1946 and 1950) in two different constituencies in South Trinidad.
Today the people of Kumar Village in the county of Victoria fondly remember the engineer
politician who marked out their settlement from the sugar cane fields and provided the
necessary infrastructure for the establishment of a vibrant rural community. Today too the
Hindu and Muslim communities remember him for his tireless advocacy of causes which
were dear to them as they sought to rise above the drudgery of plantation life:

The battle to win State recognition for Hindu and Muslim Schools, the recognition of Hindu
and Muslim marriages and the legal right to cremate their dead on open pyres. All of these
battles were won during his lifetime (Kumar 1981: 223).

What then, were the particular qualities which made Kumar such a popular leader among the
East Indians as well as in the wider national community? For one thing, he saw himself as a
member of the globalized British Empire which allowed easy movement between India and
England and to the Caribbean as one large British space. The fact that he had studied in the
seat of the British Empire enhanced his professional mobility, and his mastery of three
languages (English, Hindi and Urdu) gave him wide access to many audiences and sources of
information. His military training in India allowed him to attain 'qualities' that were necessary
for upward mobility in a racist colonial environment. His broad knowledge of relevant
technical issues (flooding, electricity supply, construction of roads and buildings) ensured
that there was a wider non-Indian audience which looked to him for leadership. Additionally
his close following of world affairs which was reflected in his frequent articles, gave him a
wide audience which transcended ethnic or religious boundaries. He wrote with equal
passion about the problems of Afghanistan or about the sugar industry or what should be
the role of the Church in the education of youths. For these reasons he was a leader in the
Port of Spain City Council whilst to the East Indians he was dubbed the ‘Lion of the
Punjab’. His memory remains as an indissoluble link between India and the Caribbean.

Indo-Caribbean Leaders
Adrian Cola Rienzi (1905 – 1972) a contemporary of Ranjit Kumar, was another Indo-
Caribbean leader who, whilst retaining his Indian identity, was also able to claim his space as
a Caribbean person during the crucial period of transition between India and the New World
habitat. He was born in the Southern sugar belt area of Trinidad as Krishna Deonarine. His
grandfather Chaithnath Tiwari had fled from Bihar in order to escape British vengeance for
his participation in the 1857 Revolt. In Trinidad, Tiwari had married Lakshmin, the grand-
daughter of an Indian general who had fought in the army of Babu Kuarsingh one of the
leaders of the Revolt. In Trinidad, Deonarine’s parents became petty shop-keepers servicing
many Indians who were still under indentureship. After his secondary education Krishna
Deonarine became a law clerk in Trinidad’s second major city, San Fernando. At this stage in
his life Deonarine decided upon law as a career which meant that he had to go to England to
study. Being aware of the difficulty which he might encounter abroad with a very Indian
name, he changed his name in 1927 to Adrian Cola Rienzi. He took the name Adrian
because of his admiration for an English magistrate Adrian Clarke who was his exemplar in
Trinidad. Cola Rienzi was adopted because of Deonarine’s great admiration for Cola di
Rienzo (1313 – 1354) the Roman activist who had successfully led a revolution in Rome in
1347. This revolution had severely curtailed the power of the nobility and had restored
power to the peoples’ representatives.

During his years abroad (1930 – 1934) Rienzi continued his political activism which had
started in Trinidad. Whilst a student at Trinity College in Dublin he was an active member of
the Irish branch of the League Against Imperialism (LAI) and spoke at many of their
meetings.4 His major theme was the Indian struggle for independence and in this campaign
he was joined by many Irish and Indian freedom fighters. Soon he decided to go to India in
order to involve himself more directly in the struggle but he was denied a visa to travel there.
In the circumstances Rienzi moved to London where he entered the Middle Temple in 1931
and was called to the Bar in 1934. In London, Rienzi plunged into political activity. Here he
came under the influence of Shapurji Saklatvala, (1874 – 1936) an ardent Indian Socialist,
who had settled in England. ‘Saks’ as he was popularly known, had abandoned the luxury of
his family’s (the Tatas) comforts in India to embark on a career in British trade unionism and
left–wing politics. His greatest wish he said was to ‘spread socialism from one end of the
world to the other.’ Saks won seats to the British parliament in 1922 and 1924 and was one
of the major organisers of the General Strike in Britain in 1926. Rienzi remained in constant
contact with Saks and together they worked in the Indian Freedom League and the Indian
Independence League.

Adrian Cola Rienzi

These two groups maintained close contacts with the Irish Republican Congress and with
Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association in the United States whose
struggles were common anti-imperialist causes. All of these activities were closely monitored
by Scotland Yard and were reported to the Colonial Office and to the Trinidad colonial
administration. This information was used to make Rienzi’s Trinidad years, after 1934, as
difficult as the British could make it.

Adrian Cola Rienzi returned to Trinidad in June 1934 and immediately applied to be
admitted to the Bar. The local administration, however, refused to admit him. He was
considered ‘a Communist agitator’ who challenged the foreign dominance of the local oil
and sugar industries. Consequently, Rienzi had to appeal to the English
lawyer/parliamentarian Sir Stafford Cripps, upon whose intervention the restriction was
lifted and Rienzi was finally admitted to the Bar. Rienzi’s major contributions to Caribbean
development lay in three areas: he helped to establish the Caribbean trade union movement;
as Mayor of the City of San Fernando and as a member of the colony’s legislative and
executive councils he demonstrated the capability of the Caribbean-born people to manage
their own governance; and his strong advocacy of the problems faced by the recently
emancipated (1920) East Indian population, improved the living conditions of many
thousands of people.

The Caribbean trade union movement, before the entry of Rienzi, was a movement in name
only. Under pressure from vested interests, the colonial administration was most reluctant to
allow for the free growth of trade unionism. Such legislation as they allowed was calculated
to render unionism toothless. A 1932 ordinance, for example, which allowed for the
formation of trade unions, denied the right to picket or protection against actions in tort.
Using the grounds well created by the West Indian–wide disturbances of the 1930s, Rienzi
successfully pressed for the liberalization of trade union regulations after which he organised
and registered the Oilfield Workers Trade Union in 1937 and the All Trinidad Sugar Estates
and Factory Workers’ Trade Union also in 1937. Today these two unions remain the major
representatives for both oil and sugar. Rienzi followed this early success by advising and
organizing other unions. From a total of five ‘unions’ in 1936, there were twenty by 1940. In
1938 there was the formation of the Trinidad and Tobago Trade Union Council of which
Rienzi remained President until 1944. During this period too, Rienzi was one of the
founders of the West Indian Labour Conference of which he was the first Secretary.

Trade union activity led naturally to political involvement. Rienzi’s first foray into politics
was in the San Fernando Borough Council where he was elected for three consecutive terms
(1939–1942) as Councillor and Mayor. From the municipal level he moved upwards to that
of the Legislative Council where he represented an ethnically mixed constituency from 1938
to 1944. It was during this period that he founded the Caribbean’s first socialist party in 1941
namely the Trinidad and Tobago Socialist Party. By 1944 Rienzi had proven to be an
effective trade union leader and an able advocate of the working class and so was invited to
sit on the Governor’s Executive Council in 1944. It has been argued that the State used this
device as a means of getting rid of a political opponent whom they preferred to have on the
government side (Singh 1994: 147). In the event, Rienzi’s acceptance of the high office
effectively removed him from active politics and labour agitation. After his stint in the
Executive Council he joined the Civil Service as a Crown Counsel and he served on a
number of State Commissions and Boards.
Despite this total commitment to national and West Indian causes Rienzi, throughout his
career, found time to encourage Caribbean East Indians to work out their relationship with
India and with their new janam bhoomi in the Western world. Whilst Rienzi believed that
Indians of the diaspora should adhere to the cultural values of their ancient civilization, he
advised against developing a blind loyalty to India. They should be patriotic to their new
places of settlement. His admonition to East Indian youths in 1928 is instructive:

In conclusion I want to close my appeal to the Indian youths of Trinidad by paraphrasing

the eloquent and inspiring words of Subhas Chandra Bose, a noble Indian patriot, in asking
them to take up the torch and set ablaze the whole Colony with the sacred fire of
nationalism and patriotism. No power on earth would be able to quench that sacred flame
(The East Indian Weekly. Trinidad, 28th July 1928).

From the 1930s Rienzi moved actively to give a sense of pride to people who were generally
referred to as ‘coolies’ and often treated as such. In 1936 he advised the colonial government
to set up an advisory board on East Indian matters. In 1937 such a board was appointed.
Rienzi formed the India Club and became its first President. He took office in the East
Indian National Association and this body became the major advocate for State recognition
of Hindu and Muslim marriages, for the privilege of cremation, for the recognition of Hindu
and Muslim schools and for the extension of the franchise to include East Indians. He was a
close ally of Ranjit Kumar in these struggles and both of them lived to see the successful
finalization of their struggle. In fact as Rienzi became older he became increasingly
concerned with the problems of the East Indian segment of the population. In 1947, the
year of Indian independence, Rienzi changed his name once again to Desh Bandhu (patriot).
It was during this last phase of his life that he founded the Indian Cultural Association which
had grown steadily since that time; today it is the National Council of Indian culture, the
flagship organization for the promotion of concerns which are important to the Indo-
Trinidadian community. In similar fashion the headquarters of the sugar union (which Rienzi
founded) has been appropriately named ‘The Adrian Cola Rienzi Complex’.

Western Influences
Yet another Indo-Trinidadian leader who, like Rienzi, worked to establish a place for the
East Indian community as a part of Caribbean society was Mitra Gokhale Sinanan. Born in
Vistabella, San Fernando in southern Trinidad, Mitra Gokhale Sinanan (1910-1983) was a
third generation descendant of an indentured Brahmin family who had served on the
Pempallet estate in South-central Trinidad. After his grandparents completed their indenture,
they moved to Vistabella where his father Ramhit Sinanan, went into business in San
Fernando. Here Ramhit Sinanan became a successful businessman as well as a prominent
political figure in the municipal politics of San Fernando where he served for thirty years as
member of the Borough Council.

Mitra Sinanan therefore grew up in a political environment and from an early age was
exposed to political activity. He also came into contact with many of his father’s friends,
more particularly, people like F.E.M. Hosein and Captain Cipriani both of whom were
regular visitors to the family home and considerably influenced the later life of Mitra
Sinanan. Hosein (1880-1936) a graduate of Oxford and of Lincoln’s Inn (London) was a
barrister who became a political activist. He was elected Mayor of the town of Arima (1929-
31) and member of the legislature (1928-31). Captain A.A. Cipriani (1875-1945) was a
merchant who fought in the First World War after which he entered politics. He was elected
to the Port of Spain City Council (1921-41) and to the legislature (1925-45).

The home of the Sinanan family was also a rendezvous for prominent visitors to San
Fernando in the 1920s and 1930s. Because of the family’s love and admiration for India,
visitors from the sub-continent were always welcomed to their home. In 1929 for instance,
Rev. C.F. Andrews was the house guest of the Sinanan family and made ‘Baroda House’ as
the family home had been dubbed, his base during his visits to Indian communities in South
Trinidad. It was in such an open home environment that Mitra Sinanan received his early
political education as he came into contact with people from all walks of life. Rev. C.F.
Andrews (1871-1940) was an Anglican Pastor who came to India as lecturer in Delhi
University in 1904. In India he became closely identified with the freedom struggle and with
the anti-indentureship campaign. In 1929 he visited British Guiana and Trinidad as the
Mahatma’s emissary to the Caribbean. He reported back to Gandhi about the conditions of
the Indo-Caribbean immigrants.

Mitra Sinanan however, received his formal education at the Vistabella Canadian Mission
(C.M.) School, Naparima College, Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad, Middle Temple and
the London School of Economics in England. For a few months he also studied Latin in
Ireland5 where he met with his countryman and later colleague, the Marxist oriented Rienzi
who at that time was also pursuing studies in jurisprudence at Trinity College in Dublin.
Here they both struck a close relationship and associated themselves with the activities of
the Sinn Feinn Movement. Not surprisingly, the activities of both young colonials were
henceforth closely monitored by British Intelligence, and from 1930 when both men
established base in London as students at Middle Temple, they were placed under close
surveillance (Calder-Marshall 1939: 230).

It was in London that Mitra Sinanan began his formal political career. Like many young
colonials studying in London in the 1930s he came into the mainstream of anti-colonial
thought, was heavily influenced by Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, and
had considerable admiration and regard for people like Sir Stafford Cripps, Arthur Creech-
Jones and other British Labour Party politicians. It is not surprising that in a period of
intellectual ferment, international economic crisis created by the impact of the Great
Depression and the upsurge of the national liberation movement in India that Mitra Sinanan
found himself in the same camp as those who identified with the anti-colonial movement in
London.

At the age of 21, Sinanan joined the anti-colonial struggle in London by becoming a member
of the League of Coloured Peoples in 1931. Under the chairmanship of the distinguished
Jamaican Dr. Harold Moody, the Trinidadian served as secretary of the League and actively
mobilized support for the organization. The League represented progressive and enlightened
public opinion among coloured peoples in London and supported the demands of Africans,
Asians and other colonial peoples for democratic rights, civil liberties and self-determination.
It was as a member of the League of Coloured Peoples that Sinanan familiarized himself
with the problems of non-West Indian peoples, associated himself with their struggle and
established friendship with some of Africa’s early politicians, more importantly, Kenya’s
Jomo Kenyatta. In fact, Sinanan and Kenyatta represented the League at a conference in
Geneva in 1932 where they presented a position paper on the African child.

It was during Sinanan’s association with the League that it grew as an influential organization
in London setting the pace for colonial protest in the early 1930s. A few years later other
Trinidadians were to join the League and when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935 the
League of Coloured Peoples joined forces with the International African Friends of
Ethiopia, an organization formed in the United Kingdom, to protest against Mussolini’s
fascist policies. There were such prominent black West Indians like C.L.R. James and Sam
Manning from Trinidad, T.A. Marryshow from Grenada and Peter Maillard from British
Guiana who were in the forefront of such agitation. They were also some of the key figures
who were later to feature in the work of George Padmore’s International African Service
Bureau formed in 1937 to seek political redress for colonial peoples (Padmore 1956: 144-47).
It was in this mould of the early anti-colonial tradition that Mitra Sinanan was associated
while in London in the 1930s working with West Indian and Africans alike seeking
democratic rights for colonial peoples in Africa and elsewhere.

While Sinanan associated himself with the broader anti-colonial struggle he had a particular
interest in the nationalist movement in India where Mahatma Gandhi was waging a
campaign against British rule in the sub-continent. Sinanan’s familiarity with the nature of
the struggle while in Trinidad,6 the fact that it was a major subject of discussion in close
family circles, and the reverence and admiration which Sinanan’s father had for the early
nationalist leaders – all generated in the young Sinanan a keen interest in the politics of
decolonization in the sub-continent. In fact, the name Gokhale was given to Sinanan by his
father in admiration for the Indian nationalist leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale one of the
early stalwarts of the Indian National Congress.

The Indian Connection

Like many Indians of his generation in Trinidad he saw India’s struggle as his own. India’s
ethnic and cultural affinity with Trinidad and the role India was playing as the pace setter in
anti-colonial thought and struggle, generated pride among Indians in Trinidad as well as
those domiciled elsewhere in the empire. A victory for the nationalist struggle therefore was
perceived as a victory for Indians in Trinidad. It is in this context that Sinanan closely
associated himself with Indian activists and the Indian students movement in London, so
much so that in 1932, he was elected vice-president of the Indian Students’ Association after
defeating none other than V.K. Krishna Menon who was later to become a major political
player in the Nehru administration. He was a full participant in the activities of the
Association and framed a number of resolutions for the Association’s meetings denouncing
the British Raj and supporting the ‘Quit India movement’ (Malik 1971: 86).
While in London he kept in close touch with developments in Trinidad where Cipriani and
the Trinidad Labour Party were still in the forefront of political agitation in the colony
advocating labour, social and political reforms. Sinanan was an ardent supporter of Cipriani
and maintained an interest in domestic affairs by seeking information from time to time
directly from the Colonial Office about occurrences in the colony. In 1934 he was disturbed
by the outbreak of the East Indian Disturbances on the major sugar estates in Trinidad and
vigorously denounced the composition of the Commission appointed to investigate the riots
and protested against ‘the evidence given in camera’ during the Commission’s hearings (C.O.
295/585, Minute by S.M. Campbell, December 12, 1934). He took his protest to the
Colonial Office where he planned to speak directly with the Permanent Under-Secretary of
State on the matter. His insistence on seeing senior officials paid off, for as the following
minute by S.M. Campbell of the West India Department reveals, he also spoke to a number
of other officials in the Colonial Office.

A young Trinidad East Indian, Mr. M.G. Sinanan … Barrister at Law Middle Temple called
yesterday at the library and asked to seek Council Paper 109 in (T) and was given facilities:
he later asked … to see all sorts of people including Sir John Maffey with whom he seemed
to claim some acquaintance or ‘had met’. He saw Mr. J.B. Williams, Mr. Rootham and later
myself as he had seemed dissatisfied on the evidence point… I gather that Mr. Sinanan, who
is very frank about being anti-Trinidad Government and a great democrat, was very cross
over persons purporting to represent labour being parties to the findings of the Commission
and he seemed to think that East Indians in particular were very badly served in the
Commission’s findings … He also complained of inadequate representation of Indian
(working class) interests in Trinidad and hinted that the Indian represented in the Legislative
Council were not representatives at all (ibid.).

Sinanan, as the minute reveals, also had strong working class sympathies for he denounced
the choice of Seereram Maharaj and Sarran Teelucksingh as representatives of Indian
interests on the Commission. His argument was that both men were wealthy Indians who
represented the interest of the middle class. In much the same way he protested against
Indian representation as existed in the legislative council stating that Teelucksingh, a wealthy
cinema owner and Timothy Roodal, an oil magnate were representatives of their own vested
interest rather than representatives of the Indian working class (ibid.).

By 1935, when Sinanan returned to Trinidad as a barrister-at-law,7 it was clear that he had
developed a view of society and the world to which very few in the establishment would
subscribe. He was a strong democrat with a sense of justice and concern for the welfare of
the oppressed. He also had strong labour leanings and was convinced that political and
constitutional reforms were issues which had to be placed in earnest on the anti-colonial
agenda. More importantly, he returned home at a time when the society was looking for
young, erudite and committed people to help in the anti-colonial movement which was
rapidly picking up momentum. The East Indian population particularly was looking for
political leadership during this crucial period of political transition. As Yogendra Malik has
written, upon Sinanan’s return from the United Kingdom ‘many East Indians looked to him
for leadership with the hope that he might form a political party based upon secular
principles’ (Malik 1971: 86)
For the first few years after his return however, Sinanan chose to establish and build his legal
profession and served as a junior in the chambers of Gaston Johnston Q.C., one of the most
outstanding lawyers in Trinidad at that time. While serving in Port-of-Spain under Gaston
Johnston he worked in an advisory capacity to Rienzi who had returned to Trinidad in 1934
and had become quite active in local politics. In fact, between 1935 and 1937, Rienzi
consulted extensively with Sinanan on a host of issues including the former’s break with
Cipriani and the role which East Indians ought to play in the politics of Trinidad.

Yet Sinanan was not altogether politically inactive at this time, for during the second half of
the thirties he used his professional services to help the cause of labour. On numerous
occasions he gratuitously did a number of quasi-political cases for workers who had been
arrested for staging hunger marches and labour demonstrations during the critical years prior
to the outbreak of the June 1937 riots in Trinidad. It was the June riots of 1937, however,
which catapulted Sinanan to a position of colonial prominence in Trinidad and the
Caribbean and marked the beginning of an active political life for the young East Indian
lawyer.

The riots of 1937 were significant in many respects. It struck a serious blow against British
colonialism (Basdeo 1983: 173), represented an advance in the level of political and labour
consciousness of the working class, and reflected a degree of Afro-Indian solidarity hitherto
unforeseen in Trinidad and Tobago.8 In this sense the riots symbolised the fulfillment of
everything for which Sinanan had been working during his days in London.

When T.U.B. Butler, the black leader of the island-wide strike movement came out of hiding
following the June unrest, he was arrested and incarcerated and found it difficult to attract
legal counsel. His reputation as a social political anarchist, his anti-colonial posturings, and
most importantly his avowed anti-establishment position meant that legal counselors were
unwilling to defend him. When no one else came to his rescue, it was Mitra Sinanan who
volunteered his legal services to Butler and set about defending him at the Assizes in Port-
of-Spain. This gesture of courage, bravery and goodwill characterized the young Indian
lawyer of the 1930s. But it was more than just that. Instinctively, Sinanan saw it as his duty
to defend the hero of the working class who had courageously stood up for the workers
openly challenging the colonial status quo. In much the same way as Rienzi picked up the
struggle where Butler had left off, Mitra Sinanan complemented the struggle by defending
the idol of the workers. Indeed it was Rienzi and Sinanan – both young Indian lawyers –
who stood up to defend and assist Butler and the working class when everyone else refused.

Sinanan encountered considerable problems in attempting to defend Butler. On more than

one occasion he was abused and harassed by prison officials while attempting to interview
his client and in one instance was asked to leave the prison compounds because he had taken
newspapers with him to the goal (Sinanan 1937). Sinanan from the very outset was
apprehensive about the dispensing of justice and wrote a letter to the governor and colonial
secretary in which he made his case that ‘the charges against my client are extremely serious
and unless every possible assistance and facility are given to his Counsel in the preparation of
the defence of the accused then the ends of justice are bound to be defeated’ (Sinanan 1937).
There is no doubt that the authorities were prepared to place whatever obstacles possible to
frustrate and discourage Sinanan’s efforts at defending Butler.

When Butler lost his case against charges of sedition in the Supreme Court of Trinidad and
Tobago in December 1937 and was sentenced to two years imprisonment, Sinanan
immediately filed an application for leave to appeal against the conviction. He contacted Sir
Stafford Cripps in London and sought his services to defend Butler before the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council in the United Kingdom (Sinanan 1938).

Sinanan’s choice of Sir Stafford Cripps was personal and deliberate. He had come to know
Sir Stafford in London quite well and was aware of his legal ability as well as his political
sympathies. In fact, Sir Stafford was held in high esteem by West Indians and colonial
peoples in London for his humanitarian understanding and anti-colonial persuasion and
came to influence many young colonials studying in London in the thirties. As a member of
the opposition Labour Party in Britain he had taken a strong position against the British
Government regarding the West Indian-wide disturbances of the late thirties and in 1937
wrote that the British had been ‘far too complacent about the sufferings of colonial peoples
and have not had the vision to realize that the very pressing dangers which we are facing are
due even more to British imperialism than our own domestic capitalism’ (See Cripps 1977:
xi). Sir Stafford had also served on many of the Labour Party committees appointed to study
West Indian problems and it was his knowledge of Caribbean questions as well as his labour
leanings which persuaded Norman Manley to invite him in September 1938 to launch the
Peoples National Party in Jamaica (Basdeo 1983: 185-86).

These were the considerations which influenced Sinanan to seek the services of Sir Stafford
in Butler’s Appeal. They were also considerations which influenced him to seek the services
of H.L.S. Polak & Co., solicitors and privy council agents, as solicitors in the case (Cripps
1938). Polak was not only a solicitor but like Cripps a member of the British Labour Party
who served on a number of Labour Party committees appointed to study colonial problems.
In addition he was appointed a member of the Colonial Advisory Committee of the British
Trades Union Congress in late 1937 to investigate labour conditions in the colonies.9 Both
Cripps and Polak were therefore ideal choices for the case. In fact Polak was excited about
the case and wrote to Sinanan congratulating him on being ‘able to be of service to … Uriah
Butler, whose case has caused a sensation in legal circles here’ (Polak 1938a). Moreover he
assured Sinanan that while ‘Sir Stafford himself is willing to appear without charging a fee’
his firm of solicitors would charge minimal fees to cover’“the cost incurred in paper work’
(Polak 1938a).

From the Trinidad end Sinanan not only conscientiously handled the legal matters but
himself charged no fees and stood his own expenses to go to London (Polak 1938b). While
in the United Kingdom he worked closely with Sir Stafford on the case and agreed with
English counsel that the case should be fought on the grounds that the Court of Criminal
Appeal was not duly constituted according to the provisions of the Criminal Appeal
Ordinance of 1931. The Privy Council upheld the appeal and Butler’s indictment for sedition
was squashed on May 12, 1939 (Polak 1938c).

Butler’s freedom was seen as a victory for Mitra Sinanan whose prominence in the legal
circles suddenly rose. His name like that of Adrian Cola Rienzi, also a lawyer, became a
household word in Trinidad. Both men were seen as representing the new generation of
Indo-Trinidadians who had not only excelled in their particular professions but had come to
associate themselves with the progressive forces in Trinidad and the Caribbean and/as
champions of the underdog. Sinanan’s prominence subsequently took him to the legislative
council of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1950s where he served as a member of the Butler
Party.

From Trinidad to Guyana

So far we have looked at a number of Indo-Trinidadian leaders, seeking to understand how
they sought to devise ways for the re-construction of the Indian self after its de-construction
during and immediately after indentureship. We shall now briefly examine the career of the
first Indo-Caribbean person to become Prime Minister of a Caribbean state which, upon
Independence in 1966, changed its name from ‘British Guiana’ to ‘Guyana’.

British Guiana was the only British possession and English–speaking colony in continental
South America, having been finally conquered from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars
which followed the French Revolution. In 1803 at the Peace of Amiens it was formally
confirmed as a British possession. Upon Emancipation in 1838 the former slaves abandoned
the plantations in large numbers, many of them moving into the vast South American
jungles setting up their own villages or joining the Amerindians in the search for precious
metals. As in the rest of the Caribbean, attempts were made to replace this lost labour
through the importation of Portuguese, Chinese and free Africans from the other West
Indian Colonies. Since these sources proved to be insufficient, recourse was made to South
Asia from whence the majority of labourers were imported into British Guiana (See Table 1).
Because of the heavy importation of Indians into this colony they became the largest ethnic
group whose presence was the cause of considerable conflict between themselves and the
substantial African minority. Black and coloured leaders pointed to the fact that the Indians
constituted scab labour in that they worked for ‘slave’ wages which they had refused upon
Emancipation. Additionally, they correctly argued that they were indirectly paying for their
own displacement since one-third of Indian immigration costs were being drawn from
public revenues. A third, very Guyanese argument was that there was fierce competition for
the marginal lands on the narrow coastal strip whereon ninety percent (90%) of the
Guyanese population resides. The other ten (10%) live on the (90%) forests and savannahs
of the interiors. Indians and Africans have always had to fight for the cultivable pieces on
the swampy coastland which itself is subject to frequent flooding whenever the large rivers
from the interior are in spate. In Trinidad the tension has been less because of the greater
availability of cultivable areas for both ethnic groups.
It was into such a situation that Cheddi Jagan (1918 – 1997) was born. The grandson of
indentured Bihari labourers, Cheddi’s early years were spent on the plantations of Port
Mourant on Guyana’s West Coast swamplands. His parents, like many others of that
generation, saw education as the major lever to upward mobility; they therefore at great
personal sacrifice, sent him to the capital Georgetown for his secondary education.10 In 1936
Jagan left for the USA where he studied first at Howard University and then at North
Western in Chicago where he qualified as a dentist. In the USA he met and married Janet
Rosenberg a qualified nurse who came to Guyana in 1943, the year of her husband’s return
to his native land. Jagan like so many contemporary, young qualified returnees to the
Caribbean, took to political agitation soon after his return. His early pronouncements and his
programme for reform was the cause of considerable alarm at home and abroad, particularly
in the USA and the United Kingdom. S. Referring to the monopoly exercised by one Sugar
Company – Bookers Sugar Company – Jagan outlined his intention in 1953:

Booker is the symbol of British Imperialism in B.G. …. It is represented in all phases of the
economic life, so much that B. G. is sometimes colloquially referred to as Bookers Guiana
… The workers are sweated and millions of dollars produced by them find their way into the
pockets of sugar ‘gods’ in England … As a socialist party [Jagan’s PPP] rationalization of the
sugar industry, and indeed all major industries is our objective (cited in Seecharan 2005: 61).

This declaration of nationalization and socialism raised alarm bells in the United Kingdom
and its close ally the USA. The Cold War era had just started and the Cuban Revolution of
1959 made matters much worse for Jagan and his left-wing programme. A visit to Cuba in
1960 by Cheddi and Janet Jagan added salt to the wound and put the Jagans on a collision
path against the US that did not end until 1992 when he won the first democratically
conducted election since 1961. We shall now briefly trace Jagan’s career from his first
electoral victory in 1953 to his last in 1992.

Despite the prior history of ethnic antagonism Cheddi Jagan was able to combine forces
with his fellow-Guyanese of African descent, Forbes Burnham to form the socialist oriented
Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) which handsomely won the first election which it contested
in April 1953. The PPP won 18 out of the 24 available seats. To Winston Churchill, the
British Prime Minister, and Dwight Eisenhower, the American President, this ‘Communist’
take-over of the colony’s government could not be tolerated. In October 1953, Churchill
suspended the constitution and instructed his Governor in the colony to assume full control.
When Cheddi Jagan and his wife defied the regulations prohibiting political meetings they
were both jailed in 1954. As the imperialists prepared the colony for another election,
scheduled for 1957, Britain and the USA sought to keep Jagan out by actively fomenting
ethnic discord among the major races. Jagan’s erstwhile ally, Burnham, was actively
encouraged to break with Jagan. This he did for the 1957 elections in which there were now
two rival PPP slates. The result of that election indicated that Jagan’s PPP had won nine out
of the 14 available seats and Burnham’s PPP had won only three.
 Cheddi Jagan

How did the colony’s government perform under the premiership of Jagan after 1957? An
American scholar who has extensively researched the subject had this to say:

Over the next three years, the Macmillan government found Cheddi Jagan’s leadership
satisfactory. PPP ministers focused on improving the living and working conditions of the
population. They sponsored drainage and irrigation schemes, built houses for sugar workers,
extended workmen’s compensation laws and mandated paid annual vacations for workers
(Rabe 2005: 61).

But the die had been cast against Jagan. Under active United States support, Burnham was
encouraged to form his own party. In 1958 he created the Peoples National Congress (PNC)
which prepared itself for the next election, due in 1961. Despite massive American aid for
Burnham, Jagan’s PPP won 20 out of the 35 seats available in 1961 whilst Burnhams’s PNC
won 11. It was during Jagan’s second term as premier that the Central Intelligence Agency
took the decision to eject him from political leadership by ‘hook or crook’ (Rabe 2005: 131).
Arthur Schlesinger who was one of Kennedy’s principal advisors recalled, in his memoirs,
the deliberate decision of the US government to unseat Jagan. Although the British
government showed a marked preference to Jagan over Burnham, Kennedy insisted that
Cold War considerations must take precedence and worked actively to devise a system which
would take out Jagan. This system was successfully effected in 1964 (Schlesinger. 1965: 775-
79). In that year the Jagan government was forced out by US sponsored strikes, arson and
mayhem in the colony forcing Jagan’s government to resign. A system of proportional
representation was instituted for the 1964 elections and through this system Burnham was
able to maintain dominance in elections and referenda in 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1985. What
was the legacy of Burnham’s long tenure? Again, Professor Rabe’s analysis is instructive:
 Forbes Burnham and his Peoples National Congress practiced the politics of squalor in
Guyana …. Burnham and his followers perpetrated despicable crimes against the Guyanese.
They rigged elections, murdered political opponents, persecuted Indians, stole money, ruined
the economy and impoverished the nation (Rabe 2005: 162).

By the 1990s the Cold War had abated considerably. Jagan and his leftist views were not
considered harmful anymore, and ex-President Jimmy Carter was able to persuade
Burnham’s successor Desmond Hoyte to hold free and fair elections in 1992. Carter’s actual
presence in Guyana for those elections was crucial. Jagan’s PPP easily won those elections
and has continued to win subsequent elections in the nation. Jagan himself died in March of
1997.

Conclusion
What did India mean to these Indo-Caribbean political leaders? For Ranjit Kumar, India was
close at hand; he was born there and had experienced work in rural areas of the North. This
authenticity gave him special authority among Caribbean Indians who saw him as a symbol
of the best that the motherland could produce. His aggressiveness in whatever he did was
also an example to a people who had been cowed down in India and in the Caribbean.
Kumar pointed an acceptable way ahead; both ‘Ranjit’ and ‘Kumar’ became popular names
among Indo-Caribbean youths. Adrian Cola Rienzi had visited India and his study, as the
authors have seen, was filled with pictures of India, his library had a number of books with
Indian themes and his correspondence was filled with letters of many individuals and
organizations in India. His Indian identity did not preclude him from claiming his Caribbean
space. He was thus an East Indian West Indian. Sinanan was no different. Like Rienzi he was
not parochial. He had a larger view of society and the world; he was imbued with a sense of
justice and worked for equality and freedom for all Trinidadians. Sinanan belonged to that
generation of East Indians who remained undaunted in the quest to build bridges between
East Indians and Africans in Trinidad and Tobago and by extension demonstrated a keen
sense of commitment in the building of a new social and political order in the Caribbean.
Cheddi Jagan was similar. On the one hand, he was intensely proud of his Indian heritage.
His grandparents he proudly claimed, were for ‘Basti in Uttar Pradesh, and about sixty miles
from Allahabad, Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth place’ (Jagan 1966: 11). At Howard University he
specialized in the exact natural sciences. ‘Outside of these subjects, all that interested me
were the writings of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian question; at that time India was in the
forefront of the struggle for independence’ (Jagan 1966: 45).

The position of the Indian National Congress influenced his attitude to the Second World
War and he saw ‘Hitler and fascism through the eyes of the Indian National Congress and
… identified the struggle for freedom in India as part and parcel of the struggle for freedom
at home’ (Jagan 1966: 55). As the United States and Britain pressed him to abandon his ties
with Moscow (and Cuba) and place himself firmly on this side of the Iron Curtain he argued
that he was following India’s path of neutrality and could, like India, deal with both sides.
What he failed to understand was that India was not in the American sphere of influence and
therefore did not pose a security threat to America. Secondly, he failed to consider India’s
vast physical and population size or her increasing military strength. Guyana was a small fly
which could be easily swatted! Jagan appears to have realized this fact late in life, at which
point, the Americans were prepared to install him into office once again. He died as
Executive President in 1997.

These four Indo-Caribbean leaders have etched themselves in the history of the Caribbean.
Three of them (Rienzi, Sinanan and Jagan) were among the first descendants of Girmityas
who were able to obtain primary and secondary education in the colonies after which they
went abroad for further studies. They were exemplars who constituted the first generation of
educated Indo-Caribbean people. The attainment of this education in the Western mode,
would have been at considerable cost. Yet, when they returned from study they did not take
the traditional path of rapid recouping of their investment. In fact, they all spent a
considerable part of their energies in seeking to improve the condition of the working class,
both African and Indian. At the same time, as professionals who had emerged from the
Indian sector of the labouring population, they were able to focus on problems which were
of special importance to this group: the recognition of Hindu and Muslim marriages, the
privilege of cremating their dead, literacy in English and participation in the Independence
movement. Ranjit Kumar, the fourth leader, was born in India but he adopted Trinidad as
his homeland and joined with the other leaders in seeking to improve the lot of the ordinary
person. At the same time he used his Indian background to inform the local Indo-
Trinidadian population of events in the India of their imagination. We can say, then, that
these four leaders tested the waters initially, demonstrating that people of Indian ancestry
possessed the ability to participate in the politics of a multi-racial society. Regarding
themselves as members of a global British Empire they saw no contradiction in proclaiming
cultural loyalty to the ancestral imaginary (India) whilst having their feet firmly planted in the
American world and its different ways of interpreting society. Like other immigrant peoples,
they clung to the familiar, inherited tradition whilst seeking to negotiate their emergence in a
space which had already been claimed by those who had previously arrived. Had these
pioneers not succeeded in negotiating that transition from the Old World to the New, the
subsequent shape of Caribbean society would have been different. As it happened, they
provided some clear directions regarding the path to be taken by Indo-Caribbean peoples.

Notes
1. In a population where Indians were in a clear majority there were 1,320 blacks and
164 Indians in the police force in 1964.
2. National Archives. London. CO1031/1972. See Draft Note of discussion held on
21st Dec. 1954.
3. The authors were able to obtain access to Kumar’s private papers from whence
much of this material was gathered.
4. For an account of Rienzi’s early life, see Calder-Marshall 1939.
5. The authors extend thanks to the late Senator Ashford Sastri Sinanan for this
information as well as his help in other areas of this paper. He died in 1990. He was
the younger brother of Mitra and was himself a prominent lawyer and political figure
in Trinidad and the Caribbean. He served as Leader of the Opposition in the West
 Indian Federal Parliament (1958-62); served as Speaker of the Legislative Council of
Trinidad; Member of Parliament and Senator and as Trinidad High Commissioner to
India.
6. See Brinsley Samaroo, ‘the Vanguard of Indian Nationalism in Trinidad: The East
Indian Weekly, 1928-1932’ (unpublished paper read at the Conference of Association
of Caribbean Historians in 1977), pp. 7-9, where he points out that considerable
press coverage was given to the Indian Nationalist struggle in Trinidad newspapers
especially The East Weekly.
7. Mitra Sinanan had returned to Trinidad for a brief period in 1933 at the time of his
father’s death. He left for British Guiana in 1933 to work with J.A. Luckoo and G.J.
Gajraj but spent only six months before returning to London in 1934. He then left
London for Trinidad in early 1935.
8. See Port of Spain Gazette, June 22, 1937; also The People, June 24, 1939.
9. Colonial Advisory Committee of the Trades Union Congress 1/1. Private and
Confidential. Memorandum for Inaugural Meeting, December 22, 1937.
10. For more on Jagan’s early life see C. Jagan. 1966. The West on Trial. London: Hansib.
Chapters 1 and II.

References
Basdeo, Sahadeo. 1983. Labour Organisation and Labour Reform in Trinidad, 1919-1939. St.
Augustine: ISER.
Calder-Marshall, Arthur. 1939. Glory Dead. London: Michael Joseph Ltd.
Cripps, Sir Stafford. 1938. Stafford Cripps to Mitra Sinanan (Telegram), March 1, in Private
Papers of Mitra Sinanan.
Cripps, Sir Stafford. 1977. ‘Foreword’, in George Padmore, Africa and World Peace, p. XI.
London: Frank Cass.
Jagan, C. 1966. The West on Trial. London: Hansib.
Kumar, Ranjit. 1981. Thoughts and Memories of Ranjit Kumar. Port of Spain: Imprint Caribbean
Ltd.
Malik, Yogendra K. 1971. East Indians in Trinidad: A Study in Minority Politics. London: Oxford
University Press.
Padmore, George 1956. Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa. London:
Dobson Books Ltd.
Polak, H.L.S. 1938a. H.L.S. Polak to Mitra Sinanan, May 9, in Private Papers of Mitra
Sinanan.
Polak, H.L.S. 1938b. H.L.S. Polak to Mitra Sinanan, September 24, (Enclosure).
Polak, H.L.S. 1938c. H.L.S. Polak to Mitra Sinanan, Polak to Sinanan, August 10.
Rabe, S. 2005. US Intervention in British Guiana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press.
Schlesinger, A.M. 1965. A Thousand days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. New York:
Greenwich House.
Seecharan, C. 2005. Sweetening bitter sugar. Kingston: Ian Randle.
Sinanan, Mitra. 1937. Mitra Sinanan to Governor of Trinidad, October 15, in Private Papers
of Mitra Sinanan.
Sinanan, Mitra. 1938. Mitra Sinanan to Stafford Cripps (Telegram), February 25, in Private
Papers of Mitra Sinanan.
Singh, K. 1994. Race and class struggles in a colonial state. Calgary: University of Calgary.
Smith, M.G. 1974. The Plural Society in the British West Indies. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
 Section-II
The New Indian Diaspora
 The New Indian Diaspora -
Introduction
Dave Sangha

This section focuses on the ‘New Indian Diaspora’, which includes the so-called ‘developed’
countries of the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United
Kingdom and other parts of Europe. This new Indian diaspora can be distinguished from
the ‘Old Indentured Diaspora' referred to in the previous section by Indian migrants’ more
recent arrival in these destinations. In most part this is a story of postcolonial migration from
an independent India. The flavour of the country that these migrants leave behind and the
social and economic contexts that they enter are decidedly influenced by the rhetoric of
modernity and of progress. In India social stratification, as always seemed to affect who
could migrate. As in the colonial era, education seemed to be a route to internationalism but
this time, international education was deployed not so much towards a renewed nationalist
project by those who return home, but to project individual trajectories, professional careers
and to build new Indian diasporas in these territories. Immigration regulations increasingly
filtered out those without ‘skills’. A waning of the direct influence of colonialism alongside
the increasingly magnetic pull of the United States changed the contours of emigration. Or
rather, colonial ties now shaped emigration to the Old Commonwealth rather than to the
racially marked countries that were increasingly to be recognised as New Commonwealth.
Indian diasporics had to face up to 'whiteness' on new terrains and on new terms.

It is in this context that the chapters in this section discuss diasporic belonging. The new
diaspora did indeed offer new ways of constructing the relationship between these
communities, their adopted homes and their relationship to India. Certainly, the affluence of
many of these new Indian diasporics was greatly enhanced because of the professional
qualifications of immigrants admitted to these countries. Women too increasingly joined the
ranks of those who could migrate as class at least partially allowed them to overcome gender
biases in migration. These communities also provided larger remittances to the homeland
than those in the ‘Old Diaspora’ did, so that the newly coined term NRI, which captured
these Indians, came to have a very definite economic leaning.

New diasporics were right from the start, offered the opportunity to live their lives much
more transnationally. Unlike for instance, indentured workers, many of these Indians in the
new diaspora had the resources financial and technological to maintain close networks with
relatives and friends in the homeland as well as other parts of the Indian diaspora, even
shortly after migration. Improvements in communication (phones, emails) and
transportation (regular air service), have allowed individuals living in the diaspora to
communicate and move easily between their country of origin, their adopted country and
other parts of the Indian diaspora. Moreover, unlike in the case of the Old diaspora, the
Indian government has opened up a number of institutional channels with which to maintain
this connectedness (Adeney and Lall 2005). Indians in the new diaspora have also come face
to face with diasporics from the old diaspora. For instance, there has been large-scale
emigration from East Africa and a significant number of Indians have also left South Africa
and Fiji in the 1990s. These migrants have moved to the same sites as the new diasporics -
New Zealand, the UK, Canada, the US and Australia Boundaries it appears are truly being
criss-crossed, including the artificial demarcation between old and new diaspora.

Yet, very often we may at best consider this as incidences of boundary interference, rather
than boundary decimation. Racism has continued to mar the experiences of Indians abroad.
In the post 9/11 world being Asian is not easy, being a Muslim Asian even harder (Maira,
this volume). Religious differences are hardening both in India and abroad. Class differences
between different waves of migrants are sometimes eroding as Indians use education to fuel
class mobility, but at other times these differences are being reinforced through selective
immigration policies that privilege those with access to skills (Raghuram, this volume).
Gender differences within the home have been difficult to disrupt (Ralston, this volume).

Indians in the new diasporas have attempted to reproduce social and cultural milieus and
social practices that they took from India, thus creating globally marketable cultural
emblems, buildings and cuisine (see Barn on language, this volume). This was never any
simple process of reproduction. Certain practices became hegemonic, memories valorised,
traditions selected - and theses processes were influenced both by what was going on in
India and in countries of settlement.

Some papers in this section (Maira and Gottschlich) focus on the politics of Indian diaspora
in an increasingly transnational world. Other papers (Friesen and Kearns, Ralston) consider
the socio-economic/cultural aspects of transnationalism, while still others (Raghuram and
Barn) look at immigration and identity issues of the Indian diaspora in a transnational world
where ‘boundaries’ criss-cross each other, leading to the [re]definition of nation-state.

Sunaina Maira’s chapter focuses on the impacts of the fallout from the events of September
11, 2001 upon South Asian and Muslim immigrant youth living in the United States. Maira
suggests that the racial profiling and the questioning of their ‘Americanness’ has
fundamentally altered the relationship of these youth to their adopted nation state. Many of
the youth she interviewed had tended to see themselves as in possession of a type of ‘flexible
citizenship’, which allowed them to develop functional and personally advantageous ties to
both their adopted home (the US) and their homeland (South Asia). In response to the
racial, ethnic and religious discrimination that they have faced in the post 9/11 era, many of
these same youth have now acquired a type of ‘dissenting citizenship’. While these youth
disparage the acts of terrorists, they have begun to publicly express their opposition to US
foreign policy and to the discrimination they face. Maira suggests that the story of these
youth illustrates the underlying tension of the relationship between immigrants, transnational
identities and the host nation. While immigrants are often valued as important economic
‘assets’ in a globalized economy in host nations, they are at the same time often targeted and
scapegoated in nationalist discourses.

Pierre Gottschlich’s chapter illustrates the growing political influence of the Indian diasporic
community in the United States. Gottschlich points to several factors which help explain the
success of their political efforts. First, the Indian diasporic community has been very
successful in mobilizing its limited voting power and in influencing public opinion through
issue campaigns and public education. Secondly, the community has concentrated it’s efforts
in educating politicians and decision makers through mechanisms such as the Congressional
Caucus on India and Indian Americans and U.S. Senate’s Caucus Friends of India, as well as
thru consultations, testimonies and internship. Thirdly, Gottschlich suggests that the
community has become successful in using their ‘cheque writing’ capabilities to acquire
political influence. This growing political influence has resulted in at least two specific
outcomes. First, support from the Indian community has already resulted in the successful
election of a member of the Indian diaspora to the Congress and two members of state
legislatures, with undoubtedly more to follow. Secondly, lobbying by the Indian American
community has resulted in the U.S. government taking positions favourable to the Indian
government on a range of issues at the international level. However, it is important to ensure
that this political activity does not slip into claims by a righteous ‘model minority’ but
becomes the foundation for building inclusive, expansive political identities (Biswas 2005)

Parvati Raghuram focuses on the issue of how changing immigration regulations and
citizenship requirements in the United Kingdom have shaped and reshaped Indian diasporic
communities and ultimately the nature of the relationship of diasporics with their former
home country. As in the case of other OECD countries, the United Kingdom has begun to
refocus it’s immigration regulations towards attracting skilled labour as part of it’s effort to
reposition itself in the global marketplace. Workers with certain skills are therefore provided
with greater rights than others, resulting in greater social stratification within the diasporic
community. At the same time, the UK has, in the post 9/11 era, begun to require migrants
seeking British citizenship to undertake formal processes such as a swearing in ceremony, as
well as undertake a language and a ‘Life in the UK’ test. This formalization of the citizenship
process signals a desire on the part of the state for new citizens to swear an exclusive
allegiance to their new home. Raghuram’s chapter therefore suggests that the economic
rationality that demands skilled work for a globalising economy, is enacted on a different
terrain than the securitisation debates that surround the migration of the lesser skilled. She
argues that these contradictions pose serious challenges to diasporics everywhere.

Ravinder Barn’s chapter describes the challenges facing second generation parents of the
Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom in attempting to teach their heritage languages to
their children. Barn makes clear that these parents value the transmission of their mother
tongue to their children as a means to maintain cultural, religious and family ties to others in
their community. Nonetheless, Barn suggests that heritage languages are in decline in the
UK due to several factors, including the lack of fluency among second generation parents, a
parental belief that an exclusive emphasis on English is needed to ensure academic success,
and a limited heritage language teaching infrastructure. Barn also focuses on the impacts of
broader discourses current in British society which equate monolingualism with social
inclusion and citizenship, in contrast to bilingualism, which is viewed as problematic.

Wardlow Friesen and Robin Kearns consider the characteristics of the Indian diaspora of
New Zealand, using Vertovec’s six conceptual premises of transnationalism. They find
strong evidence of New Zealand as a site of social morphology, in that all of the Indian
migrants studied maintain regular contact with relatives and friends at least once a month. A
‘diaspora consciousness’ is evident in the proliferation of ethnic associations designed to
promote regional Indian identities as well as others promoting a pan Indian identity and
political stance. Focussing on the Auckland suburb of Sandringham, Friesen and Kearns
note the changes to the ‘sociosphere’ of community life (i.e., the residential, shopping and
religious spaces) which have marked the change of this area from a typical ‘kiwi’ suburb to
one reflective of the increasing Indian diasporic presence. They argue that the growing
Indian presence and the efforts of local government to support cultural diversity is changing
the fundamental character of the city’s calendar and cultural landscape.

Helen Ralston focuses on the family and career connections and disconnections facing
women of the Indian diaspora who have settled in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Ralston found that many of the women maintained transnational links with parents, siblings
and extended family through visits, phone calls and emails. They have made use of these
connections in identifying educational and career opportunities for themselves, their
husbands and their children. She also found that many of these women, particularly those
with professional qualifications and those who settled in non-metropolitan centres, find
themselves either unemployed or unemployed. She found that these problems occurred due
to difficulties in obtaining recognition of Indian credentials and experience in Indian settings
from Canadian employers and credentialing bodies. Ralston suggests that if Canada,
Australia and New Zealand wish to retain these women in order to address labour market
and economic needs, their governments will have develop policies which address these
barriers to employment.

The chapters in this section offer diverse insights into the fate of new diasporics.
Significantly, there are significant links between older and newer migrants and in the age of
transnationalism, they are also redefining India as their influence on the homeland increases
both because of their economic strength and political powers. Together these different
places are also crafting new spaces for enacting narratives of belonging, identificatory
practices and diasporic imaginaries, themes to which we turn in the next section

References
Adeney, Katharine and Marie Lall. 2005. ‘Institutional Attempts to Build a “National”
Identity in India: Internal and External Dimensions’, India Review, 4(3&4): 258–286.
Biswas, Shampa. 2005. ‘Globalization and the Nation Beyond: The Indian-American
Diaspora and the Rethinking of Territory, Citizenship and Democracy’, New Political
Science, 27(1): 43-67.
 7
Citizenship and Dissent in Diaspora: Indian Immigrant Youth
in the U.S. After 9/11
Sunaina Maira
This essay focuses on the ways in which communities in the Indian diaspora confront issues
of nationalism, citizenship, and war and sheds light on some of the most pressing political
questions of our contemporary moment, namely, that of imperial power. In particular, the
research on which this chapter is based examines the experiences of Indian Muslim youth
living in the U.S. after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the impact of those events on
their feelings of national belonging in relation to the U.S. as well as India. The racial,
religious, and ethnic discrimination faced by South Asian, Arab, and Muslim Americans—
and those misrecognized as ‘Muslim’—shows the ways in which diasporic communities are
caught in the web of the global ‘War on Terrorism’ and sometimes find themselves caught
between home and empire.

Looking at young Indian immigrants that were targeted with suspicion after 9/11 and that
continue to experience racial profiling allows us to understand some of the paradoxes of
national belonging, exclusion, and alienation in the diaspora. Ironically, as I will demonstrate
in this essay, diasporic connections have sometimes worked against immigrant communities
who are new viewed with suspicion for having transnational ties that cast them as potentially
disloyal subjects of their host nation. Indian and South Asian Muslim youth, in particular, are
coming of age in U.S. society at a moment when their religious and national affiliations are
politically charged issues. This study addresses the question: where do you feel you belong
when you know you are, at a particular moment, the state’s ‘enemy’ population?

This chapter focuses on the question of belonging and citizenship in the Indian diaspora,
particularly as understood by young immigrants. Citizenship has become an increasingly
prominent lens through which to discuss questions of globalization, immigration, social
movements, cultural pluralism, democracy, and the shifting nature of the state. These
questions are especially pertinent to youth, who are seen as the next generation of ‘citizens.’
Youth are the targets of nationalizing discourse by states and civil society institutions, for
example, in high schools where ideas of national identity and history are inculcated for the
purposes of producing ‘good citizens.’ Citizenship is an important question for immigrant
youth in the U.S. for they are often perceived as not American enough, or desiring to
‘become American’ but being ‘caught between two worlds’ and thus being culturally suspect.
If youth is seen as a liminal stage in the development of political and national identity, then
immigrant youth are perceived as doubly liminal, because of their age and also their national
status.

For Muslim and South Asian immigrant youth in the U.S. the questioning of their national
belonging is even more acute, especially after 9/11. They are constructed in mainstream
discourse as culturally or religiously alien, and also as potential threats to the nation. Much of
the discussion of Muslim American youth after 9/11 is tinged with these deeper social and
national anxieties in the U.S. about how Muslim, South Asian, and Arab Americans will
position themselves in relation to the nation-state and what kinds of citizens they will
become. Images of Muslim South Asian and Arab American youth in the mainstream U.S.
media are often linked to religious fundamentalist movements or anti-American ideologies,
or at best, they are seen as having divided loyalties at a time when national unity is seen as
critical (for example, Breslin 2002). Some of the most extreme examples are media stories
about South Asian Muslim youth linked to allegations of terrorism, for example, the case of
a Bangladeshi teenager who was arrested in New York because of an essay she wrote about
suicide bombing and Islam (Bernstein 2005) and the conviction of a young Pakistani
American man in Lodi, California for presumably attending a terrorist training camp, with
no proven evidence (Giese 2005; Schmitt 2006). These representations reinforce suspicions
of Muslim youth more generally as being ‘anti-American’ which sometimes provokes the
response of hyper-patriotism among targeted communities who wish to prove their national
allegiance and avoid harassment (Hegranes 2005). One of the aims of this essay is to show
the range of ways that young Indian Muslim immigrants engaged with questions of national
belonging by focusing on narratives of their own experiences.

In this essay, I alternate between using the term ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’ for these
concepts have different meanings and intellectual genealogies. Diaspora has been used to
acknowledge the experience of displacement and the ideological force of ‘homeland’ for
immigrant communities, but over the years it has become a somewhat diffuse formulation
that is used to simply describe any immigrant community. Transnationalism, a notion
developed initially by social scientists, is based on the concrete, strategic ways in which
immigrant communities ‘forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together
their societies of origin and settlement’ through economic, political, and cultural ties (Basch,
Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1994: 7). These social and material relationships are
created in the context of global flows of capital, labor, media, and ideologies (Appadurai
1996). Transnational ‘social fields’ are still strongly shaped by nation-states and still deeply
concerned with ‘place’ and ‘local’ community. Both terms are useful, for they capture the
ideological as well as material implications of crossing national borders. James Clifford
suggests that ‘the term diaspora is a signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement,
but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical contexts
of displacement’ (1997: 287). This chapter shows how Indian Muslim immigrant youth in the
diaspora struggle with defining their feelings about nation and state and engage with local
and national politics, informally in their everyday life, challenging their perception as ‘enemy
threats’ or ‘indifferent outsiders.’ These young express an ethics of belonging that address
some of the key questions of our times--about war, human rights, and justice.

The War on Terrorism

After the horrifying attacks in 2001 on the Twin Towers in New York, the Bush
administration waged a global war that was meant to root out terrorism, attacking
Afghanistan and later Iraq, and also subjecting thousands of South Asians and Arabs in the
U.S. to surveillance, detention, and deportation. The ‘war on terrorism’ was waged primarily
against immigrants, heightening the distinction between citizens and non-citizens and
making citizenship a crucible for the post-9/11 crackdown. However, many of those
targeted have been U.S. citizens and the overwhelming majority have no links to terrorism,
let alone any connection with the events of September 11. The state-sponsored ‘war on
terror’ after 9/11 was aided by the USA PATRIOT ACT, which gave the Bush
administration sweeping new powers of investigation and surveillance. After September 11,
many Americans willingly sacrificed their civil liberties--particularly the civil rights of other
communities rather than their own--and accepted the surveillance state as being necessary
for ‘national security.’ The PATRIOT Act, took away due process rights from noncitizens
who could now be placed in mandatory, indefinite, and secret detention and deported
because of participation in broadly defined ‘terrorist activity,’ often for minor immigration
violations and in secret (Chang 2002: 43-44; Cole and Dempsey 2002: 151-153). The
important feature of the PATRIOT Act was that its provisions principally targeted foreign
nationals, especially from Arab and predominantly Muslim nations linked by the Bush
administration to Al-Qaeda, but not those from Spain, Germany, France or Britain, all
countries where alleged Al Qaeda suspects had lived (Cainkar 2004).

The Bush government’s rhetorical insistence that the War on Terrorism is not against
members of the Muslim diaspora is contradicted by the focus of state policies that officially
target Arab and South Asian immigrants of Muslim background. For example, in June 2002,
the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) was established requiring all
male nationals over sixteen years of age from 24 Muslim-majority countries--including
Pakistan and Bangladesh--as well as North Korea, to submit to photographing and
fingerprinting at federal immigration facilities.1 Over 80,000 men complied with the ‘special
registration’ programme and went to register. Many of these men, however, never came
back; 2,870 were detained and 13,799 were put in deportation proceedings (Nguyen 2005:
xviii). Muslim and Arab American men also began getting calls or surprise visits by the FBI
for so-called ‘voluntary interviews’ (Cainkar 2004: 246).

The civil rights crisis experienced by South Asian Americans after 9/11 is the most virulent
example of large-scale scapegoating of South Asians in the U.S. since the anti-Indian riots on
the West Coast in the early twentieth century (Jensen 1988). As part of the domestic ‘War on
Terror,’ over 1200 Muslim immigrant men were rounded up and detained in the aftermath
of 9/11, without any criminal charges, some in high security prisons. Nearly 40 percent of
the detainees are thought to be Pakistani, though virtually none of the detainees has been
identified publicly and the locations where they have been held remained secret (Schulhofer
2002: 11). After 9/11, Muslim families began experiencing the ‘disappearances’ of their
husbands, brothers, and sons, and many families ended up leaving the country after
indefinite separations and loss of the means of family support. There was a violent public
backlash against Muslims, or those thought to be Muslim, with 700 hate crimes against
South Asian Americans, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans, including four homicides
(two involving South Asian American victims), reported in the three weeks following
September 11, 2001.2 According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),
reported hate crimes against those believed be Muslim in 2001 increased by 1600 percent
from the previous year, in the FBI’s own estimate (Nguyen 2005: 6); over time, hate crimes
declined and incidents of airport profiling and workplace discrimination increased.3 Indians
and South Asians of all religious backgrounds, including many turbaned Sikh men, have
been profiled after 9/11 for supposedly ‘looking’ like a ‘terrorist.’

The earlier fear of detentions and deportations in the aftermath of 9/11 seems to have
largely diminished within South Asian American communities at large, but it seems to be
borne ever more by Muslim and Sikh Americans to the exclusion of those who feel they are
not ‘targets’ of the war on terror. While some Indian Americans have spoken out against
racism and Islamophobia in the U.S. as being a problem for all, regardless of religion or
nationality, others have responded by distancing themselves from Muslims and Arabs rather
than extending support. Communal, national, and class cleavages have become sharpened
after 9/11 in some cases, exacerbating older divisions, but there have also been a few
instances of unity among different religious and diasporic communities. There has been a
growing movement of Americans, constituted of individuals of various racial and class
backgrounds and an array of political groups, expressing varying forms of dissent against the
domestic and global War on Terror, most strongly against the crackdown on civil liberties
that has affected U.S. citizens.

One of the questions my research addresses is what it means to be a young member of the
targeted communities in such a political climate, and how immigrants who are seen as
outside of ‘American’ national culture or citizenship wrestle with the question of national
belonging in the diaspora. The contradictory relationships between citizenship and
nationalism on the one hand, and the imperial state on the other, is addressed in this essay
through a discussion of the nuanced responses that immigrant youth expressed to the events
of 9/11 and the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Diaspora in Empire
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the U.S. found itself
the lone superpower and began consolidating its plans for global military, economic, and
political dominance, but it was not until after 9/11 that the idea of American empire has
come out of the closet in public discourse. Unlike earlier European empires, the U.S. has
tried to distance itself from direct colonization and to hide its interventions in other
sovereign nation-states behind covert operations and proxy wars. U.S. imperial power also
cloaks itself in the discourse of human rights, so ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ becomes,
paradoxically, the justification for dominance and neo-colonial occupation.

Since September 11, 2001, there has been a profusion of approaches to thinking and re-
thinking empire and imperialism and a new book with the word empire in the title seems to
appear in American bookstores with increasing regularity. The word ‘empire’ has been re-
attached to the U.S. with a profusion of articles in the American mass media discussing not
just whether the U.S. is an empire, but what form of empire it should, and could, take. For
example, Michael Ignatieff (2003), in a cover story for The New York Times Magazine, argued
that although President Bush proclaimed in June, 2003, that ‘America has no empire to
extend or utopia to establish,’ it was necessary for the U.S. to find, even if reluctantly, the
will to sustain empire as the ‘last hope for democracy and stability,’ particularly in the Middle
East.

Clearly, the U.S., unlike earlier empires, does not always exercise direct governance of other
nation-states and its global power is based on a mix of ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ empire,
including client states (Mamdani 2004). Clearly, there are different strategies of dominance
used by U.S. imperial power: ‘control over international bodies (the United Nations, World
Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization), covert actions, global
surveillance methods, direct military interventions, political machinations, and deadly
economic sanctions of the sort used against Iraq’ (Boggs 2003: 6).4 The pre-emptive strike
doctrine that Bush has used since September 11 has been based on a messianic imperialism,
a discourse of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ that obscures the economic and political interests behind
the U.S. War on Terror (AbuKhalil 2002; Lincoln 2003; Silberstein 2002). Immigrants from
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh come from a region that is already influenced by U.S.
foreign policy interests in extending the ‘war on terror’ and building strategic alliances in the
region and that has been penetrated by U.S. culture in various forms. Their entry to the U.S.
is shaped by these global forces and also by U.S. immigration policies and the domestic
profiling of South Asian, Muslim, and Arab Americans after 9/11.

The research here is an attempt to provide a more grounded analysis of diaspora in relation
to empire today. Situating the experiences of South Asians in the U.S. after 9/11 within the
framework of empire helps to illuminate their relationship to the state and to understand the
role of various South Asian diasporic communities in the global world order as shaped by
U.S. policies today. The study situates the experiences of these youth within the political
context of the aftermath of 9/11, but also within the broader cultures of U.S. imperialism, in
which empire is constructed through cultural representations, public discourses, state
institutions, and social relations that shape identification with, support for, or dissent from
imperial policies.

A key insight to understanding the connections between global imperial power and the
experience of diasporic communities in the U.S. is that empire has two faces: the domestic
and the foreign. The global ‘war on terrorism’ waged by the Bush administration after 9/11
and the war on terror ‘at home’ are actually part of the same project of imperial control. It is
this link that underlies the contradictions of citizenship, in its legal as well as cultural senses,
for diasporic subjects grappling with their positioning within U.S. society while
simultaneously making sense of the U.S. role on the world stage and in their home countries.
The deportations and detentions set in motion by the ‘war on terror’ had national as well as
global impact, for they triggered a flow of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian immigrants
returning to their home communities or to other places. As news of the domestic crackdown
spread quickly in South Asia and the Arab world, there was increased anxiety about
migrating to the U.S. in this political climate. So imperial policy has rippled through local and
global realms, altering migration patterns, family networks, and economic futures for South
Asian diasporas.
The Study
This essay is based on an ethnographic study of South Asian immigrant students in a public
high school in a town in Massachusetts that I call Wellford, in the year following the events
of September 11, 2001.5 My research involved interviews and participant-observation and
focused on the everyday experiences of these youth over a period of one year both in and
outside the school. While conducting research in the school, I was also working as a
volunteer with the South Asian Mentoring and Tutoring Association (SAMTA), a support
programme for South Asian immigrant students that offered workshops on social, cultural,
and academic issues. Wellford is an interesting site for this research, for while media
attention and community discussions of racial profiling after 9/11 were primarily focused on
South Asians in the New York/New Jersey area, there were hundreds of incidents around
the country in places such as Wellford, where South Asians have not been as visible in the
public sphere or as organised, as in Massachusetts or New England.

The South Asian immigrant youth I focused on in this research are predominantly working-
to lower-middle class, recently arrived, and with minimal to moderate fluency in English.
Reflecting national immigration trends for South Asians, the largest group of South Asian
immigrant students in the high school was from India, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Nepal, Tibet, and Afghanistan. The majority of the Indian immigrant youth are from Muslim
families, most from small towns or villages in Gujarat, and most migrated within the last five
to seven years.6 Several of the South Asian students are actually related to one another as
their families have sponsored relatives as part of an ongoing chain migration. Whole families
have migrated from the same village in Gujarat recreating their extended family networks in
the same apartment building in Wellford.

This group of youth represents the most recent wave of immigration from South Asia to the
U.S. The first major wave of South Asian immigrants came after 1965 when U.S. law revised
the half-century-old policy of restrictions on Asian immigration and the number of new
immigrants from India and Pakistan increased dramatically.7 It is important to note that the
changes in immigration law were in large part due to the politics of the Cold War, where the
U.S. found it could no longer practice racially biased immigration policies while championing
itself as the defender of the ‘free world,’ and also needed to import skilled scientific and
technical labor to compete with the Soviet Union in the arms and technology race (Chan
1991). Diasporic flows have thus been shaped by U.S. foreign policy and global interests
since their inception. The new immigration laws gave preferential treatment to professionals,
hence the early wave of post-1965 South Asian immigrants consisted of highly educated
professionals most of whom, in a relatively short time, acquired middle- to upper-middle-
class status (Agarwal 1991; Helweg and Helweg 1990). However, the image of Indian
Americans—and Asian Americans more generally—as a ‘model minority’ is based on the
class status and educational achievements of a privileged segment of the immigrant group.

Since the 1980s, there has been a second wave of South Asian immigrants in the U.S. that
includes a substantial working- and lower-middle-class population, as well as relatives of
earlier immigrants who enter with family reunification visas, changing the presumed ‘model
minority’ image of the South Asian American community.8 Chain migration, or sponsorship
for immigration visas for family members who then sponsor other relatives, has helped
create growing urban enclaves of Indian immigrants from particular regions or even
provinces and towns in India; for example, immigrants from Anand and Valsar in Gujarat
(who are Hindu, Jain, as well as Muslim) have clustered in particular towns in Massachusetts,
as I found in an earlier study (Maira & Levitt 1997).

The parents of the South Asian immigrant youth in Wellford generally work in low-income
jobs in the service sector, and they themselves work after school, up to thirty hours a week,
in fast food restaurants, gas stations, retail stores, and as security guards. The families of
these Muslim (Sunni) youth are not very involved in local Muslim organizations or mosques
that draw a diverse Arab, North African, Asian, and African American population. They
tend to socialize mainly with people from their own ethnic community; but they do not seem
to affiliate with the Indian American or Pakistani American community organizations in the
area as these tend to involve mainly middle- to upper-middle class, suburban families. The
experiences of these urban, working-class immigrant youth are often completely unknown to
their more privileged South Asian American counterparts in the area.

Cultural Citizenship

I found that in nearly all my conversations with Indian immigrant youth, as well as their
parents, the discussion would inevitably turn to questions of citizenship for this was an issue
that had profoundly shaped their lives and driven their experiences of migration. Most of
these young immigrants desired and had applied for formal U.S. citizenship, since they came
to the U.S. sponsored by relatives who are permanent residents or citizens. About half of
these immigrant youth had green cards already; the remaining were a mix of citizens and
undocumented immigrants. Nearly all of them desired a U.S. passport because of what they
perceived as its civic and economic benefits. After 9/11, of course, citizenship seemed to
become less a matter of choice for immigrants--particularly Muslims and South Asian/Arab
Americans--than a hoped-for shield against the abuses of civil rights.

Citizenship has traditionally been thought of in political, economic, and civic terms (Marshall
1950), but analyses increasingly focus on the notion of cultural citizenship, or cultural
belonging in the nation. As multiethnic societies are forced to confront questions of
difference that undergird social inequity, it has become increasingly clear that the rights and
obligations of civic citizenship are mediated by race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, as well
as religion (Berlant 1997; Miller 1993; Rosaldo 1997: 27–38). Cultural citizenship, according
to Lok Siu, is the ‘behaviors, discourses, and practices that give meaning to citizenship as
lived experience’ in the context of ‘an uneven and complex field of structural inequalities,’
the ‘quotidian practices of inclusion and exclusion’ (2001: 9). It is a useful framework for
studying diasporic communities for it sheds light on the cultural dimensions of national
belonging that shape the lives of immigrants, in addition to legal and economic citizenship.
Cultural citizenship is an important notion for South Asian Americans because legal
citizenship is clearly no longer enough to guarantee protection under the law, as is clear from
the profiling, surveillance, and detention of Muslim Americans who are U.S. citizens.
My research looks at the ways in which young Indian immigrants fashion their own ideas of
national belonging and citizen rights in response to their political environment. It uses an
ethnographic approach to analyze citizenship in the everyday social contexts that youth
inhabit, such as school, work, home, community events, and popular culture. The larger
study explores the ideas and practices of citizenship for immigrant youth after 9/11,
connected to issues such as class mobility, multiculturalism, religious and inter-racial
affiliation, urban and subcultural identifications, dissent, and complicity. In this chapter, I
draw on excerpts from the research and focus on two cultural ideologies that these
immigrant students associated with citizenship in the diaspora: first, flexibility and mobility,
and second, dissent and human rights.

Flexible Citizenship
‘Flexible citizenship’ was the form of cultural citizenship most clearly evident in nearly all
these young people’s stories about their experiences of migration and citizenship. As a
concept, it is used to describe the emergence of new uses of citizenship by migrants in
response to the conditions of transnationalism, specifically, the use of transnational links to
provide political or material resources not available within a single nation-state, as has been
demonstrated for affluent Chinese migrants by Aihwa Ong (1999). Saskia Sassen (2004: 190-
191) points out that practices of citizenship are no longer based in the arena of the nation-
state alone, as the national state has been transformed, but extend to ‘international arenas.’

South Asian immigrant youth understand formal citizenship, as well as cultural belonging, in
relation to the U.S. as well as nations in South Asia. For them, national affiliations as well as
linguistic-regional identities (such as ‘Gujarati’ or ‘Punjabi’) were very important, and they
viewed all these identifications as compatible with U.S. citizenship. Flexible citizenship for
these youth is part of a carefully planned, long-term, family-based strategy of migration in
response to economic pressures on those living in, or at the edge of, the middle class in
South Asia. Legal citizenship and immigration documents were understood by these youth as
artifacts created by the state that they needed in order to move across national borders and
to be reunited with their families, but they were also the source of disruption of family ties
and cleavages of emotional bonds. In some cases, these immigrant youth had fathers who
had migrated alone to the U.S. many years earlier while waiting to sponsor their families.
Some of the youth in Wellford imagine their lives spanning national borders and speak of
returning to South Asia in the future, at least temporarily, once they have become U.S.
citizens and perhaps when their parents have retired there. Ismail, a Gujarati immigrant boy
from Valsar, said of his future plans:

Actually, the thing is I’d like to stay here but this place doesn’t need me more than my
country, because in India there’s a lot of poor people who need our help and our education.
If we study here, then we’ll go back to our country . . . If I at least learn some computer stuff
and my brother and me open up a company there, and one here, that’ll be a great thing
because people can work and they can come here, they can support their whole family.
Flexible citizenship is a strategy driven by family relationships, which are used to sponsor
relatives for permanent residency and then citizenship, but it is also a strategy that divides
and disperses families and radically alters the meaning of family ties. It is ironic that South
Asian and Asian immigrants more generally are held up in the U.S. as ‘model minority’
citizens who embody exemplary ‘family values,’ presumably emphasizing stable family units
with two parents. Yet one could also view these immigrants as the model citizens of global
capitalism who are willing to scatter family members across the globe and separate parents
from their children in order to have a ‘better life.’ These are probably the ‘family values’ that
the globalized free market and state immigrant policies engender, for immigrants rely on
family ties for citizenship and on recreating extended families through chain migration.

There is a strategic dimension to flexible citizenship embedded in these histories of

migration and dispersal, but there is also an emotional dimension rooted in a geography of
loss and memory, and in feelings of loss or alienation. Riyaz, a Gujarati boy who had just
come to the U.S. when I met him in fall, 2002, spoke with anguish and almost disbelief at his
uprooting from his village, his companions, his daily life. He did not speak much English
when he first came and did not engage much in discussions at SAMTA workshops, but
when we asked students to share an image they associated with the places they had left
behind, he simply drew a broken heart on a sheet of paper. A Pakistani friend of his
scribbled ‘India’ and ‘America’ next to each of the jagged halves of Riyaz’ heart. Riyaz’ uncle
in Gujarat was an agent who helped people migrate to the Persian Gulf states from their
hometown of Valsar, underscoring that the U.S. is just one node for labor migrants in the
vast Gujarati diaspora (see Ho 2004).

Some of the immigrant youth I spoke to clearly articulated their vision of using flexible
citizenship as an economic practice in their future lives, such as Ismail who wanted to set up
a transnational hi-tech business as a development strategy for diasporic Indians to fulfill their
obligations to the home nation-state, using the benefits of U.S. citizenship. Official practices
of flexible citizenship for the benefit of home nations has been encouraged by the Indian
government which developed policies to encourage Indian citizens living overseas, or Non-
Resident Indians (NRIs), to invest in the Indian economy. Both India's Overseas Indian
Citizenship and the interim category PIO (Person of Indian Origin) created by the Indian
government in 1999 for foreign citizens of Indian origin wanting easier travel to India and
limited economic rights, and willing to purchase a PIO card (for a hundred and fifty dollars
and up) offer one route into such a flexible citizenship. While on the one hand, the Indian
government was issuing PIO cards to wealthy diasporic Indians, on the other hand, news
media reported a plan to develop identity cards to identify and deport ‘illegal settlers’ from
Pakistan and Bangladesh to combat ‘terror threats’ to the nation, using language remarkably
similar to that of the U.S. government after 9/11.9

In winter 2003, while I was visiting New Delhi, the Indian government hosted the first
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, a festival to celebrate diasporic Indians from Fiji to South Africa.
While the event was an effort to link the ‘Indian diaspora’ to the nation, I was struck by the
fact that this celebration of the successes of Indian diasporic elites seemed to have little
room for the experiences of not-so-successful members of the diaspora. The event was a
homeland effort to bolster a particular version of flexible citizenship, feting the most
successful ‘model minority’ NRIs and courting economic support for India’s role in the
global economy. Then Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee ‘also cautioned against divided
loyalties,’ advising diasporic Indians to be ‘loyal to their country of adoption.’10 This was of
course, in the post-9/11 context of the global war on terrorism, when the Indian
government was well aware that Indian nationals in the U.S. were being targeted because of
an assumption that their national loyalties were in question, but still wanted them to translate
their loyalty to India into economic investments. One reason for the lack of attention to the
struggles of Indian Muslims abroad during the festival was probably because the then ruling
Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government was using the Bush
administration’s campaign against ‘Islamic terrorism’ to bolster its own campaign of targeting
Muslim minorities and questioning their claims to belonging in India. An Indian critic
pointed out that ‘the irony of Mr. Vajpayee’s advice ... is that it comes from the head of a
political parivar [referring to the Sangh Parivar, or network of Hindu right-wing
organizations of which the BJP is a member] which has long questioned the right of religious
minorities to their own unique culture in this country.’11

Indian Muslim youth in the U.S. have to confront the failures of both home and host states
to guarantee protection and equal rights to Muslim subjects (Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001:
3). With the anti-Muslim massacres in Gujarat in spring, 2002 following on the heels of the
post-9/11 backlash against Muslims in the U.S., the challenges to national belonging for
Indian Muslims need to be considered on both sides of the transnational terrain in which
citizenship is claimed and contested, in the U.S. and also in India. Despite the tragedy in
Gujarat, Ismail and other Gujarati Muslim youth I spoke to insisted on their belief in the
ideal of pluralism and secularism that they associated with India. Perhaps this assertion was
an attempt to ward off further suspicion of being disloyal citizens, but the historical context
in which these youth and their families migrated from India needs to be considered when
thinking about their experiences in the U.S. after 9/11.

After 9/11, flexible citizenship can be a tenuous or even potentially dangerous strategy for
these South Asian Muslim youth, for transnational ties and shifting national allegiances are
precisely what have come under scrutiny for Muslim Americans in the era of the PATRIOT
Act (Howell and Shryock 2003, 455). Travel across national borders; money transfers,
including donations to Islamic charities; and transnational businesses and organizations have
all been suspect with the state’s broadened definitions of involvement with ‘terrorism.’ Local
businesses owned by South Asian and Arab immigrants were investigated on the suspicion
that these small businesses were somehow funding ‘militant’ groups, leading to sweeps of
Indian-owned convenience stores in California in 2002, although none of these were found
to be channeling ‘terror funds.’12 There is greater fear among Muslim and Arab immigrants
about sending money to support family members in their home countries, particularly
through money-transfer agencies run by Muslim Americans.13 It is not just immigrant
families in the U.S. who have been affected by the War on Terror, but also homeland
economies and families overseas who depended on economic remittances from relatives
working in the U.S.
The family ties, immigration networks, financial connections, and political links that
constitute Muslim, South Asian, and Arab diasporas have been constrained by monitoring
and repression after 2001. Diaspora has become a zone of increased state suspicion and
cultural anxiety. According to Enseng Ho (2004), one way to describe the politics of the ‘war
on terror’ is in terms of a conflict between diaspora and empire, between transnational
movements and connections and imperial state power, for both have a global reach but
often different interests. Diaspora evokes an ambivalent response for the imperial state. On
the one hand, the Bush administration views flexible citizenship as an economic necessity in
a global economy; on the other hand, it is a political threat to their designs to establish a
‘new American century.’ The notion of flexible citizenship is, and always has been,
politicized and has often had disastrous consequences for diasporic communities in a time of
national crisis. The idea of flexible national loyalties has been highlighted in fanning
xenophobic hysteria and targeting particular groups as scapegoats, as in the internment of
Japanese Americans during World War II.

The paradox of flexible citizenship in the current moment is that it is considered desirable
for some and dangerous for others. Transnational ties have been encouraged, and produced,
by global capitalism and global media and viewed as positive, even glamorous. But this
movement and crossing of national spaces is also powerfully controlled for those who are
circumscribed by immigration laws, state documents, and racialized perceptions of
belonging. Flexible citizenship is layered with this tension between flexibility and immobility.
Even if these youth are not engaged in official transnational practices involving businesses or
organizations, they have all felt the power of the state to limit their mobility across national
borders and to interrogate their national allegiances.

Practices of Flexible Citizenship

After spending some time with these young immigrants, I realized that that their practices of
flexible citizenship were based on at least two everyday processes in relation to the various
nation-states with which they affiliate: popular culture and work. While it is clear that
transnational identification is often based on Bollywood films and music and Indian
television serials, I will focus here on an issue that has not been explored as much in the
research on Indian immigrant youth, that of labor.

These youth have come to the U.S. with their families as migrant workers, in some sense, for
they entered the labor market to support their families economically and saw education in
the U.S. as an avenue to a ‘better life.’ They work in low-wage, part-time jobs, without
benefits, providing the flexible labor that the globalized U.S. economy relies on for
maximum profit. But these young workers find that the immigration and citizenship policies
discriminate between U.S. and foreign-born workers. Some of these youth had ambitious
goals but these always co-existed with their daily struggles to try to keep up in school,
improve their English, find an entry-level service job, learn about the American college
system, and get financial aid to go to college. Soman, who worked in his family’s Bengali
restaurant after school and who often waited on more affluent South Asian immigrant
students from local colleges, said, ‘Here, you live in a golden cage, but it’s still a cage. . . . my
life is so limited. I go to school, come to work, study, go to sleep.’ These young immigrants
and their families came to the U.S., in a sense, to consume the mythologized promise of the
American Dream, but it was often quickly shattered after their arrival.

Many of these youth had encountered America first through Hollywood films, and
interestingly, like Shireen and Samira, a few specifically remembered seeing The Titanic in
their villages and towns in India before they embarked on their own journey to the U.S. This
film, imagining America as the destination of immigrants’ dreams and the desires of the
young protagonists is an example of how the ideology of the American Dream is consumed
transnationally by young people around the world. Inderpal Grewal observes that the notion
of ‘freedom,’ key to Bush’s global War on Terror to defend the American ‘way of life,’ is
marketed through American popular culture that circulates globally, and that ‘“freedom” as a
specific kind of “choice” was created as a symbol of [American] nationalism’ (2005: 206)
through the spread of American consumer culture. The notion of ‘choosing’ freedom and
democracy, presumably over other ways of life and in opposition to those who supposedly
‘hate’ America, is a central tenet of U.S. imperial culture that these young South Asian
immigrants began to view critically after 9/11.

Dissenting Citizenship
The critique of the anti-Muslim backlash and U.S. wars in the Middle East and South Asia
was pervasive amongst the South Asian Muslim youth to whom I spoke, for they had been
forced to deal with the impact of state and civil society discrimination targeting their
communities soon after arriving in the U.S. and were from a part of the world that was now
experiencing a U.S. military invasion. Leti Volpp (2002, 1584) argues that the post-9/11
moment ‘facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category’ that has conflated
‘Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern’ with ‘terrorist’ and ‘non-citizen.’ This identity category is not
new in the U.S., where Muslims and Arabs have long been associated with terrorism and
monitored for their support of Palestine, considered a problem since the U.S. government
provides military, economic, and political support for the Israeli occupation. The Orientalist
perception of Muslims and Arabs as ‘violent’ and ‘devious’ outsiders to Western culture, is
rooted in a form of political racism that intensified after 9/11.

The shared experiences of racial profiling of South Asian, Arab, and Muslim Americans have
forced these diasporic communities to consider the common ways in which they are
perceived in the U.S., especially as U.S. policy continues to shape affairs in both South Asia
and the Middle East. Some South Asian Muslims in Wellford were quick to point out the
outpouring of support offered by neighbors and friends after 9/11. It is true that individual
acts of solidarity co-existed with acts of discrimination, private and state-sponsored, on a
mass scale (Hing 2002). The two processes often work together in racial profiling, which
works on multiple levels and through contradictions between official rhetoric, public policy,
and individual actions (Robin 2003).

While these Indian immigrant youth were concerned about the monitoring of Muslim
Americans and often hesitant to express political views publicly, they still voiced a critical
view of the ‘war on terror’ and bombing of Afghanistan while simultaneously noting their
shock, horror, and sadness at the attacks on the Twin Towers. After an anti-Muslim incident
in the high school in fall 2001 involving two South Asian students, Amir and Walid, the
International Student Center organised a student assembly on the war on terrorism and civil
liberties. Amir, Walid, and Shireen delivered eloquent speeches condemning racial profiling
to an auditorium filled with their peers. Amir said that when he was threatened by some
young men in the city, ‘I could have done the same thing, but I don’t think it’s the right
thing to do.’ Amir is a muscular young man and his call for non-violent response was a
powerful one at that assembly, at a moment when the U.S. was bombing Afghanistan in
retribution for the attacks of September 11. Shireen stood up in her salwar kameez and said,
‘We have to respect each other if we want to change society. You have to stand up for your
rights.’ Other students who did not speak as publicly about their views expressed their
dissent in private discussion. For example, Zeenat thought that the war in Afghanistan in
response to the attacks of 9/11 was ‘wrong’ because the U.S. was attacking people who were
not involved in the terrorist attacks. Issues of innocence, culpability, justice and punishment
were uppermost in the minds of the Indian and South Asian students when discussing this
topic, even for new immigrants who were not involved in traditional forms of ‘political
activism.’

Muslim immigrant youth in the high school were being visibly drawn into race politics and
civil rights debates in the local community, although it is not clear what the impact of this
politicization will be over time. But a year later on the anniversary of September 11, when
the International Student Center organised another student assembly, two Indian girls,
Samira (Shireen’s sister) and Mumtaz, voluntarily made similar speeches. Mumtaz spoke of
her sadness at the events of 9/11, and also stated ‘that it’s not right to go after Pakistan and
Afghanistan and all Muslims who had nothing to do with it.’ The speeches made by the
immigrant girls were reported in the local paper. Even though these working-class immigrant
youth did not have the support of, or time to participate in, community or political
organizations, they seemed to have become spokespersons in the public sphere willing to
voice a dissenting view. Other Muslim American youth have also been forced to play the
role of educators for the American public, giving speeches at their schools and in community
forums about Islam.

After September, 2001, South Asian Muslims across the U.S. were increasingly hesitant to
speak publicly about political issues, given that even legal citizens were worried about
expressing political critique or dissent as the state acquired sweeping powers of surveillance
with the PATRIOT Act. In the face of such repression, I found some South Asian Muslim
immigrant youth to be engaged in a practice of dissenting citizenship: an engagement with
the nation-state that is based on a critique of its politics, and not automatically or always on
compliance with state policies. Ismail said,

I’ve talked to some friends of mine about the war, and they said this is all wrong, the
American government is just causing more violence and we don’t want this war, we should
solve the problem peacefully. . . Why are they bombing people and blaming all these other
countries? See if bin Laden has killed them, just get bin Laden. Why are they bombing
 Afghanistan and killing innocent people? They are starving there, they’re dying anyway, and
they are killing them. My black, white, Spanish friends, they all agree with that.

Some of these immigrant youth were concerned about how the image of oppressed Muslim
women in the American media was used as a pretext for going to war, for Samira thought
that ‘they always show women don’t have rights in Afghanistan.’ Shireen recalled First Lady
Laura Bush’s visit to Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion to make a statement about the
‘liberation’ of Afghan women from the Taliban; she added succinctly, ‘Everybody believes
that America is a country where people have rights, and freedom.’ While the Taliban were
certainly a repressive regime, it is the larger Orientalist discourse about the inherently
backward ‘Muslim world’ that is used to uphold imperial power and justify U.S. intervention
and occupation, as in Afghanistan and now Iraq. These immigrant youth emphasized the
importance of international human rights, denouncing both the terrorist attacks of 2001 and
militarized state aggression as a means of retribution and criticize the U.S. role as global
policeman above international law.

The notion of dissenting citizenship that I propose is not meant to suggest that dissent by
South Asian Muslim immigrant youth, or South Asian or Muslim Americans more generally,
was overt, consistent, or public, let alone that it is inherently guaranteed. At this moment of
U.S. empire, dissent is difficult to express given the intensifying climate of repression and
monitoring of political speech, and the targeting of South Asian, Arab, and Muslim
Americans and critics of the government’s policies as potential ‘traitors’ to the nation-state.
It does however, highlight, the different modes of engaging with politics and belonging in
the nation for immigrants during a time of war or national crisis, and especially for young
people from diasporic communities.

Dissenting citizenship captures some of the ambivalence toward the U.S. that these youth
experience, for America is simultaneously a place invested with their parents’ desire for
economic advancement and their own hopes to belong in a new home, and also the site of
alienation, discrimination, and anxiety about belonging. A few, such as Shireen and Samira,
had expectations that the U.S. would live up to its ideals of freedom and equal rights, but
most seemed to emphasize that U.S. actions should be held to an international standard of
justice that should apply to all nation-states, including India and Pakistan. These young
immigrants did not come to the U.S. with histories of political involvement in their home
countries but were forced, due to the events of 9/11 and the subsequent wars in South Asia
and the Middle East, to confront the discrepancy between public rhetoric, state policies, and
everyday experiences of equality and justice.

I argue that the political responses of these South Asian immigrant youth are a response not
just to globalization but to the imperial feeling in the U.S.: a potent feeling, because it is not
named as such, of being at the center of empire. The notion of an ‘imperial feeling’ unifies
the emotional and structural dimensions of citizenship, the public and private domains of
politics, for it acknowledges that, like nationalism, political identification is based on
subjective feelings as well as ‘rational’ discourse.
Conclusion
Diaspora is viewed with mixed feelings by many, for those in the home nation often
question the cultural authenticity of overseas nationals (see Maira 2002); at the same time,
the national loyalties of diasporic subjects are questioned in the host nation, as was evident
for Indians and South Asians in the U.S. after 9/11. The exclusion or marginalization of
diasporic communities that are targeted or scapegoated in nationalist discourse sheds light
on the ways that diaspora is both desired and feared in an era of globalization. For the
Indian Muslim youth in my study, the problem that loomed largest was not cultural conflict,
but the fear of profiling, detention, and deportation and their struggles to find work and get
an education. New kinds of affiliations are forged in diasporic communities, for these Indian
and South Asian youth found themselves becoming closer to other immigrant and minority
youth after 9/11 and realized that they shared experiences of marginalization and exclusion
in the U.S. with African American and Latino youth. At the same time, Indian, Pakistani,
Bangladeshi, Nepali, Tibetan, and Afghan students also became part of a pan-South Asian
community and made friendships that crossed national and religious borders. These issues
are important to consider for those interested in studying diasporas, for they highlight the
ways in which diasporic communities offer new ways for thinking about ‘home’ and ‘nation,’
though not in any idealized way. The engagement of these youth with issues of national and
international human rights also shows the potential for diaspora to be a site where struggles
for justice and equality can cross national borders.

Notes
This research was supported by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, and
conducted with the help of my very able research assistants, Palav Babaria and Sarah Khan.

1. The re-registration component of the programme was officially ended by the

Department of Homeland Security in December, 2003, after protests by
immigrant/civil rights and grassroots community organizations, while other aspects
of the programme remained in place, and the detentions and deportations put in
place by the programme continue (see Cainkar 2004).
2. Jeff Coen, ‘Hate crimes reports reach record level,’ Chicago Tribune, October 9, 2001.
3. Associated Press, San Jose, CA, ‘Hate crime reports down, civil rights complaints
up,’ October 25, 2001; ‘Hate Crimes on Muslims Show Rise,’ Boston Globe, November
26, 2002, p. A11.
4. The Bush regime brought to the fore a group of neo-conservatives, including Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, and
Richard Perle, who had long been waiting to promote a policy of global military
dominance and unilateralist foreign policy. That imperialist vision is enshrined in the
Project for the New American Century, or PNAC (Burbach & Tarbell 2004: 86).
PNAC issued a report in September 2000, ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy,
Forces and Resources for a New Century,’ that proclaimed that America’s ‘grand
strategy’ for global preeminence should rest on increased military spending, a
 stronger military presence in East Asia, a network of military deployment bases,
global missile defenses, and space control technology.
5. I conducted a total of 67 interviews for this study as well as participant-observation
in a range of sites in Wellford in 2002-03. I interviewed 38 high school students, of
whom 25 were South Asian Muslim immigrant youth (12 were Indian, 8 Pakistani,
and 5 Bangladeshi, roughly in proportion to their representation in the high school).
I also interviewed 7 'second-generation' South Asian Muslim youth, who were either
born in the U.S. or came here before the age of seven or eight, and 6 non-Muslim
South Asian or non-South Asian Muslim immigrant students (including Nepali,
Tibetan, and African youth). Of the total group of high school youth, I ended up
speaking to 25 students who were female and 13 who were male. In order to protect
the identity of these young immigrants as much as possible, I have changed the name
of the town where I did the research while still trying to provide a description of the
local context, and I have used pseudonyms for all the students I interviewed.
6. The 2000 Census reported 2,720 Indian immigrants (2.7% of the population) in
Wellford, a city that is 68.1% White American, 11.9% African American, 11.9%
Asian American, and 7.4% Latino (U.S. Census Bureau 2000; www.census.gov ). The
Census estimate does not include undocumented immigrants so the actual number of
Indian immigrants is bound to be higher.
7. For example, the national population of Indian Americans was 1,678,765 in 2000,
according to the U.S. Census (U.S. Census Bureau 2000 Census; www.census.gov).
8. The economic struggles of these often invisible Indian American challenge the
model minority stereotype: the 1990 U.S. Census found that 7.4 percent of Indian
American families fall below the poverty line, slightly more than White American
families (7 percent) (Hing 1993).
9. ‘PM Promises NRIs “dual citizenship”’, Times of India, January 10, 2003, p. 1.
10. ‘Dual Rhetoric,’ Editorial, Times of India, January 11, 2003, p. 12.
11. ‘Advani Asks States to Deport Illegal Settlers,’ Times of India, January 8, 2003, p. 1;
‘Illegal Immigrants Cause Alarm in South Mumbai,’ Times of India, Downtown Plus,
January 10, 2003, p. 1.
12. ‘US terror probe reportedly targeting Muslim, Arab stores,’ John Mintz and Douglas
Farah, Boston Globe, August 12, 2002, p. A8.
13. In late 2001, U.S. Customs launched ‘Operation Green Quest’ to seize currency and
cashier’s checks being sent out of the country by Arabs and Muslims, supposedly to
fund terrorist groups, including those that had never threatened the U.S.

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 8
The Indian Diaspora in the United States of America: An
Emerging Political Force?
Pierre Gottschlich

Introduction
The Indian Diaspora in the United States of America is one of the most interesting ethnic
groups in the country. Their rapid, almost unprecedented development from a rather small
and apolitical group of first-generation immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s to an
economically and socially well-established part of American society has drawn the attention
of a range of scholars. The increasing visibility of Indian Americans in formal political
processes political scientists is particularly interesting, as they have come to occupy the
spaces of formal political power. The first phase of Indian settlement in the U.S. began in
the 19th century, but as a result of tightened immigration legislation, displacements, and
voluntary return movements to India the community almost ceased to exist after World War
II. Only since the reformation of the immigration laws of the United States in 1965 have
people from South Asia in general, and India in particular, come to the U.S. in greater
numbers. Therefore, the history of the current Indian American population spans a mere
forty years. During that time, this group has experienced a breath-taking process of catching
up with more established ethnic groups in the United States such as Chinese or Korean
Americans, economically, socially but also politically.

This article deals with the political development of the Indian American community. It
argues that Indian Americans are becoming an important political force in the United States
through the incremental utilization of four main resources: influence through voting power
and public opinion, influence through information and institutions, influence through money
and campaign finance, and, finally, influence through Indian American candidates. In all four
of these spheres of political power the Indian Diaspora in the United States has made
marked 'progress.' This paper traces the deployment of these four elements as part of the
formal political participation of Indian Americans in American politics. The focus of this
study is the realm of electoral politics and the role of Indian Americans in this form of
political involvement.1

The Indian American ‘Community’

For the purposes of this paper, it is broadly possible to distinguish between ‘Non-Resident
Indians’ (NRIs), who are Indian citizens living abroad, and ‘People of Indian Origin’ (PIOs)
- people of Indian descent who may have another citizenship (Government of India 2001:
viii). In the U.S. there is no widely accepted specific ethnic category or another typology
agreed upon to actually distinguish Indian Americans from South Asian Americans. Since
the United States Census Bureau operates with the rather inclusive category ‘Asian Indians’ it
is virtually impossible to distinguish from the mere data whether a person comes from India,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, or even Pakistan. Still, most arguments in this article
refer explicitly to the Indian American community as an ethnic group consisting of NRIs
and PIOs as applied to India only. However, some of the statistical data may include the
broader perspective of a South Asian American community.

In the 2000 census, almost 1.7 million people in the United States described themselves as
‘Asian Indian’, up from some 800,000 in 1990. By 2005, the Indian American population
numbered an estimated 2 million. Two thirds of the community members are younger than
35 years (Dumm & Jain 2004: 4). Fifty-eight percent of all Indian Americans 25 or older
have earned a college or university degree (Gupta 2004: 3). The per capita annual income of
Indian Americans is the highest among all ethnic groups in the United States (Khagram et al.
2001: 272). At an estimated US-$ 60,000 to 65,000, it is almost twice as high as the average
annual income in the U.S. (Nordlinger 2004). However, these headlines mute the presence of
large numbers of lesser skilled and lower paid Indians who too contribute to the American
economy and society.

This heterogeneity of the Indian American population has meant that there is no single
common political agenda around which they can or should unify. The splits that emerged in
the Federation of Indian American Associations (FIA) in Los Angeles in 1997 comes to mind (Lal
1999: 44-45), and the emerging fault lines, especially along categories of class or gender
suggest some axes of difference (Lessinger 1995: 142-144). Differences in political
affiliations, religion, and language have however been partially overcome by a more and
more pragmatic treatment of potentially controversial questions within the Indian American
population paving the way for certain voices to emerge claiming to be representative of the
population and it is this group that I study here.

Voting Power and Public Opinion

The most common and direct way of exercising political influence is through elections and
votes. An active and well-informed electorate can represent a formidable source of political
power. However, very few Indian Americans register to vote (Dumm & Jain 2004: 5), at least
partially explained by their ineligibility. The recency of migration has meant that many still
retain Indian citizenship so that only a relatively small percentage of Indian Americans are
eligible to vote. Although this picture is altering the Indian American population does not
yet represent a very large voting block. Considering the fact that empirical studies suggest
that the almost unbelievable high percentage of up to 90 percent of Indian Americans
eligible and registered to vote do actually cast their votes on Election Day, there is a strong
argument for the high potential this resource has for the political power of the community
(Khagram et al. 2001: 276). Voter registration campaigns have attempted to increase the
voter participation still further. One of the most successful campaigns was the ‘National
Asian Pacific American Voter Registration Campaign’ of 1996 under the leadership of the
Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) which brought together a coalition of 19 different
Asian American interest groups. A similar project was organised in 2000, this time headed by
the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA), one of the most influential Indian
American interest groups. The campaign ‘Youth Vote 2000’ targeted primarily the age group
of 18 to 30 years and has been a widely recognized success (Lien 2001: 73).

The formation of broad pan-Asian American coalitions in the field of voter registration has
proven to be a very effective instrument of combining organizational and personal resources
in order to pursue shared interests within the Asian American population. Hence, this
strategy has been expanded to other sections of political work, namely in the area of public
opinion. Here, the focus lies on influencing the political awareness and, eventually, the
possible votes of people other than the Indian American community itself. The most
common field of broad cooperation besides immigration and naturalization issues has been
the topic of hate crimes and racist violence. No other problem has sparked greater solidarity
among all ethnic minorities in the United States. A point in case has been the unprecedented
political cooperation following a hate crime that was committed in Pittsburgh in 2000. A
Caucasian man shot and killed five people, including a Jewish woman, an African American,
a Chinese American, a Vietnamese American and an Indian American. The uniqueness of
this crime led to one of the broadest coalitions in the history of organised interest in the
United States: ‘Instead of Asians fighting hate crimes by themselves, these hate-motivated
shooting rampages became galvanizing events that united Americans of all colours to
demand legal and political changes to address related issues’ (Lien 2001: 66). In a similar
dynamic, xenophobic crimes after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought
together many Asian American interest groups under the leadership of the newly found Sikh
Coalition in order to fight against racist violence in the ‘Hate Free Zone Campaign’ (The Sikh
Coalition 2003: 8).

Apart from political issue campaigns, a large part of public opinion work is done in the field
of public education. Through special events and the integration of non-Indians into specific
Indian feast day celebrations and festivals such as Diwali or the India Day Parade in New
York City, Indian are being encouraged to educate the American public. This is a process of
small steps rather than giant leaps as reflected in the recommendation given by the India
America Forum for Political Education (IAFPE): ‘Work with local museums to organize India
festivals, display Indian costumes and photographs, serve Indian food, films on India, Indian
dances’ (Kanjilal 2002: 78). Furthermore, many publications of various Indian American
groups, for instance books and leaflets called ‘Life in India’ or ‘What is Hinduism?’, are
devoted solely to this issue. However, these attempts often abstract an 'acceptable' version of
India for presentation and are in danger of eliding religion, ethnicity and culture in complex
and sometimes dangerous ways.

It is also noteworthy that there are numerous political initiatives among Indian Americans
that do not focus on the electoral side of politics and that do not necessarily stem from
traditional top-down forms of political involvement. Prominent examples are grassroots
organizations in the field of gender and feminism (Lessinger 1995: 148-152). Women’s
groups like Asian Indian Women in America (AIWA), Manavi and Sakhi have become important
organizations within the Indian American population and address problems that oftentimes
are neglected by other groups (Khandelwal 2002: 168-171). The Asian Women’s Self-Help
Association (ASHA), for instance, concentrates on the pressing issue of domestic violence
(Preisser 1999).

Information and Institutions

Political representation and lobbying of institutions, politicians and decision-makers is
another potentially significant form of political intervention. According to a famous line by
Congressman Gary L. Ackerman (D-NY), until recently most of his colleagues in Congress
thought that ‘IndiaPakistan’ was in fact just one single word (Hathaway 2002: 386). The need
for more education could not be more obvious.

The installment of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans after an initiative by
the India America Forum for Political Education (IAFPE) in 1993 has provided one route to
political representation. Initially modeled after the Black Caucus on African American Issues, the
India Caucus soon became one of the most important links between some Indian Americans
and Congress and serves as a forum to bring up issues and discuss political options and
solutions. Together with its growing importance, the India Caucus experienced a steady
expansion (Lindsay 2002: 37-38). Today, it is the largest body of its kind in Congress, with
almost 200 members in the House of Representatives alone. This fact should not be
underestimated, especially considering the rapidity of the development. In an interview with
the Indian American newspaper ‘India Abroad’ Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) declared:
‘It’s a great tribute to the Indian American community that the India Caucus is the largest
caucus in the U.S. Congress’ (Haniffa 2005a). In 2004, a counterpart of the India Caucus was
founded in the U.S. Senate. The Caucus Friends of India has close to 40 members and is headed
by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) – another sign for the growing political importance of
the Indian American population.

The India Caucus has raised the visibility of the Indian American population and also served
as a meeting point and a road of influence for the political interests of some Indian
Americans. Many economic groups such as the Asian-American Hotel Owners Association
(AAHOA), the Indus Entrepreneurs, or the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin
(AAPI) have utilized the caucus as a discussion forum that helps put problems and issues on
the political agenda of Congress (Parekh 2000). As a contact place the caucus allows for
direct approaches by members of the Indian American community in order to communicate
questions and needs. To be sure, this is no one way-street: While politicians become more
accessible to the community, they also get the opportunity to point out their views at
conferences organised by Indian Americans or to publish opinion pieces in one of the
various Indian American newspapers or magazines such as ‘India Abroad’ or ‘News India-
Times’. Hence, the caucus represents an institutionalized dialogue between the Indian
American population and Congress. For example, the annual conferences organised by the
AAHOA, the AAPI or the Indian American Friendship Council regularly invite important
members of Congress through the caucus and offer both a platform for political talks and an
opportunity for direct lobbying efforts (Hathaway 2001: 24).
Another form of institutional contact-making and network-building is the direct access to
Congress via consultations, testimonies, and internships. Many Indian American interest
groups maintain some sort of representation in Washington, D.C., in order to stay in regular
contact with politicians and decision-makers and to contribute testimonies to Congressional
Hearings. An organization that is especially active in this field of lobbying is the Indian
American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA). The IACPA also established a special
internship programme for Indian American students, the ‘Washington Leadership Program’
(WLP) which has now been running for more than ten years. Since 1994, the WLP has
managed to place 135 interns in the offices of such notable members of Congress as
Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Jack Reed (D-RI) or Representatives Gary Ackerman
(D-NY) and Marc Foley (R-FL). Currently, the WLP offers up to 19 internships at
Congressional offices a year (Dumm 2005). The Indian American community has benefited
significantly from this programme since many of the former interns have become leading
figures in the politically active part of the Indian American population (Nurnberger 2002).
Activities such as the WLP of course also help to strengthen and deepen the relationship
between the community and lawmakers in Congress.

Money and Campaign Finance

A resource that has been utilized to a much greater extent by Indian Americans in recent
years is money. The ‘cheque writing abilities’ of the highly affluent Indian American
population could be an important source of political influence (Chandran 2000). In the
2002-2004 election cycle alone, the community donated US-$ 16 to 18 million to election
campaigns (Sharma 2004: 9). ‘The community has, for some time, been seen as a cash cow
willing to fork out donations to political campaigns without asking for much in return’
(Kumar 2004). However, as Nurnberger has argued, ‘The amount of a political contribution
is often less important than the manner in which it is given. Too often, Indian Americans
give funds to a candidate and never ask for anything in return. Political contributions should
be the start of a relationship with a political leader and not the end’ (Nurnberger 2000: 84).

This is however slowly changing. Institutions such as the US India Political Action Committee
(USINPAC) are increasingly collecting financial contributions from all over the country and
concentrating the efforts on important election campaigns, i.e. conduiting resources for
planned electoral gains. Not surprisingly, it is Indian American candidates who get the most
support (Koons 2003). The largest amounts of money have gone to the campaigns of Piyush
‘Bobby’ Jindal, a second-generation Indian American who has run for the Governorship of
Louisiana in 2003 (and narrowly lost) and was eventually elected to Congress in 2004. The
USINPAC has played a major role in both campaigns. In 2003, it co-initiated a broad
coalition of Indian American interest groups such as the Indian American Leadership Incubator
(IALI) or the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) to gather support for
Jindal (Gupta 2003). In his 2004 election campaign, Jindal was able to collect more than US-
$ 2 million from members of the Indian American community (Sharma 2004: 9).
Indian American Candidates
No single event has marked the emergence of the Indian American community as a political
actor more than Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal’s election to Congress in 2004. One year earlier,
Jindal’s gubernatorial race in Louisiana served as a wake-up-call to the Indian American
population. His 2003 campaign mobilized an unprecedented amount of financial
contributions as well as personal assistance and help among Indian Americans. This effort
almost succeeded: Jindal, who was frontrunner in many polls, only narrowly lost a run-off
election to the candidate of the Democratic Party, Kathleen B. Blanco, who went on to
become the first female Governor in the history of Louisiana. In 2004, Jindal was nominated
to run on the Republican ticket for the vacant seat in the House of Representatives for the
First District of Louisiana. Again, he managed to get the support of large parts of the Indian
American population not only in his home state but throughout the U.S. On November 2,
2004, Jindal won the seat, gaining more than 80 percent of the vote.

Jindal is the first Indian American winning an office of national importance since Dalip
Singh Saund served as a Congressman in the 1950s. The significance of Jindals success
cannot be overestimated. His election was celebrated widely, and even the former home of
the Jindal family in Malerkotla, Punjab, did sent congratulations to its ‘lost son’. In fact,
Jindal captured many headlines and was on the front page of numerous newspapers in India
although the simultaneous re-election of George W. Bush as President of the United States
was of arguably higher importance. A Punjab legislator said what many people in India and
many Indian Americans in the United States probably thought: ‘It’s a proud moment for us.
The Indian Diaspora in the United States has come of age to excel in politics’ (Nanda 2004).

Jindal went on to become the first Indian American representative in Congress for 50 years.
Significantly Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal has run on the Republican ticket. Here, an interesting
development seems to take place. Like many other immigrant groups, Indian Americans
initially strongly leaned towards the Democratic Party. The main reasons for this early
identification with liberal politics have been the less strict immigration and naturalization
policies pursued by the Democrats in contrast to the Republican Party and the fact that in
the first years and decades most Indian Americans lived in traditional urban strongholds of
the Democrats such as New York City, Chicago, or Detroit. The economic and social
success of the community, however, seems to have led to more conservative political views.
While there is no conclusive statistical evaluation of Indian American voting behavior,
several interviews and personal encounters do suggest a shift towards the Republican Party,
especially within the well-established and highly affluent segment of the middle and upper
class Indian American population. This trend can also be observed in the amount of
campaign finance money given to both parties. While for a long time the Democrats had an
advantage in this respect, financial contributions have increasingly gone to the Republicans
in recent years (Cho & Lad 2004). Tellingly, the Republican Party sought the support of the
Indian American community in the 2004 Presidential election campaign. President George
W. Bush and other leading Republicans reached out to the community, talking to prominent
representatives of the Indian American population, giving interviews to newspapers like
‘India Abroad’, and inviting members of the community to gala events and fundraising
dinners. This strategy was quite successful and led to donations, financial support, and
campaign assistance for the Republican Party by Indian Americans which sparked some
controversy within the Indian American population (Madhavapeddi 2004).

Table 1: Indian American Election Candidates, November 2, 2004

Republican Democrat
Nationa Jindal (Congress, LA) – Won
l Fernandez (Congress, NJ) –
Lost
State Randhawa (House, SC) – Won Dandekar (House, Iowa) – Won
Jayakumar (Senate, NY) – Lost
Rao (Secretary of State, NC) –
Das (House, NH) – Lost
Lost
Singh (House, AZ) – Lost

A closer look at Table 1 underscores the thesis of a possible realignment of the Indian
American community. At first glance there seems to be parity between the two parties in the
number of Indian American candidates running for politically important offices on state and
national level (many more Indian Americans do actually run for office in local and regional
elections that bear less relevance to the broad national political landscape). But while there
were two Republican candidates on a national level with Jindal capturing the seat, the
Democrats had no Indian American running. Two out of the four Republican tickets have
been successful while only Swati Dandekar in Iowa won her race for the Democrats. Hence,
there seem to be more and more qualitative differences between Republican and Democrat
Indian American election campaigns even if the quantity remains stable.

In sum, the possible Indian American realignment could point to competing identities and
interests within the community. As an ethnic minority (albeit a ‘model minority’ as often
claimed especially in the 1980s and early 1990s) and according to their cultural position the
‘natural’ choice of the Indian Americans should be the Democratic Party. On the other
hand, the economic status, the wealth, and the high class hierarchy of a large portion of the
Indian American population do ‘naturally’ point towards the Republicans. Obviously, the
important question is whether the ethnic identity or the class status and the corresponding
interests will determine the future party allegiance of the Indian American population. Given
the increasing political activism among the community, this could be a key issue for further
analysis.

Implications for India

The emergence of the Indian Diaspora in the United States as an increasingly active and
powerful political force has not gone unnoticed in India: ‘For the first time, India has a
constituency in the US with real influence and status. The Indian community in the United
States constitutes an invaluable asset in strengthening India’s relationship with the world’s
only superpower. … They have effectively mobilized on issues ranging from the nuclear
tests in 1998 to Kargil, played a crucial role in generating a favourable climate of opinion in
Congress and defeating anti-India legislation there, and lobbied effectively on other issues of
concern to the Indian community’ (Government of India 2001: xx-xxi). This statement by
the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora perfectly summarizes the growing importance
of the Indian American community to India. In fact, the first political efforts of the Indian
Diaspora in the U.S. to support India came as early as 1987 when the National Federation of
Indian American Associations (NFIA) mobilized large parts of the community and managed to
stop the sale of American AWACS-planes to Pakistan (Lal 1999: 42-48). During the Kargil
crisis in 1999, the community ‘flooded’ the offices of important members of Congress with
countless e-mails. This ‘e-mail blitz’ was a major success in motivating Representatives to
urge President Bill Clinton to call for a withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the disputed
territories – a classical example of an indirect lobbying effort (Choudhury 2002).

The formation of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans has been a milestone
for the lobbying efforts of the Indian American community. It has also raised the
responsiveness of Congressmen to issues involving the relations to India. Robert Hathaway:
‘[The India Caucus] is to an important extent ... responsible for that sea-change … in the
attitude of members of Congress about India and about the importance of the US-India
relationship’ (Hannifa 2005b). This has been particularly valuable with regard to the
economic sanctions imposed on India by the Glenn Amendment following the 1998 nuclear
tests. A coordinated effort by political interest groups and economic Indian American
organizations like the US-India Business Council or the India Interest Group led to a gradual
sanction relief and, finally, to the renunciation of the Glenn Amendment by President
George W. Bush (Hathaway 2002: 395). An important but often forgotten field of bettered
U.S.-India cooperation is the area of emergency help and disaster relief. In addition to the
efforts by the Indian Diaspora itself, Congress approved considerable financial aid packages
to India following the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the 2004 Tsunami disaster, and, most
recently, the earthquake catastrophe in the Kashmir region in October 2005. This is, at least
partly, the result of the sustained drive of the Indian American community to create a
positive image of India among U.S.-politicians and, equally important, among the American
people.

Considering the numerous benefits India received and continues to receive from the political
efforts of Indians and Indian Americans in the United States it cannot be surprising that
there have been many initiatives to further develop and strengthen the links between the
Diaspora and the former homeland. One remarkable step has been the establishment of a
special ‘Non-Resident Indian Ambassador to the Indian American Community’ who is
working independently from the official embassy of India (Kamdar 2004: 342). The granting
of dual citizenship to certain PIOs in 2003 by the Indian government after years of bitter
controversies also goes well beyond symbolic actions and conferences (Gupta 2004: 1). The
progress and the success of such measures might be critical to the relationship between India
and the United States in the future. At the very least, the Indian American population has to
be considered as a major explaining factor for foreign policy decisions made by the U.S.
regarding India. Apart from this, there seems to be a high potential to the Indian Diaspora in
the United States to become more directly involved into social, economic, and political
affairs in India. Remittances and direct investments already play a major role in the linkage
between India and its overseas population. However, the financial strength of large parts of
the Indian American population could also be used more efficiently in an attempt to fight
poverty, to address socio-economic inequalities, and to better the living conditions of large
parts of the population in India. Here, the possible impact of the Indian Diaspora might be
even more important than in foreign policy relations.

Conclusion
The Indian Diaspora in the United States is an emerging political force. In fact, the
development from an apolitical ethnic community into a well-established political actor with
real influence is well on its way. Indian Americans have successfully utilized four main
resources critical to political power: voting power and public opinion, information and
institutions, money and campaign finance, and Indian American candidates. Indian
Americans have worked hard to transform their economic and social power into political
influence. The ambitious project ‘10 in 10’ of the organization Indian American Leadership
Incubator (IALI) is a good example for this determination. The goal of the IALI-initiative is to
have 10 Representatives of Indian American descent in Congress by 2010 (Nordlinger 2004).
With the election of Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal the first and initial step has been made – although
it remains more than doubtful if the number pursued can really be achieved. Despite this
progress, questions may still be asked of the limits of a political representation that fails to
take account of many working-class members of the diaspora. Nevertheless, the project
suggests that Indian Americans are overtaking many other ethnic groups into a position at
the threshold of real and sustained political power.

The implications of this development go well beyond domestic issues in the United States.
Indian Americans may well make sure that their voice will be heard when it comes to issues
such as immigration and naturalization, family unification, discrimination, hate crimes and
racist violence, education, health care, or business interests. The globally more important
factor, however, will be the relationship between the U.S. and India. Here, Indian Americans
already are, in the words of former Indian Minister for External Affairs, Yashwant Sinha,
‘extremely important sources of support for the Indian Government in the execution of its
policies through the influence and respect they command’ (Mohan 2003). The Indian
Diaspora in the United States will probably become even more and not less influential in the
future. Consequently, the furtherance of Indo-U.S. relations will to a large part depend on
the role of the Indian American community and its ties to India. Furthermore, the direct
influence of the Diaspora on matters in India ranging from economic investments to social
projects will likely be of greater importance in the years to come. The political involvement
of India’s overseas communities in general and the Indian American population in particular
will, therefore, be of increasing interest to academic studies and scholarly research.

Notes
1. It must be noted that this paper concentrates largely on electoral politics in the
United States. Other forms of political involvement by Indian Americans, for
instance in grassroots organizations in the field of gender and feminism, are dealt
 with to a lesser degree, which of course does not deny the significance and
importance of such political activism.

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 9
Immigration Dynamics in the Receiving State - Emerging
Issues for the Indian Diaspora in the UK
Parvati Raghuram

Introduction
‘To my mind, the most important aspect of re-connecting with the world is for us to reach
out to People of Indian Origin. The NRIs and the PIOs are the most important elements of
our globalisation.’ (Indian Prime Minister's Office 2006)

As states come to terms with and accommodate the implications of the hyper-mobility of
goods, capital and people in the contemporary world, new forms of affiliation and
connections are being sought and older forms revisited. This is particularly apparent in the
ways in which the Indian state is reaffirming its relationships with its diasporic populations,
attempting to evoke a sense of belonging to ‘Mother India’ and to mobilise a sense that
diasporic populations can be reinserted into the Indian economy.

India's large diasporic population (estimated at about 20 million) has been shaped by a long
history of emigration -entrepreneurial, indentured labour and postcolonial labour and family
migration from the Indian subcontinent (Bhat et al. 2002; Jacobsen and Pratap Kumar 2004;
Watkins 2002). The travesties of history and geography have resulted in the formation of a
complex diaspora that is increasingly coming to be seen as a resource for a globalising India.

Yet, the shape of the diaspora is also as much a result of regulations and forms of
incorporation of migrants in the receiving countries. As the countries that Indians migrate
to, also take on the rhetoric of globalisation in complex and contradictory ways, the
challenges facing the diaspora are continuously altering. Changes in immigration regulations,
in forms of inclusion and exclusion and in the changing notion of citizenship in receiving
countries are influencing the shape of the diaspora, on who can become diasporic, on how
they are received and the internal dynamics within the diasporic population. In this chapter I
aim to trace some of these issues as they arise within the context of one receiving nation -
U.K.

The diaspora and the state

A number of sending states have realised the important contributions that migrants make to
their nation state (Glick Schiller and Fouron 1999) and have therefore sought to maintain
and even strengthen their links with their diasporic populations (Smith 1999). They have
altered their regulations to more effectively incorporate their former residents into the
nationalist, economic and political project by offering them dual citizenship, financial
incentives and political participation.

These moves to incorporate the diaspora are also mirrored in India and since 1991 the
Indian government has increasingly wooed its diaspora. The prospects of contributions that
extraterritorial populations can make to the nation has spurred the Government to offer
them a series of concessions - relaxation in rules on investment, on stay in India, and more
recently the offer of a limited version of citizenship rights, in the form of the overseas Indian
citizenship. In recognising the potential importance of the flow of goods, money and
knowledge in shaping India's development, the government has also re-imagined its own
boundaries.

In creating a new form of citizenship, the government has attempted to retain a form of
exclusive citizenship for nationals who are resident in the country while offering a different,
more limited set of rights to those whose interests may also be served by another state. The
overseas Indian citizenship is also sensitive to the location of the citizen and the different
modes of reception that its diasporic populations receive in different receiving states in
terms of the rights on offer. For instance, the rights of migrants to the Gulf states1 will be
greater than those accorded to migrants to other parts of the world as they will be given
voting rights and thus have the right to participate in shaping Indian polity. Thus, the Prime
Minister in his address to the Bharatiya Pravasi Diwas Annual Conference (January 7, 2006)
acknowledged that the needs of overseas ‘Indians in the Gulf are unique. They are NRIs
who will never become naturalized citizens of those countries. Most of them have immediate
families back in India and have thus a vital stake in local governance, including the issue of
who would represent them in the State Assembly or the National Parliament. Their demand
seeking “voting rights” at home has, therefore, a convincing political basis’ (PM speeches
2006). The mode of identification that is on offer to the Indian diaspora is not a common
citizenship but an uncommon one, which differentiates between and within its diaspora.

It appears that the volume, significance and particularities of emigration from India to the
Gulf continues to play an important role in India's migratory imaginary, defining and shaping
India's emigration policy and policies towards the diaspora. The major growth in migration
to the Gulf states that followed the oil price boom of 1973-74 and the subsequent economic
growth in the region led to major changes in emigration policy: initially a suspension of the
operative part of the Emigration Act (of 1922) in 1976 followed by the introduction of a
new Act in 1983 (Nair 1993). Current concessions to Gulf migrants attempts to recognise
that the approximately 3.6 million Indians working in the Persian Gulf countries have high
stakes in maintaining stronger ties with India because of the limited opportunities for
settlement in these countries. They are primarily sojourners. Moreover, the limits on family
migration based on income, means that many blue-collar workers who migrate to the Gulf
countries have limited ability to bring their families with them. And finally, the attempt by
many of these states to employ local populations and maintain ethnic balance and increasing
scrutiny over visa applications makes the fate of such migration projects even more tenuous.
In response the political rights of Gulf non resident Indians (NRIs) will be greater than
those of other migrants.
It is clear then that these forms of overseas citizenship are altering the shape and content of
Indian citizenship and leading to a multiplication of its meaning both within India and
abroad.2 The offer of differential rights to Gulf NRIs may be seen as a radical recognition of
the different forms and kinds of connections that a diasporic population may seek with their
homeland. However, these issues of differential entry and reception are not confined to the
Gulf states. All receiving states play an important part in making decisions about who is
allowed to cross its boundaries and how migrants should be incorporated into their nation-
state. Contemporary migration policies in many countries increasingly talk the language of
border controls and of the need for the ‘strengthening of borders’. Regulations on who can
or cannot enter a state have become crucial in shaping migration as immigration issues
occupy greater and greater prominence in local political agendas. Moreover, the issue of
territorial identification of migrants to the receiving countries has received a different
urgency in the post September 11 scenario. For instance in the U.S. from March 1, 2003 the
components of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) were subsumed under
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the notions of home, land and security
came to be explicitly tied with immigration. As a very significant destination for diasporic
Indians, the significance of this change is palpable through the process of migration and
settlement, the forms of selection, nature of admission and types of surveillance that Indian
diasporics can expect and in fact, already have to handle.

This issue of how the structures within the receiving countries shape the diaspora and to what
extent are the strategies of continuing affiliation with a home territory fashioned by immigration
regulations in the receiving country has thus become an increasingly pressing issue (for an
interesting study in the U.S. context see Monisha Das Gupta 1997). Immigration regulations
change the socio-economic profiles of Indian migrants in the receiving countries so that any
study of a diaspora must be sensitive to how the processes of selection that these regulations
produce (alongside changes in the home countries) will mean that members of the Indian
diaspora who enter a country in different periods will be differently positioned even within the
one receiving country. The nature and extent of identification with the two referent states will
be significantly influenced by wider discourses and practices of selection within the process of
migration that influence who can migrate and become diasporic, and of how diasporic
communities are therefore constantly being reconstituted. In the rest of the paper I want to
trace how forms of selectivity and a sense of belonging are being reconfigured in the UK and
suggest some issues this might pose for the Indian diaspora in the UK.

Territorial identification - the role of the receiving state

In the UK, the state determines the general conditions of entry, work and residence
differentiating between migrant groups on a number of bases, including skills and country of
origin3. For third country nationals, entry to the UK is particularly influenced by the
application of these state regulations as they relate to both immigration and citizenship. It
regulates entry but is also attempting to force a form of overt and often exclusionary forms
of territorial identification on its citizens. Hence, not only who can enter but how they identify
is increasingly coming under the purview of the state.
Some of these processes were exemplified in the raft of new immigration regulations that
have been introduced in the UK since the year 2000. Barbara Roche's (the UK Home Office
minister responsible for immigration) groundbreaking speech to the House of Commons on
11 September 2000 marked a major shift in immigration policy in the UK (The Hansard
2000). Since then, there has been an increasing tendency to select migrants who offer skills
that are in shortage in the UK with a concomitant closing down of entry for those without
marketable skills. The UK, like many countries around the world, it appears, began to see
access to skilled labour supply as an element of its competitiveness in the global economy so
that all the changes to immigration regulations since 2000 have centred around skill
selectivity (DTI and the Home Office 2002: Gott and Johnston 2002). Until then, the
number of work permits issued (almost wholly given to skilled workers) had been gradually
increasing, but there had been no radical break in the system. However, the period between
2000 and 2004 saw much sharper rises - the number of new work permits issued increased
from 80,000 to 111,837 and the number of extensions given from 22,000 to 33,000 (Work
Permits UK 2004).4

The changes, which began to be set in place following September 11 2000, suggested that
the British state has taken the lead in repositioning itself in the labour markets of the global
economy in direct competition with other settler or immigration states such as Australia,
Canada and the U.S. (Mclaughlan and Salt 2002). The White Paper Secure Borders, Safe Haven,5
(HMSO 2002) published in February 2002 and enacted in November 2002 as the
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, 2002, attempted to consolidate this position by
recognising that global movement, mass communication and the changing international
situation has to inform our thinking (David Blunkett in his Introduction, The Hansard,
2002).6 Further changes to immigration were implemented in the Asylum and Immigration
(Treatment of Claimants etc) Act in 2004 and this was swiftly followed by the White Paper
Controlling Our Borders: Making Migration work for Britain, published in February 2005. Together
they have reshaped both migration flows as well as discourses around migration - entry,
settlement and rights.

New regulations, old divisions

Although it is undoubtedly too simplistic to read the changes mooted in this raft of
regulations as unidirectional, one can nevertheless pick up patterns of processes of selection
of migrants, narratives of the nation and demands for an exclusive citizenship that are being
mobilised. The titles of the two White Papers are themselves revealing of the importance of
economic selection and the increasing emphasis on the language of securitisation in
managing migration (see Flynn 2005; Walters 2004; Lewis and Neal 2005 Yuval-Davis et al.
2005 for extensive critiques).

The first move, the close linkage of economic prosperity with ‘good migrants’ is made clear
in the Home Office statement (along with the CBI and the Trade Unions Congress) that:
‘Now more than ever, we need the skills and enthusiasm of people from around the world
who have chosen to make their homes here and to contribute to our economy and society.
To help them to do that, the country needs to invest wisely in their potential within the
context of a migration system that is managed in the national interest.’ (Home Office, CBI
and TUC, 5 September 2005) The statement then goes on to outline the need to facilitate
migrants' entry to meet skill shortages.

The impetus for the opening up of skilled migration by the OECD countries more generally,
and by the UK more particularly, has come from a number of sources. Some years ago,
immigration was signalled as an answer to the demographic deficit outlined in the UN
Demographic Report on Replacement Populations7 (see for example, Ruddock 2000)
fuelling competition between many of the OECD countries for skilled migrants - particularly
in the technology sector, leading to the relaxation of immigration regulations for those
working in this sector (OECD 2002). In some countries, like the U.S., corporate pressure to
allow skilled labour to enter became intensified so that a number of countries have changed
their regulations to allow more skilled persons to enter (Rollason 2000). More recently, states
have attempted to position themselves in the competing landscape of a knowledge economy
encouraging them to further ingrain the selectivity of skilled migrants into their migration
regulations.

All this has led to a sharpening of the divide between those with and without marketable
knowledges but has also led the Government to selectively valorise certain skills over
others8. For instance, despite the contraction in the labour market in the technology sector,
migrants working in the information technology (IT) sector benefit from being in the top
tier of the new schema for entry to the UK. The second tier (which requires applicants to
have skills equivalent to NVQ3 and above), approximates the current work permit category
and is envisaged to meet labour requirements at the less qualified and lower income end of
skilled work. The division between tier 1 and tier 2 recognises that not all skills are equally
marketable but has also ascribed second tier status to those (particularly women) who are
working in heavily state-regulated sectors such as nursing and teaching. The boundary
between the two tiers is marked by differential access to a range of rights. For instance,
unlike tier 1, tier 2 migrants will require a sponsor (employer, faith community or local
authority) who will ensure they comply with the regulations of employment and residence.
At the same time, the proposed plan aims to heavily restrict the migration of the lesser
skilled (tier three) on grounds that the demand for lesser skilled jobs will be largely met by
migrants from the new EU member countries. However, this does not take into account that
over time EU migrants too may be unwilling to engage in lesser paid jobs. In particular, the
regulations fail to recognise the significance of continuing labour shortages in sectors such as
care and domestic work that depend on migrant female labour (Kofman, Raghuram and
Merefield 2005).

As we can therefore see, skills loom large in the principle of selectivity adopted by the state.
However, the processes of selection have also been accompanied by an increasing adoption
of forms of an exclusive citizenship. Since July 2004, those applying for naturalisation have
been required to demonstrate knowledge of English, and on the advise of the newly
established Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration, now also need to pass a Life in
the UK test (introduced November 1, 2005), which is designed to test applicants' knowledge
of history, culture and institutions within the UK. Those whose knowledge of English is
below a required level will be required to take an English test as well as attend citizenship
classes. Hence, the knowledges necessary to obtain citizenship in the British knowledge
economy go beyond the scope of marketable skills envisaged in the skills based selection of
migrants.

Since 2002 acquiring British citizenship has also involved a public oath of allegiance and a
celebratory event with town halls around the country ringing out with the sounds and rituals
of 'citizenship ceremonies'. In beginning to resemble other settler societies, the UK has
sought to acquire the accoutrements of such states, and in particular the ceremonies and
symbolism of acquiring citizenship and its rights and obligations.9 This represents the final
step from an imperial mode of citizenship or rather subjecthood (Castles and Miller 1998)
which embraced its subjects but with little ceremony. The ceremonies attempt to square an
out-dated oath of allegiance to the Queen as subject, with a modern notion embodied in the
citizenship contract. The latter is based on democratic values and universal principles based
on the Human Rights Act 1998 (only incorporated in October 2000) which is seen as being
the ‘key source of values that British citizens should share’. The citizenship ceremonies may
also be read as the government's attempt to make would-be citizens publicly profess
territorial identification with the British state. Moreover, the affective register too is to be
targeted and the ideology of patriotism reclaimed from the Right and put to use to combat
the sense of disaffection amongst disenfranchised migrants, particularly Asian men10
(Gordon Brown speech given to the Future of Britishness conference organised by the
Fabian Society, January 14, 2006, London). The ‘age of transnationalism’ appears to be ‘a
time of continuing and even heightened nation-state building processes’ (Glick Schiller et al.
1995: 59).

The language of cohesion, which came to be adopted after the riots in Northern cities in
2001, acquired a new urgency at the realisation that those responsible for the suicide
bombings in London on July 7, 2005 were ‘home-grown’. The importance of ‘domopolitics’
(Walters 2004) in thinking the nation's migration and citizenship regulations became
highlighted in new ways. It also pushed citizenship policies further in into 'an ideological
terrain that promulgates hard boundaries between ‘West/East’, ‘good/evil’, ‘us/them’ (Lewis
and Neal 2005: 435).

These events have also led to proposals to alter the rights to citizenship. Since 2002, the
Government has been able to withdraw British citizenship from those who hold dual
citizenship and whose presence in the UK is seen as prejudicial to its vital interests, but in
September 2005, the Government tried to introduce a clause that the threshold for exclusion
would be lowered to include those whose exclusion is ‘conducive to the public good’.
Significantly, the requirement that no person can be made stateless has meant that this can
only be applied to those holding dual citizenship. The Joint Committee on Human Rights in
its scrutiny of the Bill recognises that Indian citizens who are not eligible to dual citizenship
will thus not be affected by this regulation (The Hansard 2005).
This threat of removal of rights has been accompanied by a raft of programmes that aim to
improve ‘community cohesion’ (see for instance, the Home Office publication of 2005,
Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society and Worley, 2005 for a critique). All these changes
have meant a significant shift away from affirmations of British multiculture towards a
(re)embracing of older notions of assimilationism within a newer, de-racialized, language of
social cohesion (Lewis and Neal 2005: 437) alongside a demand that citizens profess a
national affiliation to the receiving country. It appears that just as India recognises its
diaspora through an expansion of citizenship to those of Indian origin living abroad, the
terms of reception are becoming increasingly stratified, exclusionary and detrimental to those
who acknowledge or take up dual nationality. These are some of the issues I take up in the
next section.

Implications for the Indian diaspora: possibilities and pitfalls

Indians have been amongst the main beneficiaries of the expansion of intake of skilled
migrants For instance, India has since 2002 overtaken other countries as the largest recipient
of work permits. Skilled Indians have also entered through other routes. The permit-free
training scheme for doctors in training alongside the imperial reach of some British
qualifications has spurred the migration of large numbers of Indian doctors to the UK. This
has been further facilitated by the fact that India is one of the primary sites for the UK's
international medical recruitment efforts. The agreement between the Indian and UK
Governments that enables the NHS to recruit nurses from India (apart from within the
following states: Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal). And finally,
Indians have also been significant beneficiaries of the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme,
the scheme introduced in 2002 whereby those with requisite points (obtained for possession
of skills, income, particular occupations etc.) can apply to enter the UK to seek jobs and to
subsequently apply for citizenship. Additionally a number of skilled migrants bring spouses
with them, who are also skilled (Raghuram 2004a), and given that those from the Indian
subcontinent account for a significant proportion of those seeking family reunification to
the UK, they form a very significant part of overall migration to the UK, and in particular to
its skilled migrant streams11. Because skills enable them to access a bundle of rights that are
increasingly reserved for the skilled (such as rights to extend stay and eventually to apply for
citizenship), they will also form an increasingly large part of UK's diasporic population.
Students too form a growing part of the population and given the concessions to some
students (such as those studying in Scotland) that they will be allowed to stay on and seek
work in Scotland, they too may contribute to the Indian diaspora in the UK.

The most marked effect of these changes is undoubtedly the selectivity of migrants with
skills. Unlike the earlier period of labour migration, particularly the 1960s (up to 1975), when
most migrants came to take up lesser skilled work, these new migrants are being admitted
because of their skills. Although the earlier period of migration was also coterminous with
the period of brain drain migration and of the movement of doctors and scientific personnel
(Bhagwati 1976), their numbers were eclipsed by the larger numbers of lesser skilled
workers. Moreover, the nature of racism during the period also meant that not all those who
came to the UK to take up lesser skilled work were, in fact, less skilled; their skills merely
went unrecognised (and unpaid).

Another major change in the new waves of labour migration has been the role of women
migrants in these streams. Although they have always contributed to the economy as
entrepreneurs as home-workers and in factories, their participation in the more highly paid
sectors too has increased. Many of the immigration categories remain male dominated, but
the proportion of women is now steadily increasing. For instance, the proportion of work
permits awarded to Indian women has expanded from 15% of all Indian migrants in 1995 to
almost 30% in 2004. Women also form increasingly large numbers among migrant doctors
(Raghuram and Montiel 2003; Raghuram 2006) both in the hospital sector and among
general practitioners (particularly in the training grades). The large intake of migrants within
female-dominated professions such as nursing has also led to a shift in gender balance
among Indian migrants. Women are also taking part in patterns of transient mobility,
because of their increasing participation in professions that were much more gender-
exclusive, such as the IT sector (Raghuram 2004b). They are becoming a significant part of
brain circulation migration. At the same time the demand for workers in the more poorly
paid parts of the care sectors such as domestic work and as carers in care homes has also led
to the deskilling of migrant Indian women (Raghuram 2005). All this has resulted in an
expansion in the role that women are playing in migration, in the range of sectors in which
they are finding employment and challenging the ways in which Indian women are becoming
part of the diaspora. Because of the sectors that some of them work in, such as nurses and
doctors, they earn enough to be able to initiate family reunification, so that women are
becoming the lead migrants and men are being recast as family migrants. However, married
women are also migrating on short-term assignments while other women are delaying
marriage because of the difficulty of family formation within the context of repeated
patterns of mobility (Raghuram 2004b).

Equipped with the human capital that has become valorised in the new landscape of skilled
migration, Indian migrants have new positions/positionings open to them, which can at least
partially challenge the old vectors of racism. These positions offer a range of possibilities for
Indians in the UK but also some pitfalls.

Positions
What forms of belonging, of identification are being constructed within this landscape? The
positions that Indian diasporics are inserted into arise from a complex intersection of
changing formations and regulations in both the sending and the receiving country. In the
UK, the new regulations limit many rights of lesser skilled workers: rights to entry, to bring
in dependants, to stay on or to switch to other immigration categories and therefore
eventually limit the right to citizenship while engaging in a rhetoric of endowing these rights
on those with the right package of skills. Skilled migrants are being offered rights to stay and
develop ‘permanent’ links with the receiving country and to obtain citizenship rights and
duties. These links are however, to be cemented by strong territorial identification and a
public allegiance to the receiving state, with citizenship ceremonies marking the rites of
passage from one territorially based national identity to another. Their model of
incorporation involves exclusive identification with the receiving state.

One of the results of these processes of selection is that a complex civic stratification within
the diaspora is likely to ensue (Morris 2002; see also Werbner 2004). Social differentiation is
increasingly being reinforced by access to differential rights in a manner that is much more
explicit than before. Moreover, skills often act as a short hand for access to education, based
on one's class position which itself carries a sedimented history of privilege (Kamat, Mir and
Matthew 2004). Hence, skills selectivity is also a form of class selection and it is the middle
and upper classes in the sending countries that are being selected as migrants so that the new
landscape of migration is marked by a transnationalisation of these social classes (Weiss
2005).12 New vectors of inclusion and exclusion are being crafted through the neutral
language of skills. Categories such as race are being increasingly being inscribed with class
differences so that studying the fate of the Indian diasporic population will require increasing
sensitivity to class.

The language of racism is increasingly being re-deployed through the neutered language of
community cohesion and in adopting the accoutrements of anti-racist policies. Such notions
of social cohesion fail to take account of the complexities in diaspora formation outlined
below, instead imagining migrant communities largely within the spaces of the old ethnic
minority paradigm which often elide race with class, an elision that will become increasingly
untenable in the context of migrant selectivity.13 It leads to a misrecognition of the
complexities of the us/them question and to a denial of differences and divisions within
individual diasporic groups (McGhee 2003).

The adoption of the language of skills also provides a meritocratic gloss on immigration
policy and seems to suggest that the coupling of race with immigration policy has been
undone and has been replaced by a new relationship between ‘economics’ and migration. It
also makes room for claims that the use of economic criteria as the basis for entry and
settlement is a conscious move against racism obscuring the vectors of inclusion and
exclusion that skilled migrants too may face. This deracialised language tends to occlude the
social and economic deprivation faced by the lesser skilled workers and communities of
earlier migrants who do not have a history of privilege within the UK. It also fails to
recognise the continuing significance of racism in many skilled sectors. As Robinson and
Carey (2000) point out in their study of Indian doctors, racism conditions the experiences of
migrants in different parts of the class spectrum. The vectors and sites where racism need to
be addressed will alter as institutional settings such as hospitals and businesses becoming
increasingly significant sites for addressing and negotiating racial difference in the workplace.

The adoption of the language of skills is also likely to influence the shape and prospects of
anti-racist movements in the UK, and particularly the involvement of the Indian diaspora in
such movements. Although Indian migration to the UK has always been marked by class
differences, some of these differences were also mitigated by the extant racism that faced
them on their arrival in the UK. However, by deeming skilled migrants as good migrants,
and by rewarding them with territorial settlement in the UK, these migrants are also in
danger of revelling in narratives of success, and of a premature political amnesia around the
politics of race. The processes of migrant selectivity, alongside the marked educational and
occupational success of longer established migrants from India (Parekh 2000), has altered
the skills base of the Indian diaspora in the UK. This also means that Indian migrants are
seen as more successful than other migrants with whom they came together under the old
umbrella of Asian, or indeed Black. Although the fate of earlier Indian migrants was not
identical to that of Pakistani migrants who arrived around the same time, the similarity in
terms of experience of racism provided an opportunity and an incentive for South Asian
migrants to come together on an anti-racist platform. But the differences in the form of
incorporation and the trajectories of migrants along with the increasing salience of the
religious penalty in this process, means that Hindu Indians may well be tempted to
distinguish themselves from their 'less successful' compatriots from the subcontinent. These
religious distinctions also reverberate with the increasing politicisation of religion in India
but can bring particularly thorny issues for the Indian Muslim diasporic populations in the
UK.

Authenticity questions and positioning oneself as a diasporic Indian are always also re-
framed around the recency of migration, so that older migrants are viewed as 'not quite
Indian' by newer migrants as they are seen as a representative of an older India, and of a
past, they themselves have moved beyond. However, in the new climate where economic
success is inscribed into these narratives of Indianness, skilled migrants can now increasingly
also cast themselves as ‘good’ (economic) migrants who play a full part in the global
knowledge economy. Their identification is with the new globalising India, just as the Indian
government's identification too is primarily with these new successful economic migrants14.
This can also mean that positioning oneself as Indian is denied to older migrants (and the
newer lesser skilled migrants who may enter through family reunification categories for
instance) who are not seen to conform to the new models of successful Indian migrants.

And finally, it appears that just as India has opened up the possibility of professing a link
with the homeland by taking up Overseas Indian Citizenship, the risks of taking it up
become more pronounced. The accusation that the Overseas Indian citizenship is an
offering that is too little too late (EPW editorial January 16, 2006), may become particularly
pertinent in the context of the changing scenario among receiving countries who are seeking
more exclusionary forms of identification amongst their migrants. Within this context, taking
up the Overseas Indian citizenship can indeed become a poisoned chalice.

Conclusion
The selectivity of migrants on the basis of skills will configure the future shape of the Indian
diaspora as well as the nature of diasporic communities. So far, most research on the
changing forms of selectivity and the importance of skilled migrants in the UK (as well as in
other countries) has primarily concentrated on their productive role (Vertovec 2002). But
how is the diaspora being reconfigured in a skilled migratory regime? Moreover, in the UK,
where post-war labour migration has for long filled the lesser skilled labour market sector,
what will the new regime mean for internal relationships within diasporic communities?
How will it reshape diaspora politics?

While the literature on transnationalism has highlighted the continuing relationship that
individuals maintain with both the sending and receiving countries, migration regulations in
the UK are increasingly requiring their citizens to allege unilateral allegiance to the British
state. What does this mean for a range of transnational strategies, such as the likelihood of
taking up dual citizenship? How is the state limiting diasporic practices, or at least
monitoring them in the context of increasing public concerns over security and new
landscapes of racism? These are questions that migration researchers will increasingly need
to consider.

Moreover, while this paper has focused on how some of these questions are posed in the
UK, similar processes are underway in a number of other settler societies. For example, skills
are becoming an increasingly important vector for choosing migrants in Canada, Australia
and New Zealand and in all these countries other modes of entry (including family
migration) now form a smaller part of the overall migration stream. The reconfiguring of the
Indian diaspora is therefore not simply a British issue, but one that invites research from
other parts of the world.

Notes
1. In particular, the seven countries around the Persian Gulf (Oman, UAE, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Yemen) have been the main recipients and so
'Gulf' has become part of the popular language around migration, especially, in high
emigration states like Kerala.
2. Arguably this extension of citizenship is occurring at the same time that the meaning
of national citizenship is itself eroding, giving way to new forms of corporate
citizenship as well as to global citizenship movements as for example in movements
such as the World Social Forum (Brodie, 2004). However, as Aihwa Ong (1999) has
argued, citizenship is emerging as a flexible category in the context of these changes
to political participation globally.
3. This paper suggests the importance of bringing together studies of immigration and
emigration regulations. Although transnational approaches to migration have aimed
to take account of migrant experiences across receiving and sending states, they have
not interrogated the ways in which the state too is sensitive to and responds to
changes in regulations in other states. This is evidenced in some parliamentary
debates in the UK (The Hansard 2003) where it is recognised that UK citizenship
regulations must respond to the changing citizenship regime in India.UK regulations
too, it appears are territorially sensitive and are formed in cognisance of the
structures of the sending state.
4. These work permit figures only account for about 35% of all labour migrants to the
UK. For instance, they do not include migrants from the EU who come primarily for
work, or family migrants who enter through other immigration categories but join
the labour force (HMSO 2002).
 5. The regulations regarding the admission and treatment of asylum-seekers also
underwent critical changes but I am only focusing on those elements of the act that
relate to issues of labour migration. Moreover, the immigration regulation changes
will primarily affect third-country nationals.
6. It is also important to note here the extent to which these shifts in immigration
policy have received cross-party consensus. Both the other major political parties in
the UK were in broad agreement with the changes to labour migration being
suggested in this White Paper (The Hansard, February 2002). However, sharper
divisions have emerged subsequently.
7. The other two were an extension of the age of retirement and an increase in the birth
rate.
8. This divide is also echoed in the context of UK's wider population with the new
responsible, active citizen being mobilised by New Labour as the ideal citizen (Clarke
2005).
9. Although, arguably the obligations receive much more attention than the rights as
the state says little about what it will do for these new citizens, except possibly allow
them to settle in a democratic society.
10. Although how this is to be achieved is still not clear.
11. Indian sub-continent husbands accounted for 47 per cent of the total in 2004, and
wives, 38 per cent (Home Office 2005).
12. This will be further influenced by the ways in which access to education is itself
broadening and reshaping in India.
13. Even existing critiques of social cohesion policies highlight gender divisions and
point to divisions based on religion. The role of structures of migration and
differential selection of migrants, is never explored
14. ‘Most measures, however, have been aimed more at the stereotypical successful
overseas Indian, one based in the developed world…’ (Editorial, EPW, January 21,
2006)

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 10
Indian Diaspora in the UK: Second-Generation Parents’ Views
and Experiences on Heritage Language Transmission

Ravinder Barn

Introduction
The nature and extent of heritage language1 use is an important concern for scholars of the
Indian diaspora. This chapter examines the ways in which second-generation Indian parents
in the United Kingdom are experiencing the transmission of heritage languages to their
offspring. Based on empirical findings, the chapter provides an authoritative account of the
linguistic transmission experiences of Indian parents living in a land where they continue to
be perceived and marginalised as the ‘other’. It is argued that although there is increasing
research evidence into major strides being made by British Indians in a number of important
arenas such as education, employment/business, and public life; their experiences of
parenting and family life have received scant attention. This chapter makes an important
contribution to address that gap by exploring the perceptions of ‘ordinary’ Indian parents
about the crucial but challenging aspect of being a parent in a diasporic context. In
particular, parental views and experiences about their children’s acquisition of heritage
languages is explored against the backdrop of contextual factors such the social and political
discourse on race and ethnicity, and racial and ethnic identity.

The chapter is divided into four sections. Firstly, the background section sets the scene by
providing an account of heritage language use in the Indian Diaspora in different parts of the
world. A historical approach to consider the decline in heritage languages in the older
diaspora is especially poignant here. Secondly, a brief description is given of the Indian
diaspora in the UK together with an understanding of some research, albeit limited, into
heritage languages. In the next section, the empirical study upon which this chapter is based
is mentioned in some detail. The next section reports on the empirical findings of this study
(both quantitative and qualitative) and moves on to consider the salient issues and concerns
in the main discussion.

Background
People from the Indian subcontinent have migrated for centuries, however their settlement
as modern day communities in other parts of the world began, predominantly, in the 19th
century. Today, people of Indian origin are settled in over 70 countries. Estimates of the
total size of what has become known as the India diaspora range from 15-20 million
(Government of India 2001: 680).
Some scholars such as Bhat (2000) make a distinction between the older diaspora who
migrated primarily in the 19th century (for instance to Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana,
and Mauritius) and the new diaspora who migrated primarily in the 20th century (for
instance to UK, USA and Canada). In a study of heritage languages, ethnic group identity
and family and kinship, such a distinction may help us to understand the processes at work.

Bhat (2000) suggests that overseas Indians often employ three modes of self identification,
namely caste, religion and language or region of origin. Parekh (1993) believes that caste has
lost much of its traditional importance among the early indentured immigrants of the old
diaspora. It is argued that the contexts of their immigration and absorption into the
plantation barracks had weakened this sense of hierarchy. Similarly, it would appear that
knowledge and use of heritage languages also declined. Thus, today it is a religious identity
around which they are organised.

In his paper on the inclusion of Indian Immigrants in Mauritius, Mehta (1989) observes that
the older generation still speak Bhojpuri, Telugu, Tamil or Marathi, and they understand
Hindi or Urdu. He also reports that in the recent past, there have been concerted efforts to
promote heritage languages. Similarly, Jayaram (2000) notes that language retention is an age-
related phenomenon. In documenting the decline of heritage languages such as Bhojpuri,
Hindi, and Tamil in Trinidad and Tobago, he reflects that Trinidad Bhojpuri monolinguals
are generally over 75 years of age, and Trinidad Bhojpuri and Trinidad Creole English
bilinguals are mostly in the age group of 55-75 years. He argues that the elders retained their
first language mainly because they did not know English. He notes that both Trinidad
Bhojpuri and standard Hindi were predominantly a part of the oral culture and the script was
basically confined to the religious literati - the pundits among the Hindus and the ministers
among the Presbyterians. Jayaram (2000) believes that this accounts for both the general
attrition of these two languages among the Indians and the survival and retention of some
elements of their native languages.

Research into the Indian diaspora in other parts of the world documents some interesting
trends. In a study of knowledge and use of language, Dewan (1989) found that by the third-
generation Sindhis in Metro-Manila had generally displaced Sindhi with English even for use
within the home setting. David (1999), in his study of Sindhis in Malaysia, documents that by
the third-generation Sindhi had generally been replaced by English and Malay. Interestingly,
Sindhi had evolved into a new dialect (usually mixed with English) and reduced to the role of
a ‘private language’ used when there was a need to exclude an out-group member. In a study
of Sindhis and Sikhs in Hong Kong, Detaramani and Lock (2003) report a marked reduction
in multilingualism among the Sindhi population compared to their Sikh compatriots.

There is some academic interest to learn about the process of continuity and change being
experienced by the Indian diaspora around the globe. Although there are commentaries on
the decline of heritage languages in the old diaspora, limited available literature exists on the
process of linguistic heritage among the new diaspora. It is hoped that this chapter will make
some contribution to understand the issues and concerns facing the new Indian diaspora
with regard to linguistic heritage in the West.
The Indian community2 in the UK
Since the Second World War, Britain has become an increasingly heterogeneous society and
home to 4.6 million people of minority ethnic origin, that is, of non-white background
including predominantly South Asians, African Caribbean, African, Chinese, and those of
mixed parentage (National Statistics, 2003). Over a million of this group are people of Indian
origin (originating from the Indian subcontinent - including those who have themselves or
whose families have moved directly from India, East Africa or other parts of the world).

Over the last five decades, Britain has experienced an unprecedented increase in immigration
from its former colonies. The 2001 census reveals that the Indian population is the largest
single ethnic minority group in Britain - making up almost one quarter of the total minority
ethnic population. London has the largest concentration of Indians (437,000), followed by
the West Midlands (179,000), the East Midlands (122,000), the South-East (89,000), and the
North-West (72,000). There are over four times as many Indians as Pakistanis in the East
Midlands (122,000 compared with 28,000). The English regions with the smallest Indian
communities are the North-East (10,000) and the South-West (16,000). Under 3% live
outside England - less than 25,000 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined (see
figure 1).

Figure 1: Percentage Distribution of the British Indian Population in the UK; Source - office
for National statistics, 2001
In contemporary British society, the Indian community is perceived to be the ‘model
minority’ in a similar way to the Chinese community in the USA (Lee 1994). Indians are seen
as hard-working and successful. Indeed, research evidence into the socio-economic
circumstances of minority groups has consistently shown, that in spite of racial
discrimination and disadvantage in British society, the Indian community is progressively
better off than other groups (Modood at al. 1997). In many of the key indicators related to
economic success (including level of education and qualifications, employment, income, and
home ownership), the Indian community is described as a success story.

Children and young people of Indian origin are outstripping their minority ethnic and white
peers in terms of educational achievement (Swann 1985; Gillborn and Gipps 1996). They are
more likely to achieve good GCSE and A-level results (secondary school qualifications) and
go on to university than their peers. Their chances of attaining a university degree are far
greater than their contemporaries. The implications of educational achievement for the
phenomena of economic progress are therefore transparent.

In public life, the visibility of the Indian has grown hugely from the days when white English
actors ‘browned-up’ their faces to take on Asian character roles in films and T.V.
programmes such as Alec Guiness as Professor Godbole in ‘A Passage to India’, and
Michael Bates as Rangi Ram in ‘It ain't half hot Mum’. Contemporary British society has
seen the birth of British Asian film directors such as Gurinder Chadha of the ‘Bend it like
Beckham fame’, and British Asian comedians such as Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar of the
hit TV comedies – ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, and ‘Kumars at number 42’. British Asian
music (including Bhangra, hip hop, soul, rap, and fusions of these genres), and the
Bollywood film industry have also been making inroads into the mainstream (Sharma et al.
1996). And needless to say, Indian food has become part and parcel of British cuisine.
Indeed, Chicken Tikka Masala remains the nation's favourite dish; and ingredients for Indian
cookery and Indian ready-made meals can be found in almost all supermarkets.

A word of caution is necessary to prevent the reader from running away with the idea that
the British Indian community is basking in affluence and influence. It is important to
recognise that the Indian community is not a homogenous grouping. Contextual variables
such as social class, caste, gender and family form are likely to shape socio-economic status.
Consequently, disadvantage and deprivation are likely to be experienced by some sections of
the community. It is possible that the comparative nature of available research into socio-
economic status and ethnicity creates an erroneous picture which cloaks the heterogeneity of
the British Indian experience.

Much of the research into the British Indian community has been largely in the areas of
education, employment, housing, and health (Gillborn and Gipps 1996; Modood et al. 1997;
Luthra 1997; Berthoud 2000; Hopkins and Bahl 1993). It would be fair to say that by and
large British researchers have demonstrated little interest in learning about the social and
cultural adjustment of Indian communities in their adopted countries of settlement. In spite
of this chronic paucity in the literature, there is some evidence of settlement, adjustment, and
parenting and family life within the South Asian community in the UK (Aurora 1965;
Dosanjh 1976; Burghart 1987; Dosanjh and Ghuman 1996; Tatla 1999). However, within the
South Asian grouping, there is a general paucity of literature into language proficiency and
use amongst second and third-generation Indians.

In a study of identity construction amongst South Asian adolescents in the West, Ghuman
(2003) found that many of them reported some verbal fluency in their heritage language, but
highlighted the confinement of the language to the home setting only. Similarly, Shaw (2000)
suggested that increasing numbers of second-generation Pakistanis were unable to read and
write their heritage language and were also restricting the spoken language to home and
family.

With the exception of a few localised studies, it is evident that there is a general paucity of
research into language proficiency and use amongst South Asian families. Such a dearth of
empirical research literature into parenting and family life in the UK has resulted in a gap in
our understanding about how parents attempt to ensure that their children learn their
heritage language in a country in which the English language is the norm.

This chapter now reports on the key empirical findings from a study carried out by the
author to provide both statistical information about the nature and extent of heritage
language use, and the views and experiences of second-generation Indian parents of the
process of transmission of a linguistic heritage (Barn 2006).

The study
The article stems from a broader study into parenting in different ethnic groups in British
society (see Barn 2006). The original study comprised parents from a range of different
ethnic groups including Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, African Caribbean, African, and
white (n=385). Parents (both mothers and fathers) of 7-11 year old children completed
quantitative questionnaires, and a sub-sample also participated in semi-structured in-depth
interviews (n=61).

The extent to which minority ethnic groups adapt to social and cultural change is an
important debate in modern multi-racial societies (Sam and Berry 2006). In this study, we
attempted to consider continuity and change for families in our sample. We were keen to
identify the influence of time and location and the extent to which racial and cultural
minorities retain and redefine cultural values and norms, maintain heritage languages, and
observes religious practices. The ways in which the majority ethnic group adapts and
contributes to cultural diversity was also a component in our original study.

This chapter focuses upon Hindu (n=32) and Sikh (n=52) parents only. Questionnaires were
completed by all of these parents, and a sub-sample (n=16) took part in an interview.

The mean parental age was 39 years. The majority of the parents were either born in the UK
or had spent most of their life in Britain (21%, and 47% respectively). The vast majority of
the sample resided in a two-parent family, and one in 10 were living in a lone parent
household. Just over a third of the Hindu families and a quarter of the Sikh families were
living in extended households, that is, second-generation parents with their children and with
the children's grandparents. In the majority of the cases, the extended households included
paternal grandparents. The average number of children per family amounted to two.

In comparison to their South Asian counterparts, Indian parents had high levels of
education, and Indian mothers were also more likely to be in employment. Almost all of the
Indian families were owner occupiers of their homes.

Findings

Quantitative Questionnaire Findings

In our quantitative survey, we asked parents to tell us what language they generally spoke to
their child. We also asked what language the child generally spoke to them. In-depth semi-
structured interviews sought to explore the story behind these statistics to understand the
dynamics of the transmission of heritage languages.

Our statistical findings show that the majority of Sikh and Hindu parents conversed with
their children in ‘English and heritage languages’ (82% and 78% respectively). About a fifth
of the Hindu parents reported speaking to the child in English only, while one in 10 of the
Sikh parents reported the same. A very small proportion of both Hindu and Sikh parents
reported speaking in their heritage language only. There were no discernible differences
between mothers and fathers. Thus, it would appear that the most common form of speech
utilised by the parents included English and heritage languages.

Since women and mothers are often perceived as the vehicle for the transmission of heritage
and culture, it is pertinent to note a few key aspects. Our study found that many of the
Indian mothers were either born in Britain or had lived there most of their life. In addition,
many of these women were in employment. Thus, they had a good fluency in the English
language, and speaking English both inside and outside the home had become the norm for
many of them (albeit in conjunction with the heritage language). The high rates of Indian
female participation in the labour market coupled with length of residence in the UK
indicate that social class is less significant in understanding the impact on language
transmission. In other words, whilst an English speaking mother may have been a rarity in
lower class homes thirty years ago, this is no longer the case. Thus, a dual-language
household has become commonplace.

Table 1: Languages spoken by parents to their children % (n=84)

Parental English only English and Heritage Total
group heritage languages only
languages
Sikh 10% 82% 8% 100% (n=52)
Hindu 19% 78% 3% 100% (n=32)
An analysis of the languages spoken by children to their parents reveals an interesting
picture. Here we can see that although parents report speaking to their children primarily in
English and heritage languages, this is not reciprocated by the children. The majority of the
Hindu children are reported to be speaking in English only (56%). Similarly, a significant
proportion of the Sikh children (40%) are described as speaking in English only. The
differences between the Sikh and Hindu children were found to be not statistically
significant.

Table 2: Languages spoken by children to their parents % (n=84)

Parental English only English and Heritage Total
group heritage languages only
languages
Sikh 40% 60% 0% 100% (n=52)
Hindu 56% 44% 0% 100% (n=32)

Our findings show that the sole use of heritage languages is very minimal. Only 8% of the
Sikh parents and 3% of the Hindu parents reported speaking exclusively in their heritage
language. Not surprisingly, no child was reported to speak exclusively a heritage language.
We found that length of residence seemed to have an impact on languages spoken in Indian
households. Families that had lived in Britain for less than five years were more likely to
speak heritage languages ‘only’ within the home setting. Parents who reported speaking
exclusively in English were either British born, or had lived in Britain for a considerable
length of time, generally over 20 years.

Although it is not within the remit of this article to make comparisons with other minority
ethnic groups, it should be noted that our study found a quantitative difference between
Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi parents. The children of the latter were found to be less
likely to speak exclusively in English within the home setting; and were more likely to
demonstrate fluency in heritage languages.

Interview findings
Our interview findings suggest the importance of heritage languages for many Indian
parents. It is evident that whilst children in some Indian households may not be using a
heritage language in everyday conversations with their parents, the strong desire of their
parents to attempt to ensure that their children grow up to be bilingual is palpable.

Parents stressed the importance of heritage language skills in practical and relationship
terms. A common reason given for inculcating bilingualism in the child was so that he/she
could communicate with the grandparents (over a third of the Hindu and a quarter of the
Sikh households included resident grandparents), and other relatives who did not speak
English. However, the importance of learning one’s heritage language was also seen to be
important in cultural terms, in that it helped to foster ethnic group identities by facilitating
knowledge and understanding of parental values and culture. Attempts to maintain and
transmit heritage linguistic skills were found to be in evidence (Berry 1980, 2001; Ghuman
2003).

They speak English outside all day, and when they come home they forget and just carry on, so I do tell them
to not forget their own language. I try to get them to speak Punjabi at home so that the grandparents won’t
feel left out. They will speak Punjabi when we and the grandparents are sitting, but when they are all together
with their own age, cousins and friends, they speak English (Indian Mother).

Language was also important for maintaining cultural and relationship links with family and
relatives in countries of origin. For some Indian parents, language and culture were
intertwined. They emphasised the importance of ensuring that their children learned their
ethnic group language for reasons of ethnic identity and culture. Parents perceived that this
sense of belonging could help children feel a connectivity with the community. Attempts to
foster a positive ethnic identity and ethnic loyalty were rooted in parental concerns of
dislocation and lack of acceptance by mainstream society. Parents were cognisant of the
process of acculturation, but deemed it essential for their children’s well-being that they
remained rooted in their cultural identity.

It is important. I think it is important that she realises, although she’s going to be more British than I am,
and I’m more British than my parents, that our background is way over there in Punjab (Indian Father).

Difficulties encountered in minority language teaching

Whilst Hindu and Sikh parents made efforts to speak to their children in their heritage
language, this skill and ability was not being readily transferred to their children. Interviews
with parents revealed the many and disparate reasons for this.

In some Indian homes, parents spoke languages other than English but did not always make
a conscious effort to teach the children those languages. This may explain why these children
were less likely to speak these languages.

…I want them to understand their own language as well. They do understand it, but they can’t speak
it…(Indian Father).

Some parents expressed their own inadequacy in their heritage language, and felt that they
would disadvantage the child in transferring poor standards. One East African Indian
mother in a mixed-marriage stated that she had made a choice to speak to the children in
English only, because her language skills in Gujarati were minimal.

I speak Gujarati but I don’t read or write it, and on the basis of that, I feel I’m not in the place to speak it
to my children. Some of the words I use are absolutely wrong, some of the language is actually Swahili, not
even Gujarati, because of the melting pot of culture (Indian Mother).

It seemed that the pressure to teach heritage languages to children often came from the
grandparents. Some second generation parents had a desire for their children to learn their
language, but were not making any concerted efforts to make this a reality. This was often
tied up that there was little external provision available for this to happen. An Indian Sikh
mother who had taught her daughter at home to sit a formal examination in Punjabi
explained that the push had come from the child’s grandmother.

Simran did her Punjabi and she got an A in her GCSE… I didn’t put that much effort… she was
interested because as I said she was close to my mum and she really wanted to do it because my mum wanted
her to do it. But she did it and she did really well. I only taught her at home (Indian Mother).

The difficulties of teaching a language when it is only to be spoken within the confines of
your home, with little or no external assistance was voiced by many Indian parents. Parents
had either taught their children at home, or found some local weekly class at a place of
worship or at a school in the area.

They speak Punjabi at home, Punjabi and English. English no problem to them. Only Punjabi, once a
week I took them in the temple, then I help them, help them how to make the sentence, to pronounce this and
whatever (Indian Father).

A Gujarati mother expressed similar sentiments in that she too grew up speaking little of her
heritage language, but now as an adult made every effort to speak to her parents in Gujarati.
In contrast to other parents who felt stressed about their children not speaking their heritage
language, this mother was less concerned and felt that just as she had made the switch as an
adult, her children would too.

I was like that when I was their age, everyone would speak to me in Gujarati, even my parents would speak
to me, but I always used to reply in English. But as I got older … you know now when I speak to my mum
I speak to her in Gujarati…for a long time, she goes ‘You never used to speak like this, how come you speak
like this all of a sudden? (Indian Mother).

The value placed on bi-lingualism seemed to be so strong within the Indian community that
some parents felt that they had failed in their parenting if their children did not speak their
heritage language. Given the central role of women as mothers in the construction and
maintenance of cultural values and norms, linguistic and religious heritage, such a view was
generally prevalent amongst Indian mothers (Rayaprol 1997).

Overall, it would seem that the second-generation Indian parents place a great deal of
emphasis upon the transmission of their heritage languages to their children. However, the
nature and extent of this is variable. The availability of appropriate heritage language
teaching infrastructures coupled with family structures (extended households with resident
grandparents), visits to India, parental language of choice seemed to be key determinants of
bilingualism. Given that bilingualism is associated with more desirable results in terms of
family relations and psycho-social adjustment, it would seem that parents need to be
supported in the transfer of heritage language skills (Portes and Hao 2002). There is evidence
that the teaching of heritage languages in mainstream schools helps validate these languages
in the eyes of children, and may help with bilingualism and ethnic socialisation (Ghuman
2003).
Discussion
Language is generally perceived to be inextricably intertwined with ethnicity and culture. It is
generally perceived as a central vehicle for accessing a culture, constructing shared identities
and defining out-groups. Its dynamic and evolving nature is also recognised.

The teaching of heritage language is considered to be an important aspect or challenge of the

experience of being a parent in a diasporic context. The importance of language and culture
for minority families is at the centre of key debates about assimilation, integration, cohesion,
citizenship, multi-culturalism, and racial and ethnic identity.

Generally speaking, British society can be described as possessing a pecking order or a

hierarchy with regards to heritage languages. This can be said to be reinforced and supported
by the prevailing social and political order. People make a positive or negative evaluation
about the heritage languages that others may use. There is a temptation to disparage others’
language forms as deficient, or see them as less valuable. This is usually the case when that
language happens to be a non-European language. Thus whilst European languages such as
French, German and Spanish are routinely taught in most secondary schools, this is not the
case for minority languages such as Punjabi, Hindi, or Gujarati. Moreover, there appears to
be a hierarchy among minority languages too. Statistical information from the National
Centre for Languages reveals that of the heritage languages which are taught in some
secondary schools (where there is a significant number of minorities from the relevant
backgrounds) and the estimated 2,200 supplementary and mother tongue schools, the most
widely taught community languages include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Turkish and Urdu
(CILT 2005). Indeed, Indian languages such as Punjabi and Gujarati have witnessed a decline
over the last few years. The reasons for this are unclear and may include lack of demand.

The distribution of power in British society, and the social and political discourse on race
and ethnicity is useful in understanding the views and experiences of Indian family life. In
2001, in the aftermath of the riots in the northern cities with significant Asian populations,
the then Home Secretary David Blunkett, stated that one of the problems with the Asian
community was their inability to speak the English language. His comments were framed
within the notion of what constitutes ‘Britishness’. Interestingly, the Home Secretary
received much support for his statements relating to learning English for participating in
civic life, including from some key figures such as Nick Griffin, leader of the far right British
National party, and Norman Tebbit (former Conservative minister infamous for his cricket
test speech questioning the loyalty of minority groups to Britain). A BBC poll also found
widespread approval for Blunkett’s proposal.

In a subsequent paper, David Blunkett was at pains to argue that he was not proposing
assimilation to a prevailing monoculture, and that diversity was endorsed as a source of pride
in British society. He also stressed that he had in no way implied that the riots, in which
many Asian young people were involved, were as a result of language problems. He went on
to say that:
 … speaking English enables parents to converse with their children in English, as well as in their historic
mother tongue, at home and to participate in wider modern culture. It helps overcome the schizophrenia which
bedevils generational relationships. In as many as 30% of Asian British households, according to the recent
citizenship survey, English is not spoken at home (David Blunkett 2002).

The above statement was again criticised by some in the Asian community. Ghuman (2003)
notes that Blunkett's argument that nearly a third of the South Asian families in Britain speak
only their native language at home suggests that this is a major cause of maladaptation of the
younger generation.

In their study ‘Child-rearing in ethnic minorities’, Dosanjh and Ghuman (1997) concluded
that the first generation of the 1960s and 1970s had to struggle hard to reproduce its
institutions of religion and family life and its community networks. They believed that the
second generation was in an advantageous position to transmit its cultural heritage due to
the establishment of the necessary social structures. Our study shows that whilst the
transmission of a cultural heritage is a key goal of Indian parents, it is by no means an easy
task. The difficulties and struggles in raising bi-lingual children were evident. Moreover,
parents revealed a plurality of experience influenced by societal views about race, ethnicity
and ethnic group languages, educational support structures, wider family and kinship
network, and the acculturation process

In their accounts of parenting practices, concerns and anxieties, it became evident that many
Indian parents shared a relatively common view on ethnic and racial socialisation of their
children. The emphasis placed on language transmission, and the location of this within a
family and cultural context was a key components of this framework.

The majority of Indian parents reported many struggles in the transmission of ethnic group
language. In the absence of key educational support structures, parents argued that they were
finding it extremely difficult to be able to raise bi-lingual children. Although the educational
and social benefits of bilingualism are beginning to be recognised (Baker 1995, Alladina
1995), the majority of parents signified the importance of learning ethnic group languages in
family and cultural terms only. For a few parents, the mother tongue was of little
importance. This was because they themselves had a poor command of the heritage
language; or because they believed that fluency in the dominant language was the only way
forward for their child to succeed in education and the world of work.

The low status bestowed upon minority ethnic languages has been reported to be largely
responsible for a lack of adequate nursery and school structures, and for the suppression of
these languages (Alladina 1995). The teaching of heritage languages remains peripheral and
confined to classes being held in Gurdwaras and temples, or in some secondary schools with
significant South Asian populations. Other than this, there are no concerted efforts or
policies in place at local or central governmental level to teach minority ethnic heritage
languages to promote bilingualism.

In the absence of appropriate school systems, the teaching of minority ethnic group
languages falls on the shoulders of individual parents. In the context of low language status,
internalised racism, and parental belief that children will need to be fluent in English only to
be successful, it is not surprising that many minority ethnic parents report difficulties in
raising bilingual children. Moreover, a deficit model which devalues non-European languages
can negatively influence the perceptions and attitudes of minority ethnic young people.

Our study shows that the transmission of a linguistic heritage is a key concern for Indian
families since it connects generations and countries and plays a crucial role in sustaining
community and religious ties (Modood et al 1994; Portes and Hao 2002). It is important to
understand the complexity of issues involved to counter arguments which serve to equate
monolingualism with social inclusion, citizenship and adherence to British values, and
bilingualism as problematic (see Blunkett 2002; Portes and Hao 2002).

A number of key reasons can be put forward to understand the decline of heritage languages
in the old diaspora, and now in the new diaspora. These include amongst others the non-
functionality of heritage languages, the desire to be fluent and monolingual in English to
succeed in education and at work, the fluency in the English language of second-generation
Indian parents and consequently reduced parent-child interaction to foster linguistic heritage,
the nuclear family structure and the absence of grandparents, the inferior status accorded to
heritage languages in the host community, the non-availability of Indian languages as core
subjects within the school curriculum on a routine basis, increasing globalisation and the
dominance of English as a language.

As in the case of Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago where it is argued that the revival of
heritage languages is unlikely to result in a distinctive speech community; it could be argued
that in the UK we are unlikely to witness the growth of a heritage language literati. Given the
particular set of circumstances, unless concerted efforts are made to counter the prevailing
obstacles, it is possible that over time, we are likely to experience further decline in the
knowledge and use of heritage languages in the UK and other Western countries.

The extent to which an ethnic identity can exist without the linguistic glue remains to be
seen. At present, the British Indian diaspora on the whole continues to look to India as the
mother country. The numerous Hindi and Punjabi TV satellite channels and Bollywood
films remain an important leisure pursuit for many Indians of all age groups. Whilst
Bollywood films and TV dramas can be enjoyed with English subtitles, Hindu and Sikh
religious services do not as yet routinely cater in the same way (although there are early signs
that some Gurdwaras in London have begun to use overhead projectors to provide English
sub-titles of the religious service underway). With the decline in heritage languages, it will be
important to study the development of any new dialect, and the nature and extent of formal
religious activity.

The current phenomena of transnationalism is also worth a mention as it provides a number

of supports for heritage language acquisition. Films, television programmes and internet
content in heritage language formats are now readily accessible. Telephone service to
relatives in India is much more accessible and affordable than the past; and fast, accessible
international travel is now much more available. The rapid growth of the Indian economy
may also signal a shift leading to the possible popularity of heritage languages. It is feasible
that transnationalism could herald a new dawn for the Indian diaspora and its linguistic
heritage.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it would seem that the second-generation Indian parents place a great deal of
emphasis upon the transmission of their heritage languages to their children.

However, our study findings show that the nature and extent of language transference is
variable among the Indian grouping. It is evident that second-generation parents aim to
transmit heritage languages to their off-spring in the hope that this will provide them with a
secure foundation of their ethnicity. The ways in which this is being done emphasises the
negotiation of internal and external factors, the importance of a bilingual and bicultural
identity, and character formation. The task of language transference is a challenging but
important one for Indian parents and children. The efforts of Indian parents to create an
environment which is positive, nurturing and supportive need to be recognised. The failure
of the British education system to accord ‘core’ language status to Indian languages on a
routine basis, combined with the politics of race, ethnicity, and belonging make it especially
difficult for second-generation Indian parents to raise bilingual children. Whether the advent
of transnationalism and the economic and political muscle of the rapidly growing Indian
economy will alter the heritage linguistic domain of the Indian diaspora remains to be seen.

Notes
1. The term heritage language is employed throughout this chapter. The reader should
be aware that other key terms such as ‘mother-tongue’, ‘community language’,
‘minority language’ are also in existence in the wider literature on this topic.
2. The author acknowledges the contested nature of the term community. It is used
here for the sake of convenience and not to imply the existence of a uniform and
recognised Indian community in the UK. Differences in social class, education,
rural/urban background, caste, religion, family form are all important attributes to
take into consideration.

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 11
Indian Diaspora in New Zealand: History, Identity and
Cultural Landscapes
Wardlow Friesen
&
Robin A. Kearns

Introduction
In 2002, the first Diwali festival was staged in Auckland at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre, a
venue comprising a Hindu temple, and meeting halls. By 2003, the festival had attracted a
crowd of more than 40,000 people (Gregory 2004). In 2004, a 14-member bhangra group
(drummers) of the Rangla Punjab Cultural Youth Club had flown from India especially for
the celebrations (Kiong 2004). In 2005, under pressure of numbers, the fourth public Diwali
was moved from the ‘Indian-owned’ site of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre to Aotea Square,
Auckland’s civic centre, and took place over an 11 hour period (New Zealand Herald
2005b). This event gained prestige with high-profile Indian Bollywood actor Jimmy Shergill
and Indian pop singer Aiysha travelling to New Zealand to be part of the judging panel for
Auckland’s Diwali festival dance competition (New Zealand Herald 2005a). A Bollywood
talent-spotter and four of Aiysha's entourage, three of her choreographers and her dance
instructor were on the panel as well. The popularity of this celebration has now spread to
smaller centres, with the regional city of New Plymouth (population 70,000) having its own
Diwali festival that includes a programme of dances, musical items, a play involving 30
children, and a pot-luck Indian meal (Geetha 2002).

Picture-1: Hindi Radio at Diwali Festival 2006

The civic support of festivals such as Diwali, and their widespread patronage by members of
the dominant Pakeha (European) culture signifies something of a ‘coming of age’ for the
Indian population in Auckland. Along with the increasing numbers of Indian restaurants in
Auckland, high-profile festivals serve to authenticate (and, to an extent, commodify) cultural
expressions that were formerly dismissed as marginal, if not unwelcome. This recent and
escalating acceptability of Indian cultural festivities within a nation which, until recently,
demonstrated minimal ethnic diversity warrants investigation for reflection of a growing
expression of the Indian diaspora in the South Pacific.

The story of the Indian diaspora has been characterised as ‘…one of sweat and toil often
washed with tears’ (Singh 2004:95), and this is an accurate reflection of many past
migrations, and a considerable number into the present. However, contemporary migration
streams are highly influenced by processes of globalisation and a greater focus on skilled
migration (Khadria 2001), so in many cases ‘sweat and toil’ has been displaced by knowledge
transfer and investment potential. At the same time, ‘sweat and toil’ may still be an accurate
description of the outcome for some Indian migrants who have taken unskilled or semi-
skilled jobs because they have not been able to secure employment commensurate with their
professional qualifications. While studies of the Indian diaspora are numerous (e.g. Clarke et
al. 1990, Vertovec 2000, Jayaram 2004, Sharma et al. 2004, Ghosh & Chatterjee 2004),
comparable studies in New Zealand are relatively scarce (e.g. Leckie 1995, Tiwari 1980).
Perhaps one reason for this is that, although there have been Indians in New Zealand for
more than a century, their numbers have been relatively small until the late 1980s. Although
the Indian diaspora in New Zealand is small on the global scene, the issues of diversity and
multiple identities are amply illustrated by this case study. Further, with New Zealand’s
relatively small population of just over four million, and a proactive immigration policy, the
proportion of its population that identifies as Indian has increased rapidly over the last two
decades. Thus the impacts of the Indian diaspora on the New Zealand ‘mainstream’ have
been considerable, in cultural, economic, social and political terms.

In this chapter, we review the history and present status of the Indian diaspora in New
Zealand, then present a case study of one central Auckland suburb – Sandringham -- which
has experienced high levels of ethnic diversification in recent years. The significance of
Auckland as migrant destination is again illustrated in the fact that 71% of the Indian
population added to the New Zealand total between 1986 and 2001 was based in Auckland,
resulting in a population in Auckland of 41,544 in the latter year. We therefore consider the
way in which the Indian diaspora links New Zealand and many individual suburbs such as
Sandringham into global processes and networks. We situate our consideration of the Indian
diaspora and the Sandringham case study within the context of the large literature on
transnationalism that has developed since the early 1990s.

History of Indian settlement in New Zealand

The first record of an Indian in New Zealand was of a Bengali who jumped ship in 1810 to
marry ‘a local woman’, followed by a pioneer gold prospector from Goa who arrived in 1853
(Leckie 1995:136). However, the roots of contemporary Indian communities are more to be
found in the arrival of two Punjabi brothers in 1890 via Australia (Leckie 1995:136). In the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Indian states of Gujarat and Punjab were
undergoing significant transformations under British imperial rule (e.g. the decline of
artisanal textile and handicraft production under competition from European imports), and
migrants from these states reached many parts of the world, including New Zealand. The
majority of these immigrants were traders, artisans and labourers (Taher 1970:39-43). During
this period as well, there was a large-scale movement of indentured labourers from India to
Fiji, and this process generated a parallel movement of ‘free’ migrants, some of whom settled
in New Zealand (Taher 1970:39-43). These early migrants were mostly men, with women
only starting to arrive in the 1920s (Leckie 1995:137). After 1921, the flow of all Asian
migrants was limited by the racist Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1921 so the
main source of Indian migration was through the arrival of the children, wives and fiancées
of earlier migrants.

After World War II, restrictions on Asian migration remained, but there was still a small
stream of Indians arriving under family reunification conditions, as students, and by ‘special
permission’ for other reasons, and an increasing proportion of these migrants came from Fiji
(Taher 1970:40). The strong pro-British immigration stance of New Zealand was weakened
in 1974, but not fully abolished until the Immigration Act of 1987 removed all reference to
‘preferred countries of origin’. According to the 1986 Census, there were 14,172 people who
identified themselves as Indian and this made up just less than one percent (0.8%) of New
Zealand’s population (Friesen et al. 2005:389).

Figure-1
New Zealand residence visas and permits granted to nationals of India and Fiji
1982-2005 (March years)

India Fiji

10,000

9,000

8,000
no. of residence visas and permits

7,000

6,000

5,000

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0
1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
year
After the implementation of a new immigration policy in 1987 which emphasised education,
skills and investment capital in the selection of migrants, the number of Indians entering
New Zealand began to accelerate. The change of policy coincided with a coup in Fiji which
overthrew an elected government which was perceived to be ‘pro Indo-Fijian’ despite being
lead by an indigenous Fijian Prime Minister, Timoci Bavandra. This, combined with a visa
waiver in that year as well, resulted in an influx of Indo-Fijians into New Zealand. Although
the number rapidly declined with the end of the visa waiver after 1988, there was a steady
flow from Fiji through the 1990s as Indo-Fijians remained unsure of their future in Fiji, and
this once again accelerated after another attempted nationalist coup in 2000. The changed
immigration policy resulted in a slow but steady increase in the number of residence visas
granted to migrants from India with a rapid increase in the twenty-first century, followed by
a sudden decline, reflecting an easing and then a tightening in immigration policy (Figure 1).

Multiple identities within the Indian diaspora in New Zealand

There is not, of course, a homogeneous ‘Indian diaspora’ in reality, and ‘…Indian
communities abroad have been invariably required to negotiate the problem of ethnicity’
(Jayaram 2004:17). Even a definition of what comprises ‘Indian’ is a matter of debate and
this is illustrated in the New Zealand case as much as it is elsewhere. In the 2001 Census,
‘Pakistani’ and ‘Bangladeshi’ were the usually declared ethnicities of people originating in
those countries of ‘the Indian subcontinent’, but some of the earlier migrants to New
Zealand or those who came via Fiji originated in the areas now occupied by Pakistan and
Bangladesh, but for generations have considered themselves ‘Indians’. Also, there have been
many Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka, some of whom declared themselves as ‘Sri Lankan’
while others declared themselves as ‘Indian’ while still others declared themselves as ‘Tamil’.1

Figure-2
Birthplaces of Indian population of New Zealand 2001
(number = 62,187)

United Kingdom
1% Other
Malaysia 5%
1%
South Africa
3%

New Zealand
29%

Fiji
30%

India
30%
At the time of the 2001 national Census, the Indian population was almost equally divided
between those born in India, Fiji and New Zealand (Figure 2). Nearly ten percent of the
population originated elsewhere with South Africa, Malaysia and the United Kingdom being
the most common places of birth, but with significant numbers also coming from Singapore,
Australia, Sri Lanka and the U.S.A. However, these birthplace statistics mask other aspects
of diversity within the Indian population, since within the population coming from any one
of those countries there may considerable linguistic, religious and cultural diversity.

The staging of Indian migration to New Zealand has had significant impacts on the linguistic
and ‘ethnic’ composition of the population over time. The earlier migrants, whose
descendents make up the New Zealand-born Indian population, mostly originated from
northern India, predominated by Gujaratis, but Punjabis were also significant (Leckie 1995).
Hinduism was the predominant religion, but there were also Muslims and Sikhs in the earlier
migrations. The characteristics of Indo-Fijian migrants from the 1980s onwards were, of
course, highly influenced by the makeup of the indentures2 from the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, and subsequent ‘free’ migrations. North India, especially Uttar
Pradesh, was the predominant source of early indentures with most being Hindu, with only
13 percent being Muslim (Ray 2004:248). After 1903, South India became a source of
indentures for Fiji and by the end of the indenture period in 1919, nearly one-quarter of the
Indian population of Fiji was from the south (Ray 2004). Most of the indentures worked in
the plantations of the Colonial Sugar Company, and while many returned to India once they
were eligible for free passage, the greater number stayed on to cultivate sugar on land leased
from indigenous Fijians clans. The third wave of migrants to Fiji in the 1920s and 1930s
comprised ‘free migrants’, mostly Gujaratis who came as shopkeepers, moneylenders and
tradespeople. By this time, a lingua franca based on Hindi had already developed in Fiji, and
new migrants had to adapt to this if their language was different (Ray 2004:248).

The increase of emigration from India in the 1990s increased the diversity of the Indian
population of New Zealand. The chain migration of earlier periods when many migrants
came from the same region, or even the same villages, the migration systems of the late
twentieth century were based on wider dissemination of information and opportunities, so
that new Indian migrations involved a more diverse range of occupations and regional
origins (e.g. see Voigt-Graf 2005, Khadria 2001).

An indication of the regional origins of the Indian population in New Zealand can be gained
according to the language capabilities shown in the 2001 Census. Hindi was the most widely
spoken language (22,749), followed by Gujarati (11,145), Punjabi (5,541), Tamil (3,810),
Bengali (1,467), Telugu (14190, Marathi (861), Malayalam (588) and Kannada (414) with a
number specifying an unspecified Indo-Aryan language (2,538). However, since Hindi is a
state-promoted language in India, and a variation of it became a lingua franca in Fiji, the ability
to speak this language does not necessarily equate to a regional origin. The other languages
are more useful for this purpose and reveal the significance of Gujarati and Punjabi migrants
into New Zealand in all three periods of migration mentioned above. The language data
suggests that there are a considerable number of Indians who do not claim competence in
any Indian language; presumably these are mostly New Zealand-born, but may include those
born in other countries.

Data on religious affiliation also reveals great diversity in the Indian population of New
Zealand. Of the population of ‘South-central Asian’ origin (includes Pakistani, Bangladeshi
and Sri Lankan), about half (49%) were Hindu, 16 percent Christian, 12 percent Muslim, 4
percent Buddhist with the rest comprising those of other religions, with no religion, refusing
to state or not specified (Statistics New Zealand 2003:15).

The data on language and religion above suggest that to some extent the use of term ‘Indian’
is a statistical convenience when it is used to refer to an ‘ethnicity’. At the same time, ‘Indian’
does have a political reality based on a shared colonial history and country of origin, and
there are occasions when a pan-Indian identity is adopted, and this is further discussed in
this paper in the contexts of transnationalism and festival.

Educational and Economic background of Indians in New Zealand

The Indian population of New Zealand is relatively highly educated. Whereas 47 percent of
the total population aged 15 and over had less than a full high school qualification, only 27.6
percent of the Indian population were in this category in 2001. At the other end of the
spectrum, while only 10.1 percent of the total population had a Bachelor’s or higher
university degree, the level among the Indian population was twice that high (21.5 percent).
This seems to reflect an ethic favouring education, as well as the selective nature of New
Zealand immigration policy under which considerable points are gained from higher levels
of education. Of course, within certain age cohorts of the Indian population, educational
rates are much higher: for example of those aged 30 to 44, 30.7 percent of males and 26.6
percent of females had a university qualification.

For new migrants in particular, high educational levels have not always translated into high
levels of employment. For ‘new immigrants’ (resident less than 10 years) from ‘south-central
Asia’ 16 percent of those in the labour force were unemployed in 2001 and a further 19
percent were in part-time employment (Statistics New Zealand 2003:5). Levels of
unemployment among recent migrants from India were more severe and this had
considerable impacts on the ability to afford adequate accommodation, and limited the
potential of social interaction and participation in the broader community (Trlin et al. 1999).
While many of those unemployed or underemployed took jobs which required much less
than their educational qualifications suggested, others opted for some form of education or
training to improve their employment chances (Trlin et al. 1999). Other migrants, for
example some of those who expected good jobs in the IT sector returned to India, or moved
on to third countries (Raman 2003). However, for those migrants who remained, rates of
unemployment declined significantly, so that ‘south-central Asian’ migrants who had resided
more than ten years had an unemployment rate (seven percent) which was less than one-half
of the rate of the more recent migrants (Statistics New Zealand 2003: 5). An important issue,
the level of underemployment which has characterised migrant groups, including Indian, has
been widely reported in the media, but not adequately researched in New Zealand.
Sandringham: (Re)construction of locality: from British suburb to
‘ethnoburb’
While transnationalism by definition involves processes and linkages across national borders,
many of its characteristics are evident at the local level. Thus, before considering the Indian
diaspora within broader transnational circuits, we introduce the local suburban case of
Sandringham, which provides further examples during the broader discussion.

Sandringham in central Auckland is a neighbourhood marked by both continuity and

change. The suburb was named for the British royal estate at Sandringham, occupied at the
time by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and still maintained as a royal residence. This
name, applied at a time of establishing colonial norms, persists as a remnant landscape
featuring elements of what once was found only at the ‘edge of empire’: mosques, halal
butcheries, and spice shops (Jacobs 1996). Compared to high-profile suburbs like Howick
and Remuera which have been destinations for the majority of affluent Chinese migrants to
Auckland (Friesen et al, 2000), Sandringham neither features within public imaginings, nor
has the literal profile in terms of radical change in the built environment that more affluent
suburbs have. Sandringham is, however, a suburb that has recently undergone significant
change involving, among other groups, Indian populations. Its evolving ‘sociospheres’ of
community life are at once highly localised (i.e., residential, shopping, religious spaces) and
explicitly transnational in character (i.e. reflective of its migrant peoples and their
international linkages) (see Friesen et al, 2005). While these connections and manifestations
of the Indian diaspora are not of the scale evident in ‘world cities’, they are nationally
significant and reflect a local response to globalisation processes.

When language data are considered, Sandringham and adjacent suburbs in Mount Albert and
Mount Roskill have the highest concentration of Hindi and Gujarati speakers in New
Zealand (Holt 1999). Further diversity is evident in the fact that even within a group such as
Gujarati there are some born in India and others in Fiji. The presence of a large mosque as
well as a Hindu temple within Sandringham symbolically attests to the religious diversity
associated with these population shifts. Direct importing of goods from overseas by ‘ethnic’
businesses has increased in recent years and this is also an increasingly conspicuous aspect of
the retail landscape of Sandringham. One of the best places to acquire South Asian food
supplies in Auckland is Khyber Spices which has a shop in the Sandringham retail strip. In
an informal survey of this shop there were 13 different brands/varieties of Basmati rice
available and eight varieties of freshly baked roti/nan breads, a far cry from the 1960s when
there was a single spice merchant in central Auckland. As one Sandringham interviewee, a
New Zealand-born Indian put it: ‘…when we heard there were certain spices and rice or dhals have
come in, we all went down there [Central Auckland] …you just walk up the road now and get whatever you
want’. Also in the shopping strip is the Madina Islamic Focus (Islamic clothing and goods)
which caters to the large Muslim population in the area.
Indian Transnationalism in New Zealand, Auckland and Sandringham
Vertovec (1999) proposes that the literature on transnationalism is grounded on six distinct
(although interrelated) conceptual premises. First he presents transnationalism as ‘a social
morphology spanning borders’. This understanding of transnationalism uses ethnic diaspora
as a paradigm, and emphasises networks (Vertovec 1999: 449). In recent times, networks,
facilitated by new information and travel technologies, have been especially important.
Transnationalism can also be conceived of as a type of consciousness ‘marked by dual or
multiple identities’ which may result in both a physical and perceptual ‘multi-locality’
(Vertovec 1999:450). A third concept envisages transnationalism as a ‘mode of cultural
reproduction’ which is ‘often associated with a fluidity of constructed styles, social
institutions and everyday practices’ (Vertovec 1999: 451). Especially among transnational
youth this mode is often manifest in hybrid forms of fashion, music and other art forms. A
further conceptualisation is of transnationalism as an avenue for capital, both at the scale of
large transnational corporations and at smaller scales such as migrant remittances (Vertovec
1999: 452). Vertovec’s fifth conceptual premise is that transnationalism may serve as a site of
political engagement in which international NGOs promote causes which transcend national
borders, while at the same time there can be a variety of individual and other types of
institutional actors pursuing various political agendas (Portes et al. 2000:221). Finally,
transnationalism can be conceptualised as a (re)construction of place or locality resulting in
new ‘translocalities’ (Vertovec 1999: 455-456).

In our case study of New Zealand in general, and the Auckland suburb of Sandringham in
particular, there are many manifestations of Indian transnationalism, some more apparent
than others. The first three of Vertovec’s (1999) conceptual premises on the nature of
transnationalism are particularly useful in considering examples of transnationalism in the
context of New Zealand and of Auckland. Conceiving transnationalism as a social
morphology, there is increasing evidence that the Indian community (communities) in New
Zealand comprise a ‘social formation spanning borders’ (Vertovec 1999:449). A study of the
personal connections of Indian migrants who had arrived in New Zealand in the 1990s
showed that 100 percent maintained contact with relatives and/or friends in their home
country at least once a month, with all of them using the telephone ‘to maintain regular
contact’ and in the two survey years, between 90 and 97 percent used email (Trlin et al.
2001:6). The use of these two media, and the further use of video by 20 percent of the
sample, illustrates the significance of new technologies in facilitating transnationalism,
although letters were also used by more than one-half of the sample (Trlin et al. 2001). The
significance, and apparent availability, of air travel as a means of maintaining transnational
linkages was also confirmed in the survey. Of the sample, 43 percent had been visited by a
relative of themselves or their partner since taking up residence, and about one-third had
visited their home country since a previous interview a year earlier (Trlin et al. 2001).

The Indian diaspora involves not only a social formation spanning borders, but may also
span generations. This is illustrated by the case of a Gujarati family with some members
resident in Sandringham. A retired New Zealand-born Gujarati interviewed for this study
recounted how his father had arrived in New Zealand about 80 years ago, and established
one of the oldest Indian families in the country. The second generation of the family started
to lose fluency in the Gujarati language, and the third generation had nearly lost the ability to
speak it. However, the relatively recent increases in migration from India, and increasing
linkages between India and New Zealand have resulted in something of a rejuvenation of
both language and culture among some longer-term Gujarati residents. Of the interviewee’s
children, three have brought a spouse from India and another from a third country, and as a
result of this have become much more conversant in the language. Further, some members
of this family now travel regularly to India, an opportunity that was not usually available to
the generation before them. For the earlier generation, this was partly a result of the
weakening of family linkages during a period when transport and communication linkages
were more limited, although the Gujarati (and Punjabi) communities have tended to
maintain some marriage linkages to India and third countries of settlement throughout the
twentieth century (Leckie 1995:142).

Indian transnationalism in New Zealand is also evident in cyberspace. The NZ Ek NaZar

web site (www.nzeknazar.com) allows the Indian community to communicate its concerns
internally but also serves as a link back to India and Fiji (and presumably more widely). On
the website is a Discussion Board in which New Zealand-based Indians advise would-be
migrants or visitors of the advantages and problems of life in New Zealand. Specific advice
is offered on accommodation possibilities and areas of residence including parts of
Sandringham are portrayed as ideal in terms of cost of housing and proximity to the centre
of Auckland. Would-be migrants are also warned of the difficulties of getting employment in
New Zealand, even with educational qualifications and work experience. As a ‘mode of
cultural reproduction’ (Vertovec 1999:452), this site constitutes an important information
conduit for new and intending migrants and marks a new form of interconnectedness
between communities.

Transnationalism may be conceived of as ‘a kind of “diaspora consciousness” marked by

dual and multiple identifications’ (Vertovec 1999:450), and the Indian diaspora in New
Zealand amply illustrates this type of consciousness. The duality of being Indian and New
Zealander is one aspect of this consciousness but the multiple identities of many Indian New
Zealanders is also apparent. Many ethnic associations have been formed to facilitate the
maintenance of a specific Indian regional culture. For example the purpose of the
‘International Movement for Tamil Culture New Zealand’ is to ‘promote Tamil language,
culture, literature, art and music at local and international level’ and similar objectives are
fostered by groups such as the ‘Goan Overseas Association New Zealand’ and the ‘New
Zealand Sikh Society’ (‘Ethnic Community Groups’, www.ethnicaffairs.govt.nz). At the same
time, there is a strong imperative to establishing a pan-Indian identity and political presence
in New Zealand. The ‘New Zealand Indian Central Association’ has objectives which include
the promotion of understanding between migrant and host communities and linkages back
to India and Fiji, but because of its long history has tended to be seen as largely representing
Gujarati interests. However, efforts have been made recently to incorporate other groups as
well, to promote linkages and cooperation between disparate Indian communities. Pan-
Indian consciousness is also revealed by media presence in New Zealand; two significant
newspapers The Indian Tribune and Indian Newslink seek to appeal to Indians across a broad
spectrum, and to migrants from both India and Fiji.

Among the sample of New Zealand Indians interviewed in this study, there was a difference
of opinion as to whether a pan-Indian identity really exists in New Zealand. Of course,
everyone interviewed recognised that they are ‘Indian’ as far as a majority of New Zealanders
are concerned, but several argued that their primary identity is more closely aligned to a
linguistic or religious subset within the ‘Indian’ population. Others argued that there are
elements of pan-Indianness which unite many of these groups. For those who come from
India there is the sense of national pride stemming from the Independence struggle, the
success of the Indian economy in recent years and perhaps sports achievements (cricket in
particular?). However, these factors do not apply equally to the Indo-Fijian community
which has been separated from the Indian subcontinent for generations. But even these have
a sense of ‘Indianness’, stemming from the acquisition by most Indo-Fijians of Fiji Hindi,
from a sense of solidarity arising from the binary polarisation of the Fijian political system,
and from their love of Bollywood. The last of these was referred to by others as a pan-
Indian phenomenon, since even many of those whose first language is not Hindi are
passionate about Bollywood.

Picture-2: The New Sikh Gurdwara in Auckland

It is not only local dynamics which have facilitated transnationalism among the Indian
communities in New Zealand; some of the political factors affecting these communities
originate in their country of origin. In January 2003, at a conference on the Indian diaspora
held in New Delhi, the Indian government announced the possible implementation of a
system of dual citizenship for People of Indian Origin (PIO) in selected countries. New
Zealand was one of the six selected countries, the others being the USA, Canada, United
Kingdom, Australia and Singapore (The Tribune, Chandigarh, 10/1/2003). However, various
concerns resulted in a dilution of the original proposal so a system of Overseas Citizenship
of India (OCI) was implemented in its place in 2006, but this does not confer full citizenship
of India. Although weakened, this example of ‘high level institutionalization’ of political
transnationalism (Portes et al. 1999:222) is seen to be of mutual benefit to members of the
Indian diaspora and to India itself. In proposing the earlier policy change, the Indian Prime
Minister Vajpayee advised PIO who would be eligible for dual citizenship: ‘….it is necessary
to strengthen the broader Indian identity in the country of your residence. When you are
united as Indians, your voice carries greater weight: both for highlighting issues of your
concern in your country and for promoting Indian causes…’ (The Tribune, Chandigarh,
10/1/2003). At the same time, he advised that ‘loyalty’ must also extend to the adopted
country of residence: ‘The biggest challenge facing every community is to integrate
harmoniously into the political, economic and social life of the host society, while preserving
and cherishing its civilisational heritage’ (The Tribune, Chandigarh, 10/1/2003).

Soon after the proposal for India’s dual citizenship programme, the government of Fiji
announced that it was considering a similar step (Indian Newslink, February 2003). The
motive for this announcement seemed to be blatantly economic and an attempt to attract
investment from the many PIO who left the country after the coups of 1987 and 2000.
Further it sought to attract some skilled migrants back, even if only for periods of time
(Indian Newslink, February 2003). Such a policy would have a significant impact on Indian
communities in New Zealand and facilitate increased circulation of people, investment and
information between centres of Indian population across the Pacific. However, by 2006 the
Fijian proposal had not been implemented.

Despite the fact that it is still necessary to revoke one’s Indian or Fijian citizenship and
passport to become a New Zealand citizen, it seems that this is the most common action of
Indian immigrants in recent years. When asked if it was difficult to give up her Indian
citizenship, one respondent said ‘My Indianness is within me…’ so it was not so hard to
exchange an Indian passport for a New Zealand one. On reflecting why some people settle
better than others she went on to say:

I find one of the reasons for communities settling well is a strong sense of cultural
identity…I believe very much that to be secure you need to be sure where you came from,
and you need to be proud of that…I consider that I settled very well very early, because for
one thing I’m not too concerned about how I look, or how I talk and I’m sure of my work
and myself, and I’m proud to be who I am….

On reflecting further on her identity, more emphasis was made of her origins within the
state of Karnataka roots than on her Indianness. This is an excellent example of the multiple
layering of identity outlined by Vertovec, in which each layer has meaning and relevance, and
none has to be denied, despite the likelihood that over time, the significance of these
identities will evolve.

Conclusion
We have considered the dimensions of the Indian diaspora in New Zealand through the use
of historical accounts, descriptive statistics and a brief case study in central Auckland. The
lens of Vertovec’s (1999) ideas of social morphology, type of consciousness, and mode of
cultural reproduction has assisted in making the links between diaspora (the ‘scattering’ of a
population) and transnationalism (a set of ongoing linkages). Our examination of a social
morphology crossing borders is illustrated by the transnational processes and linkages which
become materially evident at the local level and which are multiply located and linked
between New Zealand, India and Fiji. This recognition turned our attention to Sandringham,
which was once regarded as the epitome of the ‘kiwi suburb’ but which has evolved an
increasingly complex layering of transnational connections involving movements of people,
goods and information between New Zealand and India (as well as other countries). These
connections may be small-scale compared to those evident in ‘global cities’, but they are
significant and reflect local response to globalisation processes involving the Indian
population

Transnationalism as a kind of ‘diaspora consciousness’ marked by dual and multiple

identifications is amply evident in the context of our case study in which depending on
contingent circumstances a person may be a Bengali, an Indian and/or a New Zealander of
Indian, Fijian or other origin. A further aspect of identity may be related to changing
perceptions of class and socioeconomic status, with the stereotypical Indian horticultural
worker or shop owner being replaced by the (also stereotypical?) Indian professional worker,
albeit not always suitably employed.

Finally, we have seen that Indian transnationalism in New Zealand is evident as a mode of
social reproduction. Manifestations of social reproduction within the Indian diaspora in New
Zealand may range from the physical through to the cultural and metaphysical. Changes to
the built environment have been spectacular in the form of transformed retail outlets (in
appearance as well as merchandise) and the appearance of new places of worship. In recent
years, however, the cultural expressions of people resident and employed in localised spaces
of urban change such as Sandringham are given contemporary recognition in Auckland
through festivals like Diwali, now embedded in the city’s civic calendar and cultural
landscape, as well as through websites, media attention, the increasing profile of Bollywood,
and even languages regularly heard on the street.

Notes
1. There was no nationality (citizenship) question in the 2001 New Zealand census,
only questions on birthplace and self-identified ethnicity.
2. Indian indentures (girmitya) were indentured for five years and were then free to
return to India (or elsewhere). However, they did not qualify for free passage back to
India for a further five years, and this encouraged many to stay on in Fiji.

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 12
Transnational Analysis of Women in the South Asian Diaspora
Helen Ralston

Introduction
This chapter adopts a feminist perspective to examine family and career connections of
transmigrant women in Canada (Atlantic Canada, British Columbia), Australia and New
Zealand—three Commonwealth countries of the South Asian diaspora which share a British
colonial heritage with the Indian subcontinent. As a result of removal of discriminatory
clauses in immigration policies since the 1960s in Canada and a little later in Australia and
New Zealand, Asia has become a main continental source of immigrants to Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, composition, settlement patterns and sex ratio of
post World War Two South Asian immigrant populations in the respective countries have
also changed because of changes in immigration laws. From the standpoint of the respective
countries, there has been a significant change not only in the volume of migrants and the
ratio of foreign born to native-born residents in these countries, but also in the
heterogeneous composition of their populations. Canada, Australia and New Zealand in fact
have all become at least in part multicultural, multiracial and multireligious societies.1 The
research is ongoing in that I interviewed daughters of some women in major Canadian and
Australian metropolises in 1999 to 2000. I am now doing longitudinal studies of mothers and
daughters, research that is beyond the scope of the present discussion. The chapter is limited
to discussion of the initial research with transmigrant South Asian women.

South Asian, diaspora, and transnational as analytical concepts

South Asia is a descriptive category that refers to a geopolitical region that includes the
countries of the Indian subcontinent. The term ‘South Asian’ encompasses distinctly
different categories of people who trace their origins either directly to the Indian
subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh), or else indirectly through their
ancestors who migrated to East and South Africa, Fiji, East and South-East Asia, the
Caribbean and elsewhere. Being South Asian therefore refers not so much to individual
personal qualities as to social characteristics that have been constructed and reconstructed in
historical and ongoing social relations in specific social, economic and political contexts. It
thus connotes heterogeneity and hybridity, rather than homogeneity, in intersecting race,
ethnicity, language, class, caste and sub-caste, religion and national origin in the construction
of identity.

The term ‘diaspora’ is equally problematic. Brah (1996) has raised critical questions about the
links between diaspora, border, location, difference, diversity, and contemporary migrations
of people, capital and cultures. Most simply, diaspora is a descriptive category, which
originally applied to the dispersion of the Jews and later, by extension, came to be used in
reference to other peoples who are dispersed from an assumed homeland to different parts
of the world. Diaspora as a descriptive category connotes a journey that implies crossing
borders to a new place of settlement. Bhachu (1985, 1995) coined the terms direct, twice and
thrice migrants in her study of East African Sikh settlers in Britain to capture some aspects
of this diaspora. According to her terminology, direct migrants are those who have directly
migrated from the Indian sub-continent, twice or thrice migrants are those who have
subsequently migrated to a second and third or more country. For Brah (1996: 15-16, 181-
186) however, diaspora is also an analytical category. The concept is a frame of reference for
understanding and interpreting both the historical, political, social, cultural and economic
circumstances of the journeying and, in addition, ‘how and in what ways a group is inserted
within the social relations of class, gender, racism, sexuality, or other axes of differentiation
in the country (or countries) to which it migrates’ (Brah 1996: 182).

Over the past two decades or more, many scholars have focused on migration in terms of
transnationalism and transnational migrants or transmigrants, rather than international
migration of emigrants from a source country who become immigrants and permanent
settlers in a specific destination country. In their analysis of migration between Latin
America and the U.S.A., Glick Schiller et al. (1992, 1999) proposed transnational migration
or transnationalism as a new paradigm for analysis of migration across the borders of nation
states to capture the everyday reality of those whose lives mediate across these boundaries.
Thereafter, research on migrant transnationalism proliferated in Europe (Vertovec 1999,
2001; Ballard 2003). Vertovec's (1999) analysis of the formation of transnational ethnic
diasporas with networks of social relationships, the development of ‘a diaspora
consciousness marked by dual or multiple identifications’, the everyday use of transnational
electronic connections through cyberspace, and his focus on ‘transnational communities’
offers much to an analysis of transnational South Asian diasporic communities. Voigt-Graf
(2002) extended the concept of transnational migration beyond the context of the American
and European continents. She examined the construction of transnational spaces in various
spheres of daily life by Indian migrants in the South Pacific and Pacific Rim countries such
as Australia.

In this essay I want to explore some aspects of diasporic South Asian women's transnational
social and cultural practices and the connections and disconnections in their careers to
suggest factors that may have contributed to their experience. Although there is an ever
expanding literature on the experience of Immigrant women, there is relatively little
comparative study of the experience of those who migrate to less densely populated regions
rather than to global metropolises. My research highlights some of these different
experiences.

Research samples and their characteristics

The research is based on the assumption that, in the study of migrants' experience, it is
necessary to consider not only the migrants’ geographical and cultural origins but also their
particular place of settlement and any previous settlement experiences. My assumption was
that the concentration of South Asians in a place of settlement affects experience and
identity of South Asian immigrant women. For instance, immigrants who settle in sparsely
populated, semi-rural regions have different experiences from those who settle in densely
populated, highly urbanized and industrialized regions. They are more geographically
dispersed and more isolated. In particular, they do not have the same level of informal
networks and organised support services such as ethnocultural and women’s community
organizations. Moreover, migrants who have previously lived in a Western country will have
different experiences from those who have come directly from their homeland to a Western
Commonwealth country such as Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Research samples were
therefore drawn in two kinds of settlement regions: regions that were less and more densely
populated, less or more urbanized and regions with smaller or larger concentrations of South
Asians. In other words, they were drawn in regions that differed demographically,
historically, and socially.

South Asians have also settled unevenly throughout the case study countries: Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. I therefore examined South Asian women's experience in the
eastern and western coastal regions of Canada. Atlantic Canada (comprising four provinces:
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland) is isolated from
the densely populated central and western regions of Canada. It is very different from the
Pacific maritime Province of British Columbia — demographically, historically, and socially.
According to the 1991 census of Canada (Statistics Canada 1993), 55 per cent of self-
identified South Asians were settled in Ontario, but they represented only 1.6 per cent of the
Ontario population (the national average) as compared to 3.2 per cent of the British
Columbia population. South Asians represented only 0.2 per cent of the Atlantic Canada
population. The total South Asian population of British Columbia was more than twenty
times that of Atlantic Canada. In British Columbia, 74 per cent of the South Asian
population resided in Vancouver metropolis. In Atlantic Canada, the South Asian population
was more scattered; only 44 per cent of South Asians were settled in Halifax, the major
metropolis. Historically, British Columbia was the port of entry for the initial South Asian
immigrants to Canada at the turn of the twentieth century. South Asians migrated to Atlantic
Canada only after World War Two when racially discriminatory policies were beginning to
relax (Ralston 1994). Socially, British Columbia, especially Vancouver, has a large population
of diverse Asian ethnic origins. Atlantic Canada has relatively few people of Asian origins.
Moreover, South Asians who migrated to British Columbia at the turn of the twentieth
century were mainly male Punjabi Sikh farmers. South Asian immigrants to Canada of recent
decades have comprised a heterogeneous population in terms of regional, linguistic, religious
and national origins.

As in Canada, the Australian metropolises, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth differ

demographically, historically and socially. The Australian population is 91 per cent
urbanized. In the post-World War Two influx of migrants to Australia, the large
metropolises of Sydney and Melbourne have been the prime destinations. In the 1991
Australian census (BIMPR 1995), persons born in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and
Fiji —those assumed to be of Indian ethnic origin were mainly settled in the capital cities of
New South Wales and Victoria, Sydney and Melbourne, respectively, and, to a lesser extent,
 in Perth, Western Australia. Sydney and Melbourne comprise about 40 per cent of the
population of Australia, Perth metropolis only about 5 per cent. Perth, on the southwest
coast, is distinguished by its isolation from the densely populated eastern region of Australia.

In New Zealand, as in Canada and Australia, there was a marked change in composition of
the 1980s South Asian migrant population (Bedford 1987, 1989, 1990; Bedford and Levick
1988; Brooking and Rabel 1995; Larner 1993; Trlin and Spoonley 1992; New Zealand 1994).
The settlers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were mainly Gujarati and
Punjabi Indians. In the mid-1990s, notably since the 1987 coups in Fiji (Shameem 1992), in
addition to those who migrated from the Indian subcontinent, there was an estimated
population of 11,000 Indo-Fijians (Leckie 1995: 135-137). All told, New Zealand persons of
South Asian origin, including Indian (persons born in both India and Fiji) and Sri Lanka
ethnic origin persons numbered 30,945. They resided principally in the Auckland and
Wellington regions of the North Island (Leckie 1995).

Research samples were drawn in proportion to the distribution of South Asians in the
respective countries (Statistics Canada 1993; BIMPR 1995). New Zealand research was
limited to the major metropolis, Auckland. Data were gathered in face-to-face semi-
structured in-depth interviews with samples of migrant women (conceived as transmigrants)
of South Asian origin between the late 1980s to the mid-1990s: 126 Atlantic Canada women
between 1988 and 1991, 100 British Columbia women in 1994, 50 Australian women in
1995, and 10 New Zealand women in 1995.2 Table 1 presents their age at the time of the
interviews.

Table 1: Age at Interview of Samples of South Asian Women, Atlantic Canada, British
Columbia, Australia and New Zealand
From To AC South Asian BC South Asian Australian South New Zealand
Women Women Asian Women South Asian
Women
(>) (<) Count Percent Count Percent Count Percent Count Percent
20.00 25.00 3 2.38 2 2.00 2 4.00
25.00 30.00 2 1.59 8 8.00 7 14.00
30.00 35.00 14 11.11 4 4.00 3 6.00 3 30.00
35.00 40.00 19 15.08 11 11.00 8 16.00 1 10.00
40.00 45.00 26 20.64 16 16.00 5 10.00 0 0
45.00 50.00 21 16.66 23 23.00 11 22.00 2 20.00
50.00 55.00 21 16.66 14 14.00 6 12.00 3 30.00
55.00 60.00 11 8.73 7 7.00 4 8.00 0 0
60.00 65.00 4 3.18 7 7.00 3 6.00 1 10.00
65.00 70.00 3 2.38 5 5.00 0 0
70.00 75.00 2 1.59 3 3.00 1 2.00
Total 126 100.00 100 100.00 50 100.00 10 100.00
Heterogeneity characterized the migrant women in all samples. They were of diverse
national, linguistic and religious backgrounds: 15 birth countries (Table 2), 17 mother
tongues and 7 religions.

Table 2: Birth Country of Samples of South Asian Women, Atlantic Canada, British
Columbia, Australia and New Zealand
Birth Country AC South Asian BC South Asian Australian South New Zealand
Women Women Asian Women South Asian
Women
Count % Count % Count % Count %
India 83 65.87 60 60.00 18 36.00 3 30.00
Sri Lanka 4 3.18 2 2.00 9 18.00 1 10.00
Bangladesh 6 4.76 7 14.00
Pakistan 20 15.88 8 8.00 6 12.00 1 10.00
Burma 2 1.59
Kenya 3 2.38 4 4.00 1 2.00
Uganda 3 2.38 3 3.00
Tanzania 2 1.59 1 1.00
Caribbean
Fiji 21 21.00 5 10.00 5 50.00
Malaysia 1 1.00 4 8.00
Indonesia 1 0.79
Singapore 1 0.79
England 1 0.79
Caribbean 2 1.59
Total 126 100.00 100 100.00 50 100.00 10 100.00

Despite significant diversity, there were some points of commonality among the women. For
instance, 90 per cent of them were married. About two-thirds had arranged or ‘semi-
arranged’ marriages: Atlantic Canada 75 per cent, British Columbia 69 per cent, Australia 64
per cent, and the New Zealand 60 per cent. Two-thirds or more of the women had an
educational level beyond high school at the time of their entrance to Canada, Australia or
New Zealand.

The years of the women’s entrance to the respective countries reflected to some extent the
history of a country’s immigration policies. As noted above, British Columbia was the initial
port of entry for South Asian immigrants to Canada at the turn of twentieth century. South
Asians migrated to Atlantic Canada only after World War II (Ralston 1994). The earliest
British Columbia arrivals in my study were Punjabi Sikhs with Punjabi male relatives and
extended families already settled in the province. They entered between 1949 and 1994, the
modal year being 1973. The woman who migrated in 1949 was typical of migrants with
extended family already settled in British Columbia. She came as a nine-year old child. Her
father was born in British Columbia, her grandfather having been among the earliest Punjabi
Jat Sikh ‘sojouners’ in British Columbia who suffered from the race and gender
discriminatory immigration laws (designed to prevent reproduction of South Asians in
Canada) in the early 1900s right up until post World War Two. The men went to India to
find their wives and returned alone because immigration laws forbade the entry of South
Asian women to Canada (Ralston, 1994). At age 20, my original British Columbia
interviewee had an arranged marriage with a Canadian-born Punjabi Jat Sikh man in the
lumber industry (as was the case with the majority of Punjabi Jat Sikhs). She joined a large
extended family in British Columbia. By contrast, South Asians migrated to Atlantic Canada
only after World War Two. In my studies, they entered Canada between 1956 and 1988, the
modal year being 1967. Australian women migrated between 1961 and 1995, the modal year
being 1990; New Zealand women between 1964 and 1991, the modal year being 1989.

Many of the women in my samples were twice or thrice migrants who had lived in other
countries prior to migration to the respective settlement country: 52 per cent of Atlantic
Canada women, 37 per cent of British Columbia women, 42 per cent of Australian women
and 20 per cent of New Zealand women. A smaller number of these women had lived in
other Western countries, for example, principally but not exclusively, English-speaking
Commonwealth countries: the UK before Canada or Australia or New Zealand, New
Zealand before Australia, Canada before Australia, and USA before Canada.

Reasons for migration

Migration decisions are based on a range of factors: personal reasons, such as career
ambitions, resident relatives and friends, as well as immigration policies of receiving
countries, recognition of qualifications and skills, opportunities for jobs and settlement.

Sometimes people move to another country as ‘forced migrants’ because of political

upheaval in their homeland or source country. For example, the gradual deconstruction of
the British Empire after World War Two and independence of its former colonies—India
and Pakistan in 1947, Ceylon/Sri Lanka in 1948, and, later, Fiji in 1970. The partition of
India in 1947 forced violent mass migration of people within the Indian subcontinent.
Hindus, Muslims Sikhs, Christian Anglo-Indians and Burghers moved from India, Pakistan
and Ceylon/Sri Lanka within the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere. Forced migration for
many South Asian minorities in former colonies contributed to construction of the
transnational diasporic South Asian community. British Empire domination had left a legacy
of knowledge of the English language, a British educational system and English-medium
schools and universities, as well as various aspects of its legal system and culture. All this
historical, political and cultural heritage facilitated movement of former ‘British subjects’
throughout the former colonies of the British Empire—the Commonwealth today: India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Uganda, Kenya, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
Fiji and so on. Case study details in my research highlighted structural global colonialism
(and its deconstruction) that determined movement of peoples throughout the former
British Empire. Since then minority Tamils migrated from Sri Lanka, Ugandan Indians were
forced to leave that country in 1972 under Idi Amin's regime, and Indo-Fijians in the Fiji
Islands migrated after independence and political coups in the 1980s. Thus a range of
geopolitical factors influenced the shape of the research sample.
Migration decision-makers and gender
One can also distinguish between ‘primary migrants’, those who make the decisions for
themselves alone or for their families as well, and ‘secondary migrants’, where migration is
derivative from a decision made by the head of the family (Shryock and Larmon 1965).
Children and, married women are very frequently secondary migrants, even when
immigration regulations permit them to be the principal applicants. For example, while it
was true that a single woman could apply to enter Canada as an independent immigrant, it
was only in 1974 that Canadian immigration regulations allowed a woman to be principal
applicant for a married couple (Boyd 1987: 19). The characteristics of the male adult, who
was designated as head of the household, were used to determine eligibility of a married
couple for entrance to Canada. Gender bias was compounded with marital status bias.
Gender analysis is therefore essential when investigating the migration process, career
decisions and transnational career connections and disconnections of a married couple.

In my studies, I analysed whose idea it was to migrate to the respective countries. In the
1960s and 1970s Atlantic Canada in particular was in dire need of skilled professional
transmigrants. The large metropolises of Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) were in a similar
situation a little later.

Migration was the husband's idea for over half of the married Atlantic Canada transmigrant
women. Among greater proportions of British Columbia, Australian and New Zealand
married women, both wife and husband shared in the migration decision.

A quarter of the Atlantic Canada sample stated explicitly that migration was part of willing
agreement to an arranged marriage with a professional man (doctor, teacher, engineer) that
they liked who had been recruited to work not only in the relatively small cities but also in
the many small towns that characterize the Atlantic region. In a few cases, a wife or
husband’s close relative or friend already living in Canada, Australia or New Zealand
suggested migration and provided some practical and/or emotional support on arrival. Close
relatives played a significant role in decision-making for forty percent of British Columbia
women.

Few women in my research were primary decision-makers in migration. Some primary

migrants were single women who migrated to study or work. For example, an Atlantic
Canada woman with no relatives in Canada came alone as a direct migrant in 1961 to study
medicine. Another Atlantic Canada single woman came as a direct migrant from Pakistan in
1967 to work as a teacher in metropolitan Halifax where she had a close friend, another
from India in 1987 to work as an occupational therapist in a small Atlantic Canada town.

Some Australian primary migrants came as students or visitors. In the late 1960s and the
1970s, they easily converted their status into permanent residents. One woman chose
migration to Australia, rather than Canada, where she was also accepted. She entered Sydney
in 1967 as an independent worker with a sponsor for employment in the health sciences. She
received permanent resident status on arrival, and, according to immigration regulations at
the time, citizenship by mail a year later. A Malaysian-born Punjabi Sikh woman, aged 46, a
resident of Perth, Western Australia, at the time of her interview in 1995, had a history of
transnational migration. With a recognized high school diploma she had trained as a
secretary in New Zealand before entering Australia first as a legal visitor. There she trained
as a computer programmer and worked for eleven years as a single woman. She became an
Australian citizen. As a single woman in Sydney, she had organised a group for single
Punjabi Indian-origin men and women to meet partners. Transnational family connections
took her back and forth to Malaysia, Fiji and England, where she married and lived for three
years. Then she sponsored her husband to migrate and settle in Perth, Western Australia.
The couple first bought a home in Perth. She observed:

We found Perth small after London. We tried Sydney for two months. We came back to
Perth. Now we are settled here and could not move anywhere else. Sydney is too busy for us.
This is home now. This is my country, where I belong. I don't find discrimination. I seem to
get on well with everyone. I don't separate myself. I came young. I could not live in Malaysia
now. I find the people strange there.

At the time of her interview, she had two young children, one of them a physically
challenged child who needed special care. She was not working outside the home, but was
upgrading her computer programming skills with a view to returning to a paid job.

Few married women gave their job as the reason for migration. In fact, three-quarters of
Atlantic Canada women, 58 per cent of British Columbia women, 44 per cent of Australian
women and 20 per cent of New Zealand women reported that the principal reason for
settlement in Canada, Australia or New Zealand was the husband's job. The vast majority of
Atlantic Canada husbands were professionals: engineers, medical doctors or other health
professionals, university and high school teachers who fulfilled a crying need for such skills
in that region. By contrast, some husbands of British Columbian women and their extended
families were working in the lumber industry. Over half the Australian women's husbands
were highly skilled medical, educational, scientific, engineering and other professionals who
met the needs of Australia's exploding metropolises.

Married women who lived in small isolated communities had markedly different career
experiences from those who resided in large metropolises. For example, a frustrated married
woman, living in a small Atlantic Canada town and aged 51 at the time of her interview,
bitterly described her career and daily life experience. She held a post-graduate science
degree and had worked as a university science researcher and teacher. Both her parents had
taught in higher educational institutions in her home country. She had an arranged marriage
with a medical doctor. After initially settling in Montreal, they moved to their current
residence so that her husband could set up a private medical practice in his own home. He
was ‘very comfortable here,’ she reported. She, on the other hand, wanted to move to
Toronto ‘where plenty of jobs (for someone with her qualifications) were available.’ She
joined the provincial Teachers Union and had her credentials recognized but was considered
‘too qualified’ for a full-time job in the local high school. She could only obtain part-time
jobs as a substitute teacher. She articulated explicitly the contradiction between the gender
ideology she had learned and the reality of her experience. She described her daily life, which
included both stereotypically female and male activities, as follows:

I do absolutely everything. He just does his own job. Nothing else. If I had been trained in
medicine, I would probably do that too. It is lots of work to run the house. Suppose the pipe
bursts and is going to leak, I'm the one who is going to call people to fix it. Something goes
wrong with the car. I take it to the garage, get it fixed up. Everything has to be in order. And
not only that. I take the kids to expose them to the maximum number of things they would
like to do: basketball, volleyball, swimming, tennis, you name it. Each kid has a different
routine. Chauffeuring for them takes lots of time. And that's not all. He has a dream but he
has no time to fulfill it. He wants to develop the land (around the house). So I just try to
work hard and make him happy, the way he wants. It is I who would do the work and make
his dream come true. He tells me to do something and I just go ahead and do it.

Then she took stock of her subservience to her husband's domestic needs. She
acknowledged her evident equality with a man's physical and intellectual capacity. She
questioned and analyzed the reasons for her acquiescence and actively resisted the socially
constructed gender relations in her family life.

Now I've decided I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to stop. I mean whose wife
goes and develops land, unless they are professional engineers, which I am not? All these
things I do, it is kind of a man's job—fixing the car, the vacuum cleaner, the maintenance of
the house, developing the land. Why am I doing it? Just because he wants it. And that's a
female's job. I analyze myself. Outside, physically, I have the capacity to do a man's job.
Inside, psychologically, I am still submissive, still going along and doing what he wants me to
do. Maybe it's because of my background. I came here at the age of twenty-two. I was
brought up to believe that you are supposed to listen to your husband.

Stereotypical myths of domesticity and subservience belied the experience and possible
agency and resistance of this Atlantic Canada woman. Her situation and sense of frustration
were in sharp contrast with the experience, for example, of the middle-class Sydney woman
described above, who worked in a government job as a highly paid quantity surveyor and
was very content with her life in Sydney, Australia. Both migrated to their respective
countries in the early post World War Two years of migration and at approximately the
same age. Their initial interviews were in 1989 and 1991, respectively. The Sydney woman’s
parents were both teachers in her home country. The Sydney couple, by contrast with the
Atlantic Canada woman, did further post-graduate studies in professions after migration.

Migration and transnational family connections

A large body of migration research has indicated that migrants tend to move, wherever
possible, to places where they have relatives, friends or acquaintances who will help with
migration, settlement, employment and career mobility. In my studies of transmigrant
women, 76 per cent in Atlantic Canada, 77 per cent in British Columbia, 70 per cent in
Australia, and 80 per cent in New Zealand had relatives or friends already resident in the
respective settlement country. Among 34 percent of Atlantic Canadian women, the husband
was already a resident of the country and this figure ranged from 27 per cent in British
Columbia, to 18 per cent in Australia and 20 per cent in New Zealand.

Conversely, one might expect that women who had no relatives already resident in the
country would have great difficulties in settlement. Such was not necessarily the case—
particularly in the 1960s and 1970s in Atlantic Canada and Australia, where professionals,
such as doctors, engineers and teachers, were badly needed. For example, an Atlantic
Canadian woman who migrated from Pakistan with her husband and children in 1967
reported:

That time the Canadian government needed lots of doctors. They didn't have enough. So
they organized all our visas and everything. We didn't have to go to the offices or anything.
Whatever hospitals he applied to, they just looked for a house for us. And when we came,
we had some place to get into. Of course the rent was our responsibility.

Several Australian women migrated as dependants of medical professional husbands and

science professors when racially discriminatory immigration policies were beginning to relax.
Australia needed such expert professionals for new universities and teaching hospitals in its
exploding Sydney and Melbourne metropolises. The women played a significant role in
founding ethnocultural organizations. As the flow of South Asian transmigrants to these
cities in Australia and also to Vancouver, British Columbia, increased, the formation of
ethnospecific cultural and religious organizations increased. Such organizations provided
diasporic spaces for transmigrants’ identity reconstruction as Australians or Canadians, for
addressing settlement needs of newcomers, and for exchange with other migrants and
native-born Australians.

Transnational career connections and disconnections: gender and race

Even though many of the women in the studies were highly educated at the time of their
migration, few married women entered in the migrant category of ‘principal applicant’.
Gender and marital status discrimination in recognition of educational qualifications and
work experience typically prevailed in these cases. When racial and national origin
discriminatory immigration laws were repealed in 1962, a single or married man could enter
Canada as principal applicant. While it was true that a single woman could apply to enter
Canada as an independent immigrant, it was only in 1974 that a woman was allowed to be
principal applicant for a married couple (Boyd 1987:19). Until then, a married woman, no
matter what her qualifications, was automatically admitted as a dependant of her husband,
no matter what his qualifications.

A married woman with advanced nursing qualifications reported how the couple creatively
dealt with gender and marital status discriminatory regulations prior to 1974. She had a firm
job offer in Atlantic Canada. Her husband had to seek out a very chancy employer to
sponsor him as ‘principal applicant’. She told her story as follows:

My job wasn't counted as a job, because I wasn't the family head. They don't count women.
If any single woman is coming, then it's ok for the person, but I was with a family and my
 services were not counted. My husband is (counted). So we got a letter anyway. Friends here
in (Atlantic Canada), they arranged (a job for my husband) with their relative who had an
electric company. We got entrance on that letter, not on my job. When we came here, that
electric company was all finished, so he was out of a job. My job was there. I stayed in my
job at the Hospital for twelve years!

Nevertheless, even when discrimination against Canadian women’s marital status was
removed in 1974, few married women in my studies who entered Canada after 1974 did so
as ‘principal applicant’. It would seem that patriarchal gender roles prevailed in most families.

A relatively high percentage of transmigrant South Asian women who presented their
educational and career qualifications in the settlement country, particularly in Atlantic
Canada, found that they were not recognized, were downgraded or required recertification:
Atlantic Canada 51 per cent, British Columbia 40 per cent, Australia 38 per cent, New
Zealand 20 per cent. Some women did not try to have their credentials accepted.

With a view to furthering their careers and getting good jobs in the new settlement country,
many transmigrant women obtained further education after migration: Atlantic Canada 63
per cent, British Columbia 63 per cent, Australia 60 per cent, and New Zealand 60 per cent.
Table 3 presents the level of education of the women in the source country and their further
educational level obtained in the settlement country. Although relatively high percentages of
the women pursued further education, few women in any of my studies actually entered the
respective country as a student.

Table 3: Highest Education Source Country, Further Education after Migration, South Asian
Women, Atlantic Canada (AC), British Columbia (BC), Australia (AU), New Zealand (NZ)
Highest Level Source Country Further Education
of Education Education After Migration
AC BC AU NZ AC BC AU NZ
N=126 N=100 N=50 N=10 N=79 N=63 N=30 N=6
% % % % % % % %
Post 27.78 23.00 14.00 20.00 30.38 46.03 50.00 50.00
Graduate
Bacca- 25.40 17.00 42.00 10.00 17.72 3.17 40.00 16.00
laureate
College/Post 28.57 23.00 28.00 30.00 45.57 42.86 10.00 34.00
High School
High School 15.08 16.00 10.00 40.00 6.33 7.94
Elementary 3.17 12.00 6.00
or None
Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

At the time of the interviews, only 48 per cent of Atlantic Canadian women had paid work
outside the home, whereas 63 per cent of British Columbia women, 60 per cent of
Australian women, and 60 per cent of New Zealand had paid work. Getting paid work
 outside the home was particularly difficult for Atlantic Canada women who settled outside
metropolitan centres.

Table 4: Settlement and Source Country Occupation, South Asian Women, Atlantic
Canada (AC), British Columbia (BC), Australia (AU), New Zealand (NZ)
Occupation Settlement Country Source Country
AC BC AU NZ AC BC AU NZ
N=60 N=63 N=30 N=6 N=79 N=63 N=30 N=6
% % % % % % % %
Major educational, health and 11.67 9.52 26.67 21.13 14.03 19.35 14.29
other administrators and
professionals
Owner of large or medium 3.17 3.33 3.22
business
Lesser educational, health and
other administrators and 43.33 28.57 33.33 66.67 63.38 47.37 38.71 57.14
professionals
Executive secretaries,
administrative personnel 6.67 6.35 6.67 1.41 7.02 3.23
Self-employed small business 5.00 3.33
owner
Semi-professional, lab 3.33 7.94 5.63 3.51 3.23
assistant
Secretaries, book-keepers,
editor, cashiers, clerks and 21.67 20.64 13.34 33.33 8.45 19.30 29.03 28.57
salespersons
Skilled manual workers, 3.33 6.67 3.23
technicians
Machine operators 5.00 11.11 3.33 8.77
Unskilled employees 12.70 3.3
Total 100.00 100.0 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
0

Table 4 presents settlement and source country occupations of the transmigrant women in
the four studies. Many migrant women in Canada, especially if they are non-white, tend to be
in lower-paid, less skilled and less secure traditionally female occupations (Boyd 1975, 1984,
1986; Ng and Ramirez 1981). However, research has indicated that immigrant women are
bimodally distributed in the occupational structure (Arnopoulos 1979; Boyd 1975, 1986), a
high percentage of them being concentrated in skilled and professional occupations. For
some non-white migrant women, including South Asians, the bimodal occupation
distribution is replicated (Stasiulis 1987). In other words, a high-percentage of transmigrant
South Asian women is employed in skilled and professional occupations.

In the 1991 Australian census, India-born and Sri Lanka-born women were most likely to be
employed as clerks, professionals, sales persons and personal service workers (BIMPR 1995).
Australian South Asian transmigrant women in my samples had stories to tell that were
similar to those told by migrants to Canada. Their experience of downgrading of credentials
and overseas experience highlighted the interconnections of gender, race, ethnicity, class and
national origin. Approximately half of the women in the sample had difficulties in getting
paid work outside the home. For example, an Australian woman complained,

They put great emphasis on equal employment opportunity but there still is discrimination.
They go on the status of what country you got your education. Experience in Fiji doesn't
count as much as experience in Australia.

Other Australian women identified unfamiliar dress style worn by South Asian women as a
common basis for race and gender discrimination in seeking work and in the workplace
itself:

(I was) just newly married, thrown into a new environment. There were few Indians on the
road. People thought you alien. Once I was looking for a job, wearing a sari, looking for an
address to get directions. People shunned me, both men and women.

And again

The first job was the hardest to find because I didn't work before. In Bangladesh we don't
work until all our studies are finished. So when I got my degree here I was 28, I went looking
for a job without any experience. I was too qualified with a Master's degree. Being
Bangladeshi made a difference. I wore salwar kameez at that time. I had to change. I thought
that employers didn’t really like it. It could have put them off. Then when I changed to
western dress, I got the job at that interview.

Although more than half the South Asian women in paid work in the settlement country
were employed as educational and health professionals, senior administrators, librarians or
accountants, case studies of many working women revealed individual underemployment.

Table 5: Paid work outside the home in both source country and settlement country: South
Asian Women Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, Australia and New Zealand
Paid work AC South Asian BC South Asian Australian New Zealand
outside the Women Women South Asian South Asian
home in both Women Women
source & N = 126 N = 100 N = 50 N= 10
settlement
countries
Percent Percent Percent Percent
Yes 33 39 38 50
No 67 61 62 50
100 100 100 100

As Table 5 shows, only 33 per cent of the Atlantic Canada women, 39 per cent of British
Columbia women, 38 per cent of Australian women and 50 per cent of New Zealand
women had paid work in both their source country and in the respective settlement country.
Frustration in trying to get paid work outside the home was greater for women with graduate
degrees who had worked in the source country than for less highly qualified women. For
example, one Atlantic Canada woman, a practising medical doctor prior to migration at age
38 with her husband, also a medical doctor of the same age, settled in a small town in
Atlantic Canada. Interviewed seventeen years after migration, she was still bitter that her
qualifications as a medical doctor were unrecognized. The cost of recertification for medical
practice was/is prohibitive financially and domestically. Patriarchal family roles determined
that her husband was the one who wrote exams and obtained certification to practise
medicine. She worked as his uncertified paid office assistant and cared for the children.
Nevertheless, she was happy in her home and was an active volunteer in community
activities in the small Atlantic Canada town.

Among British Columbia women in my study there was a wider distribution and
occupational levels at entrance to Canada than among the other samples. However,
approximately two-thirds of the women (63 per cent) pursued some form of further
education after migration to Canada. Lack of recognition for education and work experience
in the source country was a problem for many of the interviewees in the British Columbia
sample. Only 15 per cent found that their qualifications were treated as equivalent to
Canadian qualifications. Many found that they were socially defined as ‘different’ because of
foreign educational qualifications, language, Third World origin, skin colour, work
experience (or lack of Canadian work experience). The year of immigration appeared to have
little relationship to qualifications being recognized as equivalent. The rule of thumb
appeared to be that a baccalaureate degree counted for no more that university entrance; a
post-graduate degree might give a woman a first-degree equivalency. Failure to get
recognition for a B.A. earned in the source country meant that a woman could not pursue
graduate studies and would be ‘stuck in a menial job with no opportunity,’ to quote a woman
who had a B.A. degree upon entrance to Canada. Her degree was downgraded to equivalent
of a high school certificate. At the time of her interview in Vancouver, she was training to
become a dental receptionist, as well as working at two part-time jobs: a DJ for an Indian
private radio programme and an outreach worker in a community prenatal programme
managed by an Indian women’s organization. In contrast with the Atlantic Canada women,
British Columbia women in my samples who worked in their source country in high status
occupations (Table 3) were major educational administrators. Few were professional such as
a medical doctor or a university teacher.

In some women's experience, racism played an explicit role in their failure to get work.
Transmigrant South Asian women in Atlantic Canada, British Columbia and Australia spoke
of the duplicity of employers who gave lack of Canadian or Australian experience,
respectively, as the reason for not hiring them. Such reports suggested that not having
Canadian/Australian experience was used as a form of racial discrimination that a Human
Rights Commissioner could not challenge. Rajagopal (1990: 98) raised questions about why
Indo-Canadians in Ontario were unable to obtain employment consonant with their
qualifications. He suggested that the invisible glass ceiling might have its roots in their
ethnicity. According to an equity officer's report to me, migrants in Melbourne, Australia,
referred to the concrete ceiling because they could not even see what was unavailable to them.

In sum, with respect to work-related difficulties upon settlement, 30 per cent of both
Atlantic Canada and British Columbia South Asian women gave poor English, lack of
recognition of educational and work credentials, inability to get employment, and race
discrimination as the greatest difficulties. In sparsely populated Atlantic Canada, the greatest
difficulties for 59 per cent of the women were lack of family support, isolation, loneliness,
depression, cultural differences, and the harsh winter climate. Atlantic Canada women who
lived in small towns and rural areas had few neighbours and found Canadians cold and
difficult to meet. Although 32 per cent of British Columbia women experienced culture
shock, isolation and homesickness as the greatest difficulties upon arrival, others spoke
positively of extended family support.

Upon settlement, getting a job was less of a problem for Australian and New Zealand
women than for the Canadian interviewees. Atlantic Canada is much less urbanized and
much less ethnically diverse than the rest of Canada. In Atlantic Canada race, class, gender
and region of settlement were inextricably interconnected in the women's work experience.
As one woman put it, ‘For women of colour it's difficult to find jobs, particularly in a place
where few jobs are available.’ Three Atlantic Canada women spoke of the complete lack of
job opportunities in their geographical area for women with their advanced science
qualifications. Not only could they find no research jobs, but they were also designated as
‘too qualified’ for some secondary school teaching jobs or else told that there was a surplus
of teachers. Similarly, some women who had practiced as medical doctors in the home
country found it impossible to work as such in Atlantic Canada: either they could not get an
internship after passing certification exams or they were unable to take the necessary time
for studying and sitting for certification exams (Ralston 1996). Among the 80 per cent of
Australian interviewees who had paid work since settlement, about half of them worked in
public service jobs: Telecom, state schools, universities, hospitals, health departments and
other government departments. The incumbent Labor federal and state governments at the
time had policies of hiring migrants. For example, a middle-class professional Sydney woman
who worked in a government job as a highly paid quantity surveyor described her experience
of twenty years as follows:

In the past, it was very difficult to be a migrant. Then there was discrimination because you
were a woman as well as a migrant. Now, there is discrimination because (one is) a woman,
not because one is a migrant woman, Now promotion is purely on merit, but there is some
subtle discrimination, in normal jobs, not at our government level, but at the corporate level.
For example, I will never be head of a company, no matter how good I am. Now I don’t feel
different, that I have any barriers. I feel that we are given equal opportunity.

Few Australian had jobs in the private sector other than in their own businesses. South
Asian transmigrant Australian and New Zealand women had relatively few friends or
relatives to support them. Overwork inside and outside the home, isolation, homesickness
and culture shock were their greatest difficulties. Some reported that they experienced
racism in everyday life. On the other hand, one Australian woman who had migrated to
Australia from the UK reported that in her experience Australia was less racist than
England. My recent longitudinal studies with mothers and daughters in Australia and
Canada have confirmed that, although racism and gender discrimination persist in both
countries, more than twenty years of ethnically diverse migrants and, especially, explicit
multicultural policies have made White Australians and Canadians more accustomed to and
accepting of ethnic and racial diversity. However, as I write, the situation is changing daily
as religious and racial discrimination increases globally.

Transmigrant women also spoke of positive paid-work career experiences. For example, 15
per cent of Atlantic Canadians, 23 per cent of British Columbian and 22 per cent of
Australia had never worked in South Asia but were currently working. Some had well-paid
jobs in education, health professions, and accountancy, or as bookkeepers or secretaries.
Other women were self-employed in profitable small businesses, others in low-paid sales,
cashier, secretarial and factory jobs. Work outside the home gave them economic and social
independence and a measure of control over their lives. Moreover, they valued opportunities
to increase their fluency in English language, to make work friends, and their liberation from
being ‘house bound’. Some women related that they had never experienced race or other
discrimination, that they had worked hard and ‘made it’ as migrant women.

Connections with parents and siblings in the transnational diaspora

The transmigrant women had ongoing connections with parents and siblings in the South
Asian diaspora, with varying degrees of frequency, through visits to and from them and
through electronic communications by phone and by e-mail. As Tables 6 and 7 show, the
women had parents and many siblings who were scattered around the globe, especially
throughout Commonwealth countries: in the home country, Canada, England, English-
speaking former British colonies, the U.S.A. and elsewhere.
 Table 6: Living Parents' Location Among Samples of South Asian Women Atlantic Canada,
British Columbia, Australia and New Zealand
Living AC South Asian BC South Asian Australian South New Zealand South
Parents' Location Women Women Asian Women Asian Women
N = 81 N = 68 N = 43 N= 10
Percent Percent Percent Percent
India 51.85 42.65 44.19 30.00
Pakistan 6.17 4.65
Bangladesh 6.17 6.98
Sri Lanka 1.24 11.63 10.00
Fiji 10.29 2.33 30.00
Britain 4.93 2.94 2.32
Malaysia 1.47
Kenya 1.47
United Arab 1.47
Emirates
U.S.A. 6.17 4.41 2.32
Canada 20.99 35.30 2.32 10.00
Australia 23.26
New Zealand 20.00
Guyana 1.24
Singapore 1.24
Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
 Table 7: Siblings' Location Among Samples of South Asian Women Atlantic Canada, British
Columbia, Australia and New Zealand

Living AC South Asian BC South Asian Australian New Zealand South Asian
Siblings' Women Women South Asian Women
Location N = 126 N = 100 Women N= 10
N = 50
Percent Percent Percent Percent
All this country 4.76 14.00 22.00 10.00
This country & 9.53 17.00 10.00 30.00
homeland
This country & 9.53 11.00 2.00
abroad
Abroad 9.52 4.00 10.00 10.00
Homeland 36.51 30.00 32.00 20.00
This country, 3.97 12.00 16.00 10.00
homeland & abroad
Homeland & 22.22 10.00 8.00 20.00
abroad
N/A 3.96 2.00
Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Among South Asian women whose siblings were living abroad, ‘Abroad’ included the following
countries
Atlantic Canada sample: Not stated
British Columbia sample: Malaysia, England, U.S.A., Australia, United Arab
Emirates.
Australia sample: Canada, England. New Zealand, Kenya, Nepal,
U.S.A., Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Germany.
New Zealand sample: Australia, Canada, England, U.S.A.
Through their ongoing communications the women belonged to a transnational South Asian
diasporic community with a transnational perspective on migration, family and career. Their
connections opened up opportunities for educational and career mobility for husbands and
children as well as for the women themselves. Recent longitudinal studies with mothers and
daughters have confirmed that they took advantage of these transnational family connections
to marry, study and work abroad (Ralston 2006).

As might be expected, whether or not parents or siblings were still living in the migrants'
home countries influenced to some extent not only their visits to the home country but also
their intentions of returning there at some period in their lives. Despite long distance
expensive travel, a high percentage of women in all studies had visited their home country:
Atlantic Canada 82 per cent, British Columbia 80 per cent, Australia 76 per cent, and all New
Zealand women. Some had made frequent visits, others few visits because of the high cost
of travel or because few family members remained there. The visits were not only to see
family but also for children's religious rites of passage. They wanted their children to know
and be known by their grandparents and extended family and to learn about South Asian
culture. A few women visited to attend to property or other business matters or to arrange a
marriage for a son or daughter.

Further transnational migration throughout the South Asian diaspora

Transmigrants in all studies were asked if they intended to ‘stay here permanently’—in their
present place or country of residence or to move elsewhere. Table 8 presents their
responses.

Table 8: Transmigrant South Asian Women Plans to Stay in Current Country Atlantic
Canada, British Columbia, Australia and New Zealand
AC South Asian BC South Asian Australian New Zealand
Plans to stay in Women Women South Asian South Asian
current country Women Women
N = 126 N = 100 N = 50 N= 10
Percent Percent Percent Percent
Yes 76 84 88 100
No 3 9 6
Don't know 21 2 6
N/A 1
Not stated 4
Total 100 100 100 100

Not surprisingly, having close relatives living in the source country, or having children who
had grown up in the settlement country and had married or might marry and settle there,
were major factors that influenced transmigrant women's plans for their own future
settlement. The women were also asked if they felt ‘at home’ in their present settlement
country. The vast majority agreed that they did: Atlantic Canada 86 per cent, British
Columbia 95 per cent, Australia 84 per cent, and New Zealand 100 per cent.

Transmigrant women in my studies, however, could identify with more than one ‘home’.
Both country of origin and country of settlement could be ‘home’. For example, a Perth
interviewee of South Indian origin had lived previously in Canada and in Sydney, Australia,
because of her husband's studies and jobs as an engineer. Although an Australian citizen,
with ‘friends from many ethnic backgrounds’, she reconstructed her transnational identity
primarily as Indian. Nevertheless, she felt ‘at home’ and had a sense of belonging in Australia
‘because it really is a multicultural society’. A devotee of a transnational Krishna movement,
she and her husband planned to retire to their guru's ashram in India. Despite her experience
of racialization as ‘other’ in everyday life, the choices she made in Perth diasporic spaces
expressed her agency:

It's a good country. I can follow my culture. I live the life I used to live in India. Some
changes—I don't wear a sari when I go out. I want to be one among the crowd. Otherwise
people stare and you feel like an alien. We wear traditional dress for Indian functions. How
you present yourself (in different spaces) depends on you.

On the other hand, A Canadian Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, who now visits her
family every winter, remarked recently (Ralston 2006),

There, my way of interacting changes. I wonder who I am. It’s the old culture there. I have
lived here for forty years. Yesterday, I was sitting here alone and I felt so at home here in my
own home.

Another Perth woman who migrated in 1970 had lived initially in remote Western Australian
mining towns for eleven years, and thereafter in Sydney for four years. Although she visited
India frequently to see parents and extended family, she felt ‘at home’ and was quite sure she
would stay permanently in Perth, even though she had not yet taken up Australian citizenship.

I have no data on whether or not transmigrant women who said that they intended to stay in
the respective countries at the time of their interviews have actually stayed there. However,
there are a few small indicators. In late 1999 to early 2000, I did research with daughters of
previously interviewed women in Canadian and Australian metropolises: Halifax, Vancouver,
Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. My only way of locating daughters was through their mothers,
that is, interviewees of the original studies. It was nearly ten years since the interviews with 48
Halifax women. I could locate only nine Halifax daughters out of a possible 25 migrant
women whose daughters met my criteria for selection. The ‘disappearance’ of my original
cases from Halifax in the intervening years bore witness to ‘common knowledge’ and
government statistical data that record persistent high Atlantic Canada out-migration of initial
migrants region for better job opportunities elsewhere in Canada. In fact, the Nova Scotia
provincial government actively promotes policies and programmes to keep initial migrants in
the province–even publicly encouraging local citizens to ‘be nice to immigrant neighbours’.
My ongoing research has suggested that South Asians like to move where they have relatives
and greater concentrations of members of their ethnospecific community, as well as better
job opportunities. The Halifax daughters whom I interviewed were secondary or post-
secondary students in medicine, accounting or other professions. In the course of their
interviews, they reported that most of their former classmates and friends had moved away to
larger Canadian cities or to the U.S.A. for post-secondary education or to pursue their careers.
By contrast with Halifax, I had no difficulty in finding daughters in Vancouver, Sydney,
Melbourne or Perth. My hunch is that future internal migration or transmigration of married
children may well influence transnational migration of their mothers and fathers within the
South Asian diaspora.

Conclusions and policy implications

The studies of transmigrant South Asian women in Atlantic Canada, British Columbia,
Australia and New Zealand have indicated that the women identified with a transnational
diasporic South Asian community. The majority maintained transnational connections with
parents, siblings and extended family through visits and regular communications. They were
active agents in constructing multidimensional transnational identities across diasporic
borders.

From a transnational perspective, migration is conceived not as a one-time event but as an

ongoing process. Migration, especially direct migration from a home country, involves a
rupture in the migrant woman's worldview and consciousness of cultural identity. Previous
experience of living in another country, especially in a Western country, facilitated settlement
in Canada, Australia or New Zealand for these transmigrant women. A transmigrant woman
crosses not only territorial borders but also cultural, social, psychic and symbolic boundaries.
She enters into new relationships in new spaces that define identity, membership, belonging,
meaning systems and worldviews of the realities of everyday life (Berger and Luckmann
1966; Berger 1967). Through relations with their community, other migrants and native-born
people in diasporic spaces South Asian women can redefine their identity, resist negative
racist representations and present themselves as conscious agents in their movement towards
personal and social empowerment. A true dialogical relationship implies for non-migrants as
well as migrants what Yuval-Davis (1997: 204) calls ‘rooting and shifting’ in settlement
spaces—that is, being rooted in one’s grouping but trying to shift so as to put oneself in
exchange with others who have different groupings and identities. Transmigrant women
remain rooted in their cultural identities, values and beliefs. However, some transmigrant
women, especially if they have made no return visits to their country of origin, ‘hang on’ to
the roots of the culture they knew in their youth and fail to realize that culture is dynamic,
fluid and constantly changing over time. Some of my interviewees criticized other migrants
for this practice. My research has indicated, nevertheless, that transmigrant women are often
willing to shift and to share in dialogue with others, especially with those who are willing to
do the same. For example, an Australian transmigrant woman described herself as ‘a friendly
person’ who socialized with ‘people of my own cultural group, of all ethnic backgrounds,
anyone I feel comfortable with,’ made the following comments about her experience over
many hyears:
 My greatest difficulty on arrival was cultural. It was a small mining town. There were very
few (native-born) Australians. Most were migrants from all over the world. So we learned
about other people. It was a very practical education for me. All of us were lonely people
there. Here in the city now, we celebrate only one big festival: Independence Day, August 15
— which is kind of funny! I mean, we all came from our country and we celebrate
Independence Day here. It’s sheer hypocrisy! We are now Australian. I am at home here. It
was our decision to come to this country, our choice. I had to be friends with everyone (in
the mining town). So once I accepted, ‘I am here. I have to live my life,’ I started calling
them for dinner, whether they were reciprocating or not. I invited them. I didn't wait to be
invited.

She stated that she had no preferences as to cultural background for her daughters’
marriages. Her youngest of three daughters confirmed in the following remarks that the
statement was true:

I know many girls who would want arranged marriages, girls who are like me, who have
grown up in Australia or in a foreign country. My parents have never forced the idea on us at
all. As a consequence, we are all very independent, think for ourselves, and are not shackled
by cultural ideas like ‘Good girls get married by this age,’ and your identity is via your
husband as opposed to by yourselves. I respect my parents so much for instilling those
values in me.

The South Asian transmigrant women in my studies met many crossroads in their migratory
journeys. As ‘forced migrants’ because of political upheavals earlier in life, some women had
little or no choice about migration to a foreign country. All had many choices that
challenged their agency as women of colour living in dominantly white societies. Choices
included such things as whether or not to agree to an arranged marriage that included
migration to a foreign country, whether or not to settle where the husband had a job and her
chances of work were less, whether to move ‘here’ rather than ‘there’. Then there was the
ongoing question of whether to move on to another diasporic country.

Some of the issues of ongoing concern, frustration and discrimination for Canadian and for
Australian transmigrant South Asian women were the following: getting professional
certification, negation of experience gained in the source country and the impossible demand
to demonstrate ‘Canadian experience’ or ‘Australian experience’. Racist assumptions and
practices intervened in their attempts to get work. Some women were in a double-bind
situation. Their high level education and job status in the source country were discounted in
Canada and Australia, respectively. Yet they often met demands for superior performance in
exams and work just to be treated equally with other Canadians or Australians.

Policies need to address gender and race inequalities in migration and settlement.
Transmigrant women as well as men need formal assessment of educational and work
equivalency to pursue careers commensurate with their existing qualifications. If immigrant
settlement countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand need to retain migrants for a
productive labour market and economy, transmigrant women and men need equality in
access to employment. At the time of the interviews, Australian women fared better than
Canadian women through government-sponsored migrant settlement services. Work outside
the home for South Asian (and other) transmigrant women provides not only income but
also social connections with other workers and with civic community activities. One of the
greatest barriers to getting jobs commensurate with experience lies in professional
associations and unions that are gatekeepers for careers such as medicine, other health
professions, teaching and engineering. Pro-active anti-sexist and anti-racist education and
practices within communities, businesses, professions, labour unions, private and public
employment are essential. Only then will South Asian transmigrant women choose to stay
there, rather than to journey to some other place in the transnational South Asian diaspora.
There they will seek extended family and friends for settlement support, meaningful and
rewarding work, and equitable social relations in civil society.

Notes
1. For a more detailed exploration of the impact of immigration and multicultural
(policies of Canada and Australia on the lived experience of South Asian women see
Ralston (1994, 1998).
2. The non-probability sample for the initial Atlantic Canada study between 1988 and
1991 comprised 126 first-generation South Asian immigrant women 15 years of age
and over, one-tenth of the estimated total population of South Asian women of that
age in the Atlantic region at the 1986 Census. Statistics Canada, Special tabulations
for population, age 15+, Census of Canada 1986, Custom Table 1 gave a total
population over 15 years of 2,640 persons (1,265 females, 1,375 males). I drew the
sample from two directories in proportion to the distribution of South Asians in the
four Atlantic Provinces (namely, the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland). In the 1991 Canadian census, the South
Asian population in British Columbia had grown to 103,545, from 69,250 in the 1986
census (Statistics Canada 1993). Of these, 75,430 (73 per cent) resided in Census
Metropolitan Area (CMA) Vancouver. Because the study included Indo-Fijians, who
numbered 4,945 in British Columbia (with 4,640 of these in CMA Vancouver), 74 of
the sample of 100 women were interviewed in 1994 in CMA Vancouver, 26
proportionately drawn from other places in BC. Similarly, in Australia in 1995, I
drew a sample of 50 women in proportion to settlement distribution (BIMPR 1995).
In British Columbia, Australia and New Zealand, it was not possible to draw a non-
probability sample. Rather, a snowballing method was used, with a deliberate attempt
to select women of diverse ages, class, community backgrounds, countries of origin,
dates of entry to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, respectively. For financial and
other reasons, in 1995 I interviewed only 10 women in Auckland, the major New
Zealand settlement. In all projects, we took care to ensure that no specific category
of women of South Asian origin was excluded and that non-members of
ethnocultural organizations were included. A research assistant, Emily Burton, MA,
conducted 46 Vancouver interviews of the initial sample of 74 Vancouver women. I
conducted the remaining interviews. I gratefully acknowledge two Social Sciences
and Humanities Standard Research Grants of Canada as well as several Saint Mary’s
University Senate Research Grants that funded various stages of this search.
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 Section-III
Doing Diaspora: Identifications
 Doing Diaspora: Identifications -
Introduction
Parvati Raghuram

The chapters in this section all consider diaspora as a set of practices which are ‘used to
make claims, to articulate projects, to formulate expectations, to mobilize energies, to appeal
to loyalties’ (Brubaker 2005: 12). But the claims they make are not of any straightforward
affiliation to India as a political entity. Rather, the ‘Indian diaspora’ is unravelled in these
chapters to unveil some of the particularistic identities that are claimed by people who could
be broadly encompassed within the Indian diaspora. These claims highlight the multiple
arenas where narratives of belonging are crafted and ultimately undermine the notion or
possibility of a singular Indian diaspora.

One such destabilising act is offered in Celia Genn's chapter where she focuses on a
transnational spiritual/religious movement based in the Indian diaspora - the Inayati Sufi
Movement. She argues that the Sufi Movement has re-established its links with historical and
sacred places in India through socio-cultural activities such as pilgrimage, Urs celebrations,
spiritual retreats, music festivals and social work projects. Her exploration of the Chishtiyya
diaspora outlines the ways in which the biography of an individual, Hazrat Inayat Khan, a
Sufi spiritual leader shapes. The travels of Inayat Khan to the ‘West’ in the early part of the
twentieth century led to the establishment of a Sufi diaspora in the countries through which
he travelled. In Genn's account, notions of belonging are not rooted to ‘India’ as a political
entity but to particular sites and spaces through which Inayat Khan moved in India. These
places have become sacralized, pilgrimage destinations but also the object of charitable
activities and ‘development’ initiatives. This essay is also an account of mobility, not only of
the spiritual leader or of the diasporic Chishtiyyas who return to India on pilgrimage but also
of the changing nature of religion. Just like the individual and its believers, the religion too
altered in travel - the Sufism he preached and therefore what he brought back to India had
incorporated many values that he had imbibed along the way. Moreover, there is no simple
continuity in the commemorative or memorialising practices - rather new ones are being
evoked and created as the religion, these places, and the possibilities of travel all alter over
time. Importantly for this volume, by giving versions of Islam a spiritual home in India
Genn dispels any notion of India as a Hindu homeland.

A very different story of an essentially Muslim diaspora is offered by Karen Leonard's

chapter - Hyderabadis Abroad: Memories of Home. The chapter encapsulates the essence of
intensive ethnographic study of those who identify themselves as mulkis, i.e. those who
profess a sense of belonging to the old Hyderabad state and now live in a range of locations
(Pakistan, UK, Australia, US, Canada, Kuwait and the UAE). It offers an evocative account
of the multiple strands through which belonging to a cultural milieu that has now
disappeared is forged. In this sense it is an account of a classical diaspora, a homeland that
was dismantled after decolonisation. Interestingly, the contradictory effects of the
dismantling of colonialism on Indians was not limited to other parts of the empire (traced in
the chapters in the first section of this book) but equally true of India. Independence, and
particularly the post-Independence reorganisation of states led to the loss of a Mughlai
culture as played out in the premier princely state of Hyderabad that is sorely missed
amongst the diasporic Hyderabadis. The practices and places that are deemed important
were shaped by urbanity, by stylised notions of civilisation, by class positionings and by
authoritative power arising from the political formations of the old Hyderabad State. What is
being recalled therefore is a version of high culture, of fetishized authenticity narratives and
that is sought by diasporics in their narratives of belonging. But it is a fragile memory that
produces Hyderabadi culture by selectively remembering and forgetting.

India is also an active site for this selective remembering and forgetting, of the production of
India and of an Indian diaspora. As a number of authors have suggested the media has
emerged as a crucial space for the enactment of the desires and struggles of a diverse
community loosely defined as the ‘Indian diaspora’ (Mallapragada 2006: 225) but has also
helped to craft an imagined gendered subjectivity of a diasporic Indian amongst those still in
India. This pre-migration subjectivity will probably play a role in shaping the expectations
and experiences of migrant women abroad, as Mala Pandurang suggests. Her study of young
Gujarati girls studying at a college in Mumbai explores their imaginations of moving abroad,
of how their femininities might be reassembled and their social roles altered. This study
addresses a major gap in existing literature on the diaspora by recognising these girls as
already occupying a transnational space even though territorially located in India. Diasporic
belonging, it appears, is not simply a post-migration event. However, this transnational space
is an imagined abstraction with its own limitations and peculiarities. Thus, despite the
increasing significance of women's individual migration for employment, and their
significant presence in landscapes of modernity and hypermodernity, the girls whom
Pandurang interviews construct their own departure within the matrix of a family, of
selectively produced ‘Indianised’ femininities (also see Kalpagam 2005), projecting otherness
on the countries they expect to travel to and reside in.

Cynthia Miller picks up the themes of selective memory and collective memory in her
chapter Immigrants, Images, and Identity: Visualizing Homelands across Borders. Her essay offers an
interesting example of the circular relationship between text, landscape and identification.
Through intensive ethnographic research with migrants in the U.S., Miller tries to unravel
the memories that produce connections to a homeland now left behind. Her interviews take
her to the importance of textual representations of the landscape of rural Tamil Nadu in
Tamil literature. As Kumar evocatively puts it, these migrants are like a child departed, who
'began to treasure his childhood experiences, and envisioned the land of his childhood as
located in the new status of the ‘past’ and ‘tradition’. The child became more ‘rooted’ in
childhood space for moving away. This geography of an ‘unearthly beauty, with its fields and
rivers, its untrodden forests and the changing glory of its moonlit face’ (Bandopadhyay 1968:
354) became available as an asset for the regeneration of the nation, its history, its future'
(Kumar 2006: 415).

The process of regeneration produces new landscapes - of temples - in the U.S. exemplified
by the Shri Lakshmi temple in Boston. 'The immigrants' shared, constructed, and sometimes
imaginative knowledge of the Tamil homeland has become tangible, concrete, and actual -- a
homeland and a land of destiny transplanted’ (Miller, this volume). The coming together of
the Tamilised landscapes of Boston with those of Tamil Nadu come home to Miller as she
views videos of the homeland with her interviewees and what she sees there is the complex
coming together and holding apart of a reified Hindu diaspora, which locates its religion not
in the Sanskritised version of Hinduism but in its regional cultures, physical landscapes and
localised texts. However, it is worth remembering that these practices can too easily become
appropriated by Yankee Hindutva (Matthew and Prashad 2000) - the politicisation of
religion in the diaspora, particularly the U.S. fed by its links with religious revivalism in India.
Hence, some people who may seek place-based identities may nevertheless decide not to use
temple buildings as cornerstones for memory making. Many people are conscious of how
religion and region are increasingly being tied together and actively opt out of identifying
with any elements of that volatile combination. Memory and memorialising are thus neither
'natural' nor 'inherent'. Moreover, they are not merely resident in a past but are claim-making
practices that envision future linkages and affiliations.

These contradictions of diasporic belonging are also explored by Geoffrey Burkhart in his
chapter ‘Where Should I Be From?’: Gay South Asian Men In North America. He attends to the
complex currency of sexuality and its complex cultural appropriation by South Asian gay
men at the junction between American (often white) homosexuality and the often
assumed/implied heteronormativity of South Asian diaspora. Burkhart's chapter takes some
steps towards what Desai (2000) calls ‘attending to the multiple valences of desire, such as
identification, national belonging, and same-sex intimacy’. This project is particularly critical
if we are to ‘create transnational studies of sexualities that vary from a discussion about
Western hegemony and pure indigenous identities and practices, instead imagining sexualities
as complex and contradictory practices located in multiple fields of power. This will allow us
queer methods and politics that not only require us to queer-y at the levels of the local,
national, and transnational, but also link our critiques of heteronormativity to our
understandings of other social normativities, with special attention to narratives of desire and
longing’ (Desai 2002: 85).

Burkhart's study attempts to locate the experience of 12 South Asian gay men whom he
interviewed within the context of notions of ethnicity and sexuality. He explores how these
notions are played out in the overlapping spaces of different social spaces - intimate home
spaces as well as spaces of publicly professed engagement with both national and same-sex
belonging. He summarises that his interviewees were engaged in an ‘imaginative and
constructive reformulation of subjectivity’ as they have refused to comply with
identifications that require pitching towards one side of a range of constructed dichotomies
that they are often constructed with East/West, American/Indian or gay/straight. Secondly,
his analysis suggests the difficulties of narrating the self in a way that walks the boundaries
between a middle-class gay construction of individualised identity and an over-valorised
notion of sociality that is so often imposed on South Asians abroad. Significantly, for this
volume Burkhart's chapter ‘posits non-heteronormative racialized subjects as sites of
knowledge that challenge the disarticulation of racial formation from national, class, gender,
and sexual formations’ (Gopinath 2005: 159).
Burkhart recognises that his interview material is profoundly influenced by his shared gay
positionality, middle class location and his academic authority, which is easily readable for his
interviewees all of whom had been university students. This self-reflexivity helps the author
to read the chapter not only as a narrative of the social contexts of the interviewees but also
as an interaction between the narrator and his research objects.

The recognition of authorial agency can be fruitfully extrapolated to other chapters in the
volume too. It forces us to ask how and why these authors have invested in diasporic
questions and how their viewpoints have themselves been shaped. It forces us to recognise
that we are after all only dealing with authorial representations of diasporic belongings, a
theme we return to in the next section.

References
Bhatt, Chetan and Mukta Parita. 2000. ‘Hindutva in the West: mapping the antinomies of
diaspora nationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23(3): 407-441.
Brubaker, R. 2005. ‘The “diaspora” diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28 (1): 1–19.
Desai, J. 2002. ‘Homo on the Range: Mobile and Global Sexualities’, Social Text, 20 (4): 65 -
89.
Falzon, Mark-Anthony. 2003. ‘‘Bombay, Our Cultural Heart’: Rethinking the relation
between homeland and diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26(4): 662 – 683.
Gopinath, G. 2005. ‘Bollywood Spectacles: Queer Diasporic Critique in the Aftermath of
9/11’, Social Text, 23 (3&4): 157-169.
Kalpagam, U. 2005. ‘‘America Varan’ Marriages among Tamil Brahmans: Preferences,
Strategies and Outcomes’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12 (2&3): 189-215.
Kumar, N. 2006. ‘Provincialism in Modern India: The Multiple Narratives of Education and
their Pain’, Modern Asian Studies, 40 (2):397–423.
Mallapragada, Madhavi. 2006. ‘Home, Homeland, Homepage: Belonging and the Indian-
American Web’, New Media & Society, 8 (2): 207–227.
 13
The Chishtiyya Diaspora – An Expanding Circle?
Celia A. Genn

Introduction
I was transported by destiny from the world of lyric and poetry to the world of industry and
commerce, on the 13th of September 1910. I bade farewell to my motherland, the soil of
India, the land of the sun, for America the land of my future, wondering: ‘perhaps I shall
return some day,’ and yet I did not know how long it would be before I should return
(Inayat Khan cited in Van Voorst van Beest and Guillaume-Schamhart 1979: 121).

The Indian musician and Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan’s journey in 1910 on a mission to
‘harmonise East and West’1 through music and Sufi spirituality marked the beginning of the
first wave of Sufism in the West and of what can be seen as the creation of a world-wide
Indian and Chishtiyya-origin Sufi diaspora. The Inayati Sufi order2 he founded is today a
significant transnational religious/spiritual movement with a well-developed formal
organisation and groups on virtually every continent. Inayat Khan (b. 1882) himself finally
returned to India for a visit in October 1926 after 16 years in the West. However after a
lecture tour, visiting the family home and making pilgrimage to Ajmer, he unexpectedly died
in New Delhi just a few months later on February 5, 1927. For over 50 years the Sufi
movement and family he left behind in Europe and the United States expanded
transnationally but had little contact with their Indian homeland. However, from around the
mid-1980s there has been new interest in re-establishing these links such that in 2006 (as in
several previous years), mureeds (disciples)3 of the Inayati order from many countries and
backgrounds, including several of Inayat Khan’s relations and descendants, made pilgrimage
to India to celebrate Inayat Khan’s Urs (commemoration of the saint’s death day) at his
dargah (shrine complex) in the Nizamuddin West area of Delhi. Before attending the Urs,
many also gathered at Inayat Khan’s birthplace in Vadodara (Baroda) for an annual music
festival honouring Inayat Khan and his grandfather, Maula Bakhsh’s musical
accomplishments.

Despite the growing popularity of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Sufi movement and of his
universalist4 understanding of Sufism in the West, this highly accomplished, creative and
successful member of the early modern Indian diaspora is only recently becoming better
known in his homeland (beyond musical and Chishti circles). While the achievements of
Indians in business, information technology and public life in their many countries of
adoption are relatively well known, the achievements of Indian religious figures, especially
from the Muslim tradition, are still less well known.

Inayat Khan’s Sufi movement has attracted considerable scholarly interest in the West. A
number of studies have focused on its role and place in the development of Western Sufism
(Hammer 2004; Hermansen 2004; Rawlinson 1997). It is featured as a new religious
movement (NRM) in many scholarly encyclopaedias of religious/spiritual groups in the West
(e.g. Melton 1986), and has been analysed in relation to the growing New Age bricolage of
philosophies, practices and groups (Koszegi 1992; Wilson 1998). There has also been
recognition of the importance of Inayat Khan’s spiritual and Indian cultural heritage for the
shape, appeal and challenges of this transnational Sufi movement (Ernst and Lawrence
2002b; Genn 2006).

Yet, it is only very recently that the concept of a Chishtiyya diaspora has been applied to this
group. Ernst and Lawrence, in their study of the Chishti order ‘in South Asia and beyond’,
apply the term ‘diasporic Chishtis’ to Inayat Khan’s mureeds outside India and use the heading
‘The Chishtiyya in Diaspora’ in a Sufi bibliography posted on the web (Ernst and Lawrence
2002a; 2002b). This reflects the recent growth in diaspora discourse and identification of
diasporas. It may also reflect new perspectives arising from the recent growth in pilgrimage
to India by members of Inayat Khan’s Sufi order. As Werbner (1998) has shown in her study
of a Pakistani-origin Sufi order in Britain, pilgrimage to the Urs of the saint in Pakistan by
followers from Britain involves a process of ‘sacred exchange’ that symbolically and
organisationally links far-flung Sufi lodges to the central shrine. Also, as the presence of a
Sufi saint or master is believed to bestow blessing, Inayat Khan’s own life trajectory, from
his birth in Baroda, to his extensive travel in North America and Europe, and finally his
death in Delhi, has itself produced diasporic relations by attaching meaning to places in India
and elsewhere.

Viewing the Inayat Khan Sufi movement as part of the Chishtiyya diaspora is useful in
focussing attention on the linkages between this transnational spiritual organisation and
India and the Chishtiyya order. It also raises broader questions about the different kinds of
Indian religious/spiritual movements being practised in the Indian diaspora or originating
from it. There is, for example, a basic contrast between religious movements like the Brahma
Kumaris that have spread into the Indian diaspora and beyond from a centre in India, and
those, like the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON) and Inayat Khan’s
Sufi movement that have developed from overseas centres and been repatriated to India. It
is important to learn more about these groups as religious figures and movements are a
particularly important part of Indian diaspora communities, as well as being instrumental in
the spread of Indian religious traditions beyond the Indian community.

New global and ‘glocal’ forms of identity are being created through the transnational and
diasporic interactions facilitated by modern communication technologies and increasing ease
of travel. Religious traditions everywhere are adapting from more ‘traditional’ social and
religious contexts to those of ‘modernity’, and Asian-origin traditions are, in addition,
grappling with new social and cultural contexts. A theme in migration studies is the influence
that migrants are having back on their homelands with scholars identifying reciprocal
patterns of influence that change religious structures and practices in the countries of origin
(e.g. Ebaugh and Chafetz 2002). As described by Beyer (1994), there has been a polarisation
in the religious response to these challenges. Some religious movements such as the Tablighi
Jama‘at and the various Hindu nationalist movements have responded by defending their
particularism, and/ or by supporting political agendas in the diaspora and the homeland. The
transnational Inayati Sufi movement, by contrast, provides an interesting example of a
particular kind of Indian-origin religious movement that is not doing that. Rather, this group
has developed an inclusive liberal religious ethic as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
transnational community.

This chapter reflects on the global development of Inayat Khan’s transnational Sufi
movement over the last 100 years and the linkages this transnational Sufi community has
forged with India. The story of this Chishtiyya-origin diaspora is one strand in the history
and on-going development of the Indian diaspora and religious/ spiritual movements. While
it is too soon to assess all the implications of the recent ‘return’ linkages, the chapter shows
that they are having an impact both within India and elsewhere. To the extent that
‘Indianness’ can be expressed through connections to sacred places in India and its living
and dead saints, and a more specific Chishtiyya ‘diaspora-ship’ through the initiatic line
(silsila) and retention of the order’s long-standing emphasis on sama (music) and zikar (dhikr
or the practice of the remembrance of God) (Ernst and Lawrence 2002b: 144), narrowly
territorial, nationalistic or ethnic conceptions of diaspora may need to be expanded.
However, rather than stretch the term too far, the chapter shows that it is more important to
look at the ways in which India and its diaspora overlap and interact with this particular
multi-ethnic religious movement. Like other Indian-origin transnational religious/spiritual
movements the Inayati Sufi movement has developed significant relationships with Indian
and non-Indian communities with mutual consequences for identity and perception.

Inayat Khan’s Indian and Sufi Heritage

The early Indian diaspora involved both ‘dispersal’ and ‘expansion’ from the homeland
(Cohen 1997: 26), with a large ‘victim’ or proletarian diaspora, and a very much smaller
‘mobilized’ or elite diaspora (Armstrong 1976), though all these early journeys were in
different ways by-products of colonialism. Most of the first wave of the modern Indian
diaspora journeyed in search of a livelihood and settled abroad in many countries. A few
from the Indian cultural elites of the nineteenth and early twentieth century colonial era
sought education in the West but then returned home. A small number of the Indian elites
such as Swami Vivekenanda5 and Sufi Inayat Khan became religious figures, voyaging with a
mission to bring Indian spirituality to a materialistic West. Some of these, like Inayat Khan,
settled abroad.

One of the mobilized or elite group, Hazrat Inayat Khan, was born in Baroda (now
Vadodara) in Gujerat India on July 5, 1882 into a family of zamindars, musicans and mystics.
He was brought up in the home of his maternal grandfather, Maula Bakhsh Khan (1833 –
1896). Maula Bakhsh, with the support of Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwar, founded
Gayanshala, the Academy of Music at Baroda (now the Faculty of Performing Arts,
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda). Maula Bakhsh is remembered in India for his
pioneering contributions to musical notation and education. He opened the academy to
students of all castes and creeds, and to girls as well as boys. His prominent position brought
the family into contact with leading Brahmin and Parsi families as well as Muslims. Inayat’s
father, Rahmat Khan (1843 – 1910), was from a family of musicians, poets and mystics. His
mother, Khatidja Bibi (d. 1900), was the second of Maula Bakhsh’s three daughters. A family
story tells that Maula Bakhsh’s wife, Qasim Bi, was the granddaughter of Tipu Sultan, the
‘Tiger of Mysore’ (Khan 2001).6

As his background indicates, Inayat Khan was from an early age exposed to multi-religious
and multi-cultural influences, including contact with his uncle, Alaoddin Khan, who obtained
the degree of Doctor of Music from the Royal Academy of Music in London. As a child
Inayat Khan loved music, poetry and philosophy, and by the age of twenty he was
accomplished in Karnatic as well as Hindustani music, and a full professor at the
Gayanshala. He played the veena, composed songs and ragas, sang at the courts of Nawabs
and Maharajas, and the then Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Mahebub Ali Khan, called him his
Tansen.7 Whilst still in India, he published several books including Minqar-i-Musiqar
(Allahabad Indian Press, 1913) on the theory and practice of Indian Classical music.

Picture-1: Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Indian Sufi master and musician who first brought
Sufism to the West.

In 1903 he met his murshid (spiritual guide)8 Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani and was initiated
into Sufism. Upon his murshid’s death, Inayat Khan set out on a pilgrimage to ‘the holy men
of India’ and also travelled to Nepal, Ceylon and Burma before settling for two years (1909-
1910) in Calcutta where he gave music lectures and performances and arranged the recording
of thirty-one classical Indian songs by the Gramophone Company Ltd., Calcutta.9
The Sufism that Inayat Khan taught and established in the West had its roots in this Indian
heritage and in the particular development of Islam in India where the Sufi tradition is
pervasive in Islamic discourse and institutions (Metcalf and Metcalf 2002: 8). The Chishtiyya
Sufi order to which Inayat Khan primarily belonged,10 reflects an historically pluralistic
religious environment and emphasises music and poetry for spiritual attainment. The
Chishtis are characteristically inclusive and tolerant of religious pluralism and will accept
mureeds from non-Muslim backgrounds without first demanding conversion to Islam (De
Tassy 1997: 174; Harris et al. 1992: 124-5). This openness is also found in India in the
Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya (Dahnhardt 2002) but rarely in Sufi orders elsewhere in the
Muslim world.

In introducing Sufism to the West Inayat Khan made significant changes but also drew
heavily on his Chishti background. He continued the Chishti use of music (sama) and zikar
(the remembrance of God) as key spiritual practices. His Sufi Movement retains the
hierarchical structure of a Sufi order, as well as the central role of the spiritual teacher
(shaikh, pir or murshid), the murshid-mureed relationship, and pir-bhai or the brotherhood/
community of disciples. The major changes he made in presenting Sufism in the West were
the introduction of full gender equality within his order, the recognition of women in
leadership positions, and a loosening or redefining of the relationship between Sufism and
the exoteric traditions and practices of Islam. As part of his vision for religion in the modern
world, he made Sufi training available to everybody, not just Muslims.

Inayat Khan’s training in the Chishtiyya order, together with his pluralistic religious
background and his contact with the intellectual and social world of the Western powers in
late nineteenth century colonial India, all contributed to the success of his spiritual mission.
He was a complex and multidimensional figure. Zia Inayat-Khan, his grandson and the
current leader of one branch of the Inayati order, succinctly summarises Hazrat Inayat
Khan’s heritage and vision in describing him as ‘a paragon of high Mughal culture who was
equally a forerunner of postnationalist cosmopolitanism; a performer of sacred music and a
sage with a musical message; a tradition-sanctioned Chishti initiator inspired with an urgent
transcendental vision of radical ecumenism and global spiritual renewal’ (Inayat-Khan 2001:
xiii).

Settling in the West

Accompanied by his cousin Ali Khan and brother Maheboob Khan and joined a year later
by his younger brother Musharaff Khan, Inayat Khan travelled, gave concerts and taught
Sufism in the United States, England, Russia and Europe for sixteen years. In 1913 he
married an American, Ora-Ray Baker (who took the name Ameena Begam, d. 1949). They
had four children: daughters Noor (b. 1914 in Russia) and Khair (b. 1919), and sons Vilayat
(b. 1916) and Hidayat (b. 1917). The family lived in England during World War I and then,
from 1920, in France where Inayat Khan’s descendants still retain the family home in a
suburb of Paris. Inayat Khan’s brothers and cousin, and later his two sons, all married
Western women (English, Dutch and American) and settled in the West.
Inayat Khan’s family became known in the West not just for Sufism and music, but also for
the heroism of his daughter, Noor, during World War II. A musician and writer, Noor was a
secret agent for the French Resistance Movement against the Nazis. She was caught and
executed in Dachau Concentration Camp on 13 September 1944 and posthumously awarded
the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre for her contribution and bravery (Overton Fuller
1971).

Development of the Inayati Sufi order

At first Inayat Khan just gave instruction to interested people and established Sufi Societies
in the various countries he visited. As the numbers of mureeds grew so did the need for a
formal organisation to co-ordinate the work and in 1923 the International Sufi Movement
was incorporated in the Salle Centrale, Geneva.

By the time of Inayat Khan’s death in 1927, he had several thousand followers in Europe
and America. In Europe the Sufi work was carried on first by his companions in the West,
his brother Shaikh-al-Mashaikh Maheboob Khan (1887–1948), his cousin Pir-o-Murshid
Muhammad Ali Khan (1881-1958), and his younger brother Pir-o-Murshid Musharaff Khan
(1895-1967). Fazal Inayat-Khan (1942 – 1990), a grandson, then led the Sufi Movement until
around 1982. After that there was a period of co-operative leadership until 1993 when
Hidayat Inayat-Khan, Inayat Khan’s younger son, was recognised as the Representative
General and Pir-o-Murshid of this group known as the International Sufi Movement.

In the United States the early American branch was led by Inayat Khan’s first mureed in the
West, Murshida Rabia Martin, until its collapse after her death in the late 1940s. The Inayati
Sufi order was then revived in America in the 1950s by Inayat Khan’s elder son, Pir Vilayat
(d. 2004). Vilayat’s son, Zia Inayat-Khan, is the current leader of this group known as the
International Sufi Order. Another Inayati group, the Sufi Ruhaniat Society, also became
established in the 1960s and 1970s and is currently led by an American, Pir Shabda Kahn.
These branches are all formal, well-established transnational organisations and together
constitute the Inayati Sufi order.

While many early mureeds came from the upper and titled classes of Europe and participants
are still drawn largely from the well-educated middle and upper-middle classes of Western
society (Genn 2004: 176; Hermansen 1998: 156), the order has continued to expand
transnationally and includes people from a wide range of religious, ethnic and national
backgrounds. As well as the European and North American countries, the order now has
groups in a number of South American and South-East Asian counties, Australia, New
Zealand and India.

With headquarters in the Netherlands and the United States, Sufi temples in the Netherlands
and South Africa and the sacred site of the dargah complex of Inayat Khan in India, Inayat
Khan’s Sufi movement has become an increasingly multi-site phenomenon. The annual
Summer Schools at the Sufi Temple in Katwijk in the Netherlands and the annual Urs and
retreats at the dargah in Delhi are attended by mureeds from all over the world. The
transnational spread of Inayat Khan’s Sufi order has involved ‘sacralising’ and linking new
places, a process identified by Werbner (1996) in her study of a Pakistani-origin Sufi diaspora
in Britain. As Werbner shows, this can occur through the performance of Sufi practices and
rituals, as well as through the presence of saintly beings (living or dead). Diasporas do not
necessarily have singular centres (Goldschmidt 2000; Werbner 2002), and this capacity to
sacralise space is one factor that enables Sufi orders to create new sacred centres.

Linkages with India

The Inayati Sufi Movement is also now growing in India, where it has been, in a sense re-
imported from the West. Except for his lecture tour in late 1926, Inayat Khan did not teach
in India, though he apparently had intended to (Goodenough c1930: 106). Inayat Khan’s
burial in India has been a key factor for linkages between his transnational Sufi movement
and its country of origin, a factor which has parallels with other migrant experience. On his
return visit in 1926 Inayat Khan met and spent time with Khwaja Hasan Nizami, a
prominent Sufi and custodian of the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. When Inayat
Khan died Hasan Nizami donated land in the vicinity of Nizamuddin Auliya as a waqf (a
religious endowment under Islamic law) for his grave. Waqf’s come under the jurisdiction of
a local (in this case the Delhi) Waqf Board, and are also traditionally under the care of a
Mutawalli. Over the years, the Mutawalli for the grave of Inayat Khan has been the current
head of the International Sufi Movement and, to date, a close relative of Inayat Khan. This
was first arranged when shortly after Inayat Khan’s death, his wife, children, brothers and
cousin spent three months in India visiting his grave and the family home. None of these
Mutawallis, however, lived in India and while this link between the family, the Inayati Sufi
movement and India has been continuous, it was largely unattended until the 1970s and
1980s. The loss of the Maula Bakhsh family home in Baroda in the late 1940s or early 1950s
also weakened the family sense of links with India.

The tide began to change in the 1970s when, with the greater affordability and ease of
international travel, more Sufi movement leaders, mureeds and family members started to visit
India and become concerned about the poor condition of Inayat Khan’s grave and the
poverty in the surrounding basti (village). Several steps were taken. In Europe, the Hazrat
Inayat Khan Memorial Trust was established largely through the initiative of Dutch mureeds
and leaders, Dr. H.J. and R. Witteveen. In the 1980s the Trust built a dargah around the
grave, enclosing the waqf land with a marble room and in the 1990s it acquired additional
land to expand the dargah complex. The Trust, financed by the International Sufi Movement
and private donations, is under the direction of Pir-o-Murshid Hidayat Inayat-Khan, with the
assistance of an Administrator and Deputy-Administrator. The Trust’s advisory Management
Committee also includes leaders of other Inayati branches. As a result of its work, for many
years overseen in India by Dutch mureeds, Wali and Walia van Lohuizen, and still by the
dargah caretaker, Dr Farida Ali, the dargah is no longer a tomb alone but a centre for social
work and a growing complex with a music hall and school, library, courtyard/ garden and
caretaker home. In 2003 a retreat house was also added. From 1989, Inayat Khan’s Sufi
Message volumes and other books have been reissued in India and received favourable
reviews.
Responding to the extreme poverty of many in the Nizamuddin basti around the dargah, Pir
Vilayat Inayat Khan, the elder son of Hazrat Inayat Khan, established the Hope Project
Charitable Trust in 1975. It strives to provide opportunities and resources to enable the poor
to help themselves and currently runs a community health centre, a crêche, a school,
vocational courses and income generation projects. It has fifty Indian staff members and is
financed largely by private donations. On his death in 2004 Pir Vilayat has also, at his
request, been buried in the Nizamuddin basti.

Mureeds visiting India for the Urs of Hazrat Inayat Khan or more recently for that of Pir
Vilayat, or for the retreats which began in 2003, frequently also make additional pilgrimages.
They pay their respects at the nearby dargah of Nizamuddin Auylia, at the tomb of Salim
Chishti in Fatipur Sikri and, of course, at the dargah in Ajmer of the order’s founder in India,
Hazrat Khwaja Mu’inuddin Chishti.

The Urs of Hazrat Inayat Khan on February 5 is a major event, celebrated over the
surrounding week at the dargah complex. On the morning of the fifth there are traditional
Sufi ceremonies and rituals and a procession to the Nizamuddin Auylia dargah where the new
chador (gold cloth) that will cover the grave is blessed. For this ceremony and the associated
sama (qawwali), Western mureeds adopt the appropriate shawls and head coverings and mingle
with Indian mureeds as well as other devotees and visitors to the Nizamuddin dargah. Later in
the day the Universal Worship (a ceremony created by Inayat Khan in the West) is held in
the Sufi Hall and there is usually a concert of classical Indian music, as well a theatre
programme by the children of the Hope Project and the Memorial Trust informal school.

Picture-2: Children’s theatre programme at the Urs of Hazrat Inayat Khan in Delhi, 1999.
The children attend schools in the Nizamuddin basti established by the Hazrat Inayat Khan
Memorial Trust and the Hope Project Charitable Trust. Photograph by Celia Genn.
Since the 1990s, the family and mureeds of Inayat Khan have also pursued links with his
birthplace of Baroda. Largely through the efforts of Inayat Khan’s nephew Mahmood Khan
and his wife, Harunnisa Khanim Maulabakhsh, and the German mureeds Petra-Beate and
Vakil Schildbach, the room in Maula Bakhsh’s house in which Inayat Khan was born has
been re-purchased. In January 2006 a ceremony of inauguration of his birth-place was
conducted. For several years now mureeds of the International Sufi Movement have been
working with Professor Mehta at the University of Baroda to hold two-day musical festivals
each January in honour of Maula Bakhsh and Inayat Khan. In 2006, students of the Faculty
of Performing Arts, S.M. University also presented the play, ‘The Bogey-Man’, written by
Inayat Khan.

Over the last 30 or so years, the Inayati Sufi order’s hitherto loose bonds with India and the
Chishtiyya Sufi tradition have been strengthened with a variety of spiritual, cultural, family,
and material links with Inayat Khan’s Indian homeland. The revitalisation of these links
embraces the concerns of the transnational Sufi movement as well as those of Inayat Khan’s
family.

Implications and Mutual Perceptions

As the director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Centre wrote recently, there are
‘innumerable currents and cross-currents marking the evolution of modern-day Indian
culture’ (Dutta 2005). The burial of the founder of this Sufi movement in his native land is
drawing members of the group back to India, literally as pilgrims and supporters of social
and building programmes and metaphorically in their desire to understand and learn more
about the Indian heritage. As yet the full implications remain to be seen, but this ‘return’
impacts the mutual perceptions and identities of a range of overlapping circles or
communities involved with this transnational religious movement, both in India and abroad.

A growing number of Indians now attend the Urs ceremonies for Inayat Khan, and for
musicians, it is regarded as an honour to play at his dargah. As yet, only a few Indians are
studying as mureeds. Even though the Chishtiyya order has historically accepted mureeds who
were not Muslim, the study and practice of Sufism in India is generally embedded not just in
the exoteric practice of Islam, but also within the Muslim and Indian cultural community.
While globalisation and modern communications are changing Indian culture, for many
Indians this de-culturalised version of Sufism is still unthinkable – something for ‘foreigners.’

The increasing presence of ‘foreigners’ of both Indian and non-Indian background at the
dargah in Delhi poses challenges as well as benefits for ‘locals’ and impacts on mutual
perceptions The mureeds of Inayat Khan are generally perceived favourably in the basti and in
the nearby Nizamuddin Auylia dargah complex. I was told that this is because, unlike some
tourists, they dress appropriately, behave respectfully and are serious students of Sufism.
However, there was a serious challenge a few years ago when a Hope Project education
programme on HIV and AIDS was perceived to be culturally and socially inappropriate by
some basti residents. They expressed their anger about the programme in a demonstration at
the Inayat Khan dargah. Resolution of the issues required consultation between leaders from
the dargah, the Hope Project and the basti, as well as withdrawal of the programme.

Picture-3: Participants from India, Australia, the United States, Canada and Germany in a
retreat at Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Dargah in Delhi, 2003. Behind them is the marble room built
around the grave in the 1980s. Photograph by Celia Genn.

For the mureeds from outside India (whether of Indian origin or not), this return to the
spiritual homeland also poses risks and challenges, as well as opportunities. As one leader
put it ‘some people smell the spices and think it is Sufism … or think that wearing a
headscarf or prayer cap somehow makes them a more authentic Sufi.’ More positively some
mureeds find, as it was remarked to me, that the contact with India makes it possible ‘to
understand the teachings in ways that you can’t sitting in Europe.’ For some mureeds, being
present for rituals at Inayat Khan’s dargah invokes a new sense of spiritual relationship with
Inayat Khan, though others were unsure if the rituals were religious and spiritual, or ‘just
cultural.’11 One of the Pirs at the nearby Nizamuddin Auylia dargah has, in a sense, adopted
the group, and many of the visiting mureeds spend considerable time with him and in
meditations at the shrine there. While not common, this experience has led a small number
of the foreign mureeds to formally convert to Islam.

As Werbner found in her study of a ‘Global Sufi Cult’, participation in Sufi festivals and
pilgrimage in South Asia involves complex material and symbolic processes of exchange,
connection and transformation for individuals and the community (Werbner 2003).
Similarly, for the Inayat Khan Sufi movement, new connections and influences are being
generated by the recent immersion of mureeds from across the world in the spiritual and
cultural performance of the Urs in Delhi, in associated pilgrimages, and in the various music
and social programmes. The ‘return’ linkages are adding a new dimension to participation in
the order. For mureeds worldwide there is an increased sense of connection with India, and
for Indian mureeds an increased sense of belonging to a global Sufi ‘family’.
A Transnational Chishtiyya Diaspora?
Most of the literature on religion in the Indian diaspora and on Indian-origin religious/
spiritual movements overseas naturally focuses on the practice, functions and purposes of
religion within Indian immigrant communities. The literature addresses such aspects as
religion’s role in community and identity formation within a host society, links with
nationalist or political agendas in the homeland, and concerns for future generations or
gender relations (Coward et al. 2000; Jacobsen and Kumar 2004; Kurien 1998; Kurien 2001;
Kurien 2004; Tatla 1999; Vertovec 2000; Warner and Wittner 1998).

But ‘Indian’ religions are not just being practised or adhered to by ‘Indians,’ whether at
home or in the diaspora. Like the Inayati Sufi movement discussed in this chapter, the Sri
Sathya Sai Baba Movement, the Brahma Kumaris, ISKCON (International Society for
Krishna Consciousness) and the Siddha Yoga Foundation (Gurudev Siddha Peeth), to
mention just a few, all present themselves as ‘universal’ or open to all regardless of national,
religious or ethnic background. All have followings not only in India and among Indian
immigrants but also among Anglo or Euro Westerners, South Americans, South-east Asians
and others. These movements have generally become multi-site phenomena, and are
practised somewhat differently in the West and in India (e.g. Howell and Nelson 1997).

Nonetheless, as this chapter shows, historical and organisational links to sacred places or
persons in India often make India a spiritual if not literal homeland, even for the non-Indian
adherents of these movements. And the ties often become material and tangible with
pilgrimage, tourism and support of social programmes in India or with acculturation in food,
dress, music, ritual and ethos. For example at the 2006 Sufi Movement gathering in
Australia, salwaar kameez (traditional Indian clothing), were offered for sale, for the first time,
along with the usual books, CDs, DVDs, and tasbih (prayer beads).

These developments have been accelerated by the communications and transport revolution
of recent decades and appear, to some degree, to be ‘Indianising’ the Inayati Sufi movement.
Further, and more importantly, they show how religious affiliation and practice and even
commodity culture (as in the salwaar kameez example) are creating transnational social and
religious spaces and transnational identity formation processes that cannot just be limited to
immigrant groups (Dwyer 2004; Jackson et al. 2004). As the Inayati case shows, increasing
numbers of people are now participating in this transnational space, irrespective of their
ethnic or even religious histories (Brah 1996; Jackson et al. 2004: 2). Clearly, beyond any
narrowly defined diaspora community lies a complex, multi-dimensional range of
investments, affinities, identities, cross-cultural passages and communal myths (Fludernik
2003; Paranjape 2003; Safran 2004).

Perhaps, as Brubaker argues, ‘diaspora’ should be seen less as a substantive bounded entity
or ethno-cultural fact than as ‘an idiom, a stance, a claim … a way of formulating …
identities and loyalties’ (Brubaker 2005: 12-13). Overviews of the diverse range of current
usages of the concept of diaspora show that the term resists precise definition (Fludernik
2003) and is already being stretched to accommodate various ‘intellectual, cultural and
political agendas’ (Brubaker 2005: 1). In India, as Kapur demonstrates, the basis for
definitions and concepts of ‘Indianness’ and of who exactly constitute the Indian diaspora
has changed historically, and also been applied inconsistently (Kapur 2004). The definition
of Indianness is also being contested in political struggles between Hindu and Muslim Indian
immigrants in the United States as to whether India is, or should be, a Hindu state or a
multi-religious and multi-cultural society (Kurien 2001). Yet it is also generally acknowledged
that the Indian diaspora is more heterogeneous than many others (Fludernik 2003) and a
linking of Mishra’s term ‘diasporic imaginary’ (Mishra 1996) with Anderson’s ‘imagined
communities’ (Anderson 1991), implies an additional creative element that further explains
why nobody’s diaspora ‘looks wholly like their neighbour’s’ (Fludernik 2003: i).

Conclusions
In this chapter I have looked at the origins and transnational development of the Inayati Sufi
Movement over the last 100 years and the recent ‘return’ linkages being forged with India
and its Indian and Chishtiyya heritage. It is stretching the concept to consider all members of
this Sufi movement outside of India as a part of the Indian diaspora although Inayat Khan’s
Sufi movement can, arguably, be considered both as part of a Chishtiyya diaspora and as a
new religious/spiritual movement. Like a number of Indian-origin religious/spiritual
movements in the contemporary world, the Inayati Sufi movement has expanded beyond the
territorial and ethnic boundaries of both India and its diaspora.

The chapter has not attempted to ‘put it back’ within these boundaries or to limit interest to
a narrowly defined diaspora community. Rather, it recognises the expansion and
transnational development of many spiritual/ religious movements by exploring how India
and the Indian diaspora overlap and interact with them. The chapter shows that the
particular origins and heritage, multi-ethnic composition, ‘universal’ or inclusive ethos, and
cultural, spiritual and family linkages forged with India, make the Inayat Khan Sufi
movement an interesting example of one particular kind of diasporic religious movement.
The increasing linkages between this Sufi movement and India have also been shown to be
impacting the mutual perceptions and identities of the growing circles involved in this
transnational spiritual community. In so far as Inayat Khan’s Sufi movement and others like
it cross traditional ethnic, cultural and religious boundaries, they can also be seen as part of a
new and developing variant of transnational religion that extends beyond the more usual
trans-state particularisms.

Notes
1. As reported by Block (1915), Inayat Khan was given this commission or blessing ‘to
spread the wisdom of Sufism abroad’ by his murshid (spiritual guide).
2. In the early twentieth century the Sufi movement established by Inayat Khan was
effectively the only Sufi order in the West and did not need to be distinguished from
others. As this is no longer the case, I refer to it as the Inayati order (following the
traditional practice in naming Sufi orders), or as Inayat Khan’s Sufi movement.
 3. The Sufi order founded by Inayat Khan has used the term mureed for its disciples/
students since its inception in the West. It has the same meaning as the more usual
transliteration of murid.
4. Sufism as taught by Inayat Khan is universalist in the sense of being available to all
regardless of religious or ethnic background, or gender.
5. Assayag and Benei (2005: 14-15) summarize the crucial role played by Vivekananda
in transforming and expounding the Hindu tradition in encounter with Western
thought. Vivekananda was a key participant in the World Parliament of Religions in
Chicago in 1893.
6. Inayat Khan’s nephew, Mahmood Khan, provides a detailed family history as well a
comprehensive bibliography of sources (Khan 2001).
7. Tansen was a famous musician at the court of the Emperor Akbar.
8. Murshid, shaikh and pir are all terms given by the Sufis to their guides and teachers.
9. In 1994 these were discovered in the London Archives of EMI.
10. As was common in the nineteenth century in India, Inayat Khan was a member of all
four major Sufi orders in India, but his teacher and his training were primarily within
the Chishtiyya order.
11. Some Sufi and other Islamic reformers are critical of practices at saint’s tombs.

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 14
Hyderabadis Abroad: Memories of Home
Karen Isaksen Leonard

Hyderabad, India, was both a city and a state, a cosmopolitan urban place and a native state
that escaped direct rule by the British colonial government in India. Under the Nizam’s rule,
Hyderabad State continued to patronize and represent Indo-Muslim or Mughlai culture in
India until 1948, when the state was taken over by newly-independent India. Persian was the
state language until 1883 and Urdu was the language of administration thereafter; the Urdu-
medium Osmania University, inaugurated in 1917, was the subcontinent’s first modern
vernacular language university. ‘Hyderabadi,’ or person from Hyderabad, was an identity that
linked one closely to the state and the ruling class Mughlai culture. It was also an identity
that involved being a mulki (countryman) or citizen, not so much in the modern sense of
participation in political decision-making as in the sense of having a claim on the state for
one’s livelihood. All of these things changed abruptly in 1948 and again in 1956 when the
Linguistic States Reorganization split the Nizam’s state into three parts and made Hyderabad
city the capital of the new Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh.

People now write about the diaspora from Hyderabad focusing on Telugu-speakers, but the
older Hyderabadi diaspora involves those committed to the Mughlai culture of the Nizam’s
Hyderabad. Hyderabad used to be a magnet for immigrants. Hyderabadis in the former state
did not often leave, and there was a process by which non-mulkis could become mulkis.
However, after the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 and especially after 1948 and
1956, Hyderabadis have been leaving. Some Muslims went to Pakistan in 1947 and after
1948, and Hyderabadis of all backgrounds have migrated in subsequent decades, pulled by
favorable opportunities abroad and pushed by a sense of loss of the former cosmopolitan
Indo-Muslim culture. The changes in the city have been considerable, and the mulki diaspora
probably represents the decline of the last significant vestiges of Mughlai urban culture in
India.

My fifteen-year study of emigrants from Hyderabad, Deccan, to Pakistan, the UK, Australia,
the US, Canada, and the Gulf states of Kuwait and the UAE (Leonard forthcoming) follows
self-identified Hyderabadis to new homelands. The study, begun in 1990, traces primarily
those who still identified to some extent with the Nizam’s former state of Hyderabad, those
who called themselves mulkis. It emphasizes the ruptures of 1948 and 1956 (Police Action
and India’s Linguistic States Reorganization that ended Hyderabad State’s independence and
divided it among three new linguistic states), calling attention to the changing urban
landscape as Hyderabad city became capital of Andhra Pradesh. This article, however,
focuses on the emigrants and their interactions with others .in their new homes abroad I
discuss here only two of William’s Safran’s six part definition of diasporic populations
(1991): retaining collective memories of the homeland and defining a collective
consciousness through a continuing relationship to the homeland. The other four
characteristics, that people have been dispersed from the center, that they believe they are
not and perhaps cannot be fully accepted by the host societies, that they regard the
homeland as the true home to which they or their descendants should return, and that they
want to maintain or restore the homeland, were far less relevant for the Hyderabadi case.

Rich materials about the remembering and forgetting of Hyderabad by those abroad were
obtained through interviews. Over a fifteen year period, I conducted numerous interviews
(often with several people present) in the various sites: 37 in Australia, 19 in Canada, 78 in
India, 25 in Kuwait, 59 in Pakistan, 24 in the UAE, 20 in the UK, and 49 in the US (names
are listed in my forthcoming book).1 These took place in many settings and were basically
unstructured, although the focus was always on the reasons for emigration and the
experiences of settlement in the new sites. I interviewed all who called themselves
Hyderabadis, men and women of all class and religious backgrounds (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh,
Parsi, and Christian), including self-proclaimed mulkis whom others labeled non-mulkis. For
most sites, I made return visits or sent drafts to informants to obtain comments and updates.

Locating Hyderabadis in their original home and then following them abroad involved
careful consideration of Pakistan, the UK, Australia, the US, Canada, and the Gulf states of
Kuwait and the UAE in addition to Hyderabad and India, contexts that were changing even
as individuals and communities were changing. The Hyderabadis acted as agents in
reformulating their identities, identities shaped by their locations in both old and new
settings, but their actions were constrained or encouraged by nation-states and by differing
national constellations of fellow immigrants and citizens. The study traces how these
identities are shaped across space, not only in the diaspora but also in the various sending
contexts, including Hyderabad in India but also Pakistan.2 It illustrates the ways in which
cities and nations and global forces compete for and shape the identities of citizens.3 The
voices of the migrants show that they theorized meaningfully about their own movements
and that those movements were both materially and ideologically produced. Their voices and
further detailing of their backgrounds, networks, and views call into question the notion of a
‘diasporic community’ and highlight differences among the emigrants and their differential
reworkings of identities in the new sites.4

I found that most self-identified Hyderabadis abroad were first generation migrants over the
age of fifty who claimed some connection with the old Hyderabad state or its urban Indo-
Muslim culture. They continued to use the term mulki as a meaningful social category even
when discussing emigrants. Many still voiced the traditional historical narrative so central to
their own family histories, that Hyderabad was a successful plural society, perhaps even a
cultural synthesis (Leonard 1973; Butt 1990; Sirajuddin 1990). As Andrew Shryock wrote
about an aspiring historian of the Beduoin tribes in Jordan, ‘Muhammad is a victim of the
real historical power of the “Adwan” [his own tribe]. His identity is firmly grounded in the
shaykhly era, and the memory of local might–now reduced to a kind of haughty nostalgia–
makes new identities hard to imagine in any terms other than loss.’5 Hyderabadis from the
former ruling class, and not only in the UK, tended to privilege that version of the past
based on hierarchies of both caste and class. Their ways of thinking were akin to what
Shryock has called a ‘genealogical imagination,’ ‘a tendency to parse society into discrete,
vertical chains of inheritance and transmission, some of them biological, others intellectual,
and others still a combination of the two (1995: 5).’6 These Hyderabadis did not appreciate
my inclusion of a wide range of informants and conflicting versions of the past. The versions
of old Hyderabad produced by some Hindus and Anglo Indians that emphasized the
‘Muslim’ nature of the elite and, in some cases, gave importance to the British Resident, were
strange to them.

Many Hyderabadi emigrants took with them romantic notions of Hyderabadi culture, usually
conceptualized by the end of the century as surviving better in the diaspora than in the
homeland. However, the exact nature of the Hyderabad emigrants claimed as their homeland
was clearly a matter of contention. Ideas about old Hyderabad varied significantly,
depending partly on one’s age and status in the old society but also on one’s status in the
new location and the national narratives of the new states. Hyderabadi culture was being
drawn upon differently, redefined, and sometimes consciously discarded in the new
locations. It had at least three uses abroad. First, people celebrated the Hyderabadi culture of
the past and talked about the virtues of the old state, its royalty, and its cultural synthesis.
This stance was a primarily private and nostalgic one and inspired most of the initial
invitational Hyderabad Associations abroad. Second, people affirmed an ongoing
Hyderabadi cultural synthesis and saw it as not only still meaningful but useful in the public
arena, analogous to notions of secular pluralism in some of the new countries. This activist
stance also played a role in the rhetoric of many Hyderabad Associations, often at slightly
later stages of their development as membership expanded. It was used, too, by Hyderabadis
working to build multicultural alliances, like political coalitions with other South Asians,
religious interfaith efforts, or professional coalitions.

A third stance involved fairly drastic reinterpretations of Hyderabadi culture. The

assimilative powers of the new national print cultures, most powerfully the nations of India
and Pakistan, pulled the old Hyderabad narrative in different directions. The Pakistani
version saw Hyderabad as an Islamic state and the Indian version saw it as a backward,
feudal society, interpretations anticipated by political groups within Hyderabad in the 1930s
and 40s (Leonard 1978). Among emigrants, the most powerful reinterpretations invoked
Islam to challenge the dominant narrative of the former state.7 One version was that
Hyderabad was really an Islamic state all along and the cultural synthesis was a myth, a view
that could be voiced by Hindus and Muslims alike. Another version was that Hyderabad was
a failed Islamic state, that the cultural synthesis, while real, evidenced the Nizam’s failure to
establish a truly Islamic state. To remember Hyderabad as either a successful or failed
Islamic state well served those Hyderabadis who sought to recapture or replace Hyderabad
by migrating to Pakistan. To remember it as a failed Islamic state paradoxically inspired some
Muslims, minorities in predominantly Christian countries, to say that religious freedom in
the west permitted them to be better Muslims abroad, where their religion was not tainted by
Hindu practices. These Hyderabadi Muslims stressed Islamic ideals and built alliances with
other Muslims in the new settings, distancing themselves from Hyderabadis organizing on
the basis of culture or language in the new settings. First-generation immigrants8 voiced all
these stances. Unsurprisingly, the nostalgic and plural society interpretations were held by
those best placed in both old and new societies, while the interpretation stressing Islam was
held by those less well placed in both. These ‘Islamic twists’ to the Hyderabad narrative also
found places in some Hyderabad associations, associations always initially founded to
celebrate the Hyderabadi cultural synthesis attributed to the Nizam’s state.9

The place of Islam and Muslims in the Hyderabad of the past was the most contentious
issue. While not endorsing views of Hyderabad as an Islamic state, the upper classes among
the Anglo Indians (Britishers or the descendants of Britishers through the 'male line' in
India) and the Hindus oriented themselves to what they termed ‘the Muslim side’ of
traditional Hyderabad society. Those in the military and those of high rank in the state
administration reflected this most. The schools most important in shaping lasting friendship
networks were dominated by the Indo-Muslim or Mughlai culture of the ruling class. Even
the Australian principal of St. George’s had to know Hyderabadi Urdu and Mughlai culture.
The Anglo Indians in Australia from the lower classes, for example, those who worked for
the Railway, spoke more often of the British Resident, seeing the shadow of the colonial
power behind the Nizam’s throne buttressing their position in Hyderabad State. Similarly
perhaps, the shadow of an Islamic state behind the Nizam’s throne seemed empowering to
lower-class Muslims, a shadow emerging into full view overseas and embodied in Muslim
organizations and institutions being built by pan-ethnic Muslim populations in the western
sites (Leonard 2003).

The role of the state emerged as central in all the diasporic settings. The kinds of national
projects being undertaken by the states in which Hyderabadis were settling differed
markedly, and these new national narratives powerfully influenced immigrant interpretations
of the homeland culture. Pakistan’s Punjabi-dominated and increasingly polarized society
had no comfortable place for a Hyderabadi identity. British, Canadian, Australian, and
United States versions of cultural pluralism could accommodate old Hyderabad as a
successful plural society. In the western countries where many Hyderabadis whom I
interviewed lived, differing constellations of indigenous and immigrant populations offered
opportunities for political alliances and social networks beyond the Hyderabadi emigrant
community, including new marriage patterns and religious organizations for some
immigrants.

A Hyderabadi emigrant collective consciousness based upon relationships with the

homeland also involved close relationships with Hyderabadis in other diasporic sites. George
Marcus writes (1995: 110), ‘The sense of the system beyond the particular site of research
remains contingent and not assumed,’ but to a very large extent the larger canvas was in
mind, for me and my informants, as we talked about people’s movements and memories.
This was true even in cases of erasure or repression of memories. Hyderabadi immigrants in
each site had a sense of what was going on in other sites and often compared and contrasted
experiences. This was least true for those in Pakistan, where the immigrants’ own prospects
depended to some extent on deliberate erasure of connections to Indian relatives, and those
in the UK were somewhat slow to sense the broader ebbs and flows, complacent in their
sense of having selected the very best destination. I, the researcher, was part of that wider
consciousness, playing the role of ‘circumstantial activist’ by both seeking and conveying
information and opinions as I moved from site to site. I was interested in mappings of the
diaspora as an intellectual exercise, but emigrants were interested in such mappings for their
own strategic purposes or those of their friends and relatives.

The collective activities of the immigrants, the associations they formed or joined and their
maintenance of social networks brought from Hyderabad, were important measures of the
persistence of the Hyderabadi identity abroad. The absence or presence of the Hyderabad
associations seemed correlated with the strength of the first generation’s commitment to
traditional notions of mulki identity, notions founded in pride of ancestry and closeness to
power in the former state. Where such immigrants from Hyderabad were numerous enough,
as in the UK and North American cities like Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston,
efforts were made to establish associations and maintain a Hyderabadi identity.10 Where the
earliest immigrants were not from the elite or where Hyderabadi identity served no useful
purpose, as in Australia and many American settings, or where Hyderabadi identity was a
disadvantage, as in Pakistan, Hyderabad associations were not established or were weak.
Where multiclass and often multinational groups supported other kinds of associations, like
Urdu, Muslim, Indian or Pakistani associations, these thrived with varying degrees of
Hyderabadi participation. Linguistic associations, chiefly Urdu and Telugu ones,11 attracted
immigrants from Hyderabad. Everywhere, spoken Hyderabadi Urdu continued to distinguish
Hyderabadis from other speakers of Urdu.12 In Pakistan, however, it marked a negative
ethnic identity.

National policies structured decisions and actions and formed cultural orientations.
Educational institutions and their orientations to government service loomed large in
people’s memories. The schools in Hyderabad--Madras-i-Aliya, Mahbubiyah, Nizam College,
St. George’s Grammar School, Public School or Jagirdar’s College, Osmania University, and
Residency Women’s College--that shaped Hyderabad’s elite had lasting impacts on networks
abroad.13 A major finding was the importance of these school networks. Schoolmates and
classmates filled both instrumental and expressive roles for emigrants, and the classmate
cohorts affected sibling and friendship and marital networks as well. Leading educators were
reference figures, from the Australian Reverend Bellingham of St. George’s and the British
Miss Linnell of Mahbubiyah Girls School to the American William Mulder and Peace Corps
and Kansas State teachers.

National policies about language and changes of language in schools spurred emigration in
numerous instances. Urdu’s place at the top of the administrative, literary, and educational
domains in Hyderabad was unchallenged until 1948, even as the regional vernaculars gained
importance through expanded secondary education and the Library Movement in Hyderabad
State. Urdu’s displacement, at first gradual and by English in elite higher educational
institutions before 1948, and then abrupt and by Hindi and Telugu as well and at all levels of
the administrative and educational systems after 1948 and 1956, has had continuing
repercussions on Hyderabadis at home and abroad. India’s three-language policy meant that
children being educated in English and/or Urdu suddenly had to acquire Hindi and Telugu
as well. The linguistic reorientations spelled doom for Anglo Indian and Indo-Muslim
culture alike, and Anglo Indians and Muslims adapted or migrated. In Pakistan, even though
Urdu became the national language, the dominance of Punjabi-speakers and the rootedness
of the regional vernaculars helped reduce the influence of the Urdu-speaking migrants from
India, people who continued to be termed muhajirs (refugees or exiles). In the Gulf, Urdu
and Indo-Muslim culture flourished in the UAE but Arabic and Arabic culture dominated in
Kuwait, differentially shaping migrant experiences. Despite the gradual decline of Urdu in
India, Urdu literary societies functioned throughout the diaspora and maintained a more
truly international set of vital, inclusive first generation linkages overseas than any other
associational activity.

The remembering and forgetting of the homeland was an especially fluid process because
Hyderabadi emigrants initially moved without supporting casts, without the servants or
members of the older generation who had been crucial to the transmission and maintenance
of Hyderabadi culture. The role of servants came up again and again, their presence,
absence, or degree of cultural knowledge an indicator of the strength of Hyderabadi culture
in any site, including Hyderabad, where servants who knew the old culture are now few and
hard to get. There was a growing tendency to bring aging parents to live abroad, especially in
Australia, Canada, and the US. (The immigrants in Pakistan were less able to do this,
constrained by parental commitments to Hyderabad or by politics, while those in the UK
had settled earlier when parents were less mobile and those working in the Gulf were
constrained by legal regimes.) In recent decades, emigrants moving as families have
eventually resettled their parents abroad, putting the burden of cultural maintenance on
women, whether mothers or grandmothers.14

James Clifford has characterized people migrating as ‘changed by their travel but marked by
places of origin, by peculiar allegiances and alienations (1989: 185).’ Despite changes brought
about by travel, many ‘peculiar allegiances and alienations’ associated with Hyderabad
survived in the diaspora. Most first-generation Hyderabadi immigrants in countries other
than Pakistan retained a very positive collective memory of old Hyderabad; it was an
important part of their consciousness and often of their collective life abroad. Hyderabad
has become an integral part of Andhra Pradesh and India, but those Hyderabadis who lived
in the Nizam's state and many of their children had a lingering sense of loyalty to a state that
they viewed as equal to British India and relatively free from communal tensions. Some
Hyderabadis proudly proclaimed Hyderabad's cultural synthesis a model for all of India and
pointed to Osmania University’s pioneering role in the development of vernacular education
for the masses. The Deccani cultural synthesis proved not entirely a myth, as the old urban-
based Indo-Muslim culture continued to connect former members of the ruling class and, to
a considerable extent, all mulkis, or former citizens, of Hyderabad State, abroad. Some
emigrants tried to maintain and transmit Hyderabadi culture in the new settings. The Urdu
language and one Urdu newspaper, Siyasat, were particularly important to emigrants. But the
ideas about a Deccani synthesis and Hyderabadi culture were qualified in their time, and they
have become harder to maintain in the face of rising Hindu communalism and the decline of
Urdu, a language that does not have a territorial base in India.

Jonathan Boyarin (1994: 23 et passim), discussing Maurice Halbwachs' seminal 1950 work
On Collective Memory, commented that Halbwachs spoke not of fantasies or of people defining
themselves as a collective in the present, but of the invocation of memories based on family,
schoolmates, and village, of the shared reminiscences linking given sets of people in the past.
Here it was not a village but a city, a city that symbolized a state and its Indo-Muslim culture,
that was the subject of memory and of research, and it was linkages among sets of people
that survived best. The interviews conducted in the course of the study and their contents
are too numerous, the details too abundant, to cite here, but they evidenced close friendships
across religious and linguistic lines, friendships among emigrants and those who stayed at
home. They also provided eloquent testimony to international journeys, old boy and old girl
networks, and some associational activities that kept people actively in touch with one
another. The very strongest network that many first-generation Hyderabadi emigrants tried
to sustain was that of classmates or schoolmates. ‘We went to school together,’ ‘His sister
was in my class,’ ‘She and my wife were classmates,’ and variations on these remarks were
almost always the first response when I named people met elsewhere. Being classmates or
schoolmates most frequently explained expensive and difficult journeys to attend reunions
and weddings.

But the members of the second generation were being schooled in the new homelands,
forming friendships with co-learners of Pakistani, Australian, British, or North American
history and culture and heading for careers in their new nations. The generational differences
emerged clearly in all of the research sites. Some young people of Hyderabadi background in
both Canada and the US claimed to be ‘first generation’ because they were the first
generation born or raised abroad. They thought of themselves as very different from their
parents, decisively formed by the new context and not by Hyderabad. Another cohort, that
of parents brought to North America, also contained some members who claimed to be first
generation. Since they were older, some parents (especially men with successful careers
behind them) asserted this, even though they were following their children. Their deliberate
attempt to appropriate the term for themselves could be the diasporic English language
equivalent of contests over mulki/non-mulki or muhajir/non-muhajir status in India and
Pakistan. Western social scientists should acknowledge the unsettled nature of these
generational categories in the minds of immigrants.15 Who was a native and who was a
newcomer was a controversial and socially meaningful issue in all these cases, involving
claims to citizenship and national identity. These terms signaled cultural claims to power in
new settings.

The Hyderabadi experiences abroad speak to the selective shaping of new national identities,
the forgetting of much about Hyderabad but the mobilization of memories to claim places in
new homes abroad. I heard what was remembered, what proved useful, and I have less sense
of what was being discarded, although older emigrants sometimes voiced details about the
past placement of the family in the Nizam’s state, details that proved largely irrelevant to the
family’s circumstances abroad and that their descendants stopped repeating. Instead, people
in plural societies stressed the cultural synthesis and people in Pakistan stressed Islam and
Muslim identities.

First-generation Hyderabadis abroad drew on memories and networks based on families and
localities, schools and schoolmates, in old Hyderabad, but such memories and networks
were not successfully extended to the second generation in any of the sites abroad. Jacob
Climo writes of memory, defining transmitted or ‘vicarious’ memory as ‘strong, personal
identifications with historical collective memories that belong to people other than those
who experienced them directly.’ Vicarious memories, he specifies, are passed through strong
emotional attachments from generation to generation in groups that share not only a
common historical identity but also the process of its redefinition (Climo 1995: 176). Talking
to members of the second generation, one was struck by the absence of cross-generational
vicarious memories. For the descendants of the Hyderabadis abroad, there could not be an
absorption and assimilation of a continuing identity, but rather responses to an interruption,
a consciousness of difference. At best, the descendants tried to constitute and interrogate
their parents' memories, which in any case invoked a range of interpretations and uses of
Hyderabadi culture. The powerful new conceptions of citizenship in the new nation-states
reoriented memories and shaped the evolving personal and national identities of the young
people of Hyderabadi ancestry and even of their parents. Privileging the homeland in
relation to a diaspora proved less relevant than careful examination of the changes wrought
by state policies and regulations, new demographic configurations, and the identity politics
of the new homelands.

The extent of the changes in Hyderabad itself also helps to explain the generational rupture,
but the chief reason is that the children of the immigrants identify strongly as citizens of the
new nations. Elements of Hyderabadi culture may continue if they appear useful to the
children’s futures, for example, multicultural values in a plural society, respect and courtesy
in everyday relations with others, or the winning tastes of foods like bagara began and
Hyderabadi biryani as they enter the ‘multicuisines’ of the destination countries. The nation-
states in which the Hyderabadi emigrants reside and work set the parameters for their
participation in their new sites, marking members of the first generation and definitively
shaping the identities of members of the second and subsequent generations.

Notes
1. I am grateful for Fulbright grants in 1992 and 1993 for work in Pakistan and for a
Committee on American Overseas Research Centers grant in 1995–1996 for work in
Kuwait, the UAE, and Pakistan. For Hyderabad (1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997), the
UK (1991, 1992, 1997, 1999), Australia (1993), Canada (1994, 1997, 2000), Pakistan
(again in 1994, 1995, 1999), and the United States (1991–1999), I got small grants
from the University of California, Irvine, or funded the trips myself.
2. Few studies of migration involve more than two receiving societies and few examine
the impact of emigration and transnationalism on the sending society, according to
Brettell and Hollifield (2000) 13, 18.
3. Holston and Appadurai (1996) argued that cities are challenging and replacing
nations as the important space of citizenship. I would argue that Hyderabad city was
very important in the past as an urban space of citizenship, one located in a lingering
Indo-Muslim cultural sphere. However, it is clearly becoming an important node in
the operations of globally oriented capital and labor (a topic for another study).
4. I draw here on Silvey and Lawson (1999: 122-23).
 5. Shryock, (1996: 39). Shryock discusses, here and in his 1997 book, identities based
on received versions of particular tribal histories that conflict with other versions and
with new, modern assimilative languages of identity circulating in print culture and at
the level of the nation-state. Like Shryock, I collected oral materials often based on
genealogical notions of transmission and authenticity.
6. Andrew Shryock (1995: 5), states that this was not a way of thinking that was purely
tribal, but of ‘a larger political and historical discourse... which owes its legitimacy to
voices and identities which are much older... [than Hashemite Jordan].’
7. For the following, see Leonard, forthcoming, particularly the chapters on Pakistan,
Australia, the US, and Canada.
8. By first generation, I mean those who first migrated. Actually, the term is contested,
as some parents brought over later by their adult children claim it because they are
elders and some children of the migrants claim it because they are the first to be
born and brought up in the new homeland.
9. Such developments have taken place in London, Toronto, and several US cities as
well, as detailed in Leonard, forthcoming.
10. Hindu Kayasths abroad conspicuously continued to associate with Hyderabadi
Muslim emigrants and help to form Hyderabad Associations. This, according to
critics, reproduced the old elite partnership that celebrated Mughlai culture and Urdu
rather than other vernacular languages in Hyderabad State.
11. Political associations competed for the Telugu-speakers: the Telugu Association of
North America was dominated by members of the Kamma caste and the American
Telugu Association is dominated by members of the Reddy caste.
12. C.M. Naim. Professor of Urdu at the University of Chicago, remarked that the
Hyderabadi habit of speaking Urdu when together meant that their children knew
only Hyderabadi Urdu; he found their ignorance of ‘standard’ Urdu was a problem
when they attended his classes. But language was the only marker of difference for
the second generation Hyderabadis, he said; they were like other second-generation
immigrants from India in all other respects.
13. Richard T. Antoun, ‘Transnational Migration for Higher Education: A Comparison
Jordanians in Greece and Pakistan’ (paper at the American Anthropological
Association, Philadelphia, Dec. 3, 1998), suggests that academics underestimate the
importance of their own occupation, of the impact of higher education and the
institutions that deliver it, and I agree.
14. See Leonard forthcoming, chapter 11.
15. Interestingly, I found the same situation among the children of the Punjabi Mexican
couples whom I studied in the 1980s, the same proud assertion that they were the
‘first generation’ of Americans (Leonard 1992).

References
Antoun, Richard T. 1998. ‘Transnational Migration for Higher Education: A Comparison
Jordanians in Greece and Pakistan’. Paper at the American Anthropological
Association, Philadelphia, Dec. 3.
Boyarin, Jonathan. 1994. ‘Space, Time, and the Politics of Memory’, in Jonathan Boyarin,
(ed.), Remapping Memory: The Politics of TimeSpace, pp.1-37. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota.
Brettell, Caroline B., and James F. Hollifield. 2000. Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines.
New York: Routledge.
Butt, Helen B. (ed.). 1990. The Composite Nature of Hyderabadi Culture. Hyderabad:
Intercultural Cooperation Hyderabad Chapter & Osmania University.
Clifford, James. 1989. ‘Notes on Theory and Travel’, in James Clifford and Vivek
Dhareshwar, (eds.), Traveling Theory Traveling Theorists. Santa Cruz: Center for Cultural
Studies.
Climo, Jacob. 1995. ‘Prisoners of Silence: A Vicarious Holocaust Memory’, in Marea C.
Teski and Jacob J. Climo (eds.), The Labyrinth of Memory: Ethnographic Journeys, pp.
175-184. Westport, Conn: Bergin and Garvey.
Holston, James, and Arjun Appadurai. 1996. ‘Cities and Citizenship,’ Public Culture, 8: 187-
204.
Leonard, Karen Isaksen. 1973. ‘The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad: An
Historiographic Essay’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 205-18.
--------1978. ‘Mulki--non-Mulki Conflict in Hyderabad State’, in Robin Jeffrey (ed.), People,
Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States, pp.65-106.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
--------1992. Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
---------2003. Muslims in the United States: the State of Research. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
---------Forthcoming. Locating Home: India’s Hyderabadis Abroad. Palo Alto: Stanford University
Press.
Marcus, George E. 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-
Sited Ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24: 95-117.
Safran, William. 1991. ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’,
Diaspora, l (l): 83-99.
Silvey, Rachel, and Victoria Lawson. 1999. ‘Placing the Migrant’, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 89 (1): 121-132.
Sirajuddin, Syed. 1990. ‘Deccan-Hyderabadi Culture’, Hyderabad: private manuscript.
Shryock, Andrew. 1995. ‘Writing Oral History in Tribal Jordan: Developments on the
Margins of Literate Culture’, Anthropology Today, 11 (3): 3-5.
---------1996. ‘Tribes and the Print Trade: Notes from the Margins of Literate Culture in
Jordan’, American Anthropologist, 98(1): 26-40.
---------1997. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
 15
Moving Beyond, Moving Ahead: Possible Paradigms for
Accessing Indian Emigrant Subjectivities

Mala Pandurang

This paper inserts itself in ongoing academic discussions on migration processes viz. the
post-colonial Indian nation-state. It suggests that since there have been rapid changes in the
complexion of outward migration post the 1990s, existing theoretical frameworks that
operate largely with the semantics of dis-placement, dis-location, and dis-ease require some
revision. What is needed is a critical epistemology that takes cognizance of, and yet goes
beyond, the tropes of trauma, memory and related representations.

India today is the third largest growing economy in the world. There is a concomitant
emergence of a ‘high comfort zone’ among the Indian middleclass. The growth of the
information technology sector, the information technology revolution and the simultaneity
in flow of services and goods has led to changes in public consumption habits, and resulting
lifestyles. The number of Indians below the age of 35 is an unprecedented 728 million
people and this accounts for seventy percent of the total population. We are witnessing the
phenomenon of a growing body of student migrants, confident and technologically savvy,
and most likely to change the face of Indian communities abroad in the years to come
(Khadria 1999). Changing perceptions of sexuality, and language acquisition processes
through training cells of Business Processing Outsourcing and Call centres are examples of
swift social and cultural changes that have taken place post 1990s, with the liberalization of
the Indian economy. Young, skilled Indians today possess a stronger sense of self as a
consequence of their awareness of an increasing demand for their professional competence
within first world locations.

The expansion of global communication networks has led to the unsettling of traditional
concepts of nation state. In this context, the concept of border crossing requires
redefinition. Traditionally the stance of the migrant towards the host culture was regarded as
tentative, and often negative. The traveler of today however, holds a more neutral position.
She is largely aware of the limited possibilities of actual interaction across cultures and race,
and is therefore pre-prepared for the reception of the host society. Rather than experiencing
a schismatic break with India, she partakes in a hyper mobile phenomenon wherein she
continues to interact, almost on a daily basis, with the cultural matrix of the ‘homeland’ over
the Internet, chat facilities, email and telephone. She already speaks the language of the host
society and most often dresses according to its requirements. Yet, she does not discard with
deliberate speed the formative influences of her own culture to take on those of the new
culture. The boundaries between these are anyhow increasingly indistinct. Given the
complexities of the visa, she is prepared for the possibility of the return ‘home’ at any given
point of time.

While there is a simultaneous intensification of newer forms of interaction on the one hand,
there is also a growing reassertion of particularistic identities on the other hand, based on
religious, regional and linguistic lines. New boundaries are continually in the process of being
created. Circumstances of the rapid social-cultural transformations in post-liberalization
Indian urban society are bound to reflect on the potential individual emigrant’s strategies at
negotiating the spaces of the host culture upon arrival. By recognising the significance of
departure in the itinerary of migration, we acknowledge that negotiation skills do not
necessarily evolve only upon arrival. This is turn compels the theorist to re-conceptualise the
psychosocial dynamics of the moment of arrival, normally associated with concepts of
‘shock’ and ‘ambivalence’.

I therefore argue for the need to conceptualize a framework to understand ‘pre-departure

subjectivities’ of these emerging groups of possible emigrants. In other words, how do
specific categories of Indians anticipate migration and how can we use our observations as
intervention to re-conceptualize the emigrant/host society/home nation relationship and
move beyond conventional paradigms of categorising one as the recipient society, and the
other as the other as a donor society of a population of immigrants.

II

I am keen on exploring how inherent tensions within the migratory processes get reflected in
ways more subtle than depersonalised empirical data. In this regard, analyses of ‘untutored’
subject responses to cultural and literary texts can perform as tangential inputs into the
mechanisms of trans-national interactions. Collated responses to the literary narrative can
serve as a useful entry point to conceptualise pre-migration subjectivities, specifically in
terms of gendered behaviour.

My initial exploration for a suitable analytical model led to a review of contemporary cultural
theorising that emanates from the metropolitan centres of first world locations, either in
Europe or North America. I also drew from my first hand experiences of teaching a
graduate seminar programme on ‘Gender and Migration’ at the Otto-von-Guericke
University in Magdeburg, Germany in 2000, and a similar course at the Department of
Comparative Literature, University of Texas at Austin, in the Fall of 2005. My teaching
tenure at Magdeburg coincided with the period wherein the German nation-state was
revising its immigration policies, and there were nation wide debates surrounding the
proposed ‘green card’ for IT specialists, represented basically as Indians.

A number of academic forums initiated discussions on the long-term impact of multicultural

and transnational interactions on the German-nation building process. Postcolonial scholars
have related the growth of academic interest in cultural and postcolonial studies as a
discipline to the 500 percent increase in Asian Immigration in the wake of Lyndon Johnson’s
reform of the Immigration Act of 1965. Similarly, the rise of diaspora theory as academic
discipline within literary studies has much more to do with notable shifts in the social
demography of Euro -centric nations and the growth of new, vast, immigrant communities
therein, rather than exploring the actual complexities of the sending nation. Having
observed the extent to which the large-scale immigration of a non-white labor force has
become a major determinate of contemporary social experience in developed/western
nations, I could understand why much analysis is directed towards the emergence of a 'new
world culture' within these geographical spaces. As I asked of my German colleagues has the
desire to incorporate migration studies into the university curricula stemmed from a desire to
embrace a pluralistic and multicultural future. Or, rather, is it based on an almost nervous
desire, to understand and negotiate the ‘potential contamination of the dominant discourse’,
and the unavoidable redefining of conventional relations given drastic demographic shifts,
with the United States of America and the United Kingdom as case studies of societies with
a longer multicultural history.

My teaching experience at the University of Texas at Austin in the Fall of 2005 differed in
two aspects. Unlike the German experience, students attending my course at Austin were
more or less attuned to the notion of a campus with a multi-diverse/ethnic population.
Multicultural possibility was not a novelty. Secondly, the 'migration problem' that dominated
media discourse was in reference to the mass influx of peoples from across the Mexico
border. The ‘migrant as a problem’ was therefore not white collared South Asian, but the
poor Mexican illegal laborer. The self-awarded ‘victim’ status therefore paled in comparison.

What was common to both instances was that the theoretical framework applied by the
student while interpreting the literary was almost always predictable. Their responses to
narratives under study were primarily dominated by the semantics of displacement. They
drew from prefabricated parameters already set out for them in the innumerable academic
papers and publications being churned out under the rubric of diaspora studies. Their
analysis of the narratives of a range of authors from Salman Rushdie to Jhumpa Lahiri or
Chitra Baneerjee Divakaruni would inevitably center on tropes of ambivalence and
restlessness; the fear of erasure, and various degrees of trauma, crisis and conflict, all within a
specific racial – cultural paradigm. In their desire to conceptualize the ‘third space’, the
discourse of ‘arrival’ is valourised and the migrancy condition is read as a transition from an
‘elsewhere’ to the ‘center’. Given my own ethnicity and gender, students invested in me a
certain authority over their own to comment on the experiential shifts within the
consciousness of the migrant Indian woman who once lived on the Indian subcontinent and
then chose to move elsewhere. I found myself constantly reminding them that not only was
I not that migrant other, but the other was ‘an other’ to me. The RI (Resident Indian) and
the NRI (Non-resident Indian) share a rather complicated relationship and there are multiple
markers of difference between the RI, the NRI and the POI (People of Indian origin), in
terms of dress, language, accent and attitude. Although I did wonder whether these terms
too were becoming redundant given the increasing presence of others like me, sojourners
who are ordinarily resident in India but increasingly visible as a liminal category abroad,
threatening the very force of residence as a marker of identificatory practices. Both the
increasing numbers of short-term migrants and their ability to draw on narratives of
authenticity with regard to the homeland give them a power to disrupt old narratives of the
diaspora.

Although there was a time gap of five years between both courses, students at Austin did not
still take cognizance of the rapid changes, increasingly visible, as a result of economic
liberalization policies of the Indian nation state. My teaching strategies were directed towards
engaging students in a dialectic that takes account of the material factors of contemporary
Indian society. They had to be reminded that the homelands of the imagination of canonized
writers of the Indian diaspora are not necessarily the reality of the Indian nation state today.
Viewed in this context, one cannot help but be troubled about the institutionalization of
diaspora/migration studies, and concomitant one-to-one transposition of these very same
theoretical parameters by scholars located from within the Indian academy who are
themselves guilty of ignoring multiple social, economic and cultural transformations within
the sending society prior to departure. It is only when we consider the same that we can
arrive at any conclusion about shifts in identity and dilemmas of liminality at individual and
larger group levels after arrival in the receiving society.

III

In the third section of this paper, I offer the hypothesis that, today, an increasing number of
young women from urban middle class families in the metropolitan centre of Mumbai,
anticipate the possibility of emigration from a ‘non-first world’ location to a ‘first world’
location as a given, irrespective of whether actual physical emigration will eventually occur or
not. I am curious to explore the correlation between ‘the will to emigrate’ from the home
country or sending nation, and ‘resistance to assimilation’ upon arrival in the host country or
the receiving nation.

I do not contest the fact that potential women emigrants will have to constantly negotiate
identity within complex and shifting perspectives created by both changing geographies and
economics. However, the degree of violence of adjustment to changes in circumstances
could be dependent on the level of pre-socialisation prior to departure.

I draw upon a pilot project conducted in April 2003 wherein two sources were used to
generate a set of responses as entry points for theoretical formulation.1 I take cognisance of
the dangers of presenting a homogeneous image of the ‘new Indian woman’, and therefore
clarify that the discussion presented herein is based on collated pre-migration expectations
of fifty Gujarati speaking undergraduate female students from comparatively non-
westernised families in the average middle-income bracket.2 While the respondents have
studied in English for twelve years of schooling, their cultural and social interactions are not
necessarily conducted through English language. As students of an undergraduate Home
Science college affiliated to the SNDT Women’s University and located in the central
Mumbai suburb of Matunga, my respondents inhabit material and semiotic spaces where
multiple linguistic and cultural practices already co-exist and collide. Having grown up in a
cosmopolitan cultural milieu of multiple languages, religions and linguistic backgrounds,
negotiating identity through a maze of multi-cultural practices is not a new experience and an
act of emigration will only add to the complexity of their already hybrid composition.

I am aware that the descriptions of processes of ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’, in reference

to the negotiation of the emigrant subject’s entry into the receiving society, should be treated
with some caution. The degree to which the emigrant is willing to affiliate the self to her new
socio-cultural environment can be read in terms of either the pressure to slacken group
primordial ethnicities on the one hand, or resistance to this movement on the other.
‘Resistance’ is also predicated on the multiple contexts wherein the ‘West’ has been imagined
by the Indian consciousness from the early stages of the colonial encounter, to date.3

The group was first asked to respond to five direct questions on family background; the
probability of emigration in the near future; reasons why emigration might occur; likely
destinations; and a basic quiz to assess general awareness of the history and geography of the
receiving territory. Ss were asked to cite where and how they accessed information on the
host society. Sources of information on the receiving society included television serials in
Hindi, Bollywood films, relatives, and the Internet.

Forty of the participants who had volunteered the United States of America as their choice
destination as receiving society were short-listed for a series of structured interactions.4 This
was primarily done for two reasons. First, there are already extensive networks of Indian
migrant communities in operation in the receiving territory. Secondly, there has been a
considerable increase in the influx of popular culture production originating from the USA
into the space of sending society via satellite television programmes in the last decade. It was
important in the context of this study to work with responses of potential emigrants who to
some degree assume a ‘familiarity’ with the receiving culture prior to departure. Surprisingly,
Ss fared rather poorly in a general knowledge quiz that tested a basic awareness of the
geography, politics and history of the potential host society.

Of forty, thirty-five respondents stated that they were most likely to migrate to the United
States of America on marriage, rather than to realise educational or professional ambitions.
Young women who migrate immediately upon marriage are likely to embark on a double
experience of the ‘pangs of dislocation’ and ‘hopes of a new beginning’. They are also most
likely to fall into the category wherein their dependence is sanctioned and even enforced by
law viz. a viz. the category of HB2 visas issued them. On the one hand, one may argue that
the status of dependency for educated women is bound to create many complex, material
and emotional problems that may not be foreseen prior to emigration because of pre-
conceived utopian notions of the receiving society. Students did indeed concede of the
potential receiving society as a ‘liberating space’ for their hitherto suppressed aspirations
under patriarchal control. However, Ss also shared bytes of information that they had either
accessed themselves or received from friends, family members or fiancés which pre-prepared
them to accept additional domestic responsibilities and limited possibilities of career
advancement even in a post-emigration scenario. From personal interviews with the Ss, it
emerged that such sites helped in ‘easing’ the transition process towards re-location by
dispelling any utopian illusions of what lies ahead. The potential emigrant-bride-to-be is
made aware that she will miss out on familial support and will share only rather formal
relations with her non-South Asian neighbours, and must be prepared to do her own
domestic work without the assistance of a maid. In terms of job opportunities, she is warned
that time will hang heavy on her hands, and she should be prepared to be financially
dependent on her husband in spite of being highly qualified professionally.

The second source used to generate responses was the indirect method of requiring Ss to
respond to a creative - literary narrative. Anjana Apachana’s short story ‘Her Mother’ from
the anthology Inner Courtyard, edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom was used in order to assess
processes wherein the Ss perceived the ‘self’ in terms of an ‘other’ i.e. perceptions of ‘the
Indian woman’ as one who was not yet ‘Americanised.’ The narrative structure of Her Mother
is in the form of a letter that the main protagonist of the story, a middleclass Indian mother
is writing to her younger daughter, who has enrolled for a Ph.D. programme in comparative
literature in an U.S University. A gold medallist from Delhi University, we learn that the
daughter has left home suddenly, defiant and sullen. The mother agonises over the sudden
change in her behaviour and attempts to reach out to her daughter. The mother’s letter-
narrative – or subtext of the narrative - is interspersed with pieces of advice that she offers
the daughter, reflecting her anxiety on the inherent possibilities of ‘becoming’ that the
daughter might undergo. What is offered is the mother’s rather biased perspective of
‘American Society’. She has never been abroad herself but projects herself as an authority on
the same. She advises her daughter to remain culturally and socially insulated in her new
location.

While articulating their responses to these two extracts, Ss were surprisingly more
empathetic towards the mother’s position than that of the daughter. They did not contest
the mother’s sense of superiority over various aspects of American society. Nor did they
challenge the mother’s tendency to use ethnic group labels and fall into a dichotomy of ‘us’
as against ‘them’. Rather they acknowledged the mother’s authority to offer advice and used
adjectives such as ‘selfless’, ‘caring’ and ‘wise’ to describe the mother’s personality. They did
however also reserve certain sympathy for the daughter’s own aspirations and recognised her
need for ‘escape’.

The Mother concedes that she is the proverbial frog in the well and asks the daughter to
write a letter describing all that she has experienced in the United States thus far. Ss were
given the task of writing this letter from the daughter’s perspective. Interestingly, most of the
letters were written in terms of reassurance to the mother that her advice was being heeded.
The Ss involved in the task did not imaginatively record the daughter’s perceptions of
possible cross-cultural experiences or multi-racial encounters. Rather they limited their
responses to descriptions of the campus, classroom situations, the pressures of studies, and
food habits.

In a structured group discussion that followed, Ss were encouraged to provide support to

their written perceptions of the other woman as representative of the culture of the receiving
society, from either popular television series or films. Interestingly, only seven of the forty
respondents stated that they watched English teleserials on a regular basis. Amongst this
small group, the most commonly watched serial was the comedy sit-com Friends, which has
been appearing on both Star World and Zee English on daily slots. The non-conventional
character of Phebe was singled out as being representative of the ‘new agentive woman’. She
was admired for being ‘odd’, ‘courageous’ and ‘funny’. As far as television serials in regional
languages set abroad, and Bollywood productions were concerned, (ranging from Pardes to
the more recent box office hit Kal Ho Na Ho) Ss acknowledged that the women indigenous
to the host society remain largely marginal to the script and are therefore rendered invisible.
In general however, the ‘American woman’ is othered as white, possesses freedom of speech
and action, is not answerable either to her father or husband, participates in activities in
public spaces, is not bound by rituals, and is self-reliant with sexual freedom to experiment
with multiple relationships. The Indian on the other hand ‘respects the role of religion’, is
‘emotionally stronger’, retains ‘good family values’, and has ‘respect for elders’.

What emerges from the collated responses is a clear expectation on the part of the Ss that
the act of emigration will lead to an improvement in economic circumstances and social
status. In other words, in anticipating movement, they anticipate ‘gain’ in terms of utopian
expectations such as ‘more material benefits’, ‘a more secure lifestyle’, ‘less population’, ‘less
pollution’ and ‘less corruption’. Ss perceive emigration as an instrument that will help attain
the goal of better conditions of living. However, the intention of outward movement is not
coeval with any intention of 'integrating' into the culture of the host society. Women in the
host culture were described as independent and successful on the one hand. Yet on the other
hand however, there is a perceived resistance to identify with the other. What emerges is a
self-conception of the gendered self (in terms of gender role and behaviour) as instrumental
in preserving the ‘dignity’ and ‘pride’ of the sending society. There is clearly a disturbing
essentialization of the ‘West as against what was Indian. The placing of ‘America’ and
‘Indian’ on opposite sides of the tradition versus modernity dichotomy can be attributed to a
troubling internalised dichotomy of the ‘pristine values’ of the home culture’ and the
perception of one’s own gendered role in preserving the continuum of the sending society,
as against the ‘impurity’ of the hostess-to-be.

In a detailed analysis of the problematic ways in which the Indian community in the
United States ‘creates it own world in a country where it sees itself as different’, Annanya
Bhattacharjee (1992) differentiates between the term ‘immigrant’ and ‘expatriate’ in order to
understand better the crisis of identity that the community faces. She suggests that while ‘the
expatriate always already carries the seeds of an immigrant in his/her deferred, but
nevertheless prospective, immigrant’s state; the immigrant carries the seeds of an expatriate
as the return to one’s native place always remains a distant possibility’. The difference
between the two, she argues ‘can also be seen as a deferring of commitment, an anguish over
allegiances’ (3). Bhattacharjee’s otherwise incisive analysis, still falls back on a host-centred
framework of analysis. It seems to suggest that a self-defence mechanism comes into
operation after arrival, and upon threat of contact. It does not take cognisance of possible
mechanisms prior to departure that have already inculcated a gendered acceptance on the
part of the emigrant woman that the ‘Indian woman is expected to be responsible for
maintaining this Indian home in diaspora by remaining true to her Indian womanhood’ (12).
The collated responses discussed above suggest that the Ss are already fitted into gendered
roles of multiple identities of wives, mothers, daughter-in-laws and there is a pre-determined
othering. This is not characteristic of a becoming post-arrival. Given this level of pre-
preparedness, negotiation processes between the two variants of ‘estrangement’ and
‘comfort’ are already in motion pre-departure, and this must be taken into account in any
discussion on degrees of ‘anguish’ and ‘allegiance.’

IV

The objective of this paper has been to explore entry points towards understanding
departure, with particular focus on gendered subjectivities. The paper has argued that the
formation of the migrant identity is not necessarily controlled by encounters with the other
post arrival. Rather the degree of ambivalence or in-betweenness experienced by the migrant
can be largely controlled through multiple operations of sending society prior to departure.
The pilot study under discussion in this paper has thrown upon a whole range of questions.

To offer a synopsis:

What is the relationship between the ‘will to assimilate’ and perceptions of the other of the
host society as constructed through popular culture and literary narratives? How are
gendered perceptions of the self already enforced by means of subtle ideologies prior to
emigration? Does an already existing engagement with heterogeneity and multiple
articulation of different identities impact on attempts to 'integrate' into the multicultural
modes of the host culture? Does the educated Indian middle class woman, in the process of
migrating, view the movement out of the geographical space of the home culture as an
opportunity to go beyond her middle class social status, and explore the possibilities of 'the
agentive new woman' or is the role that she must play as a vital link in the continuum of
culture of the sending society largely already pre-defined?

The first step towards a re-articulation of theory is the formulation of a series of questions
that will initiate an exploratory process, which will in turn lead towards the redefining of a
larger patterns or frames of what might seem to be unrelated information. Further
exploration of these questions raised in the pilot study, it is hoped, will lead to an
understanding of different kinds of location, dislocation and belonging in the complex
context of new realities of globality on the one hand, and yet conventional patriarchal
hierarchies on the other hand. In conclusion, the following pointers are offered as entry
point for any attempt to revisit the current rubric of studies of the Indian diaspora:

A contextualization of politics of diaspora studies as an academic discipline from a temporal

framework account, especially in the context of the surge in interest in this area over the last
decade; an examination of existing scholarly output to understand if, as a theoretical utensil,
the concept of the diaspora has really served as a tool in boundary transcending analysis, or
if it reinforces a different kind of boundary in terms of ethno-centricities; a categorization of
categories of responses viz. diasporic subjectivity, the expatriate, the exilic the transnational,
the international, and more recently, the asylum seekers; an examination of newer emerging
conditions of mobility that might eventually lead to the ‘death’ of ‘diasporic formations’ as
 we understand them today; a reaction to heated rejoinder of Indian nativists to the visibility
accorded to literary produced from the diaspora in the west – these critics stress upon
difference rather than sameness; and an analysis of ‘other’ diasporas within the Indian nation
state, Bangladeshi for example, and a comparative study on the same.

Notes

1. This section is a reworking of a presentation of this project, made at the ASNEL

Conference held at the University of Magdeburg in May 2003.
2. I use the term ‘non-westernized’ in opposition to ‘westernized’ which is a term
used often by the media in Mumbai to describe those students whose socio-linguistic
operations are in English, adopt ‘western’ styles of dressing most commonly jeans
and t-shirts, and enjoy popular culture that is largely American in origin. An
increasing number of these students begin preparations for the GRE exams at
undergraduate level. Their search options to study abroad include the United States,
Australia, New Zealand, the U.K, and more recently Germany.
3. I am grateful to Parvati Raghuram for pointing out the need to problematize these
constructs in the context of this study.
4. These forty were derived from the initial group of 50 participants. They were all
undergraduate female students in their first year of Bsc (Home Science), at the Dr
BMN College of Home Science, Matunga, Mumbai. They were in the age group of
18-19 years and came from middleclass homes with monthly incomes ranging from
Rs 30- 000 to Rs 50 000.

References
Bhattacharjee, Anannya. 1992. ‘The Habit of Ex-Nomination: Nation, Woman, and the
Indian Immigrant Bourgeoisie’, Public Culture, 5(1): 19-44.
Khadria, Binod. 1999. The Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second Generation Effects of India's
Brain Drain. New Delhi: Sage.
 16
Immigrants, Images, and Identity: Visualizing Homelands
across Borders

Cynthia J. Miller

The ties between ‘place’ and identity are fundamental to the lives of individuals and groups.
They shape the ways in which relationships and social networks are created and maintained,
how heritage is understood, reconceived, and rewritten, how everyday life is anchored by a
strong sense of self, and how narratives and histories are located in time and space – or as
writer Wendell Berry notes, in order to know who we are, we must first know where we are
(1990: 14).

What, then, does it mean to be a person out-of-place, or of several places – a member of a

diasporic community, with a life in one location and a sense of homeland, heritage, and
essence in another? And how are relationships with those vital, yet fluid, elements of
personal and collective identification maintained?1

Boston, 1999: We sit in a living room in front of the television set: a Tamil family of four and I, spending an
evening screening one of the latest videos imported from the Indian sub-continent. What I see on the screen
before me is a barren landscape -- a dry river bed punctuated by pools of stagnant water, a few lazy shade
trees with roots exposed from the last flood, and a set of crumbling stone steps leading upward from the river
banks to the swirling dust of a dirt road in the dead of summer.

I turn to listen to my host.

The landscape he ‘sees’ apparently contains none of the barren lifelessness: what he is telling me to ‘see’ is a
sacred site, close to where his father was born and played as a child, where the poet, Thayagaraja, attained
sainthood and joined with the Divine Creator, where countless stories, ragas, and rhythmic poems were
written in praise of the teeming life and beauty that reflected the boundless glory of Lord Siva, and where he,
himself, has never been. In directing my eyes to this site, he refers me to ‘the shrine just beyond that bank’ and
‘in the midst of the deepest part of the river;’ no dust, no crumbling stone, no parched sand plays a role in his
orientation to this place.2

For me, this episode was a dramatic illustration of the power of topophilia (Tuan 1974), the
emotional attachment to place, as a medium of the imagination that is utilized by immigrants
to form reflexive relationships with utopian places known as ‘homelands.’ For some, these
homelands are places they have never been, places brought to life through text, image, and
lore; for others, they are collaborative, yet frequently contested, constructions of memory
and forgetting: the products of carefully chosen and crafted histories. The thoughts and
stories presented here are drawn from interviews and observations, both in the village of
Thillaisthanam in Tamil Nadu and with a community of Tamil immigrants in New England,
related to my larger concern with the ways in which people use media images to sustain,
challenge and revise notions of place-based identity. Working with members of Tamil
families in New England on their interpretations of Tamil videos, common patterns and
ideas began to emerge in people's reactions and responses, which indicated the presence of a
shared, creatively constructed, understanding of ‘home’ – a conceptual understanding broad
enough to enfold differences in detail and surface interpretation. In this essay, I hope to
suggest something of the ways in which the essence of the South Indian homeland in Tamil
Nadu is reconstructed by Tamil immigrants in New England to continuously create and
recreate a kind of unofficial knowledge of home, through the synergy of popular media
images and sacred literary texts. These texts provide more than merely a referential frame for
envisioning the Tamil homeland, they provide the imaginative space upon which generations
may write their recurring obsessions (Schama 1995: 12) -- where received memory assumes
the form of landscape, metaphor becomes reality, and absence becomes presence.

The brief scene described earlier begins to demonstrate not only the evocative power of
textual images of the Tamil homeland, but also their relationship with history and social
memory -- icons, myths, and lore -- the unity of past and present, of soul and soil. These
symbolic representations of place are part of a tangle of received knowledge about the
essence of the Tamil homeland: folk wisdom about the shared substances between people
and their places; classical poetry of the Sangam era3 which intertwines people and their most
intimate acts and emotions with nature and the Divine; and images from film and video
which frequently offer up romantic pastoral scenes which ground morality tales of
innocence, repression, and valor in the regional landscape. These representations of utopian
homelands serve as resources for the construction of a new sort of knowledge --
engendering new relationships with the villages and landscapes that anchor immigrants’
identities and creating a mental template for memories of home.

But places, and homelands by extension, are not merely inert backgrounds were peoples'
identities carve themselves out -- already fully formed settings for action and performance.
They are ‘moving targets’ if you will, made in the process of constructing and contesting
identities, and deeply implicated in the politics of being and belonging. Past events in the
service of the present are mapped onto notions of place, and places themselves, ‘detached’
from their fixed spatial moorings’ become ‘eminently portable possessions... tools for the
imagination' (Basso 1998: 102). As place combines experience and memory, so, together, do
they imbue place. Hence the cultural ‘truth’ in the statement that people manifest, often
quite emphatically, much of their self-identity and, at the same time, advertise it to those
outside through their constructions of place.

Tamil Nadu, 1998: Sitting over a meal, I ask my hosts to describe the relationship that a Tamil has with
his village -- his place of birth, or ur. ‘We share life with the land in this place. We share one and the same
soul, draw life from the paddy, and we know by our health and fortune that this is our place in the world.’

This notion of ‘place’ -- and the certainty one has about the nature of one's place -- is critical
to an individual’s sense of self. This becomes especially meaningful for immigrant
communities, as immigrants bear identities that are in many ways liminal, betwixt and
between, no longer of old places yet not fully of new. The certainty that derives from
ongoing, intimate experiences of even the varied locales and shifting dispositions of one's
homeland-of-identification is absent, and the immigrant is left to embrace symbols, to build
utopias. Or as writer Shehadeh observes:

When you are exiled from your land... you begin, like a pornographer, to think about it in
symbols. You articulate your love for your land, in its absence, and in the process, transform
it into something else. (86)

For Tamils living in New England, it is within this creative, radical geography that their
interpretations of mass media occur. As individuals, and collectively, they are subject to the
tensions of being members of culturally and spatially defined communities at many different
levels -- local, national, immigrant, and global. Links to ‘place-based identity’ in India -- that
is, notions of self and belonging derived from attachment to a geographically distinct locale
-- are maintained through all levels of textual, visual and electronic media, and distributed
privately, commercially, and through presentations by Tamil cultural associations. Through
these images, immigrants construct relations of ‘absent certainty.’ They partake of memories
and identities detached from present experience, providing themselves with a certainty of
place -- or possibly, a certainty of no-place -- of connection to (and knowledge of) a
homeland far removed from any South Asian geographic reality.

Thinking back to the opening vignette, we can see the force in the observation that first
there are stories to tell, and then there are places to hang them on -- rather than it being the
other way around (Leach 1984: 358). This leads to the visibility of certain things and not
others in memories of place, and often those ‘certain things’ are embedded with emotion:
dismay and disillusionment for some hearts at some times; idealized longing and be-longing
as hearts, minds, and contexts change. Through the creation of a symbolic vocabulary, the
cultural landscape can be held as a representation and reminder of what is sacred, unique, or
binding in the homeland, creating what Smith refers to as ‘poetic spaces’:

Cultivating poetic spaces means... first of all, identifying a sacred territory that belonged
historically to a particular community... Such a sacred homeland held within its domains
places of pilgrimage and reverence – Mount Zion, Mount Ararat... places of historical
collective salvation and redemption... (35)

Borders, boundaries, natural features, material constructions embody identity and give a
homeland a naturalized form. In the case of Tamil Nadu, many such poetic spaces may be
identified: temples, shrines and other sacred sites; holy rivers and hills; and even the paddy
fields which supply rice to so much of India. For one New England immigrant, Venkat, the
most evocative of all poetic spaces is the Kaveri river -- a sacred river that runs through
central Tamil Nadu, and is considered to be the source of life and blessings in a manner
similar to the Ganges in the north. For his wife, Lakshmi, it is the temple complex at
Madurai which symbolizes the essence of ‘homeland’. Both of them find idealized revisions
of these symbols in classical texts, as well as newer films and videos imported by North
America, which support their memories and place-knowledge.
Venkat relates: ‘When I read the works of the poets -- not these new writings, but the works
of the early days -- or watch the latest video with my family that depicts the Kaveri or some
other sacred river, I begin to recall the stories connected with this place -- tales I heard as a
child. I think of Appar and the other Saivite saints who wandered every inch of my
ancestors' home, stopping to take rest and bless a village with their presence, writing of the
beauty of the place -- the trees, the flowers, the clear water -- and dying peacefully with the
land. I feel a powerful love for the place, the love of a son who, after being banished from
his father's home, returns there once more. This place is my home and the place where I will
find my peace.’

Historically, Western scholars have identified traditional Indian literature with Sanskrit
literature, which has been interpreted as representative of classical Indian culture. However,
Tamil-speakers, who in India are concentrated largely in the southern state of Tamil Nadu,
have produced and nurtured sets of unique linguistic, historical, artistic and literary
traditions, which have reflected as well as shaped very different views, experiences, and
constructions of the natural world from those reflected in works of the Sanskrit-based
literary traditions.

Between the second century BC and the second century AD, there was a very large output of
Tamil literary works, but very few of these -- only about 30,000 lines of poetry -- have
survived into the present day, and of that, it is almost exclusively the lyric, heroic, and bardic
poetry of ancient Tamil that has survived. Through these remaining works, however, the
relationship between people and their environment, culture and nature, social life and
landscape, may readily be explored. These early poems display a highly sympathetic
interpretation of nature, whereby nature is brought into relationship with people, furnishing
lessons and analogies to human conduct and human aspirations, and is expressed as being in
sympathy with or in antagonism to people's lives. The tie between human identity and
written images of the Tamil landscape is an intricate weave of emotion, action and ‘place,’ as
may be seen in the poet Appar's hymn to the Kaveri:

The river comes down to the plains so that the good damsels of cool eyes may bathe and
play. It mixes itself with the honey of the bamboos. It flows into the fields, the waves of the
Kaviri getting up through the channels and proclaiming as it were its gift to the needy. The
long drawn streams coming in great numbers gather the gems, the pearls and gold so much
that the waves respond with noise (Rangaswamy 911).

In their most idealized verses, the poets painted word-pictures that are radically different
from the Kaveri that labors in dusty puddles of drought, is captured and traded as an
interstate resource, and gives off the fetid odor of urine from its banks. And while the same
may be said of the writings of Thoreau or Wordsworth, what makes classical Tamil writings
so significant is their appropriation and use in immigrants' construction of Tamil Nadu --
not as a geopolitical entity, but as a transcendent symbol of place-based identity and as a
primary resource in the construction of a certainty that finds its roots outside the established
order.
The earliest extant book of ancient Tamil, the Tolkaappiam (3rd C. BC), has provided
scholars with a wealth of material for the study of the social life and literary conventions of
the Tamils in the half millennium preceding the Christian era.4 The third part of the book,
Porulatikaaram, is the first and fundamental source for the study of nature in ancient Tamil
literature, describing the conventions which regulate the classification of Tamil poetry into
Akam, or love poetry, and Puram, or all that is not love poetry. This early Tamil poetry is
highly conventionalized - poetic interpretations of nature are determined by geographical
and climatic conditions; the landscape, the seasons, the hours appropriate to each aspect and
emotion, the trees and flowers which are symbolic of different landscapes or climates are all
outlined -- in short, how nature is to be framed as the background of human behavior and
emotion. The natural landscape is divided into five types, with classic convention being that
each region is identified as the appropriate setting for particular human actions -- for
example, the mountains are the standard backdrop for the meeting of lovers or trysts; the
littorals set the scene for sorrow or grief; the mullai or pasture lands mark separation and
waiting. Each region and action also has a designated seasonal setting, be it the rainy season,
the winter, or the dry summer heat.

Over the past two thousand years, there have been changes in the geographic and territorial
configurations of Tamil Nadu, as well as change in the climatic conditions of South India in
general. Here and there the sea has gained upon the land, or the land has encroached upon
the sea ... here and there a harbor has been silted up, a river has changed its course or been
divided into anicuts, a hill has subsided, the forests have given way to acres of tea, coffee and
rubber ... The main aspects of the natural panorama, however, remain unaltered. The
physical texture of the South Indian landscape, with its dividing mountains and rivers and its
clearly defined contours, gave the South of India not only an occasion for its small kingdoms
and smaller chieftaincies, but also formed the basis for the division of poetry on
geographical regions -- for example, ‘mountain poetry,’ ‘pasture-land poetry,’ and ‘seaside
poetry.’ By the time of the Tolkaappiyam, Tamil literature had already divided the landscape
into five types: the mountains and hills, pasture-lands, the maritime zones, agricultural areas,
and the forests and seasonally arid lands. According to literary conventions, each one of
these five regional landscapes formed the background of poems dealing with definite groups
of subjects of love and warfare, and within those categories, each is represented by
characteristic flora and fauna, has a seasonal period in which its influence is most powerful
on human impulses and activities, and is the realm of particular types of emotions. For
example, in akam poetry, a poet wishing to write a poem on love regarding the union of
lovers, nocturnal trysts, first meetings, etc., had to choose the mountain scenery as the
background of his poems, since the hills more than any other region afforded opportunities
for clandestine meetings. Each of the other four regions was reserved for lovers in varying
degrees of separation (pasture-short, clouds, dusk, virtue and patience; maritime-longer,
sunset, wind, pining and sorrow; forest-longer, fear, anxiety, danger, sorrow, summer, mid-
day; agricultural-sunrise, infidelity, ill-temper, jealousy). Thus, mountanous scenery always
signified courtship, and was symbolized by the kurinci, which covers the hillsides in white
blooms once every twelve years. Having located the scene of his poem in the mountains, the
poet also needed to observe temporal conventions regarding regions and emotions.
Midnight was the hour of choice for secret trysts and conversations. Similarly, he could not
choose as his setting any season of the year -- of the six seasons of the Tamil year, he had to
choose the season of the coldest part of the year, the rainiest, and the most beset with
difficulties. These were the times when the mountainous climate was considered to be most
itself. An example of this sort of region-emotion convention may be found in the following
passage by Kapilar, one of the foremost poets of the mountain region, a heroine is replying
to her lady-companion's question of how she will bear the separation from her lover for a
short period before marriage. Her reply is that she will console herself by looking at ‘his’
mountain, (i.e. where they held clandestine meetings) as often as possible -- as she does even
now when he departs from her after their trysts. In this verse, the poet depicts the passion of
the heroine and at the same time paints a mountain scene with rain and peacocks and
langurs.5

Just now I had a look at that mountain of his where the rain poured in such heavy showers
that the peacocks screeched in flocks and the grey-faced langurs with their young ones
trembled with fear. Is my forehead still of the same old state, or have I found peace in the
sight of it? (Kapilar, v. 249)

The three key components of akam or love poetry -- the emotional experience (urippourl),
the geographic and temporal setting (mutalporul), and the objects of the environment
(karupporul) are inextricably joined in the poetic convention of the era, such that one cannot
help but signify the other. Tradition has so closely associated the sloping hills and mountains
with adventures of the lover coming to his sweetheart at midnight that the name ‘kurinci’ is
itself enough to evoke the appropriate sentiment in the reader or listener. In this way, a
direct interrelationship among nature, emotion, and literature evolved -- such that elements
of nature (the landscape, flora, climate and other natural phenomena) which were first
simply the setting for human activities, became independently recognizable signifiers of
particular human emotions and relationships -- blending the inner worlds of poets and their
audiences with the exterior world of nature.

Corresponding writing in puram mountain poetry was verse symbolic of the initial stages of
warfare -- forays and raids made for the purpose of cattle stealing. Veici is the name of a
flower, again indigenous to the mountain region, and came to designate cattle-stealing
because the Tamil warriors adorned themselves with wreaths and garlands of these red
flowers whenever they set out on cattle raids. In fact, each strategic movement or aspect of
war had its own particular flower after which the movement was named. The garland was
symbolic of the character of the undertakings, and the feelings of those engaged in them. In
addition, puram poetry of each region included poems praising the chiefs of the respective
regions, reflective poems on the transitoriness of life, poems on statecraft, kingship, and
nobility -- all evoked by regional landscapes with attendant sentiments symbolized by the
climate, flora, and other attributes of the natural world.

This early Tamil literature, then, finds human culture visibly intertwined with constructions
of the natural world, and nature deeply implicated in people's understandings of their
emotional and social worlds. On one hand, the Sangam era poets wrote about nature as an
essential backcloth for the performance of day to day life, as this pastoral poem of lovers'
reunion after a short separation illustrates:6
 The bees buzz and the frogs croak; the pastoral region is cool and fragrant with blooms of
mullai; the pleasant season accosts; and I have returned as promised. Be not downcast and
dejected (Peyanar, v. 494).

On the other hand, however, human emotions, be they love, aggression, sorrow, jealousy or
pride, are a part of nature -- influenced by the power of the natural world in a way that
mirrors early notions of anthropogeography (the influence of geography in determining the
character and culture of a people). Rather than debate the wisdom of that school of thought,
I'd like to let it serve as an illustration for the particular positioning of people to nature that
exists in Sangam literature. The forces of nature are given agency in the drama of human
relationships, though it is still those relationships which hold the spotlight.

For Tamil immigrants in New England, these poetic conventions not only serve to naturalize
human behavior -- much as the seasonal cycles or the moods of the landscape -- but to
further tie human action to images of home. What greater ‘certainty’ of identity and being
‘in-place’ than for human action to be linked to the natural flows of time and space in the
place of one's birth -- and what greater loss of `certainty' than to migrate elsewhere.
Regaining that certainty, then, rests on immigrants' abilities to construct a different way of
knowing, utilizing whatever resources of image and memory are on hand.

Film and video prove to be more complex resources than written texts in this construction
of knowledge. Characters acting out their identities vis-a-vis villages and towns animate the
cinematic landscapes, while those same landscapes serve as lenses through which actions and
sentiments are understood. Film and its portable counterpart, video, convey place-based
morality tales for mass consumption through a constellation of rhetorical approaches, but
for those aspects of ‘being Tamil’ which cannot be represented or fixed in cinematic images,
there is always the larger landscape of imagination, in which all is subsumed.

For many members of the Tamil immigrant community, Tamil films are an important
influence on their perceptions of the subcontinent. This is especially true of those with little
or no direct experience of India, but even for those who have spent long periods there, the
films provide a counterpoint to their lived experience. Popular cinema has evolved from
village traditions of epic narration and regularly and openly draws on its characters and
contexts, as well as on the notion of an ideal moral universe. Films, much like traditional
poetics, employ exaggeration as a primary device, and rely on emotional, rather than rational
‘understanding’ from their audiences. A series of binary oppositions structure individuals'
accounts of how Tamil Nadu is perceived through film:

Tradition --------------------- Modernity

Village/rural ----------------- City/urban
Poverty ----------------------- Wealth
Communality---------------- Individuality
Morality ---------------------- Vice
This pattern of social, political, and moral discourse is inextricably linked to the natural
landscape, where a pristine, moral, rural Tamil Nadu is conventionally constructed in
opposition to its decadent, Westernized urban ‘other’, signified by a distancing of characters
from the natural landscape, as well as by environmental degradation. The New England
immigrants with whom I work often echo the films' contrasts of village and city, with a
utopian image of the Tamil homeland taking the form of the ideal village writ large - with
people and their daily lives firmly situated in the morality and purity of nature. Time and
again, while viewers exercised their critical abilities as audiences, they also mined the images
contained in films for their own recreations of an idyllic home.

Boston, 2000: Earlier in the day, Chitra, Goona, Raman, and I had been watching a series of films by T.
Rajendar, a director known for his kitschy excesses. Invariably, during the videos, shrieks of laughter would
fill the room, and fingers would point at the screen. I found myself wondering if it was really the burlesque of
these films that provided entertainment, as wisecracks like ‘They forget to tell you that those beautiful fields
stink of bullock dung that time of year’ flew fast and furious. But now, as we all sit and talk about the
differences between village and city life, those images are put to use. ‘Cities are so Western - so polluted.
Morals aren't the same. It's all filth. People in villages still remember who they are. They're connected to the
land and they care for it and it prospers.’ ‘You mean like those fields that stink of baking bullock dung?’ I
teased. ‘Hey, that's a good, honest smell.’ Goona replied.

The images found in film and video often act in synergy with the imagined images evoked by
classic texts to reinforce pastoral scenes valorizing virtue, innocence, simplicity, and ‘the
natural’. In the contexts of older movies, such as the film ‘Thirupattai’, a bucolic love story,
lush, verdant nature often serves as the backdrop for village life and human relationships.
The focus of the film is on the hero, heroine and their families, yet the subtle background
message about ‘place’ is consistently one of prosperity, comfort, and idealism. In many of
the newer movies, things work a bit differently. Directors are more attuned toward realism
and social problems, but ultimately the moral message is the same. For example in
‘Gandhian Scholar’, the tale of an upwardly mobile urban dweller who returns to his birth
village to experience re-birth and death, the village as ‘place’ receives much harsher
treatment. Conditions of squalor are highlighted -- poverty, alienation, and physical and
emotional pain are no strangers to rural characters. However, a thread of naturalized moral
rectitude runs through these films, casting worldly, materialistic, morally bankrupt urban
dwellers in binary opposition to virtuous, dominated, poor and often abused agriculturalists.
Inherent in a great many of the images and messages conveyed by these films and videos is
that the land reflects the pain of the people closest to it -- and were it not for the degradation
inherent in modernity and urbanization (alien values and ideals), the people and the land
would prosper.

The synergy of the two mediums, then -- abstracted texts of home which are read, and
somewhat differently abstracted texts of home which are viewed -- offers the immigrant a
cache of informal, often idealized, knowledge of home which results in a utopian
construction of Tamil Nadu -- a construction that is mapped onto memories and shared
with insiders and outsiders alike as being perhaps even more authentic than reality. And for
Tamil immigrants in New England, that ‘more authentic’ construction has taken shape in the
form of a newly-constructed temple and grounds.

Boston 1996: Holding golden bowls of holy water on their heads, the seven priests, two of whom had traveled
more than 7,000 miles for this moment, wound their way up the scaffolding to the top of the temple. The
priests recited ancient Hindu invocations and poured water - some of which came from sacred rivers in India -
over the temple's seven copper domes as the hundreds of worshippers gathered below prayed, cheered and
applauded. And with this sacred ceremony, the goddess Lakshmi -- the goddess of wealth -- had come to life
and the cream colored temple built in her honor, which was started 12 years ago, was finally complete. Billed
as ‘A Hindu haven in Ashland’ The Sri Lakshmi temple was opened at the end of 1996. ‘If you really
look at it and didn't know you were in Ashland, you would think you were somewhere in India. It looks as
if a Hindu temple has been transplanted here on a ship. We all feel a wonderful sense of accomplishment.’

While the Sri Lakshmi temple, with its ornately carved 50-foot tower, may initially be
interpreted as an object of interest for studies of the built environment or of material culture,
its presence has transformed the appearance, perception, and uses of the surrounding
landscape, as well. The gopuram, or grand entrance tower, designed and built over the
course of two years by architects and masons from India, is adorned with sculptures of the
goddess Lakshmi and her dwarapalika, or female gatekeepers, extends the newly Tamilized
landscape skyward, making it visible from all directions. Closer to the ground, trees have
been cleared to delineate the boundaries of sacred space, the soil is continually mingled with
handfuls of soil carried back from Tamil Nadu by travelers and visitors alike, and flowering
trees and shrubs yielding fragrant petals used in worship are nurtured nearby. In ways
similar to those found in the courtyards of temples and shrines throughout the homeland,
the natural environment surrounding the temple has become a place for meditation, quiet
conversation, and slow thoughtful wandering. The temple closely follows the typology of all
Lakshmi temples, moving many devotees to remark about the resemblance to their own
village temples, as well as those seen on video.7

Boston, 1999: Five families and I sit watching Sirai, an old film about a priest. Chitra, who is seven years
old, points at the screen and draws everyone's attention to the resemblance between the temple image being
shown and ‘our’ temple, which moves the adults to banter about whose home temple it really does look like.
‘It has the grace of the Brandeshwahari temple near the village of my father's people,’ Baburao offers. ‘But it
is a fair temple, more like the newer temples of Anicut,’ counters his wife, Meena, who is from the Anicut
area. One after another, each calls forth an aspect of the temple that is somehow familiar. Ultimately, though,
it's the children who prevail. The Lakshmi temple, they decide, is identical to one depicted in a video they saw
the week before - only that one just a bit better.

For the families with whom I work, the construction of the Sri Lakshmi temple has been
more than simply an act of building - it has been a process of becoming - a process of
inscribing their collective identity on the landscape - a Tamilization of space, if you will. In
this process, Tamil immigrants have turned symbols into substance, thereby allowing them
to take on a very real, sacralized, utopian presence. Poetic spaces - a sacred stone, the
Brandeshwahari temple, the corner of echos, the Kaveri river - no longer serve as symbols
but have become the sanctified reality itself. The immigrants' shared, constructed, and
sometimes imaginative knowledge of the Tamil homeland has become tangible, concrete,
and actual -- a homeland and a land of destiny transplanted.

And ‘certainty?’ It is now found in this embodiment of home - this newly created place
where image and memory are more real than artifact, and where informal knowledge takes
on the power of the dominant reality. Through the expression of shared knowledge in both
the material concreteness of the Sri Lakshmi temple and the social concreteness of its
community, the New England immigrant community finds another Tamil Nadu. The
experience of living, de-territorialized, has brought about a transcendental construction of
place -- of a utopian Tamil Nad. And the monsoon-drenched concrete, rutted roads, and
parched thatch retained in memories of the past have become somehow less real. And out of
this material embodiment has come a reconstruction of identity: a newly born identity of
certainty and rootedness in place.

Notes
1. While a great range and variety of ‘places’ combine and compete in the production of
place identification for Tamil immigrants (as with other individuals and groups of
various associations), along with social class, occupation, and other sociological
variables, this work takes landscape and its interpretations and symbolic loadings as
its main point of focus in exploring the construction of place-based identities and
identifications. Similarly, it should be understood that in seeking to inform an
ethnographer who was their cultural ‘other’ about their experiences, much diversity
among participants in terms of those same sociological variables might have been
deemphasized through efforts to explain a concept of ‘Tamilness’ to an outsider.
Emphasis on other variables, such as gender or socialclass, might have yielded very
different perspectives.
2. As with all unreferenced citations in this essay, I am quoting here from my field
journal (1996-2000), drawn from unstructured interviews and informal discussions
with participants in an examination of the role of media in the construction of place-
based identities among Tamil immigrants who had resettled in New England. An
earlier discussion of this ethnography appeared in ISLE 9.2, 2002.
3. The Sangam Era is commonly understood as spanning roughly from 300 BCE to
300 CE
4. The Tolkaappiam serves as a touchstone here for considering constructions of place,
nature, and affective place-based ties to an idealized Tamil Nadu as a result of its
frequent referencing as a foundational source for understanding Tamil Nadu, the
significance of its landscape, and the notion of drawing one’s character or ‘substance’
from the land of one’s origins, by participants in my research and by scholars in
Tamil Nadu with whom I consulted during a period of research there (Thanjavur,
1997)).
5. This translation has been made from an unidentified Tamil manuscript. Interested
readers, however, may consult a similar version found in Caminataiyar, U. (ed.)
Kuruntokai. Madras: Kapir Accukkutam. 1962.
6. This translation has been made from an unidentified Tamil manuscript. Interested
 readers, however, may consult a similar version found in Ainkurunuru, U. (ed.)
Kuruntokai. Madras: Kapir Accukkutam. 1957. Also, an excellent translation of
preceding and subsequent verses (minus the one cited here) may be found in
Ramanujan's Poems of Love and War. New York: Columbia. 1985
7. It is important to note here that in the diaspora, as well as through religious
revivalism in India, religion has been highly politicized, creating the potential for
volatile and problematic links between religion, place, and memory. Hence,
identification through this form of construction of place-memory is limited to certain
individuals and groups, at particular historical moments in the lives of their
communities.

References
Basso, Keith. 1988. ‘Speaking with Names: Language and landscape among the Western
Apache’, Cultural Anthropology, 3(2): 99-130.
Berry, Wendell. 1990. What are People For? San Francisco: North Point Press.
Kapilar. ‘Kuruntokai.’ n.d., n.p. v. 249.
Leach, Edmund. 1984. ‘Further thoughts on the realm of folly’, in Edward M. Bruner. (ed.),
Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society, pp. 356-64.
Washington D.C.: American Ethnological Society.
Peyanar. ‘Ainkurunuru.’ n.d., n.p. v. 494
Rangaswamy, Dorai M.A.. 1990. The Religion and Philosophy of Tevaram. Madras: University of
Madras, 911.
Schama, Simon. 1995. Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Shehadeh, Raja. 1982. The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank. London: Quartet
Books.
Smith, Anthony. 1991. National Identity. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Tuan, Yi Fu. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
 17
Identity Dilemmas: Gay South Asian Men in North America

Geoffrey Burkhart

‘For when what is given as natural needs to be torn apart, language becomes as vulnerable as
skin, and the body, quivering in its newness, must lay itself open to fresh forms of
otherness.’

‘Bahrain, Dubai, London, New York,

names thicken and crack
as fate is cut and chopped
into boarding passes.’
Meena Alexander (1996: 107, 171)

Introduction
The greatly increased visibility in North America of gay and lesbian people of South Asian
heritage has produced numerous contests over identity, over the definition of community
and over strategic deployments of identity notions in social activism. The proverbial ethnic,
linguistic, religious and regional diversity of India, let alone of South Asia as a whole, is well
reflected in the diaspora1 in North America in the numerous networks and organizations of
queer South Asians which have emerged over the past two decades. These groups seek to
provide channels for dialogues concerning identity, and some become spaces for organizing
collective action. Of course, one might argue the reverse, namely that the diversity of South
Asians is necessarily only partially reflected in the organization of these networks and groups.
Yet, even among the relatively circumscribed set of South Asians about whom I write--a
small number of gay men--there is wide variation in their backgrounds and in the ways in
which they make use of those backgrounds in representing themselves. In negotiating
personal, public and strategic identities they necessarily draw upon the corpus of
conventional, largely essentialized categories made available out of the historical
contingencies of origin in the Indian subcontinent. Further, these categories have been
refracted in a variety of diasporic settings and are now represented in numerous
circumstances of contemporary North American locations.

My aim in this paper is to explore dilemmas which the men I interviewed face in claiming
South Asian identities, in using terms denoting ethnic categories and in representing their
identity through markers denoting gay sexual orientation.2 I use the term ‘ethnic categories’
quite broadly here to include markers of diasporic experience and South Asian heritage as
evidenced in my participants’ mentioning regional, linguistic, class, caste and religious
affiliations. My paper depends upon the quotation of narrative passages that center on
‘South Asianness’ in North American contexts, on reflections on relations with parents and
siblings and, though to a lesser extent, on experience with South Asian gay networks and
associations. I use somewhat lengthy quotations, transcribed from tape-recorded interviews,
in order to illustrate participants’ ways of speaking as well as to show the embeddedness of
identity categories in their discussions of issues important to them. My intention, then, is to
present a largely descriptive account and to draw from it a sense of common concerns and
problems that merit further thought for South Asian as well as other diasporic contexts.3

Participants and Field Research

I conducted approximately 30 hours of interviewing from 1998-2000 with 12 men, as well as
having informal conversations with some of them in social settings. Interviews averaged two
hours in length. Participants ranged in age from 22 to 48, though most were between 25 and
35.4 All had completed or were completing undergraduate degrees; some had completed or
were then in post-graduate or professional degree programmes at the time of interviews.
About half had full-time employment.

These men’s family origins are in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. Some participants
were born in North America; some have come directly to North America from South Asian
countries, while the diasporic routes of others have led their families or them variously
through Malaysia, the Philippines, Kenya, Tanzania and elsewhere. Those who had
immigrated from South Asian countries had had little or no experience with gay activism
there (though this has changed rapidly as some have now developed ties in their ‘home’
nations, as some travel easily and as all make use of Internet connections).

My brief sketch of certain characteristics of the participants suggests the middle- or upper-
middle class status accorded in North America to persons who are well educated and who,
on the whole, belong to or aim to belong to a professional class.5 Thus, I would argue, this
section of the larger diasporic population, as represented by my small set of participants, is
one most likely to have a direct exposure to and an interest in engaging with predominantly
middle-class, white, male perspectives on the meanings of ‘gay’ in North America.6

It is necessary to add here that there is some conflation of middle-class and white statuses in
the interviews, though it occurs to different degrees and in different aspects in the narratives
of various participants. Where this conflation does occur there may be several contributing
factors. There is, I think, a double-sided quality to the hegemonic influence of whiteness
conditioning the narratives. On the one hand, there is what I take to be the simple fact that
North American constructions of ‘gay’ have been predominantly white. This was an issue
that only some participants explicitly spoke of. Some provided examples of having suffered
discrimination, sometimes in subtle forms, but clearly based on perceptions of racial
difference. On the other hand, some participants appeared to me to be reluctant to
acknowledge having been subject to racial discrimination, either because this would suggest
an inability to lay claim to middle-class or higher status or, similarly, because it would
indicate greater limitations than they believed were present.7
Class position necessarily affected the course of interviews. For example, participants could
easily relate to my being a white, college professor. Some seemed interested that I was
openly gay; all, of course, were intrigued to varying degrees with my interest in their lives and
in the kinds of marginality they experienced. Most treated me with more respect than I had
anticipated, respect shown me perhaps because of my occupation, my age (then late 50s), my
sympathy for the difficult circumstances in which some found themselves, and, for those
who probed, my long engagement in teaching and research on India and Indians. In some
initial interviews this respect, coupled with my quite open-ended questions, perhaps worked
against the deep disclosure that an anthropologist dreams about, but that is likely to develop
only after close bonds are created through a persisting relationship. Nonetheless, my aim to
understand identity notions embedded in narratives about family, friends and the
circumstances of daily life was facilitated by the flow of talk. I refrained from overly
redirecting conversations towards what I wanted to know in favor of trying to hear what
these men thought it relevant to talk about.

‘South Asianness’ in North America

In beginning to pursue the notion ‘South Asian’, I present an example that illustrates the vast
pool of referents which can be drawn upon in representing identity. Akash, in his mid-30s,
migrated from western India, lived previously in Sydney, Australia, for ten years and had
lived in San Francisco for three years at the time of the interview. He spoke to me of his
family's history in Gujarat. Regarding his father’s side, he said:

I mean originally they came from Portugal, and then they settled in Gujarat, and they got
married, you know, like to the locals and things, but that was. . .at least, you know, two
hundred, three hundred years back.

And regarding his mother’s side:

[T]he same with, like, the Zoroastrians and the Parsis, they came from Iran. . . [T]hey [fled]
Iran to save [themselves from] the persecution from the Muslims at that time, and then they
landed up. . .in a coastal town in Gujarat. And there’s a big Parsi community still, and my
mother is from that community.

He then continued:

I came from a Christian family. Father’s side was from India and my mother’s side was from
Persia. And during the course of time they intermingled with the different races and castes
around and uh, so, yeah, I’m very Indian.

Here I use Akash’s proclamation of his family's complex diasporic origins anecdotally to
contextualize a general point that Sandhya Shukla makes in her review of the literature on
the South Asian diaspora (2001). She says,

. . . the grouping of ‘South Asian,’ too, as a geographical reference that does not have nation
or religion in its root meaning, constructs a highly provisional language, a kind of theory
 itself for thinking about how people see themselves as part of broader social formations. (. .
.) Although time and origins may be maddeningly ambiguous for this topic, they also
constitute the rich analytical terrain for the consideration of South Asian subjectivity because
the obvious constructedness itself of South Asian diasporas allows for interesting
possibilities, for alliances and allegiances across national boundaries that help us create new
conceptual models for the complex renderings of affect and experience (2001: 553).

To use Shukla’s phrase, the ‘obvious constructedness’ of the notion, ‘South Asian’, reminds
us that the process of category construction involves those who can claim migratory routes
from the Indian subcontinent and thus a 'South Asian ethnicity'.8 None of the men I spoke
with used ‘South Asian’ automatically; each used either national or regional and/or linguistic
markers in talking with me. These include: Indian, Pakistani, Gujarati, Bengali and Tamil,
and they may sit beside other markers such as 'American' and 'East African'. I would argue
that in North America the term, ‘South Asian,’ is encompassed by an implicit master
opposition of East and West, one which distinguishes, rather than bridges, minority statuses
while reiterating, as well as partially occluding, racial oppositions reduced simplistically to
white and black (George 1997; Leong 1996; Visweswaran 1997).

At the same time, however, frequently in North America self-identification as South Asian
suggests the idea of a ‘minority’ with connotations that signify the presumed virtues of
middle-class status, in turn suggesting a ‘safe’ minority of color. Such a declaration of
identity is set implicitly in conceptual opposition to ‘less-than-model minorities’ marked by
non-white statuses (Lessinger 1995, 1999; Mathew and Prashad 1999/2000; Prashad 2000:
157-183; cf. Helweg and Helweg 1990). Further, of course, ‘South Asian’ seeks to distinguish
‘these’ Asians from ‘those’ Asians--those East Asians, Southeast Asians and so on--
distinguishing categories on the basis of supposed broad cultural differences and again
evading to some extent the racial categorization upon which the notion ‘Asian’ depends
(Shankar 1998).9

‘Gay’ and ‘South Asian’

In the same way as ‘South Asian’ can shift meaning according to context, various usages of
the label ‘gay’ are employed by the men I have spoken with.10 Some use it easily; others seem
to avoid it as too American a category; for example, one man introduced the ambiguous
phrase ‘the gay thing.’ I think all would concur with Martin Manalansan, who, in an article on
diasporic, gay Filipinos, comments:

Within the context of transnational cultural, economic, and political exchanges, monolithic
constructions and prescriptions are doomed to failure. What do we mean when we say ‘gay’
in a world where hybridity and syncretism provide the grist for cultural production,
distribution, and consumption? What forms of engagement do people (specifically those
who live outside the ‘gay’ world of Europe and North America) use to interrogate issues
involving ‘rights’ and social acceptance? (Manalansan 1995a: 429; see also 2003: 5-9).

In considering gay South Asian men, these issues lead me to guiding questions like the
following: What markers have these men been led to and/or have they chosen to draw upon
in staking a claim to participate in a South Asian-gay-focused group? What markers emerge
that, temporarily at least, foster a sense of relatedness and some degree of agreement about
identity? How do these markers help mobilize outward relations of contest or cooperation?
The larger question towards which this inquiry pushes is: How do provisionally agreed-upon
forms of ethnic representation intersect with understandings of what being gay signifies, and
with what implications for social relations? This is a very large question. Here I approach a
part of it by examining narrative statements that are revealing of ethnic and sexual identities
and that draw attention to common dilemmas that result from disruptive conjunctions of
identity constructions.

Narratives
Prakash, a man in his early 30's who had come from India to graduate school in the United
States and has stayed on to work, had been talking with me about the social costs involved in
putting together a new life. He gave this example:

I have a friend of a friend. He and his wife moved here from New York. I knew her. . .a
little bit in Bangalore, but he knew my roommates very well. . .so I've known them, and
they've invited me over to their house for dinner. . . I tried to invite them to do things with
my brother [who also lives in the United States]. . . .I always thought. . .they'd be more
comfortable with my brother and his wife and kids. . . So we did one or two things. (. . .)
And then I always felt bad that I never invited them to my house, and then I invited them
once. . . I had to cancel it for some. . .reason.

Prakash then described another situation in which he was to meet these friends, but had kept
them waiting. They waited for him for a while and then left without meeting him. He
commented:

I mean I know I was in a situation where I had to cancel and they didn't wait. (. . .) So I
blew them off. . .for whatever reason, and they're like incredibly pissed off. [He laughed
self-consciously.] . . .it hurts me actually to have to not have their confidence or to not have
them think that I am reliable enough or. . .not helpful. . .that I'm not a friend in any way.

What is interesting here, I think, is not so much the issue of his not being ‘out’ to these
friends, that is, of not acknowledging his sexual orientation openly, as is Prakash’s locating
his relation with them in the nexus of his familial ties within larger local networks of South
Asians. Prakash resists the thinking of a friend to whom he related this story; as Prakash said
to me, ‘. . .and I told an American friend of mine; . . .[who] said, “Hey, screw them, I mean if
they didn't. . .wait it out, it's tough. . .”’ Prakash understands the issue here to be primarily
about his relationship with these friends and not about individual choices.

Participation in South Asian-oriented social life can produce another problem for those who,
like Prakash, remain partially closeted. Again, Prakash outlined the difficulty:

[P]art of the burden in that for a lot of people who weren't originally ‘out’ was the fear of
dating within the community and the word getting back; therefore the whole thing was out.
 So I'm sure you're aware of that kind of big thing in the back, again not usually discussed,
but. . .there are a lot of people peripheral. I mean you may see a core of some people who
are kind of hanging out and doing things together. There are a lot of other people who are,
you know, keeping very much to the outside.

Prakash points here to what Ilan Kapoor has movingly called ‘separate solitudes’ (1995),
referring to the separation of gay and straight networks. Prakash then elaborated on the
particular difficulty–and the personal costs–entailed in navigating between gay and straight
circles within densely connected diasporic Indian communities. I quote his somewhat
plaintive remarks at length:

I have straight Indian friends, and I have a lot of gay Indian friends, and I can't make the
worlds get together very easily. I mean I've gone. . .for example to an Indian film . . .where
I've met gay friends, and I've had straight friends there, and they would say, ‘Oh, how do you
know each other?’ And then you just say, ‘Oh, Indian network’. . . And they just can't
imagine that they wouldn't know another Indian person that you knew. . . .so these are very
hard to navigate. So after a while what happens is that the straight friends just sort of drift by
the wayside unless I make a very strong effort to cultivate a friendship with them. (. . .) The
whole problem is like, how do you negotiate separate compartment of worlds? (. . .) You
don't have the time to actually really negotiate them in a big way, and (. . .) it just takes just a
huge amount of energy. . . (. . .) So. . .if you want to like really spend time with a few friends
that you make and make that world reasonably important, there isn't that much time to like
really play the whole world. (. . .) . . .how do you make all these worlds come together?

He continued:

But all I'm trying to say is that therefore within the gay community even all these straight
friendships that you have from way back, they kind of tend to fall apart if they don't kind of
get integrated into the way you live. Those are all very hard things.

Prakash’s comments on not being openly gay are framed here against the value of
maintaining a densely connected web of South Asian friends and relatives.11 Yet, the North
American notion of ‘coming out’, a public declaration of gay identity, is seen by many as a
fundamentally individualistic stance. For example, Badruddin Khan, in his autobiographical
account of growing up gay in Pakistan and moving on to life in the United States and
Canada,12 interprets coming out as an individualizing process. He says: ‘[C]oming out is the
act of becoming a distinct human being, separate from the community’ (Khan 1997: 205-
206). Referring to his life in Canada, he asserts, ‘Today I live in a stratum where individuality
is prized. This should, on the face of it, provide me with unconstrained latitude to build a
new life. However, this freedom to define myself anew is a false liberty' (1997: 206). This
recognition forces an examination of what is shaded by the umbrella of the term ‘identity’ in
the context of the relative 'freedom' from social constraints that North American society
appears to offer and which the men I talked with critiqued carefully.

Similar themes are echoed by Kumar, 24, born in the US, who was talking about family
obligations and said:
 But a lot of white American gay men say, . . .’Why do you do all these things for your
family?’ Like they don't understand. . . I do all this stuff around the house, you know. (. . .) .
. .we were talking about my family; . . .they're like, ‘Well, it's your life; you should lead it the
way you want to.’ And I'm, ‘It's not as simple as that. I mean, you know, it's my parents' too.
I mean I can't just like go and do whatever the heck I want.’ And I think Asians overall tend
to understand that more, because. . .in Asian culture in general the family is. . .much more
important. (. . .) I don't know. . .kind of being American's all about being an individual and
all this stuff, and, you know, being Asian is like the opposite; it's all about being in the group
and conforming.

He explained further:

I'm not saying that you should not be gay or not be whoever you are, but you do have to
kind of, I mean be nice to them; they are your parents, you know, and as long as. . .they're
trying, you try too. . . . . .it's not a question of, you know, ‘We're here, we're queer, get used
to it.’ I mean. . .that's nice to chant on the street, but you can't do that at the dinner table.

Akash, Daniel, Prakash and others like them understand these issues, in part but critically, as
having to do with personal integrity. I would argue that for many South Asians that sense of
integrity is situated in a dense set of social ties out of which springs their sense of self. Thus,
Prakash’s and Kumar’s concern is centrally about their places in webs of social relations and
only secondarily about their own choices.

Even in these few narrative excerpts presented above, a large number of issues are exposed
concerning ways of thinking about gay South Asian American identities and about issues and
dilemmas that gay South Asian men must grapple with. Salient concerns include finding ways
to maintain strong relations with families and developing new friendships (both gay and
straight) with South Asians and others, while trying to bridge sometimes conflicting
expectations and practices of friendship among those of South Asian and other heritages.

Ethnic Identity Viewed as a Choice

Especially for those born outside of South Asia, the question of ethnic identity these men
are always 'marked' by their ethnicity but how they express, negotiate and manage these
identities in different contexts will vary, involving complex decision about whether claiming
or stressing one’s ethnic heritage may strengthen or aid in the negotiation of a gay identity.13
Akbar spoke of his concerns about what he termed ‘being cultural’ and ‘being ethnic’. Akbar,
24, the United States-born son of Pakistani immigrants, had attended an exclusive
preparatory school, completed a BA at a prestigious university, had worked for two years in
a medical setting and hoped to attend medical school. I spoke with him on the day he was
leaving his college city to return home to live with his parents. He suspected that his parents
knew he was gay, but he had shared no open acknowledgment of this with them. To put it
mildly, on the day of our conversation he was keenly aware of the salience of identity labels.

Akbar explored something of his struggle to see himself in ethnic terms through talking
about his friend, Sankar. Sankar, like Akbar, was 24 and was born in the United States,
though of parents from India, not Pakistan. Sankar and Akbar had attended the same
university. Sankar’s aim was also to become a doctor. Akbar commented on ways in which
Sankar represented himself as Indian:

[M]y roommate, Sankar, was very involved in the Khush group, and. . .see it's funny. His. .
.approach to being ethnic and whatnot is that he latches on it. Now here is someone who
grew up in Massachusetts with. . .not many Indian people around and stuff, but he's
obsessed about being cultural, to a point where I'm like, ‘You're not. Like you're not that
Indian. Like, you know, what are you doing?’ But he has to decorate the house with Indian
things, even though like they could be completely unrelated to his life experience. I'm like, ‘. .
.why do you have to go out and buy Indian things?’ And, you know. . .he has to be, you
know, cultural. And I'm like, I'm almost, because I've never felt that accepted and never fit
in, I'm almost anti-, you know, being cultural and like, you know, I was born and raised here,
and there is no need for me to be, you know, dressed in Pakistani clothing and decorating
my house with Pakistani things.14

By seeing ethnic representation as an individual choice and by labeling that choice as

‘cultural’, Akbar positions himself in an unmarked, dominant or hegemonic category, to be
understood simply as ‘American.’ Akbar’s concern with Sankar’s choice is that it is
unfortunate, perhaps due to two reasons. He feels that Sankar, although he represents
himself as Bengali and in doing so reinforces a connection with the regional culture of his
parents, has made an inauthentic choice. That is, Akbar understands Sankar to belong more
properly to the 'unmarked' category, ‘American.’ A second concern is suggested, though not
stated explicitly, namely that some sense of loss occurs in moving oneself to a marked, that is
here, ethnic, ‘cultural’ designation. Akbar continued his comment about Sankar in this way:

But so he was very involved in the Khush group, and when he went to New York Pride he
stayed with Indian people, and there was like, his New York Pride experience was almost
exclusively Indian. And I'm like, I think part of realizing that I wouldn't fit into that crowd,
made me, like, I, you know, antagonistic towards that whole idea. I was like, ‘I can't believe
that you're just isolating yourself to the Indian community.’ But, uh, in terms of the Khush
group and going to the Khush meetings and things, I was adamantly against it. I was like,
you know, I'm not; I don't fit in there; I don't need that group and stuff.

At this point Akbar shifted ground slightly and said:

Umm. . .having met his friends from the group. . ., I realize it's been actually really beneficial
for me to know them and to see that there are Asian, South Asian gay people living normal
lives and seeing how they deal with things, and just knowing that they are out there has been
very helpful. But at the time, you know, I just felt like, you know, . . .I felt very alienated
from all these groups, you know; it's like the gay community itself. . . (. . .) I didn't really find
a foothold in the gay community.

Akbar sees Sankar’s New York Gay Pride Day experience–here I think to be understood as a
hypercritical American gay event–as somewhat diminished in being ‘almost exclusively
Indian’ and states that he, Akbar, would not be comfortable in doing the same thing, to use
his word, in ‘isolating’ himself. Akbar reacts here to a dilemma of belonging while
participating in events such as gay pride day parades. On the one hand such events tend to
privilege white ways of being gay, while, on the other hand, including non-white, ethnic (or
'cultural' in Akbar's terms) persons as necessarily exceptional or 'disruptive' of the subsuming
of 'gay' under 'whiteness'. Yet, interestingly Akbar’s assertion of standing outside, of being, in
his terms, not ‘cultural’ leads to a bridging, in acknowledging that Sankar’s friends,
presumably new friends, live ‘normal lives’ and this, in turn climaxes with the poignant
statement: ‘I felt very alienated from all these groups, you know, it's like the gay community
itself. . . (. . .) I didn't really find a foothold in the gay community.’

I argue that Akbar straddles two positions. One position is based in the sense that to realize
oneself as, for example in the case of Sankar, ‘really Bengali,’ is to find one or more
categorical markers of identity seeking unconditional implication in the lives of other
members of that category. That is, one person as Bengali may expect inclusive relations
among Bengalis, or to put it differently, that amity, a ground of unconditional connection,
prevails (Fortes 1969: 110, 239 n.19). The second of Akbar’s positions is at odds with the
first, namely that amity is not a precondition but that amicable relations are an outcome of
individual decisions. Thus, as noted earlier in the paper, certain understandings and
representations of ‘South Asianness’ are at odds with American individualism (see Roland
1988, 1996).15 What is interesting about Akbar is his courageous willingness to critique his
own individualist assumptions in part due to the strength of his friendship with Sankar. And
here we see something of the process of deliberation that may be encouraged and facilitated
in gay South Asian groups.

Of course, an objection can be raised concerning my interpretation of Akbar’s comments,

namely the unexplored issue of racially coding of 'American' as 'white', on the one hand, and
'cultural', in the sense that Akbar uses the term here, as 'of color', on the other. I did not
pursue this line of questioning sufficiently to comment on complexities of notions of race
and conflations of race and ethnicity that Akbar's comments raise. Yet, I understand Akbar's
comments as an emergent critique of varying articulations of gay, racial and ethnic statuses.16

South Asian Gay Space

Akbar comments on some implications of participation in the numerous, formally organised
South Asian gay and lesbian groups which have sprung up, alongside more loosely
articulated networks. Some men like Daniel, a 24 year-old Christian whose Indian family
lived in Sri Lanka for several generations and who initially characterized himself to me as on
the margins of North American gays, of Indian Americans, and of gay Indian Americans,
often experience a sense of not belonging and are anxious to discover the facts of other gay
South Asian men's lives. Groups in cities of the United States and Canada provide places
within which there is some latitude to explore constructing South Asian ways of being gay.
This movement is not without its problems, one of which is the negotiation of what
authenticates membership. Kumar noted:

India is not a monolithic country by any means. I mean it's more diverse than the U.S. in its
own you, you know, so for anyone to say that, ‘This is the Indian culture.’ I mean, you know,
our family was discriminated against in India because we're Catholic, in some weird ways, so
 but then they discriminate against other people because they're not Catholic, which is sort of
amusing, or they're not in their tribe or they're not in this caste or they're not in whatever. . .
It baffles me.

Similarly, Vijay, born in the United States to Indian immigrants, remarked on this issue
regarding a group he helped to found:

. . .[When w]e first were forming [our group]. . .it was just assumed, ‘Of course. . .all South
Asian gays are going to bond together, because we all have this in common'. . . (. . .) And
now I've come to the point where it's ‘No.’. I mean we're all different people. We're diverse
even within being South Asian and gay, and we don't all need to be. . .best buddies. (. . .)
There is one commonality, yeah. . . .but it doesn't mean we're all gonna band together and
sing ‘Kumbaya’. . . (He laughed.)

Daniel, a 24 year-old recent college graduate, argued that a group he occasionally participated
in overly emphasized a particular construction of being Indian. He said:

[T]here's a tension between the diasporic elements of the group and the ones who grew up
in India. . . I felt the motivation behind that is to keep it focused on India, keep looking
back, . . .all the discussion was around that, and there's such a sort of desire to affirm their
unique identity and, it just seemed so unreal. And, you know I was bringing it up. . .’ This
should be about being gay in America and being South Asian’. . .; the way to go about that
isn't necessarily to affirm your Indianness . . .because that doesn't make life in this society
easier. (. . .) I have no desire to maintain some. . .authenticity that I don't really see as
relevant. I mean I see my culture as being an evolving entity that. . .within this context
incorporates different aspects of living here.

Thus Daniel thought the group was overly nostalgic, and, perhaps unusually, he felt
somewhat constrained about what he could talk about and advocate within it. Nevertheless
such groups provide for many points of recognition that there are, so to speak, people 'just
like me' out there, for example, in South Asian spaces that are dominantly heteronormative
and gay spaces that are hegemonically white. Sankar noted how important it had been to him
to discover another man (through his connection with such a group) who had been born in
the same region of India as Sankar had been, who spoke the same mother tongue and who,
like Sankar, completed graduate work in the same field. Thus, from at least an initial
assumption of commonalities among members, such groups become important arenas for
mutual support as well as a place to air contested notions about identity.17 Thus, such
settings have a double nature, operating conceptually as enclaves with commonalities among
members, where experiences and concerns can be safely shared, but they also become arenas
for contest, places to argue different stances, priorities and points of view.18

Conclusion
In this paper, I have explored complexities at the intersection of ethnicity and gay sexual
orientation within the South Asian diaspora. I have drawn attention to the struggles that
South Asian gay men, as ‘multiply minoritized men’ (Manalansan 1995b: 250) in diaspora,
experience in coming to terms openly with attraction to men, in grappling with numerous
and often conflicting ways of framing identity and in finding meaningful ways of
representing themselves as gay.19 I have drawn on interview narratives mainly concerning
thinking about familial contexts, about wider circles of South Asian friends and
acquaintances and about experience in South Asian gay groups. Numerous dilemmas have
been shown to emerge. These include perceived challenges to the value of rootedness in
one's family and its immediate circle, sometimes interpreted by family members as a threat to
familial duty and responsibility and voiced as inappropriate capitulation to 'Western' or
'American' individualistic identity.

Yet, the narratives reveal these men’s considerable uneasiness with adopting too easily North
American middle-class conceptions of gay identity, true of those who were born or grew up
in the United States and Canada, as well as those who immigrated as adults. The appearance
of numerous South Asian gay groups parallels, of course, the great rise in the past decade or
two of South Asian diasporic organizations of all kinds. This development has occurred in
the context of the dramatic increase in ease and speed of communication among their
members (and of non-members, as well) world-wide by means of global electronic stages on
which ‘the plasticity of the transnational experience’ (Manalansan 1995b: 265), certainly for
middle- and upper-class South Asians, is being shaped and reshaped (see Mannur 2003). Just
as within local South Asian gay groups, similarities and differences in diasporic experiences
are being explored and debated on these electronic stages, and strategies of negotiation and
invention of subjectivities and their representation are explored. I have only suggested in a
preliminary way the influence of growing recognition of, and participation in, some aspects
of global flows. Knowledge of the increasing visibility of queer life in South Asia and
elsewhere in diaspora raises new possibilities and issues for imagining and authenticating
different ways of being gay (or lesbian, bisexual or transgendered) in South Asia and
elsewhere. This is especially so as attention is called to the great variety of cultural
conceptions of same-sex relations in South Asia (e.g. Reddy 2005; Vanita and Kidwai 2000).

An implicit question here has been: What does the narration of some life experiences of
South Asian gay men in diaspora tell us about significant issues in the larger problematic of
the global movement of South Asian people? Some kind of answer (or more likely, a new set
of questions) emerges that draws our attention to interrogating conventional categories of
ethnicity and sexual orientation. For example, the testimony of Akbar, in which he moves
back and forth between aspects of his own and Sankar’s understandings, might be dismissed
as simply inconsistent. Such an interpretation, I have argued, misses the point. I see Akbar’s
experience as one example of the process of imaginative and constructive reformulation of
subjectivity. The men who talked with me have refused to represent the ‘exotic’ at the same
time as they refuse to capitulate to its implicitly opposed category, the ‘domesticated’. They
have resisted the pressure to understand themselves–or to develop a subjectivity–that is built
upon the acceptance of a dichotomy of East and West (in any of its transposed forms, such
as American/Indian). I hope to have provided a glimpse into some of the ways that the men
who spoke with me have actively problematized received notions of identity, ethnicity and
community as they struggle to put together meaningful, rewarding and dignified lives and to
find effective ways to participate in building more just societies.
Notes
1. In using the term 'diaspora' I follow Gayatri Gopinath, who writes: '[Diaspora] is
hardly a given entity or a transparent term but one with an extremely problematical
genealogy inflected by class, gender and heterosexuality. I. . .use the term. . .to refer
to the global networks of affiliation constantly being produced and reproduced along
the lines of race, ethnicity, and/or sexuality' (Gopinath 1996: 125).
2. Parts of the argument and supporting material in this paper have been presented at
several conferences. I thank Maureen Fitzgerald, Aly Remtulla and Brett Williams for
helpful comments on earlier presentations. I am especially grateful to Robert McRuer
for trenchant remarks at the George Washington University South Asia Seminar in
1998 and to Lalitha Gopalan and other members of that Seminar for the probing and
encouraging points they offered that have helped to shape my work. I thank also
Parvati Raghuram for suggestions that have helped to clarify my argument. Finally, I
am indebted to American University for a grant of sabbatical leave, 1997-98, during
which period I began fieldwork.
3. Useful comparative accounts pertaining to queer diasporas in general are found in
collections edited by Cindy Patton and Benigno Sanchez-Eppler (2000) and Arnaldo
Cruz-Malave and Martin F. Manalansan IV (2002); for India in particular see Gayatri
Gopinath (2005) and Ruth Vanita (2002).
4. I acknowledge gratefully the gifts of trust and commitment given to me by the men
who spoke with me. In order to protect their privacy I use pseudonyms for all
participants, and I have in some places altered other identifying details.
5. Notably absent from my participants are men, for example, who work in grocery
stores, the kitchens of restaurants or in low-paying occupations of the service
industry. I also avoided interviewing those who are academic or other kinds of
experts on the topics I was interested in or who saw themselves as spokespersons for
gay, lesbian or bisexual people.
6. In this paper I am not examining differences between gay experience in the United
States and Canada, but instead use simply the phrase ‘North American’ to gloss the
location of my participants as a whole. Canada and the United States clearly evidence
differences in policy regarding official ideologies concerning race and cultural
differences which deserve detailed comparative treatment in regard to the
subjectivities and life experiences of gay men and lesbians. The lawfulness of civil
marriage for same-sex partners in Canada is but one, critical, expression of
differences between the two countries.
7. Only a few men spoke explicitly, for example, of experiences and relations with
blacks, latinos or people of other racial or ethnic minority categories, but neither was
this, I regret to say, a line of inquiry that I directly pursued.
8. See, for example, Shukla’s comparative discussion of race, national origin and official
categories (such as census designations) in Britain and the US (2003: 61-72).
9. I do not have space here to examine the complex subject of the use of racial
categories and of their relation to ethnic categories (see Baumann 1996; Maira 2002).
Particular attention needs to be paid as well to socio-economic class differences and
to the intersections of racial categories and those of sexual orientation (Roy 1998;
Shankar and Srikanth 1998). There is also clearly a need for the study of other sites,
such as coalition-building, gay activist groups where new formations of 'queer',
 'South Asian' and 'Asian' are being hammered out (Kukke and Shah 1999/2000;
Murray 1996; Prashad 1998; Vaid 1999/2000).
10. Some of these men occasionally use the term 'khush', 'happy', to gloss 'gay' and
'lesbian', most often in the names of groups and of Internet sites. Some men thought
the term convenient in not indicating rigid strictures of identity and in suggesting
somewhat open social margins. This usage has the value of connoting gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender statuses loosely, while clearly denoting an origin other than
Anglo-North American.
11. Rani Kawale (2004) usefully explores ‘emotion work’ by South Asian and white
lesbian and bisexual women in negotiating a variety of social scenes in London.
12. The past decade has seen a parallel growth of writings of various kinds and of films,
both in South Asia and elsewhere: fiction (e.g. Parivaraj 1998; Raj Rao 1995, 2003;
Seabrook 1998; Selvadurai 1994); anthologies of fiction, personal narratives and
poetry (e.g. Masala Trois Collective 2003; Merchant 1999, Sukthankar 1999, Vanita
and Kidwai 2000), diasporic film (e.g. Ganatra,1996, 1999; Saran 1999; Wadia 1996);
autobiography (e.g. Khan 1997), periodicals (e.g. in North America: Khush Khayal,
Shamakami, and Trikone Magazine) and other non-fiction writing (e.g. Hall Carpenter
Archives 1989, 1990; Lim-Hing 1994; Maira and Srikanth 1996; Ratti 1993, Seabrook
1999). Internet sites have, of course, proliferated greatly as well.
13. Karen Leonard’s foundational work on Punjabi Mexican Americans in California
carefully documents choices relating to the ‘perception and use of ethnicity’ (1992:
13) in the context of the life course.
14. Sankar's marking of domestic space raises interesting issues concerning the
categorization of spaces as domestic, private, public, etc. and the strategic claiming of
South Asian and South Asian gay spaces in otherwise public spaces, marked
variously as gay, straight, white, ethnic, etc. (see Kawale 2003). This issue, for
example, has been commented upon in the context of the exclusion till recently of
the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Association (SALGA) from the New York India
Day parade (Lessinger 1995: 153; Shukla 2003: 36).
15. Akbar is not alone; there are similar positions expressed by other American-born
participants, for example. There are, as well, South Asian-born participants who see
themselves as staunch individualists (Burkhart 2003: 248-249).
16. Another objection may be that I overlook religious difference. Does it matter that
Akbar is Muslim and that Sankar is Hindu? That is, is a part of Akbar’s feeling of
alienation within South Asian groups a reflection of implicit privileging of
‘Hinduness,’ reflecting simply the likelihood that a majority of members are likely to
come from Hindu backgrounds? I think not. Akbar did not raise this issue; neither
did he seem to hesitate in considering himself, the son of Pakistani immigrants,
'eligible' for inclusion in groups he labels 'Indian'. The larger issue here is that the
construction of Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh, Jain and so on is just as
negotiable as any other category, notwithstanding the frequent, but fallacious,
equation in North America (and elsewhere) of Indian with Hindu.
17. Kawale comments on lesbian and bisexual women's spaces in London: 'The South
Asian participants did not necessarily feel what they wanted to feel in either white or
South Asian spaces on the sceene, and so accessing the scene was not simply a case
of "Now I can be myself" but "How can I be myself?"' (Kawale 2004: 576).
18. Of course, many gay South Asian men have partners of other ethnicities. As noted, I
did not pursue in depth issues of the relation of racial and ethnic categories, but in
 my quite limited observation, racially and ethnically mixed partnerships did not
present any obstacle to participation in South Asian groups (see Roy 1998).
19. I realize that my account participates implicitly in the masculinist neglect of the
mutual definition and elaboration of gay and lesbian subjectivities, an issue
demanding much attention as South Asian and North American patriarchies intersect
and reinforce each other (Gopinath 1997; Puar 1988).

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 Section-IV
Representations: Contestations of/in the Indian
Diaspora
 Representations: Contestations of/in the Indian Diaspora -
Introduction
Parvati Raghuram

This section takes as its central theme the practice of writing, performing and viewing of
texts - plays, films, novels and the ways in which diaspora is invoked through these media.
Media images often form an important conduit for forging and expressing immigrants'
bonds with places and communities which are no longer a part of their day-to-day
experiences. At the same time the media are also used by India to draw together its diaspora.
The chapters in this section explore the complexity of mediated relations between the
diaspora and the homeland. They suggest that media do not simply represent a diaspora but
actively produce diasporic subjectivity both amongst the authors and within audiences. They
further argue that these are complex representations with their own elisions and illusions.

The section opens with a discussion of the staging of a play Internet drawn from
Rabindranath Tagore's oeuvre, particularly his play Raktakarabi/Red Oleander for a Bengali
American audience in the U.S. Esha De’s chapter Re-domesticating Hindu Femininity: Legible
Pasts in the Bengali American Diaspora discusses the performative recontextualisation of a
classical text and its role in creating an affective and an intellectual sense of diasporic
belonging among Bengalis in the U.S. She explores how the reversioning of a classic play
involves a temporal re-appropriation - a reading of Tagore's work for our times. However,
she suggests that the appropriation of the story line valorises certain aspects of Tagore's
writings, most notably his critique of the decimation created through global capitalism and
his humanist understanding of a homeland that is rooted in anti-imperialist sentiments.
However, problematically, this return to the homeland also fixes women as key arbiters of
narratives of homeland and of home-making practices, removing from them the potential
for radical mobility that the original play offers for Indian womanhood. De forcefully argues
that the staging of Internet 'reduces Tagore’s partial self-critique of masculine capital (national,
colonial, Orientalist), from the representational perspective of the interventionist woman, to
an aestheticized nostalgia spatialized in terms of the authentic home, neighbourhood, and
land' (De, this volume).

The performative aspects of film are addressed by Nandini Bhattacharya's chapter Romancing
the Religion: Neoliberal Bollywood's Gendered Visual Repertoire for a Pain-free Globalization.
Bhattacharya focuses on the uneasy relationship between Hinduism and trans-nationalism as
played out in Bollywood cinema. She locates her argument in the popular culture, as it is a
site where diasporic identifications are not merely displayed but also worked through.
Moreover, as Bhattacharya argues film is the paradigmatic medium for producing and
therefore studying South Asian diaspora. It has been a powerful force both in Indian
imaginaries of the diaspora and in diasporic understandings of contemporary India.
Moreover, the growing significance of Bollywood not only in Asia and in the Asian diaspora
but the adoption of its 'winning formula' in films like Moulin Rouge suggests that it's power to
form opinion extends beyond the Asian diaspora. Even amongst critics Bollywood cinema
can sometimes be celebrated as an instance where the third world is a transmitter of a
globally recognised cultural product (Shohat 1997). Bollywood cinema is therefore a key
player in (and product of) a globalising cultural milieu.

Unlike in earlier times, the locations, the narratives and the cinematic gaze offered to the
viewer cannot be seen simply as the making of a celluloid occident (Kaur 2003) but rather as
rooted in the alternative modernities of globalising middle and upper class Indians. In India
'diaspora provides upper-class Indians with a space where they can simultaneously be Indian
and Western, transnational subjects par excellence… The diaspora becomes a central site
where the metropolitan optic is trained, bringing together home and the world within the
same frame' (Moorti 2005: 59). Bhattacharya’s chapter offers a compelling account of the
shifts in the ways nation is narrated in selected Bollywood films and how these versions of
the nation are thoroughly imbricated in the transnational belongings of a few upper-class
Indians located both within India and abroad.

However, as Bhattacharya shows us, Bollywood's products are increasingly imbued with the
privileges of a pain-free globalisation. Unlike in some early Bollywood films, religion is
incorporated into more recent films, not as consciousness-changing pain but is folded into
narratives of propitiation of Gods and Goddesses who bestow wealth on a globalised, often
patriarchal family. Religion and patriarchy are thus brought into interplay to produce a visual
repertoire of a transnational India.

A different offering around pain, gender and text is offered by Sam Naidu in her chapter
Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Towards a Transnational Feminist Aesthetic? Naidu
offers a categorical analysis of the writings of female authors from the Indian diaspora
identifying what she considers to be some of the key characteristics of this literature. First, a
consciously autobiographical approach seems to be a common strand adopted by many
diasporic writers. For some of the authors writing may be considered to have been cathartic,
while for others writing is an inherent part of the imaginative production of subjectivity.
Second, the troubled territory of home - homelands and home-making - and the practices
through which these multiple homes are produced seem for Naidu to be a central
characteristic of such writing. Third, Naidu argues that many of these texts are populated by
strong female imageries, by powerful agentic women whose complex and contradictory lives
are hinted at by the authors. For Naidu, these authors then play a significant role in
overturning images of South Asian women that posit them as helpless victims of a
patriarchal society. And in doing so these texts also unsettle dominant narratives of female
sexuality, body and marriage, which are often otherwise surrounded by a constricting garb of
normative heterosexuality. Naidu suggests that the authors splice together different texts,
myths and legends with autobiographical narratives to produce a rich intertextual field of
ideas. Finally, the work of diasporic writers that Naidu draws upon also question the notion
of diaspora, caught as it is in stories of continuity with a country of origin and of change in
new locations. At its best 'diaspora' is truly undone.

Jaspal Kaur Singh offers a very different reading of one of Naidu's collective of female
diasporic authors - Meena Alexander. For Singh, Alexander's texts, particularly Faultlines and
Shock of Arrival, offer a misreading or at least a limited reading of diaspora. She argues that
the validity of the memory of trauma enunciated by the author is virtually annulled by her
privileged position within Western academy. For Singh, trauma is a too readily available
trope that is appropriated by Alexander, denying the validity of the pain that other diasporics
(such as Singh) have felt when faced with expulsion and flight. As a mobile agent who
moved volitionally, Alexander's migration is constitutive of a whole diaspora of hope, in
contrast to the pain that marks the diaspora of despair experienced by refugees and the
exiled. Moreover, Singh feels that the angst that Alexander's characters express do not make
room for the agentic subject that Naidu on the other hand identifies in the same characters.
For Singh, the versions of femininity on offer in Alexander's writing are too restricted, too
close to the postures of Asian femininity that are available on tap for 'Western audiences'.

These two readings of Alexander's texts show the polysemic nature of the text and the kinds
of identifications that may be possible for audiences - diasporic and otherwise. At its best
these multiple readings of the same text can offer the readers a way of prising open the text,
recognising the contested readings offered by the text. It can offer up a dialogic space
between the author and its multiple readers who are all invited to bring their own
subjectivities to bear on their readings. Moreover, these two reading of Alexander's work
offers us the possibility of recognising a text not just for its authorial strategy, but its
modalities of incorporation by the publication industry, the literary world and by the
academy, i.e. the multiple worlds that a text inhabits. It enables us to move the argument
about Alexander's work away from her alone and towards the conditions of what gets
published and how and whose work gets heard and the responsibilities and dangers of
writing when there are already some postures around Third World women that are
hegemonic.

Bernard Wilson continues the theme of complex female subjectivities (explored by both
Naidu and Singh) in his reading of the final part of K.S. Maniam's trilogy Between Lives.
According to Wilson, Maniam's text traces the complexities of building a postcolonial nation
within the context of a multi-ethnic society. Maniam addresses questions of continuity and
change through the lives of two female characters, who come to embody tradition and
forces of modernity, respectively. For him erasure of the histories of indenture, of the
troubled struggles over land and their reiteration in the tortuous path to modernity provide
the backdrop in which the subjectivities of these women must be understood. The
importance of land (and of landscape) in rooting memory, belonging and claims to the future
of the nation and its representation suggests the 'inseparability of self and country'.
Moreover, this analysis must be located in what Rai and Vadivella Bella in Section 1 (this
volume) identify as the problematic facing diasporic individuals in postcolonialising nations,
where independence movements that spark nationalistic fervour contradictorily exclude
those who often suffered the most from colonialism - those exiled through indenture. Thus,
a resurgent Malay nationalism that is framed with purist notions of ethnicity can be deeply
inimical to Tamils in that country. In Bernard Wilson's reading of these rooting processes,
answers to these conundrums come through an analysis of the different forms of historicity
that are involved in these selective/collective memories. Wilson suggests that the
polymorphous existence of the nation may best 'be managed through reference to Nietzsche’s
three modes of history: remembering historical lessons learned while attempting to forget
past interracial grievances; breaking the chain of colonization but, in response to the threat
to the cultures of developing nations that globalization poses, not severing – but revering –
the disparate links to the origins of cultural and artistic knowledge in this society' (Wilson,
this volume). He suggests that a recognition and appreciation of the roots and the
contributions of different cultures are a necessary part of the process of building a nation.
This theme of the diasporic space as one formulated between an originary culture and a
dispersed transnational belonging is revisited in the last chapter in this volume in a most
interesting way. The chapter posits diasporic identity not in the familiar terrain of migration
shaped by empires old and new, but on how these are reworked through further
displacements. First, the relationship between different empires is hinted at through the
incorporation of Indian migrants into French colonies. Second, through its exploration of
mixed-race dougla identity, the author questions the basis for diasporic affiliation in a world
where identities are increasingly ethnically, nationally and racially interwoven. Through the
medium of Laure Moutoussamy’s Passerelle de vie, (The Bridge of Life), the author of this essay
Brinda Mehta explores the multiple displacements of a dougla woman from Martinique who
is exiled in France. There she meets and finds consolation in her relationship with a German
man. However, the death of a friend reminds the protagonist of the book, Déméta, of the
death of her father, and the pain she felt at her inability to attend his funeral. Moutoussamy
uses this to evoke the pain of biracial identification, displacement and misrecognition. The
unfulfilled desire to belong hinted at through the novel is shaped by the forgetting of
Caribbean diasporics, particularly those who moved to French colonies by an Indian
homeland, by the limited space offered to such identities after decolonisation and the
gendered dimensions of longing and belonging that are erased through male-centred
versions of cultural pluralism. Brinda Mehta's reading of Moutoussamy’s novel and of
Déméta's search for home provides a provocative reminder of the multiplicity of the
diaspora and the incompleteness of the maps of diaspora that are usually offered to us.

The section as a whole focuses on the representations of the diaspora, not as a simple form
of re-presentation but the multiple versions of the Indian diaspora produced by them.
Diasporic literature is thus not only a reflection of diasporic life; it also plays a part in
propagating ideas and ideals that shape diasporic identities. Together these chapters also
move away from thinking of the diaspora as an unproblematic or celebratory space but one
that is problematically constructed at the intersection between the imaginaries, policies and
politics of varying actors, including, especially the inhabitants of the ‘Indian diaspora’.

References
Kaur, Ravinder. 2003. ‘Viewing the West through Bollywood: a celluloid Occident in the
making’, Contemporary South Asia, 11(2), 199-209.
Moorti, Sujata. 2005. ‘Uses of the diaspora: Indian popular culture and the NRI dilemma’,
South Asian Popular Culture, 3 (1): 49–62
Shohat, E. 1997. ‘Post-Third Worldist Culture: Gender, Nation, and the Cinema’, in Jacqui
Alexander & Chandra Mohanty (eds.), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic
Futures, pp. 183-209. London: Routledge.
 18
Re-domesticating Hindu Femininity: Legible Pasts in the
Bengali American Diaspora

Esha Niyogi De

‘Diasporas,’ writes Khachig Tololyan in the inaugural issue of the American journal by that
name, ‘are emblems of transnationalism because they embody the question of borders’
(Tololyan 1991: 6). Whereas the nation-state is imagined in terms of bounded stability—as ‘a
land, a territory, a place that functions as the site of homogeneity, equilibrium, integration . .
. [and] domestic tranquility’—diasporas are recognized and experienced as the ‘Others of the
nation-state’ (Tololyan 1991: 6). The implication of Tololyan’s observation is that, although
historically the term ‘diaspora’ referred to people’s dispersion from homelands (primarily
Jews’, Armenians’, and Greeks’) in our world of transnational capital, the diasporic cannot be
understood nor confined in the terms of geographical displacements and re-settlements. To
gain a comprehensive understanding of the contemporary phenomena of diasporans, we
must focus on the practical and the intellectual conditions which arise from existing at a
distance from the (imagined) tranquility of home and national belonging. The study of
diaspora, then, must theorize in what ways border-crossers negotiate territorial barriers and
otherness, and how they re-conceive belonging in relation to experiences of alienation. As
Tololyan elaborates, ‘diaspora’ should be seen to encompass a wide variety of national-
border-crossers including ‘immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest worker, exile community,
overseas community, ethnic community’ (Tololyan 1991: 4). This broad-ranging perspective
alerts us that what we recognize to be diasporic consciousness emerges under various
conditions of transnational mobility and perhaps also varies according to these conditions
and conjunctures.

Building on Tololyan’s pioneering vision, this chapter explores the significance of the
changes I find between two generations of male expatriate Indian imaginations. I explore
how, between these generations, imaginations of communal belonging and home-making
alter in response to the alienation imposed by state and capitalist agendas. Specifically, I
study the significance of the changes made to a woman-centered anti-capitalist allegorical
play written for both Indian and Euro-American audiences by the activist thinker
Rabindranath Tagore—Raktakarabi/Red Oleanders (1924)—in an adaptation of the play
recently performed at a Bengali American community event in California (2005). Placing this
adaptation within the contours of that community event as a whole, I use it as a lens through
which to consider the inter-relations and the contrasts between bourgeois male expatriate
Indian imaginations born under, respectively, colonial globalism and contemporary
neoliberal transnationalism. Elsewhere I have emphasized that it is important to take a
genealogical view of the interrelated eras of South Asia’s globalization, while we also eschew
periodization (see Sarker and De 2002). Along those lines, this chapter studies the gender
implications of the intertextualities between the two eras of Indian transnational mobility.
My point of studying these politics of intertextuality is not to suggest that the contemporary
adaptation somehow mistranslates and distorts the original Tagore text, or that I, as an
academic, command the informed objectivity to narrate Tagore’s correct meaning. To the
contrary, I would maintain that, being a bourgeois immigrant Indian woman myself, I am
implicated in the sociocultural processes from which these changes emerge. Furthermore, I
see in the adaptation an accurate presentation of one core idea of the Tagore play, a
challenge to masculinist capital in the light of a sustainable anti-capitalist and woman-
centered form of communal belonging and home-making. What I also find is that while
some aspects of Raktakarabi and allied expatriate writings by Tagore seem to be legible and
development-worthy in this and similar bourgeois Indian immigrant contexts, others appear
to have become blurred. Looking from a feminist perspective, I note that the adaptation on
hand partially alters the role of the female protagonist. This blurs the self-critical and
dialectical struggles against masculinist capital and territorial governance characterizing
gender relations in the Tagore play. While the adaptation commemorates Tagore’s challenge
to global capitalism, that is, it reworks the challenge in a way that smoothens out its
gendered complexities and internal dialectics. Seen another way, the challenge itself seems to
be becoming canonized: it tends towards representing a dreamed-up ‘consensus’ (See
Guillory 1992: 282) about the valuable way to belong (to India) and to be (Indian) in a
racialized capitalist world.

My objective here is to retrospectively reflect on what conclusions we can draw from

discontinuities and continuities such as these in the way bourgeois Indians challenge
racialized borders and re-conceive belonging in the consecutive eras of India’s globalization.
The overarching question is: could a genealogical exploration such as this provide one
explanation for the heightening of homogenous (i.e., imaginarily consensual) patriarchal and
communalist conceptions of homes and belongings among contemporary Indian immigrants
to the US?

Belongings and Femininities in the Routes of Global Capital

Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd (1997: 11) have noted that transnational capital characteristically
accumulates through the ‘differentiation of labor markets, material resources, consumer
markets, and production operations’ (my italics). We are able to parse this concept of
capitalist differentiation by drawing on Marxist geographer Edward Soja’s commentary. In
Soja’s view, advanced capitalism produces and governs social space through a variety of
structures that fragment, homogenize, and hierarchically arrange human lives (Soja 1989: 92).
In the eras both of colonialism and neoliberalism, world markets have homogenized and
fragmented capital and labor--on the basis of race, class, and region—in ways that directly
affect post-colonial Indian border-crossers. Since at least the mid-nineteenth century, Indian
bourgeoisie, for example, have been traversing or settling within territories dominated by the
linguistic and racial capital of their colonizers/ex-colonizers. While being homogenized as
‘others’ within racial hierarchies, they also have been gaining social and economic advantages
from the fragmented Euro-American routes of modernization by virtue of their command
of English and valuable modern education. What I explore below through my reading of
intertextual imaginations is in what ways and to what effect Indian expatriate and overseas
people’s perspectives on borders and on belonging may be altering as the character of global
differentiations alters between the colonial and the neoliberal eras of world-market-
formation.

As scholars of migration frequently observe, re-creations of belonging and habitation go

hand-in-hand with experiences of borders and otherness. In the words of Ahmed et al.
(2003) such processes of home-building or ‘“homing” . . . depends on the reclaiming or
reprocessing of habits, objects, names, and histories that have been uprooted—in migration,
displacement or colonization.’ In these reclamations, the affective and intellectual ‘qualities
of home’ and belonging, which encompass memory and nostalgia, are at least as important if
not more important than ‘concrete materialites’ (Ahmed et al. 2003: 9). At the risk of some
generalization, we should begin by noting that the conceptual charge of reclaiming belonging
can and has been met in two broadly opposite ways, both of which involve gender relations.

Experiences of otherness catalyze, on the one hand, a teleological restlessness to reclaim

territories—at home, in the land—by way of suppressing and superseding the problems of
borders. To use the words of Rey Chow, the ‘transient’ wants to give way to the ‘permanent’
in the diasporic consciousness (Chow 1993: 15). This teleological drive for an integrated
domestication tends also to be utilized by territorial-nationalist and globalist state agendas
both in host and in home countries. Under contemporary neoliberalism, for example,
bourgeois immigrant Indians are invited to feel stably affiliated and/or emotionally at home
(as full-fledged economic participants, property owners, community members) at once by
the American and the Indian nation-states and their respective markets, and by imagined
nations that are spread across state boundaries (e.g. of Hindutva or Khalistan). Even though
under colonial capital the conditions of transnational mobility significantly differed,
expatriate Indian writings (such as Tagore during his travels in America) likewise accented
the telos of homing and permanence in response to the uprootings brought on by
colonization. In short, one way in which bourgeois Indians have crossed national borders in
these consecutive global eras is by learning to reclaim homogenous territories that are
defined in binary terms against otherness.

By now it is a theoretical truism that this teleological drive for a stable belonging typically
construes the pure (bourgeois) woman as its symbolic embodiment. She is imagined to be
both the affective and the practical worker who marks the ‘boundary’ (Gopinath 2003) of
the (patriarchal) people’s authentic national spirit and tranquil home. In fact, Annanya
Bhattacharjee’s important studies of the roots of domestic violence among contemporary
bourgeois Indian Americans clarify that, in the US, the diasporic Indian home inscribes
multiple and interlocked boundaries. These are imposed simultaneously by postcolonial
Indian family values, the racially biased US immigration system, and a reactionary cultural
nationalism. For the Indian American woman, being at home means conforming to the
‘heterosexual and patriarchal family, . . . the extended ethnic community . . . [and] to their
nations of origin, often shaped by nationalist movements and histories of colonialism’
(Bhattacharjee 1997).

In contrast to this search for a permanent home and land is a non-teleological process of
crossing. This wants to challenge and to dismantle borders in the very course of experiencing
them, and even partially complying with their dictates. This second kind of crossing not only
wants to recognize and to work against territorial boundaries. It conceptualizes and
synthesizes non-bordered forms of belonging to contest and to rethink self-insulating forms
of identification and difference in the light of these alternatives. In other words, for
postcolonial people who move in a world pervaded with coercive or violent uprootings,
affective/intellectual re-conceptions of authentic community and domesticity (how
sustainably to be with others and to be at home) can acquire an emancipatory charge.
‘Responsible’ domesticity, notes Rosemary Marangoly George (1998), very well can be a site
of ‘countertheorization.’ Through it and in its light such ‘seemingly “larger” and unrelated
institutions’ (George 1998: 3) as coercive nation-states and masculinist transnational capital
can be dismantled. Along similar lines, R. Radhakrishnan argues that we must be attentive to
the political potential in the notion ‘authentic identity’. On occasion, the emotional/rational
claim of authenticity—comprising ‘choice, relevance, and a feeling of rightness . . . [and]
appropriate[ness]’ (Radhakrishnan 1996: 162)—constitutes a multiply rooted ethical critique
of ‘inauthentic’ (territorial) notions of domestic belonging and communal being.

It is my contention that central to responsible reclamations of belonging and authenticity is a

radical reconception of how the woman acts in and relates to her home and community. In
the teleological border-crossing, the relationship of the woman to patriarchal and masculinist
notions of community and home is isormorphic. In the anti-teleological crossing, on the
other hand, the woman’s relationship with masculinist structures of togetherness grows
tension-filled, dialectical, and partially interventionist. The next section of this chapter will
show that what I have just described as the opposite ways of reclaiming belonging while
negotiating borders are not discrete but overlapping. I will conclude by considering under
what global conditions of fragmentation and homogeneity one way of reclamation gains
precedence over the other in the bourgeois Indian diaspora.

Legibility and Canonicity: Diasporic Tagores in the Eras of Globalization

In the Bengali American adaptation, performative vignettes of Tagore’s Raktakarabi and
other Tagore songs and dances are placed within a romantic farce called Internet set in
contemporary Kolkata. While the plotline directly involves the Tagore play by portraying
that a group of friends are rehearsing the play for an amateur neighborhood production, the
farce as a whole is thoroughly intertextual with the theme of Raktakarabi and allied expatriate
writings by Tagore. In brief, Internet presents a middle-class Bengali family’s efforts to
arrange an upwardly mobile NRI (non-resident Indian) match for their daughter through
advertisements on the internet. Being deeply committed to preserving her native/Bengali
roots, and to her loyalty to an upright and studious boyfriend who also is rooted in Kolkata,
the daughter Nandini vigorously rejects the entire line-up of NRI suitors and family
members. The line-up are caricatures of NRI’s, shown as globe-trotting consumerists
completely uprooted from Indian moral values and social practices. While this line-up turns
out to be a hoax set up by the genial dada/big brother figures of the friends’ and family
circle—in order to safeguard Nandini’s emotional and moral rootedness and to disillusion
her parents about global upward mobility—the happy resolution is that after all Nandini
herself is on her way to becoming an authentic (rather than false) NRI in the US. Having
won a prestigious academic scholarship, her Bengal-rooted yet modern-science-educated
boyfriend prepares to marry and depart with her to California. Together they set out to
establish an authentic form of Indian homing and belonging in the US diaspora.
Throughout the stage performance I attended, the affective qualities of this process of
homing in a comfort zone of Bengali authenticity were evoked with powerful resonances.
Replete with such familiar sights as the friends collectively consuming street snacks (jhalmuri
or spicy puffed rice) as they bantered with each other, the stage took on the nostalgic hue of
a Kolkata neighborhood adda (customary chat circle of intimate friends). These sights and
smells of corporeal comfort aided in breaking down the fourth wall and eliciting muffled
responses from the audience. They were encompassing the audience in the erotic charge of
collectively remembering how the customs of orality and intimacy back there were being
revivified by the Bengali American addas out here. Like all such nostalgia-evoking immigrant
community gatherings, the performance constituted a ‘place-making practice’ serving to
‘anchor’ the diasporic consciousness against the anxieties of global migration and social
displacement (Ray 2004: 5, 12). Moreover, the beautifully enacted vignettes from the works
of the popular bourgeois Bengali icon Tagore specifically empowered Bengali ethnicity at
this gathering. As critics emphasize, such ‘reinvigorations’ (Katrak 2002) of ethnic
community and identity through gatherings and customary performances sustain Indian
immigrants’ participation in the public spaces of the American state (Katrak 2002: 77). Like
all other immigrants of color inhabiting those public spaces, Indians also are ‘produced’
(Brodkin 2000) and utilized as a particular race-and-class category by American
trans/national capital (Brodkin 2000: 239); specifically, they have to cope with the subtle
tensions of being a ‘racially indeterminate’ professional bourgeoisie (Ray 2004: 9). All in all,
the adda-resonant and Tagore-centered performance of communal/domestic belonging
invoked by the staging of Internet was interrupting the ‘gravitational pull [of] the telos of
productivity and development’ (Chakrabarty 2004: 204) at the same time that the narrative
portrayed mobility (Nandini’s and her partner’s) along the route of global capital. Seen
another way, the affective framework of the production reinforced the narrative’s argument
against global productivity and consumerism by opening up a nostalgic interval of
community in Bengali immigrant lives.

So, which strands of Raktakarabi and related expatriate writings by Tagore did Internet
decipher and develop, and which did it find illegible? In my view, the adaptation continued
and appropriated two aspects of Tagore’s approach to capital and gender while it forgot
another crucial aspect and rendered it opaque.

Both conceptually and affectively, the performance of Internet remembered and

recontextualized Raktakarabi’s challenge to masculinist state and global agendas. Albeit
working within the farcical romantic mode, the play itself recuperates Tagore’s way of
leveling this challenge from the standpoint of a sustainable, woman-centered form of
belonging to a community and being at home. What it also pulls out from Tagore’s
postcolonial voice is the contradictory pursuit of a permanent cultural anchor, an
authentically feminine community and home.

Like the contemporary farce, Tagore’s play centers upon Nandini’s namesake, a young
woman portrayed to have been forcibly brought into the ‘Land of Yaksha’ (the spirit who
guards gold in the depths of the earth in Hindu mythology) (Tagore 1924/1961). In this
dystopian land, Nandini (whose name literally means ‘the giver of happiness’) finds a King
who governs from behind an iron mesh, overseeing accumulation of gold that is dug out of
the depths of the earth; she encounters men who are known by numbers rather than names
incessantly toiling to dig the gold, or drowning their exhaustion in alcohol; and she meets a
Professor who cultivates scientific knowledge that is deemed useful for the state’s agendas.
Like her reincarnation’s, Tagore’s Nandini’s words, action, and affective appeal interrupt and
challenge the telos of accumulation and coercive governance. She not only is the most
colorful and erotically charged presence on an otherwise ‘baroque’ landscape strewn with
‘ruins’ bearing the ‘imprint’ of the progressive accumulation of capital (Benjamin 1977: 180).
She also is named as the embodiment of a time emptied of the ‘baggage of need’ (darkarer
bojha) or instrumental reason (Tagore 1924/1961: 12). As the Professor puts it, her visits rip
apart his ‘net’ of goal-driven knowledge work (Tagore 1924/1961: 12). Moreover, both
Nandini and her absent companion, Ranjan (literally, ‘the act of giving happiness’) are
portrayed to be people of the road resonating with the itinerant Vaishnava and sahajiya poets
of Tagore’s rural Bengal. The only one with whom Nandini interacts in Yaksha Land is yet
another sahajiya figure, the madman Bishu who hovers on the fringes. Thus the road and its
fringe people, with the woman at the center, stake a space-time that is at odds with the telos
of organised accumulation pursued by the meshed-in governor, the instrumental-knowledge-
netted Professor, and the encrypted gold-diggers. The play closes on a hopeful note with
Nandini leading a struggle joined by the King himself, the Professor, and a host of other
inhabitants of Yaksha Land. Collectively, they strike out to break down the coercive
structures of state governance and accumulation, striving to re-build a human community in
which all can belong.

That this play was conceived as a challenge to the borders between native and other imposed
by capitalist nation-states is evident not only from Tagore’s decision to choose this as one of
the few plays to translate and publish in Europe and America (as Red Oleanders, 1924), but
even more obviously from his English commentary targeted to Euro-American audiences. In
a fiery elucidation of the work, written in the Manchester Guardian in response to the charge of
western audiences that the piece was too obscure, Tagore states that while Nandini is the
play’s only ‘really individual person . . ., “ she is pursued by an “abstraction”’ (represented by
the King and the Professor) (Tagore 1924/1961: 123). This abstract template of existence
rests on such organizing principles of modern knowledge and capital as the ‘curiosity to
analyse and know,’ the ‘objectification’ of passion, the intention to professionalize society
(i.e., to subject sociality to methodological discipline), and the drive to ‘coerce and acquire’
fuelled by a ‘hungry purpose’ (i.e., the drive to possess and to use the world as an instrument
of self-gratification) (Tagore 1924/1961: 120-121). These principles coalesce, according to
Tagore, in such quintessential products of the European civilization as the League of
Nations and its transnational counterparts, the Asian colonies which uphold European
national ‘barriers [of] . . . race pride’ (Tagore 1924/1961: 121). Provocatively invoking the
neo-Kantian vocabulary of the autonomous individual (no doubt appropriated from the
German and British Romanticisms in which he was well-versed) Tagore pits the ‘individual’
woman Nandini’s prophetic vision of a non-bordered human belonging against these
principles of homogenization and differentiation driving European capital.

In a significant way, this critique of masculine state and colonial capital in Rakakarabi/ Red
Oleanders falls within the purview of the migratory and diasporic consciousness theorized by
such scholars as Khachig Tololyan and Sara Ahmed et. al. It responds to experiences of
colonial alienation and uprooting by challenging territorial borders/‘barriers’ through re-
conceiving a sustainable (feminine) home and belonging. As such, this play’s conceptual
framework overlaps with such other well-known expatriate works as Tagore’s Nationalism
and Personality lectures delivered in the US. As is customary to expatriate imaginations,
Tagore’s ‘perspective’ on home and host (native and foreign) spaces ‘shifts’ and interrelates
in specific ways in such writings (Kumar 2004: xiv). These works manifest at least two
contradictory shifts typical to the uprooted consciousness.

On the one hand, these writings accent Tagore’s critique of the native-foreign/self-other
binary produced by nation formations in the west, in India, and elsewhere in Asia. Not only
in Raktakarabi/ Red Oleanders but elsewhere in expatriate writings, the capitalist nation-state
and colony both are repeatedly depicted as driven by a muscular and public rationality to
which the woman-as-an-individual and her authentic home present potential alternatives. A
noteworthy example of the latter, which obviously prefigures Nandini, is the portrayal of
‘woman’ in Tagore’s American lecture by that name (Tagore 1917). In this lecture, Tagore
depicts the ideal woman-centered ‘home’ as the opposite of the rational space of the ‘office’
which, according to him, characterizes a modern civilization ‘based upon nationalism’
(Tagore 1917:180). Moreover, he posits that it is the ‘responsibility’ of the truly individual
woman to inaugurate the ‘next civilization based . . . upon world-wide social cooperation . . .
upon spiritual ideals of reciprocity, and not upon economic ideals of efficiency’ (Tagore
1917: 182).

What these words reveal, on the other hand, is that while Tagore’s expatriate voice dissents
with nation and imperialist capital, contradictorily it shifts towards accenting the existential
angst of a male subject socially uprooted by colonization. It restlessly strives to reclaim the
symbolic capital of a homogenous Indian home and community whose boundary is marked
by the authentically moral woman. Similarly, Raktakarabi/ Red Oleanders at times adopts a
binary Orientalist-Romantic view of the authentic Indian home/community in which the
woman becomes isomorphic with self-exoticized masculine and patriarchal conceptions
Feminizing India’s supposedly superior moral philosophy of love, for example, Tagore
himself states in his English commentary that the play reveals how the last ‘treasure house’
of this pure notion of love is the heart of the (Indian) woman. He claims that none other
than she is able to bring back authentic human community to the ‘desolated’ world pervaded
by ‘utilitarian’ modern man and his bordered rational nation (Tagore 1924/1961: 123). No
doubt, Tagore’s own experiences of being exoticized in the international circuit as a ‘minor
canon’ of Oriental literature during and after winning the Nobel Prize (1913) exacerbates his
quest for self-Orientalized capital in this and similar writings.

As my description above illustrates, Internet recontextualizes, through artful intertextual

moves, Raktakarabi’s challenge to transnational capital. It sets within the framework of
contemporary globalism Tagore’s attack on the ruins of human space and time under the
system of colonial capitalism, specifically the system of natural-resource-extraction governed
by the techne (Foucault 1984) of accumulating wealth at a metropolitan center. The space-time
of the colonial capitalist state is aptly transformed into that of a global consumerism which
produces the ruined human beings depicted as NRI caricatures. An even more subtle re-
contextualization of Tagore’s attack is the portrayal that cyberspace has called up these ruins
of the human. In effect, Internet challenges the contemporary capitalist phenomenon of the
‘universal mediatization of life’ through which ‘mass is overtaken by forces of speed’ (Chow
1995: 170). The work nicely demonstrates how the phenomena of speed and virtuality
decimate the individual and collective ‘human body—with its capacity for consciousness,
concentration, and voluntary memory’ (Chow 1995: 170). As such, the intellectual/affective
revivification of place and home in contrast to speedy upward global mobility takes on an
emancipatory charge. Centering upon the colorfully reincarnated Nandini and her nostalgic
Tagore performances, which also spotlight her non-consumerist and Bengal-rooted
boyfriend playing the role of the madman Bishu, the play’s invocation of authenticity
certainly interrupts and criticizes Indian transnational mobility. The performance as a whole
created for the Indian community a site of belonging together and being at home in an
interval/respite of bourgeois American public life characterized by speed and atomization,
on the one hand, and subtle reinforcements of center-and-margin (of race and social mores)
on the other. Clearly, what Internet also revives and emphasizes—despite the superficial
gender equality amidst its Indian professional audience—is the strand of self-Orientalist
Indianness (pitted in a binary way against the western capitalist ‘other’) in Raktakarabi’s
depiction of femininity and community.

What then does the contemporary adaptation find to be illegible in Tagore’s expatriate
conceptualization of borders and belonging? Moreover, what might this unreadability have
to do with other aspects of Indian bourgeois diasporic consciousness under
transnationalism?

The one crucial strand of the Tagore work that both the text and the performance of
Internet fail to decipher is the (partial) interventionist role played by the woman (-as-an-
individual) in reconstructing communal belonging. It canonizes (i.e., dreams up a consensus
about) the way to recontextualize the Tagore work—and similar migratory writings—within
contemporary transnationalism by re-domesticating the interventionist woman in a patriarchal
home and community. Reworking narrative and image, it metaphorically brings Tagore’s
woman-of-the-road, portraying a radical mobility, back into a home that is isomorphic with
the dominant group identity (familial, clan-located, national).

Two crucial alterations amply illustrate this intertextual and inter-generational canonization
of gender relations. First, while Internet’s Nandini repudiates the social and ethical uprooting
enforced on her home and community by western colonial capital, her performance of this
repudiation is directed and master-minded by the paternal figures of the neighborhood and
the family (the dada/big brother of the adda and an uncle band together to stage the parade
of false NRI’s). The upshot of this conflation is that the (unconcluded) gender dialectic in
Tagore’s conception—which presents the feminine prophet of a non-bordered community
as the antithesis of masculine statism and accumulation (represented foremost by the King
of Yaksha Land)—is suppressed. The new Nandini’s interests harmonize with the patriarchal
figures’. Notably, it is conflated with the big brother’s of the homosocial adda who also plays
the role of King in the vignettes from Raktakarabi (on stage, this role was performed by the
dramaturge, an established professional). Furthermore, this patriarchal reclamation of
Raktakarabi’s feminine dialectic—which in Tagore’s work is antithetical to the instrumental
‘office’-governed and border-enforcing state—is spearheaded by no other than a
heterosexual male technocrat. It is as if Raktakarabi’s scientist Professor, whose instrumental
knowledge is denounced because it enables the rational machinery of accumulation,
reappears as the new Nandini’s future NRI spouse. This potential technocrat commands the
marketable knowledge to immigrate and claim citizenship rights in a global Northern nation-
state. Note also that—being romanticized as a non-consumerist—this character steps into
the shoes of Tagore’s Bishu in the vignettes from Raktakarabi. In effect, this masquerade by
the male Indian technical professional contains and normalizes the dialectical consciousness
of that metaphorical ‘madman’ on the fringes of capital.
All in all, while Internet reinvigorates (affectively and intellectually) the Bengali ethnic
community’s challenge to global displacement, at the same time it contains challenge within
a self-righteous schema of patriarchal collective identity. It does so through reducing
Tagore’s partial self-critique of masculine capital (national, colonial, Orientalist), from the
representational perspective of the interventionist woman, to an aestheticized nostalgia
spatialized in terms of the authentic home, neighborhood, and land. What the iconography
of stage props at the performance revealed is that these patriarchal territories also are
imagined to be quintessentially Hindu.

Three parallely placed images on the stage, which represented the living room of Nandini’s
home in Kolkata, sketched a narrative of Bengali heritage that extended into other strands of
the programme. On stage, a Tagore portrait was placed in a balanced order with another
portrait of Swami Vivekananda and a batik painting of the goddess Durga. This iconic
schema semiotically entwined with other strands outside the performance. The event as a
whole, which included devotional Odissi dance numbers, was a fund-raiser for the erection
of a temple and center for a Hindu missionary organization (Bharat Sevasram Sangha). The
principal, saffron-clad speaker, from the American chapter of the mission, waxed eloquent
about how such community events and sites (i.e., the proposed temple) educate the second
generation youth in their ‘Indian heritage’ at the same time that they are becoming models of
achievement in American schools and workplaces. He rounded out the speech by leading the
audience in chants of ‘Bande Mataram.’ As such, the play’s iconographic framework was
conjoining with these other elements of the programme to invoke two key signifiers of the
contemporary Hindutva movement. One is the saffron-clad holy leader. Foremost
among such leaders, especially in the American diaspora, is the celebrated exponent of
Hinduism at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, Swami Vivekananda; by presenting
Hinduism as a monolithic ‘rational and masculine’ faith (Lal 1999: 157) whose superiority lay
in its (modern) ‘tolerance,’ (Basu et. al. 1993: 8) Vivekananda had won over the first cast of
western devotees. The other is Bankim Chatterjee’s hymn, Bande Mataram, which has come
to map the ‘magical wholeness’ (Sarkar 2001: 279) of the Hindu motherland in
fundamentalist narratives both in India and the diasporas.

In a nutshell, the semiotic and rhetorical resonances between the performance and the rest
of the programme suggest that Tagore and his work were being adapted into a teleological
narrative. This attempted to reclaim and integrate the ‘heritage’ of Bengal and India into a
mystical Hindu fundamentalist territory, implicitly defined in binary terms against an other.
Since all such mappings of Hindutva belonging are marked by an imagined ‘thousand-year-
old struggle of Hindus and Muslims’ (Basu et. al 1993: 2) it is not surprising that the inimical
Muslim hovers on other side of this group’s boundary. Not only do the cyber networks of
the Bengali bourgeois community of Southern California at times join voice with the
American Christian right in profiling the Islamist terrorist (in binary opposition to the
supposed democratic tolerance of enlightened Hindu Indians), on and off the internet,
Bengali intellectual history is reinvented in dichotomous terms. For example, while such
(Nobel-endowed) intellectual celebrities as Amartya Sen and Tagore himself are represented
within the telos of a triumphal Hindu history of tolerance and reason, they are so reclaimed
by casting to the historical margin such other relatively ‘crude’ Bengali writers as the
Anarchist Muslim intellectual and poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam. It is arguable that the
marginalization of Bangladeshi immigrants (many of whom are merchants or working class
people) by professional Bengali Indians both in South California and elsewhere in the US
colors this class-based communalist prejudice leveled against such a foremost voice of
modern Bangla literature as Nazrul.

By now, it is of course widely accepted by scholars that Indian diasporas in the US and
Europe are showing strong trends for Hindu fundamentalist revisions of the cultural past.
My point of this study is to emphasize one key factor contributing to this escalation of
fundamentalist nationalism. This is that radical and self-critical approaches to gender
relations within the modern ‘Indian’ family, home, and community--which had emerged
from the dialectic of decolonization--are being reinvented and canonized by historical
memory under contemporary global capital. Specifically, what are getting written out are the
elements of male self-critique and feminine autonomy that permeated the more radical
decolonial strands of nationalist imagination, such as Tagore’s. As I noted at the start of this
chapter, my overarching contention is that this erasure and homogenization of self-challenge
has to do with the way that transnational capital, and Indians’ mobility within its routes, has
altered between the colonial and the neoliberal capitalist era. I conclude by elaborating this
contention.

In Conclusion: Indian Belonging and Gender in the Eras of Global Capital

Between these eras, the differential character of transnational capital has altered in ways that
have changed the implications of bourgeois Indian diasporic mobility. In Tagore’s era, the
differential mode of production and consumption was ‘discoordinated’ (Lowe and Lloyd
1997:14). On the one hand, colonial capital defined sharp borders of class, ‘religion, culture,
language, and especially race’ (Lowe and Lloyd 1997: 14). Expatriate Indian bourgeoisie were
encountering flagrant racialization, comprising both a developmental and an exoticist
vocabulary. Because of the politics surrounding the Nobel award to a person from the
colony, Tagore’s experience of these border-enforcing languages was particularly acute. On
the other hand, colonial capital amassed in an uncoordinated way by maintaining and
utilizing non-capitalist ‘historical temporalities . . . [and] indigenous social forms’ (Lowe and
Lloyd 1997:14). All emerging-modern Indians experienced these discoordinated spaces and
times. However, such critical intellectuals as Tagore were self-consciously attempting, even
though with partial success, to look across cultural times and spaces in the endeavor to find
ways to think against the dual formations of imperial and orthodox national capital. As my
account above suggests, Raktakarabi speaks to this endeavor.

There is no doubt that contemporary neoliberal transnationalism revives and utilizes selected
colonialist borders such as those around development, race, and religion. Nonetheless, its
novel flexible forms of accumulating capital and differentiating labor are comparatively
better coordinated than the colonialist in their teleology. As Jean and John Comaroff (2005)
point out, the ‘autonomic impulse’ of neoliberal capitalism at the millennium is to
decontextualize and distantiate bourgeois knowledge producers and global consumers from
‘place and its sociomoral pressures’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2005: 182). This means that
both ‘organic’ solidarities as well as the tensions of postcolonial place—such as ‘the
workings of power, the meaning of politics and [of critical] national belonging’ (Comaroff
and Comaroff 2005: 183)—have become blurred, ‘even spectral.’
Precisely neoliberal capital’s production of autonomous diasporic Indianness, which makes
the individual isomorphic with collective identity, accounts for the containment of the
challenge to capital which I have studied in this essay. What happens in the Tagore
adaptation, then, is that the gendered self-critical challenge to transnational capital turns into
an erotically charged specter of permanence. The feminized and authentically Indian home is
dreamed up for an enchanted moment of decontextualized affect. Such affective specters
largely help to reaffirm both men and women, in this and similar diasporic Indian contexts,
in the collective pursuit of an essentialist Hindu bourgeois patriarchal (upward) mobility.

References
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Longman.
Benjamin, Walter. 1977. The Origin of German Drama. London: Verso.
Bhattacharjee, Annanya. 1997. ‘The Public/Private Mirage: Mapping Homes and
Undomesticating Violence Work in the South Asian Immigrant Community’, in M.
Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds.), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial
Legacies, Democratic Futures, pp. 308-329. New York: Routledge.
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27(2): 237-256.
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Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2005. ‘Millenial Capitalism and the Culture of
Neoliberalism’, in Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud (eds.), The Anthropology of
Development and Globalization, pp. 177-187. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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Reader, pp. 239-56. New York: Pantheon Books.
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1-20. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press.
Gopinath, Gayatri. 2003. ‘Nostalgia, Desire, Diaspora: South Asian Sexualities in Motion’, in
Ahmed Sara et al. (eds.), Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, pp.
136-156. Oxford: Berg.
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the North American Hindu Diaspora’, Diaspora, 8 (2): 137-171.
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The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital, pp. 1-32. Durham: Duke University
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Radhakrishnan, R. 1996. Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
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Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg.
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(1): 3-7.
 19
Romancing Religion: Neoliberal Bollywood’s Gendered Visual
Repertoire for a Pain-free Globalization

Nandini Bhattacharya

I first began work on this essay in the fall of 2003, when the Bharatiya Janata Party
government was in power in India. For a while I had been pondering the relationship
between the latest Bollywood films and politics in India, making note of Bollywood’s self-
refashioning in an era of ‘militant Hindutva [which] seeks to homogenize India’s multi-
religious society into its neo-fascist image.’1 Probing such refashioning led to examining how
gender ideology is a primary modality in which ethnic and religious nationalisms and
violence are lived within the Bollywood visual repertoire as well as in neo-liberal India.2

At its inception, however, my inquiry had assumed a singular and unilateral connection
between Bollywood’s redistilled imagery and the BJP/Hindutva-specific phenomenon. After
October 2004, with the toppling of the BJP government from central power, I feared I was
an author in search of an argument. However, sadly in real terms, this state of rhetorical
homelessness was shortlived. The films kept coming, and they retained that modern neo-
nationalist touch.

The paired logic of globalization and neo-liberalism as new economic policies in India
started to become evident as a material backdrop for the paired imagistic of a ubiquitous
culture of representation and representation of culture – the Indian nation and the
Bollywood film – which has marked and subtended Indian national and diasporic life.
Richard Falk writes of global neoliberalism that ‘our future is being primarily shaped by
numerous interactions among the many varieties of technocratic globalist, social reactionary
and mean-spirited traditionalists, a strange interplay between advanced sectors of electronic
capital (for example, Bill Gates’ Microsoft) and various backlash phenomena associated with
a variety of nationalist, ethnic and religious extremisms’ (Falk in Hovden and Keene 2003:
93). The triad of globalism, neoliberalism and the NRI also subtend the recent Bollywood
imagistic of ‘Indian' gender and family identity as simultaneously late capitalist and
ethnocentric. Moreover, the refiguring of global ‘Indianness’ as capitalist, paternalist and also
predominantly Hindu ethnocentric evidences the truth of an emerging scholarly perspective
that religious nationalisms and fundamentalisms are fundamentally economic and political,
not religious phenomena. This is especially evident in the NRI-conscious and NRI-oriented
films of the nineties and early twenty-first century.

In contrast with Bollywood of the 70s and 80s, where gendered religiosity took a far more
non-state or anti-state form, the nineties’ NRI-oriented Bollywood film has regenerated piety
as neoliberal social deterministic reorganization: the domestic male Hindu icon and the flash
of global money. Also, in the very imagistic processing of mobilized gendered identities
within the religious nationalist paradigm, the NRI-oriented Bollywood film has suppressed
three related social categories: women, religious minorities and the working class. This new
Indian self-fashioning is a neoliberal modernity that shirks the challenges of a more nuanced
role for civil society (Falk in Hovden and Keene 2003: 93-94).

That such modernities are frequently genocidal as well as gendered paternalist is evident in
the dilemma posed to Indian feminists in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s embrace of a demand
for a Uniform Civil Code as its gesture of support for Muslim ‘women’ during the landmark
Shah Bano case in 1986. The party and its precursor Hindutva-centric political clusters in
India have long been vocally claiming that Muslims enjoy rights unavailable to the dominant
majority as a form of minority ‘appeasement’ (Varshney 2002: 8). The BJP’s apparent and
paradoxical championship of Muslim ‘women’s rights is not only a snake in the basket for
Indian feminists, but it also embodies the political statement of the BJP that ‘“Muslim
appeasement,”. . . is the cause of communal conflicts in India.’3 This particular indirect form
of paternalist mobilization of women proceeds hand in hand with other forms of ‘Hindu’
mobilization of women including fanning anti-minority, even genocidal sentiment among
Hindu women themselves (Bachchetta in Jayawardena and de Alwis 1996: 138)

The BJP’s alignment with the zeitgeist of neoliberalism persists in the mobilization of a
transnational and diasporic Indian modernity. This mobilization makes an evocation of an
Aryanized Hindu pantheon at a crisis in the neoliberalised Bollywood filmic story a
condition of representing ‘Indianness.’ It is also non-negotiable that women must become
mobilized yet subordinate non-agents in the films.4 It is, furthermore, mandatory that
conspicuous consumerism must be a major aesthetic element of the films that evoke and
invoke mobile transnational capital and a capitalist class (Desai 2003: 47).

The neoliberal mobilization of a transnational and diasporic Indian modernity engineers the
political transformation of foreign/NRI investments into an emotional and cultural
nationalism. This is represented in Bollywood’s mediation of the event of diasporic return or
visit home. Such returns are often intended to rebuild a transnational ‘family’ as a
hypernationalist act based on fairly blatant paternalist mobilizations and manipulations of
women. In this regard, it is important that we consider the significance of location in
neoliberal Bollywood imagistic. In Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge ([The Brave Heart Will Take
the Bride], 1995; dir. Aditya Chopra), Yaadein ([Memories] 2001; Dir. Subhash Ghai, Mukta
Arts Productions), and Pardes ([Foreign Land] 1997; Dir. Subhash Ghai), the green fields and
waving crops of the Punjab served as an imagistic location for the NRI’s reabsorption into
‘Indian’ life, as in the famous opening sequence of Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.

The choice of Punjab as the new Bollywood space for renegotiating late capitalist
modernities can be explained by a polythetic analysis. The Punjab of the Green Revolution
signifies prosperity mythicized as neoliberal and entrepreneurial when it is really a result of
environmentally degrading structural subsidies (Ramakrishnan in Hovden and Keene 2002:
246-51). Punjab is also the birthplace of the Bhangra, an eastern cultural form proven
capable of ideal syncretic fusion with lucrative western beats. Finally, moreover, a political
rationale underpins and subtends these cultural ideoscapes. Until the nineties, secessionist
Sikh nationalism had made Punjab threatening and unavailable to the national imaginary
(Varshney 2002: 79-80). After the suppression of Sikh nationalism in 1990, Punjab was
reopened, and Bollywood’s mythicizing and fetishizing of Punjab – Kashmir, alas, had
meanwhile been lost – coincides with the recovery, one might say, of an entrepreneurial part
of the Hindu extended family feared lost.
A fusion of the capitalistic and the political in the renationalization of the diasporic Indian is
also found in Ek Rishtaa ([The Bond of Love], 2001; Dir. Sunil Darshan),5 wherein Indian
megastar Amitabh Bachchan appears as a Fordist industrialist whose foreign MBA-holding
son takes on the factory’s labour boss in a bloody fight sequence and thus proves that post-
Fordist capitalists are right and have the better social plan after all.

Such citations of the technologized west and the NRI are nothing new in Bollywood.
However, the neoliberal imperative of renationalizing the NRI has engendered a heightened
re-mediation of the iconography and choreography of filmic piety. The construction,
invention or recuperation of religious identity in Bollywood films used to be enacted by the
solitary believer, often a woman or even more generally a mother or wife, pleading with a
familial deity. The alternative scenario of piety and prayer would depict a male worshipper
who might be found making his case to the gods in a public setting such as a communal
temple. The first critical feature of the altered mise-en-scene of religious activity is the
prominent appearance of the usually transnational familial tableau -- or a representation of
patriarchal hegemony -- as a central imagistic of the representation of transnational piety.
Within this representational logic, domesticity has acquired publicity. The family, as headed
by a powerful patriarchis also the matrix for intensive crossweavings of economic and
interpersonal drives. The second critical feature of the altered scene of piety is the absence of
physical trauma in the individual’s negotiations of gendered identity and politics. These two
representational changes in Bollywood’s religious mise-en-scene, or pooja as it is known in
several Indian languages -- reauthorizing a strong and flourishing paterfamilial structure as
negotiator of social power and as publicized identity, and erasing individual trauma -- are
concurrent with the institutionalization of globalization-friendly economic liberalization in
India since the 1990s (Varshney 2002: 72), the diasporization and new look (Dwyer and Patel
2002: 30, 173-182) of Bollywood film, and most especially the reconfiguration of
transnational Indian ethnicity as violently Hindu-centric, patriarchal, culturalist6 and
proselytizing.

The diaspora constitutes a critical deterritorial space for the reconstitution of Bollywood
cinema since at least India’s economic liberalization policies in the early 1990s. Of the U.S.
Indian diaspora, Arvind Rajagopal writes, ‘Indians in the US tend to seek a religio-cultural
definition of their identity, partly because of a desire to side-step this issue of their racial
marginality, and partly because of a well-established pattern of reformulating cultural
difference through religious affiliation. . . .’ (Rajagopal 2000: 489-490; emphasis mine;
Dhooleka Sarhadi Raj 2000: 535-58; Aihwa Ong 1999: 5). The complex linking of national
and diasporic transnational identities and exchanges – cultural and financial – join together
what might be called in Stephen Gill’s helpful term the mythic structures of ‘market
civilization’ (Gill in Hovden and Keene 2002: 123-51).

Allow me then to begin my refraction of the new civilizational and familial hegemonies of
Hindutva–identified Indian nationalism (Van der Veer 1999: 134) in Bollywood by examining
one of those notorious and bathetic song-and-dance sequences in ‘formula’ Bollywood films.
I have picked a scene from a 1985 Amitabh Bachchan film Mard ([Real Man], dir.
Manmohan Desai). To understand the construction of a suitable viewership for this scene
one must of course recognize Bachchan’s iconic status with Bollywood audiences
worldwide.7 (See figures 1 and 2). Mard depicts the struggles of Raju/Mard, the child
tragically separated at birth from his patriot father who carved the name ‘Mard’ on the
infant’s chest at birth. Raju/Mard grows into a world of neocolonial nativist hegemony still
dominated by ‘foreign’ and colonial influences. In the pooja scene, Raju/Mard waits in the
temple of Sherewaali Ma (Tiger Goddess) for his long-lost mother whom he has found in the
native neocolonial thugs’ secret labour camp. Raju/Mard’s mother miraculously escapes the
prison guards through the kind offices of the Goddess’ sacred animal, the tiger or sher.
Meanwhile, Goddess Sherewaali and Raju/Mard/Bachchan lock gazes in a visual dynamic
wherein Raju is abjectly masochistic as well as demandingly confrontational. The populist
and idealized mise-en-scene of the temple and its congregated worshippers provides a
grassroots community backdrop for the primarily solitary struggle of Raju/Mard.
Raju/Mard/Bachchan repeatedly wounds himself and daubs the goddess with his own
blood.

Figure 1: Amitabh Bacchhan in Ram Balram, 1980

From this point, strengthened by renegotiating agency with the maternal power or Shakti
form, Raju/Mard/Bachchan inexorably triumphs over the thugs and villains. First, re-
imagining subalternity as heroic hypermasculinity cathected through the mother offers ample
opportunities for mediating spectacular displays of individual masochistic excess as popular
and anti-hegemonic discontent. Second, postcolonial subaltern crisis is crudely represented
here as self-mutilating pain against the backdrop of an empathic but non-familial collective, a
feature of civil society. The anonymous communal tableau in this scene emphasizes not the
power of the unambiguously united familial collective but the family imaginable only via
representations of trauma, abjection and triumph as serialized challenges to gendered sources
of social authority. Such scenes disappear, I believe not coincidentally, from the neoliberal
Bollywood film. They are replaced by scenes of calm plenitude depicting familial tableaux
wherein Hindutva-inspired civilizationalism, if challenged at all, are never diegetically
overturned.
 Figure 2: Amitabh Bacchan in Naseeb, 1981

Hindutva is best described as ‘Hindu-ness’; a sometimes presentist, ethnocidal, reactionary

socio-political ideology in India and abroad, it is at least equal parts piety and
civilizationalism. Its major think tank is the RSS or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh whose
political arm in India is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The cultural arm of the RSS is the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP [World Hindu Forum]), which has many outreach outfits in
the Indian diaspora.8 Most of the RSS and VHP’s offshoot organizations welcome and
benefit economically from globalization and neoliberalization

Smita Narula writes that ‘The RSS . . . reportedly runs upwards of 300,000 shakhas. . . .
Shakhas recruit young boys and men, fifty to one hundred for each cell, providing them with
extensive physical training and indoctrinating them with the Hindutva ideology’ (Narula
2003: 5; Sengupta 2002; Thapar 2004).This leads to a familialization of the doctrine of
ethnocidal hegemony by the shakhas and by RSS training. In this matter, as Tanika Sarkar
has shown, RSS women do not lag behind: ‘Krishna Sharma, the leader of the Delhi Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP) Mahila Mandal, has justified the tearing open of wombs of pregnant
Muslim women by Hindu rioters and the gang rapes of Muslim women that are said to have
been videotaped’ (Sarkar in Jeffrey and Basu 1998: 102; Basu in Jeffrey and Basu 1998: 167-
84).

Hindutva and neoliberal Bollywood’s imagistics reflect a practiced and common sleight of
hand enshrining traditional gender ideologies as Tradition.9 The protection of Tradition then
requires the demonization of ‘other’ women and other men’s ‘women’ (Kannabiran in
Jayawardena and de Alwis 1996: 33).The flip side of a violently politicized Hindutva in the era
of economic liberalization is the genesis of a diasporic as well as territorial Hindu identity
whose common matrix is capital-conscious consumerism.10 The capital-conscious,
consumerism-struck, upwardly mobile populations who largely undergird the BJP in India
have their counterparts in the diaspora populations abroad (Mukta 2000: 448, 458). Indeed,
these upwardly mobile groups now find a self-representational imagistic in Bollywood’s
peripatetic plots and lavish ‘international’ lifestyles (Dwyer and Patel 2002: 24). It is noticed
and noticeable that ‘family’ films like Yaadein, Taal (1999; dir. Subhash Ghai), and HAHK!
blatantly cited product ads as backdrop as well as plot engine: In Taal, the hero and heroine
simulate a first kiss by sipping coyly out of the same prominently viewable coke bottle. In
HAHK! glittering candy bar wraps and home pcs also play lead roles as romance as well as
suspense apparatuses.

Primoridal civilizationalism as piety plays a significant role in this new Bollywood, either
interpellating the cosmocrat or cosmocratic family, or as a medium for flashing of
modernity. Modernity is here primarily imagined as romance and technology, or the
technology of romance, or the romance of technology, as for instance in Yaadein. In a brief
pooja scene in this film, we are shown a fabulously wealthy diaspora family gathered around
their household shrine worshipping Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. Our frame allows us to
see mainly the assembled family and the priests, that is, the politics of prayer. In the middle
of the pooja a cell-phone rings and the paterfamilias' secretary hands over the phone to the
paterfamilias, who chats with someone in New York about shares and stocks. The family’s
transnational business acumen is thus plentifully invoked.

Despite the look of glazed devotion on the actors’ faces, the visual absence of the deity
denies them and the spectator the darshan -- or the direct vision of the deity -- that one
would expect from a pious locked gaze encounter with deity characteristic of Mard. Darshan
is the direct encounter with deity that characterizes Hindu spiritual subjectivity. Darshan also
has connotations of the full frontal encounter with the male ‘megastar’ in films (Dwyer and
Patel 2002: 44). Darshan is never granted in this scene to the viewer except when it is also
granted to the young male challenger to the dominant paterfamilias: the young tech-savvy
nephew played by Hritik Roshan, a Bollywood scion. The viewer’s perspective must become
identical and aligned with the male youth. Presumably, then, darshan is delayed in this scene
in order to maintain the pious gaze as the dynastic dynamic of the screen/mirror/male/deity
cathexis.

These new representations of pooja and piety should now be mapped against contemporary
presentist defences of Hindutva-guided atrocities against territorial minorities such as
Muslims, Christians, western missionaries and other foreigners as retaliation for the
supposed sexual runs of such communities upon Hindu women (Mukta 2000: 460, 462).
These gender fundamentalist doctrines can be matched with Hindutva youth organizations’
forcible re-abduction of women who were ‘raped’ into love-marriages with Muslims, the
resurgence of the practice of Sati or widow-burning in Rajasthan (officially abolished since
the 1820s),11 or with propaganda at Hindutva meetings in the U.S. where the prevention of
exogamy was the focus (Rajagopal 2000: 476).

In Yaadein, the entire pooja scene is based upon visual and material cathexes of paterfamilial
players. The scene makes women standing in the circle of piety superfluous, dominated and
chastised by overbearing men. A significant change observable in scenes of worship is
precisely the replacement of the female or the solitary male by the paterfamilial tableau
gathered around the icon. The newer configuration of pooja in the new Bollywood appears to
be at least largely a mechanism to silence women by engulfing them. And the profits of such
patriarchal familialization of devotion are clear from the imagistic constellations of pleasure
and prosperity that provide the mise-en-scene of this new piety. Thus, gender and
consumerism are, indeed, twinned modalities within which Hindu religious nationalism
defines itself. Its violence is in any case already about gendering, neutering, even
engendering, as by rape (Copelon 1995: 197-214; Menon and Bhasin in Jayawardena and de
Alwis 1996; Kannabiran in Jayawardena and de Alwis 1996: 32-41). However, violence is also
about econocide (Jayawardena and de Alwis1996: ix; see also xi, xxi, and Sangari and Vaid in
Jayawardena and de Alwis 1996: 260-66, 283).12

My argument in this essay is, among other things, also an argument about the look of
modernity even as it excavates tradition to shore up its representational logic. Take, for
instance, how the cinematic image has been visibly indebted to new technology since the
1990s, becoming slick and digitalized. This modernization and postmodernization of
cinematic form are, moreover, indebted to a Bollywood alchemy whereby ‘the modern hero
doubles up as the premodern hero from the nation’s epic past’ (Mishra 2002: 16). Slick
montage can easily be matched with the ability of the VHP ‘to forge a sense of Hinduness
world-wide.’13 As recent influential scholarship has suggested, modernity is to be understood
as several overlapping and disjunctive configurations of alternative and adaptive modernities
(Appadurai 1996; Van der Veer 1994: 132-34, 136-37; Ong1999: 35; Varshney 2002: 76-84,
106-11; Raj 2000: 538). Amitava Kumar describes the violently modern RSS youth thus
poignantly: ‘those youth are as modern as I am. We are both products of the same forces. I
left my small town and went abroad. I learned to speak the language of the world. They
caught hold of the idea of nationalism and of citizenship – powerful, modern ideas – and
they are now using them in a narrow way for their own ends in the small space left open to
them’ (Kumar 2005: 182-83).

Civilizationalism, thus, is no less problematic than fundamentalism if it takes this essentialist

and determinist trajectory (Radhakrishnan 2003: 128). In the case of the diaspora, the so-
called ‘pure’ religious identity is a response not only to perceived fluxes of economic identity
and experience, but to perceived racism from the postcolonial metropolitan state. The
diasporic Hindu nationalist is interpellated into being by this non-religious identity, in
response to non-religious threats to personhood, livelihood, security, etc. Hence diaspora
performativity is crucial to the concept of diaspora nationalism, and gendered religious
performativity creates and reifies these high patriarchal and ‘familiar-familial’ images of
identity-in-community,14 as reflected particularly in the Virat Hindu Sammelan (Great Hindu
Gathering) held in Milton Keynes in 1989. Hindutva’s own practiced culturalism – as defined
and masterminded by the VHP – also makes its connections with globalized Bollywood’s
imagistic of the nation profitable and intuitive, as the VHP’s own articulation ‘does not arise
simply out of the field of religiosity’ (Mukta 2000: 446).

Indeed, the telltale sign of the collectivist masculinization of the familial religious moment is
the prominent emergence of the cult of the God Ram, the mythical Aryan ruler of Ayodhya,
India who defeated the indigenous demon-king Ravana and rescued his abducted wife Sita
from Ravana’s kingdom, Lanka.15 The Aryan God Ram’s imagistic hegemony is symbolic of
paternalistic Hindutva’s power to dominate lower-caste, non-Hindu groups.16 The protection
and rescue of the family’s women from unclean and ethnically impure outsiders, a central
interpretation of the Ram story (the Ramayana) since its inception, lends additional fillip to
the story that Hindutva tells of the familialization of worship reflected in neoliberal
Bollywood imagistic of pooja.

Religion interpellates exegetic diaspora identity in ways that encompass disturbing affective
responses and behaviors such as ‘Hindu hurt’ and ‘Hindu denigration.’17 These are terms
used to mobilize diaspora Hindutva nationalism in the face of what is seen as the racisms and
imperialisms of adoptive western homelands such as Britain and the U.S. (Mukta 2000, 444,
446, 450). Hence, ‘the dominant religious community [Hindu, both in the east and the west],
given a political voice by the Bharatiya Janata Party, is said to be under siege. . .’ (Mukta
2000: 443).

Ashutosh Varshney argues in his excellent book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life for a ‘way of life’
civil society that is inter-communal and associational, and critiques precisely the stranglehold
of Hindutva’s cultural determinism by taking culture’s performances into the field of the
economic, social and associational where, moreover, religious identities are also largely
revealed as based on economic interests and experiences, and religious fundamentalism as
fundamentally more economic than religious.18 Varshney has itemized five characteristics of
civil society (Varshney 2002: 41, 42-46). These five characteristics are, first, space between
state and family levels; second, interconnections between individuals and families; third,
independence from the state; fourth, formal association, intra- and inter-ethnic; and fifth and
most important, voluntaristic, not ascriptive associations (Varshney 2002: 39-40). In Mard,
and in the Bachchan-dominated pre-globalized era as a whole, it was clear that the State,
ideally and necessarily a non-player in Varshney’s list of civil society attributes, was indeed
absent or, at most, a challenged hegemon in Bollywood’s political imagination. Mard and
Amar Akbar Anthony, another hilarious Bachchan starrer (1977; Dir. Manmohan Desai),
presented ascriptive ethnic identities as constructed and as institutionally derived and
instrumentalized by non-state actors (criminal cartels, the police, the law).

Because the state was a non-agent, if not a non-player, the films of the seventies and the
eighties interpellated civil and communal life, responsibility and justice through the male
protagonist’s initial powerlessness and subsequent communally witnessed recompensation
(however tenuous). Mard could attain social justice for marginalized people. Amar Akbar
Anthony could gesture at a non-ascriptive familial politics of minority empowerment. With
the film Bombay (1995; dir. Mani Ratnam), the emergence of state-sponsored inter-ethnic
violence – as in the Bombay riots of 1993 -- was vividly, spectatcularly cinematized. It is
worth noting that Bombay is a type of Hindi film different than the genre of Bollywood film
discussed throughout most of this essay; the film’s significance for this discussion lies,
however, in its visual melding of nationalist and communalist themes, something that
neoliberal Bollywood has tended to ignore or repress. Bombay’s watershed moment is
significant because of its foregrounding of intra-ethnic ascriptive identifications as the cause
of ethnic violence, and of voluntary inter-ethnic associations – like the film’s Hindu-Muslim
marriage and family – as the engine of ethnic peace.19 Since Bombay, ascriptive identification
and state involvement are civil-society disrupting factors both avowed and disavowed in
Bollywood.

The nation-state not only creates the political imagination of a national media monolith like
Bollywood, but also creates migrants (and non-migrants) and their mental and physical
spaces as cultural subjects of globalization (Kamat et al 2004: 6, 19). This gendered citizen is
generated by education policies of the Indian state and immigration policies of the US
government.20 Increasingly, this state-sponsored deterritorialized audience has become the
grande syntagmatique and the mirror/screen21 of the cinema. The resurgence of state-sponsored
ascriptive ethnic identification has taken commodified, well-packaged shape in ‘diaspora
delight’ films like Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Yaadein, Pardes, etc. These new NRI-
dominated imagistics refamiliarize patriarchal and paternal gender ideologies in the guise of
rehumanizing them (Mankekar 1999; Desai 2004: 47). The associational power of early
Bollywood – indeed, its claim to be a civil association or civil society building institution in
postcolonial India – has capitulated to two civil society disrupting forces: state sponsorship
of anti-minority feelings, and the reinforcement of ascriptive ethnic identities. Disallowed
their natural linkage, the economic and the political find new mediation in the category of
‘ethnic’ or ‘religious’ nationalism, and this forcing of a much larger set of (generally) secular
problems, regulations, institutions and mechanisms through the narrow neck of the ethnic
and religious produces neoliberal fundamentalisms in the guise of nationalisms.

Varshney has demonstrated that civil life with interethnic associations – many of them
business-related – discourage ethnic violence and segregation of ethnic groups. The lack of
civil societal structures is the cause of ethnic violence.22 Bollywood mimics this phenomenon
in depicting, in film after film, the family saga as the battle between good and evil rewritten
as the battle between insiders and outsiders in a strongly ethnicized and Hinduized (by
default, often) staging of identities. In films like Yaadein, Pardes, or Ek Rishtaa, generally
Hindus associate or do business with other Hindus and retain, despite occasional failed
experimentations with alternatives, paternalistic and capitalistic structures intact.

I will conclude with a consideration of the neoliberal Bollywood film par excellence HAHK!
(1994), a mega-blockbuster in the history of Indian cinema (see Figure 3).23 This film was
discreetly recognized as a ‘brand-name’ film replete with signs of consumerist fantasies. Its
characters drink cokes, eat expensive candybars, rollerblade, wear expensive though garish
designer clothes, use computers, and drive fast cars. One writer called it ‘a three-hour
wedding video about a family with a house the size of a cricket stadium’
(http://www.uiowa.edu/~incinema/humaapke.html). The patriarchal family romance plot is
upheld by ‘Hindu’ values and by a media-friendly religiosity.24 A central architectural
presence in this film is the idealized Hindu temple near and around which the heroine’s
family seems to have designed its identity and habitus. This temple and its highly idealized
reconstruction of a specifically Hindu antiquity – pious and splendid -- could be a model for
or replica of many Hindu temples in North America.

In this film, an older sister is first married to the elder nephew of her father's best friend.
After the birth of a son, she dies in a tragic and highly improbable staircase accident just as
her younger sister and her brother-in-law are preparing to announce their own romance to
the two families.25 Her younger sister finds herself cast by both families as her sister’s
replacement and her brother-in-law's intended second bride. Despite the highly modern era
and aura of the film, at this point the younger sister and the younger brother become
curiously inept at the most standard modes of communicating their wishes. It is understood
that the family -- still portrayed as utterly benevolent -- has the ultimate say, and the young
couple are virtually silenced by the families' consensual mandate.
 Figure 3: The families, HAHK!, 1994, still, from HAHK! Website

The day is saved in the end by a faithful retainer whom the younger sister has been teaching
English, and by a dog named Tuffy who clearly has powers of extra-sensory communication
with the household deity.26 The family retainer attends the second wedding cognizant of the
sundered couple’s pain, but as a feudal subaltern has no authority to speak of his knowledge.
This leads him to appeal, through a direct frontal gaze, to the deity. In this moment of
tearful frontality and direct appeal, like Raju/Mard’s in its pathos but unlike Raju/Mard’s in
its distinct embeddedness in feudal familial hierarchy, the deity responds in a moment of
darshan, of direct and unmediated connection with the worshipper (giving darshan) and relays
an ethereal command to the dog Tuffy who at once rushes to the heroine writing her secret
final missive to her lover, the younger brother who is a guest at his brother’s second
wedding. The interception of this letter by her intended husband and brother-in-law leads to
the discovery of the prior romance and the happy ending.

The apparent subjectification of subalterns is presented as a reactivation of communication,

of transmissibility, of the romance of a theology that transcends technology. It is mediation
in its purest form. From the direct and conspiratorial gaze of the servant upon the audience
the camera cuts to an equally direct gaze between the viewer and the household deity, an
Aryanized image of Lord Krishna, and from thence to the dog Tuffy who then becomes the
focus of the camera. HAHK!'s deity is instrumental in restoring the flow of communication,
and in reuniting the family in the paterfamilial pleasures of piety and pathos. Mard's scene
differs from that in HAHK! on two crucial counts: first, the intensification of Mard’s scene is
not by faith alone but by a challenging defiance defined by effectively solitary masochism;
and second, because the unification anticipated is individual but framed within community
values, not yet defined by brand-name publicity offered as ideal domesticity.

The narcotic piling of transnational consumerist effects was conspicuously absent in

Bollywood cinema of the70s and the 80s: no cokes or computers in Mard, only wonderdogs
and carthorses. The lading on of trauma as an affect in the worship scene from Mard signals
the pre-liberalization ‘Indian’ cinema's low-budget negotiations of social and political power,
as well as pain’s constitutive value in the production of gender and subalternity. The
contrasted absence of pain in diaspora or neoliberal films' mise-en-scene of the ‘religious’
and its attendant cathexes of familial and political power is notable. Also notable is the
absence of violence and the political as modes of negotiation in the neoliberal diasporic
Bollywood imagistic. In contrast, the real Hindutva movement's political engagement has
been significantly characterized by recourse to violence and bodily pain, real or ritualized.27

Mard’s representation of the masochistic construction of hypermasculinity within the

religious mise-en-scene of sundered family and renegotiated social power therefore reflects
an earlier and more territorialized national construct of civic crisis and political action. In
HAHK! and in Yaadein, however, the negotiation of power and the constitution of gendered
identity emphasizes the familial tableau, the kinship ties that bind even in absence, which has
been the mantra of diaspora or globalized, ‘deterritorialized’ Hindutva-based Indian
nationalism.

Gender is the borderland, and borders are gendered. Dotting the surreal landscape produced
by these two intermeshed liminalities are ruined mosques, fallen soldiers, executed terrorists,
prosperous capitalists, fabulous mansions in the middle of fields east and west, and non-
negotiable identities. Through the rising smoke and waving corn one sees the dim certainties
of a paternalist consensus on faith as a master ruse of global neoliberalism and late
capitalism. Women themselves are co-opted or commandeered into furthering the agendas
of male and ethnocidal violence (Jefferey and Basu 1998: ix-x).The structure of repetitions,
deeply loved and ardently enshrined in the Bollywood formula, has ceased to yield the
political potential outlined by Walter Benjamin’s mass art or the postcolonial aesthetic
suggested by Fredric Jameson; I believe it once did so (Benjamin 1999; Jameson 1986). The
power of liminality lingers only in the individual romance plot far too quickly subsumed into
the saga of the globalized neonationalist Hindu family.28

Notes
1. Rao, ‘Globalisation and Bollywood’; http://imagineasia.bfi.org.uk/guide/
surveys/globalization/index.html.
2. An excellent overview of Hindu, Muslim and other communities’ personal law
structures and geneses is to be found in Agnes 2004: xxxiii, xlii-xliv. On
‘appeasement’ see also Varshney 2002: 64, and Zoya Hasan, ‘Gender Politics,
Legal Reform and the Muslim Community in India,’ in Jeffrey and Basu 1998:
76-78, 80-82.
3. See Paola Bacchetta’s excellent analysis of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, in ‘Hindu
Nationalist Women as Ideologues: The ‘Sangh’, the ‘Samiti’ and their Differential
 Concepts of the Hindu Nation’, in Jayawardena and de Alwis 1996. Also see
Basu in Jeffrey and Basu 1998: 10, 11; Sarkar in Jeffrey and Basu 1998: 98-102.
4. As Jashodhara Bagchi has written, women are drawn to fundamentalist
configurations because those offer them models of empowerment or ‘Shakti’ --
however instrumentalized -- unavailable elsewhere (Bagchi in Jayawardena and
de Alwis 1996: 115), and these models are fundamentalist as much as ‘modern’
(124).
5. A fan on Sulekha writes about the film Ek Rishtaa: ‘Amitabh [Bachchan]'s deep
voiced dialog [sic] delivery remains as impressive as ever and would be a reason
alone to watch any Bollywood movie twice. Many people don’t know he is half a
Sardarji, his mother was a Sikh [sic]. Another great thing in Bollywood movies is
the increasing use of Punjabi as a deference to the biggest NRI group outside
India and whenever it is said the Punjabis always laugh in appreciation for eg [sic]
when the policeman says to Monish “Yaar tu aadmi hai ki pajama?”’
(http://www.sulekha.com/movies/moviereview.aspx?cid=119629&rvid=13207
2&pageno=22).
6. For instance, as Arvind Rajagopal has written: ‘In India, the invocation of
religion summons up the unresolved debates between nationalism and social
reform, and presents Hinduism as an implicitly conservative force. By contrast,
in the US, Hindu religion is more self-consciously a medium of cultural
reproduction’ (Rajagopal 2000: 467).
7. He continues to cast his long shadow over neoliberal Bollywood in such
megastarrers as Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (K3G or Sometimes Happiness,
Sometimes Sorrow [my translation], 2001, dir. Karan Johar, Dharma
Productions). This film’s now (in)famous motto, incidentally, is ‘It’s all about the
family.’
8. Thus Smita Narula writes: ‘A November 2002 report, The Foreign Exchange of
Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva, documents the financial ties
between the Indian Development and Relief Fund ("IDRF") a U.S.-based
charity, and Hindu nationalist groups in India that have been linked to attacks
against Muslims and Christians, forcible conversions of tribals to Hinduism, and
other atrocities’ (2003: 2). At home, the VHP's purging scrutiny naturally extends
to Bollywood films; a VHP leaflet reads: ‘Boycott wholeheartedly films in which
Muslim hero-heroines act! Throw out films produced by these anti-nationals!’
(Narula 2003: 11, n. 53).
9. See Desai 2003 and R. Radhakrishnan who describes ‘the concept of
“authenticity” and why it occupies such a central role in the diasporan imaginary’
(Radhakrishnan 2003: 119, 123, 127).
10. Malik writes that in India, ‘very upwardly-mobile urban and small town middle
classes . . . constitute an important part of BJP's constituency. . . . The “Baniya
[small trader] base” has led to the BJP being awarded the epithet “Party of
Shopkeepers.” By the late 1980s, it was wearing this as a badge of pride’ (Malik
2003: 28). See also Rajagopal: ‘The Hindu nationalist right thus came to
prominence in India as the cultural complement to economic liberalization,
which began to be instituted in the latter half of the decade’ (2000: 470). See also
Rao and Sarkar in Jeffrey and Basu 1998, 102-103.
11. Vividly and analytically dramatized by Anand Patwardhan in his documentary
Father, Son and Holy War (1994). See also Mukta 2000: 449, 451, and Kumar 2005:
50-53.
12. Sarkar in Jeffrey and Basu 1998: 103-4. Her views are supported by recent
articles in Indian newspapers about the new female consumer in India, ‘Ad
leaders bristle at survey snub about women,’
(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051105/asp/nation/story_5438897.asp).
Shelley Feldman has argued that in the case of Pakistan, too, ‘religious resurgence
is part of a broader “development crisis,” which frames efforts at nation-building
and constructions of nationalism and identity politics . . . . an ideology
embodying particular social and economic interests’ (Feldman in Jeffrey and
Basu 1998: 35).
13. Mukta 2000: 445; see also Sangari and Vaid in Jayawardena and de Alwis 1996:
283. As one reviewer of the film Diwaale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge on the Sulekha
website writes: ‘Direction? Well, the movie is split into two halves, one part
entirely shooted [sic] in Europe (well, almost) and the other half, in India. The
intermission occurs exactly at the borderline. The two parts are so well-separated,
yet woven together to make it a complete movie’
(http://www.sulekha.com/movies/moviereview.aspx?cid=305342&rvid=30938
9&pageno=30).
14. Mukta 2000: 453-55; Kumar 2005: 184-85. Other examples and analyses of such
performativity in the contexts of temple gatherings, community camps, and
purification ceremonies are found in Rajagopal 2000: 471, 474, 475, 476, 480-
484. Indeed, Rajagopal believes that ‘the Hindu Right in the US is focused most
intently on expanding the numbers of people congregating under Hindu
auspices, and using its programmes of Hinduized pedagogy oriented to the
domestic sphere’ (2000: 475; emphasis mine).
15. See Mukta 2000: 460 on the Aryanist cult of Ram in the diaspora.
16. See also Bhatt and Mukta 2000: 428, 429; Kumar 2005: 236-38.
17. Mukta eloquently writes that ‘the Hindutva movement . . .must be situated within
the rise to power in India of a political party which has embraced the economics
of liberalization [and internal colonialism] while speaking in the tongue of a
religious indigenism [and anti-imperialism]’ (Mukta 2000, 447; see also Rajagopal
2000: 468).
18. Varshney writes that ‘ethnic groups often fight over economic resources. . .
ethnic conflicts are not always about identities. . . . Essentialism makes it hard to
explain why, if animosities are so historically deep and so rooted in cultural
differences, tensions and violence between groups tend to ebb and flow at
different times, or why the same groups live peacefully in some places but fight
violently in others’ (2002: 26-28).
19. The city of Bombay has been the location of the greatest number of riot-related
deaths between 1950 and 1995 – 1137 total – and is thus one of India’s most
riot-prone cities, according to Varhsney (2002: 7, 106).
20. Kamat et al 2004: 7, 13-17. The colonial doctrine of ‘we want your labour, not
your bodies’ (Kamat et al 2004: 17) has of course reached hyper-real fulfillment
in the phenomenon of outsourced services in global production,
telecommunications and finance.
21. On the spectator as Mirror/Screen see Metz 1999: 800-32, especially 803-805.
22. Varshney 2002: 3-4; 8-9; 11-12; 46; see also 23. His thesis on religious
nationalism has strong convergences with the critique of international
neoliberalism outlined by David Long and others (Long in Hovden and Keene
2002: 43-45, 52).
23. The International Business Overview Standard records in its Trade Note section
that the film did ‘2,341 shows in 847 days of its run at Mumbai’s Liberty cinema.
It ran 105 weeks in regular shows and 16 weeks in noon shows’
(http://ibosnetwork.com/filmbodetaisl.asp?id=Hum+Aapke+Hain+Kaun). The
HAHK! website of Rajshree Productions (http://www.rajshri.com/hahk.html)
calls the film ‘A Tribute to All the Families of the World. .!’ It is also described in
the website as ‘the biggest hit in the history of Indian cinema.’
24. One of the scenes depicts the pious families of the loving young couples and
their friends relaxing in the young men’s sumptuous home. The evening’s
entertainment proves to be a ‘musical chair’ of highly performative series of
imitations of Bollywood by these Bollywood actors. The specific songs, dances
and dialogues that the actors mimic also convey the affective strands between
various characters. In thus choosing Bollywood performance as an imagistic for
its accomplishment of a Bollywood-derived narrative function, HAHK! as meta-
text clearly cites Bollywood and reifies it.
25. Dwyer and Patel have called the grand staircase a liminal space in Bollywood
films (2002: 11).
26. In a film titled Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998; Dir. Karan Johar; Dharma Productions)
which I have omitted from the larger discussion here, a child engages in intense
and telepathic worship to reunite her father with his lost college friend, her entire
agency being subsumed in brokering the father’s heterosexual romance plot.
27. The Ramjanambhoomi movement in Ayodhya, a case of intense anti-Muslim
violence in recent Indian history has been well described in Charu Gupta and
Mukul Sharma1996. Anand Patwardhan's documentary Father Son and Holy War
(1994), recent nuclear testing in India, the Godhra anti-Muslim massacre case
(2002), and Rajagopal's summer camp experiences are all accounts of the coded
or unmasked violence of this political engagement in India and abroad.
28. An excellent series of critiques of neoliberalism are to be found in Hovden and
Keene 2002; see especially the essays by David Long, John Macmillan, Stephen
Gill and Richard Falk. MacMillan critiques the neoliberal order as a neocolonial
order in which ‘Questions of social justice, the proper domestic civil-military
relationship, the establishment of accountability over the activities of
transnational corporations, the concentration of ownership of the media and the
preservation of civil liberties within liberal democracies do not appear to have a a
place’ (Hovden and Keene 2002: 59). On ‘globalization’ see especially Falk in this
volume: ‘to the extent that the state is converted into an agency role on behalf of
world capital, it loses its liberalizing capacity. . . .liberal internationalism is
severely challenged by ‘the neoliberal consensus’ that virtually disavows
governmental responsibility for social goals, and entrusts the future to the
dynamics of the market, including priorities set by the flow of capital’ (2002: 76-
77; see also Tom Young, ‘“A Project to Be Realized”: Global Liberalism and a
New World Order,’ in Hovden and Keene 2002: 183).
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http://imagineasia.bfi.org.uk/guide/surveys/globalization/index.html.
Searle- Chatterjee, Mary. 2000. ‘“World Religions” and “Ethnic Groups”: Do These
Paradigms Lend Themselves to the Cause of Hindu Nationalism?’, Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 23 (3): 497-515.
Sengupta, Somini. ‘Hindu Nationalists Are Enrolling, and Enlisting, India’s Poor.’ [May
2002]. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/international/
asia/13HIND.html.
Taal. 1999. Dir. Subhash Ghai.
Thapar, Romila. 2004. ‘The Future of the Indian Past’. Seventh D.T. Lakdawala Memorial
Lecture delivered at FICCI Auditorioum, New Delhi, February 21.
Vanita, Ruth. 2002. ‘Dosti and Tamanna: Male-Male Love, Difference, and Normality in
Hindi Cinema’, in Diane P. Mines and Sarah Lamb (eds), Everyday Life in South Asia,
pp. 146-58. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Varshney, Ashutosh. 2002. Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New
Haven; London: Yale University press.
Yaadein. 2001. Dir. Subhash Ghai. Mukta Arts productions.
 20
Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Towards a
Transnational Feminist Aesthetic?

Sam Naidu
I

Introduction: Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora

Women writers of the South Asian diaspora have, in recent decades, found prominence in
the international literary arena. These writers may be new immigrants to their diasporic
homes, migrants who divide their lives between far-flung homes (for example, Anita Desai,
who lives in India, the UK and Germany), or descended from nineteenth century
immigrants, as is the case in South Africa (for example, Farida Karodia and Agnes Sam). The
most prolific diasporic locations, in terms of this literary activity, not surprisingly, are the
USA, the UK, and Canada where the most established and successful publishing industries
as well as a large readership of English literature, are to be found. Since the 1980s these
authors have become widely published and read, and they have received recognition and
accolades from popular critics and the academy alike. For example, the works of Anita
Desai, Monica Ali and Jhumpa Lahiri have been nominated for or have won coveted literary
awards such as the Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize and the Orange Prize. In addition, their
works are now included in literature syllabi at tertiary institutions, are reviewed widely, and
are causing waves in many an urban or parochial book club.

The writers who have published substantially in recent decades have tended, on the whole,
to write prose narratives. The favoured genres are short stories, novels, autobiographies and
memoirs. Moreover, the writings display many similarities in terms of writing style, thematic
concerns and political orientation and in this study I aim to offer an overview of some of
these commonalities. At this point it is worth noting that the similarities I present here are
neither comprehensive nor uniform - rather they are broad trends within the corpus.
Further, a thoroughgoing description of this aesthetic would not omit an investigation of the
differences between authors and their works. Therefore, I identify not only some of the
similarities that may partially be ascribed to some notional 'origin' within a specified
geographic region, but also how these writers who have migrated to the far corners of the
globe are confronted with geographic, climatic, culinary, linguistic, political and economic
differences, to name but the obvious ones. These writers have been positioned differently
within the diaspora and these differences and the struggles to negotiate these differences too
occupy centre-stage in this literature.

However, there are striking similarities, most notably the authors’ shared preoccupation with
the female subject’s struggle to negotiate a path between the exigencies of her two very
different homes: the diasporic home and the homeland. The theme of the displaced
heroine’s efforts to integrate her cultural identity is prominent in works as diverse as Bharti
Kirchner’s popular romance novel, Shiva Dancing (1998), and Meera Syal’s bildungsroman, Anita
and Me (1996). Roger Bromley, whose study of diasporic writing focuses on the authors’
search for a home, points out that the

…narratives are mostly produced by women and shaped by what might be called bi-
culturalism in the sense that they are born of two worlds (or more), expressions of
marginalisation which emerge from migrant experience and cultural border zones: plural and
fractured voices, multiple personalities struggling with placelessness and the rootedness of
old, hollowed-out belongings (Bromley 2000: 4).

In Kirchner’s and Syal’s novels, the narratives revolve around the ‘biculturalism’ of their
respective heroines (interestingly, they have almost identical names), who find themselves, in
very different ways, marginalized, fractured and embroiled in old, homeland traditions1 and
allegiances. Kirchner’s heroine, Meena Kumari is a thirty-five year old systems analyst in
cosmopolitan San Francisco who returns to India after eighteen years to reclaim her
childhood bridegroom and cultural heritage. In a somewhat grittier and semi-
autobiographical comic novel, Syal creates an adolescent, first person narrator, Meena
Kumar, who is coming to grips with being the only Asian child in Tollington, a small coal-
mining town in a racist and conservative 1960s England.

Another conspicuous similarity in this body of literature is the deployment of autobiography

and other forms of life-writing. By writing her own life-story, or incorporating elements of it
into her fiction, the woman writer takes charge of her subjectivity and is able to resist
imposed subject positions. In what is obviously a political move, the stereotypical gender
and ethnic roles often ascribed to 'South Asian cultures' are explored, challenged, negotiated
and often rejected by the author. This feminist strand of the narrative is enmeshed with her
accounts of reconfiguration of self and adaptation to her diasporic community. More often
than not, these narratives end with the author/heroine taking up her self-defined and often
painfully negotiated position as a transnational subject. A prime example of such a narrative
is Meena Alexander’s memoir, Fault Lines (1992). This memoir details Alexander’s life from
her childhood in Kerala to her present position as a poet, writer, wife and mother in New
York. A large portion of this memoir deals with Alexander’s ambivalent relationship with her
mother. The portrayal of this relationship functions as a springboard for Alexander’s
feminist critique of what she sees as the straitjacketing female roles of ‘traditional’ Malayali
culture. Fault Lines derives most of it political impact from its self-reflexive exploration of
the value of writing. To write a memoir, that is, ‘to invade, to confront, to seize’ (Alexander
1992: 202) in the present, is for Alexander, an act of empowerment and liberation. To finally
be able to see her reflection drawn in the memoir, which is comprised of myriad selves, is a
testament to the power of the autobiographical process which offers a ‘kind of liberation …
since it is the ultimate tool for self-representation: telling your own story, giving birth to
yourself, and thereby claiming agency and uniqueness’ (Gudmundsdóttir 2003: 128). Even in
texts that combine autobiography and fiction, for example, Syal’s Anita and Me, the
significance of this process for self-actualisation is clearly evident. This aesthetic element, the
use of autobiography and other forms of life-writing, is explored further in Section III which
presents the various other elements of the aesthetic.
 II

What is meant by a transnational feminist literary aesthetic?

Underpinning this overview is the claim that an informal guild exists, comprising of women
writers from the South Asian diaspora. Further, this guild, however tenuous in formal
organisational or overtly articulated terms, exhibits, in literary terms, a transnational feminist
practice. A description of this literary aesthetic which binds these authors, reveals an
alternative feminism at work, one in which diasporic women have found eloquent voices to
enunciate themes and concerns specific to their gender, and to express the dilemma of the
diasporic writer who walks a tight-rope between two (possibly more) cultures. But before
such a claim can be expounded certain key terms need to be explained and defined.

Transnationalism and Diaspora

The term transnationalism, in its simplest guise, refers to the relations between citizens of
different nation states, and the networks which link them (Vertovec and Cohen 2000: xx).
When used as an adjective to describe a literary aesthetic, the term then points to the
aesthetic being located in various nations across the globe. Diaspora, in its basic form, refers
to a population that has originated in a land other than which it currently resides (Vertovec
and Cohen 2000: xvi). Used in this sense in this paper, diaspora refers to the various
populations of South Asians resident in different nations across the globe. But what is
crucial to both these definitions of Vertovec and Cohen is that they emphasise the
heterogeneity and diversity that characterize both transnationalism and diaspora. Defined as
such, transnationalism and diaspora are regarded as giving rise to sites of dynamic social and
cultural change.

For Paul Gilroy, diaspora re-shapes how space and time are conceived in theories of cultural
identity. Using metaphorical language that alludes to the etymology of the word diaspora,
Gilroy argues that the seeds in the pod (individuals who comprise a community) are similar
but when they travel through space and time and germinate in different locations with
different, often adverse, conditions, they may differ as to how they grow. In this organic
capacity for change and what Gilroy calls the ‘sameness within differentiation and the
differentiation within sameness’ (2000: 208-9), he sees the de-stabilising and subversive
effects of diaspora. Both Vertovec and Cohen’s prosaic definition, and Gilroy’s more
flamboyant one, point to the heterogeneity and tensions of diasporic cultures, which
nonetheless cohere. Stuart Halls describes this succinctly as ‘Difference … in and alongside
continuity’ (2000: 227). Sandhya Shukla’s account of this phenomenon is specific to the
South Asian diaspora. She describes it as:

… the apparent paradox of the amazing persistence of South Asian traditions and forms of
expression around the world and the increased visibility of innovative renderings of national,
regional, and religious identities under the sign of ‘South Asianness’, or ‘Indianness’ (2001:
552).

The literature by women of the South Asian diaspora is concerned with this paradox: the
tensions between homeland and diasporic location, between the local and the global, and
between the 'modern' and the ‘traditional’ (often resulting in the subversion and dismantling
of these binarisms). Mainly, these tensions are positively represented as creating new choices
with self-affirming consequences, yet the banner of South Asian or Indian is never entirely
relinquished.

Feminism and Women’s Writing

In the context of this study, the term feminist describes the achievement of women writers
of the South Asian diaspora who, in their respective cultural contexts, seek to resist and
challenge patriarchal oppression through their explicit articulation of female subjectivities.2
This literature is categorised as women’s writing because it draws attention to women writers
as agents, who in a process of self-definition, create keen and cogent cultural critiques. The
women represented in women’s writing are not constructed by patriarchy but are self-
constructed within and in opposition to cultural formations. Women’s writing is writing by
women, mainly about women, but not necessarily just for women readers. Through a literary
strategy of appropriation, self-representation, and articulation of new narrative forms, a
feminist aesthetic is inscribed by these women writers.

Aesthetics or Hierarchies Within Literary Strategies

Miki Flockemann, a South African feminist and diaspora scholar, argues that in certain types
of literature, an ‘aesthetics of transformation’ is employed. Based on a theory of ‘grounded
aesthetics’,3 her central argument is that

…the aesthetics of transformation is concerned primarily with representations of

transformative processes in relation to gendered subjectivities, geo-political identities and
hegemonic language and knowledge systems (1998: 9).

Flockemann explains that such literary representations of transformative processes offer

‘utopian glimpse[s] of an alternative’ world (1990: 65). Most pertinent for my argument,
Flockemann views ‘the textual strategies employed here, particularly in relation to symbolic
acts of creativity as a form of personal and cultural survival’ (1998: 12-13). Viewed in this
way, aesthetics as an analytic concept comes to mean a type of literary strategy with a distinct
political aim.4 It can be argued that women writers of the South Asian diaspora are
concerned primarily with representations of transformative processes in relation to gendered
subjectivities and geo-political identities, and simultaneously with the ‘beauty’ of their
creations. In other words, they are engaged in producing transformative cultural forms
(literary narratives) that offer a utopian glimpse of a world in which female subjects resolve
the tensions of diaspora. Thus, when describing the transnational feminist aesthetic inscribed
by women writers of the South Asian diaspora, analysis of literary stylistic devices, although
obviously necessary, is somewhat overshadowed by an accompanying assessment of the
political efficacy of the literature.
 III

The aesthetic pattern

Based on a reading of a wide cross-section of autobiographies, memoirs, novels, and short
stories by authors from the USA, the UK, Canada and South Africa, these are the aesthetic
elements (with some overlap) that I identify as marking many of these works. For purposes
of brevity only one or two textual illustrations are given per aesthetic element, but readers
who are familiar with this literature will certainly recognise these elements in texts they have
read.

1. Remembered selves: autobiographical or memoir style of writing

Many of the writings are drawn from the author's personal experiences and deeply intimate
concerns. Thus it often relies on personal memory, and sometimes on the synthesizing of
facts, events, people, settings from the author’s own life, with imagined/fictional characters
and events. This overt blending of fiction with autobiography results in a hybrid literary
form that has found particular favour amongst some South Asian diasporic women writers.

Often these narratives are set within the grand narratives of geopolitical formations such as
colonialism, the Partition or in the South African context apartheid. The stories contain a
strong sensory dimension. Most of the memoirs and autobiographies make conscious use of
memory, for example, the insertion of childhood anecdotes to explore how they were
experienced at an everyday level. These often very personal narratives, give the impression
that they operate as a record or a tribute to those who went through these experiences but
also play a cathartic function for the authors. This personal element affects the tone of the
writing, imbuing it sometimes with a mournful or wistful mood, and sometimes with a
celebratory, commemorative mood.

For instance, throughout Fault Lines, we see that Meena Alexander is haunted by her past in
Tiruvella, her beautiful and paradisical ancestral home in Kerala, especially when she
considers her traumatic separation from it. In recalling her idyllic childhood there she also
recounts the narrative of European colonisation of India. Her first descriptions of Tiruvella
include a contextualising account of how the Portuguese ‘set fire to an entire ship, alls souls
on board, as a sign to the Indian princes not to oppose them later’ and how the British ‘shot
hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children, who had congregated for a meeting in
Jalianwalabagh’ (1992: 7-8). For a long time Alexander uses this memory of a ‘shining past’
(1992: 201) to anchor herself, to root herself in the face of many migrations, and as an
inspiration for her poetry. But as she writes her memoir she begins to realize that that
construct has to be re-evaluated: ‘In Manhattan, I am a fissured thing, a body crossed by
fault lines. Where is my past? What is my past to me, here, now at the edge of Broadway?’
(1992: 182).

Alexander’s metaphor of the self being like the earth, an entity multiply ruptured and
composed of fragments, is echoed by scholars who attempt to capture the specific
multiplicity of the diasporic subject. Bromley refers to this subject position as ‘biculturalism’
(Bromley 2000: 4), and Vertovec has posited the theory that diaspora may result in ‘fractured
memories’ or ‘a multiplicity of histories, “communities” and selves’. This ‘multiplicity’,
according to Vertovec, used to be viewed as schizophrenic or pathological but it is being
‘redefined by diasporic individuals as a source of adaptive strength’ (2000: xviii).

Later in Fault Lines, during the course of an imaginary conversation, Alexander finally
shatters the memory of Tiruvella which had been a crutch to her for so long, but which she
had outgrown in her new life in Manhattan. Finally she accepts that this past has to be
discarded and a new one imagined through the act of writing this memoir:

It worked for a while and quite beautifully. It was a usable past for me in poetry. … It’s all
exploded now into little bits: house, courtyard, well, guava tree, bowl, pitcher. Just words
really like subway track, newspaper, bread, water (1992: 200-201).

Alexander experienced a crisis in which she was unable to see or articulate herself. The crisis,
precipitated by the writing of her life-story, and caused by the contradictory cultural forces
which shape her, is alleviated by the forging of a new relationship with the past, and an easier
acceptance of the present. The resolution,5 according to Alexander, is the recognition of
multiple selves, and an appreciation of the roles of both the past and the present in the
formation of subjectivity, and it is the writing of her memoir which facilitates this
recognition and appreciation.6

This agonized attempt to write oneself into coherency and stability has not been
sympathetically received by all readers and critics. Alexander’s tortured lyrical prose, used to
describe her victimhood and marginality, is regarded (for example, see Jaspal Kaur Singh’s
‘Memory of Trauma in Meena Alexander’s Texts’) as a self-aggrandising ploy. Alexander’s
identification with the ‘oppressed third world woman’ (Chow 2005: 603) of India is seen as a
false, perhaps even fraudulent, subject position aimed at enhancing her claims to alterity, a
valuable attribute for an aspiring postcolonial poet and academic in the USA.

But in my reading Fault Lines Alexander does not conflate herself with a homogenized,
oppressed group of third world women. Rather she offers vignettes from her childhood and
more recent past, which represent specific women, including her mother, grandmother and
nanny, empathetically and reflexively. As the author emphasises, she is not just a privileged
Western intellectual. Her past selves are always present, informing her present subjectivity.
She is all her selves at once, and that includes being a ‘dark female body’ (1992: 202), an
Indian woman subject to various forms of oppression, as well as a relatively autonomous
postcolonial artist and academic. The narrative of Fault Lines is aimed at representing the
many selves of its author along the journey to its present location. Her identification with
lives encountered along the way, lives imaginatively recollected in the narrative, may well be
evidence of Alexander’s empathetic apprehension of suffering. Alexander’s fractured
perspective in Fault Lines is indeed indicative of privilege, but it is the privilege earned by a
postcolonial, diasporic women writer who is attempting to wrench personal stability from
the multiplicity of subject positions she occupies.

2. Titillating tastes and domestic heroism

In this body of literature small objects or trivial events are described in minute detail. The
richness of home living and the domestic spaces of women are evoked. In these spaces
women are shown to have knowledge, expertise, traditional skills; here they are free from
oppression albeit temporarily. Redolent descriptions of food abound. The power of food to
evoke the homeland in the exilic imagination is one of the most effectively rendered of the
common aesthetic elements. Food and its accompanying rituals feature prominently in these
narratives, stirring the senses and the emotions of the characters. The female domestic
spaces are offered in contrast to other male-dominated, often public, spheres where women
are either silenced and abused, or complicit in the structures which suffocate their gender.
Also, because many of the characters are diasporic subjects, there is a huge emphasis on
mobility, movement through space, and movement from location to location.

An effective utilisation of this aesthetic element is evident in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The
Namesake (2003). Here Lahiri uses food as a trope to explore the vicissitudes of the diasporic
consciousness. The novel opens and closes with a scene in a kitchen. In the first scene,
Ashima Ganguli, a new immigrant to the U.S.A. is pregnant and homesick. The passage is a
lengthy description of her attempts to reproduce ‘the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta
sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India’ (2003: 1). In what is obviously a
mirroring device, the final section of the novel opens with a lengthy description of Ashima,
widowed and now aged fifty-three, preparing food for a Christmas party (2003: 274). Again
the reader is given a detailed, step-by-step account of the preparation of the dish, and again
the food operates as a catalyst for Ashima’s memories and as a symbol of her desire for the
homeland. From the outset food is used to indicate Ashima’s feelings of alienation in the
diasporic location. She is repulsed by bland ‘American’ food, and her enthusiastic culinary
endeavours are her attempts to recreate home. But these evocative, sensuous scenes also
convey Ashima’s expertise, dedication to her family, and her ability to adapt. With good
humour she learns to roast turkeys for Thanksgiving ‘albeit rubbed with garlic and cumin
and cayenne’ (2003: 64), and to make ‘yoghurt from half-and-half and sandesh from ricotta
cheese’ (2003: 276).

Sara Suleri too uses food as a trope in her witty and ironic portrayal of her life and Pakistani
politics in Meatless Days (1987). Most of her childhood is related through stories about food.
Using her particular brand of quirky humour, Suleri tells a tale of sibling malice in the story
of ‘what the kidney said’ (1987: 27). This moment of discovering that the kidneys on her
plate are indeed the organ in the body that ‘make pee’ is a significant moment in the young
Suleri’s life as it is her first experience of betrayal. In a typical stylistic gesture, Suleri transfers
the betrayal from her sister, Ifat, to the kidneys, and thus food takes on a particular, sinister
implication for Suleri:

Betrayed by food, I let her go, and wept some watery tears into the kidney juice, which was
designed anyway to evade cohesion, being thin and in its nature inexact. … Then I ran out to
the farthermost corner of the garden, where I would later go to hide my shame of milking-
time in a retch that refused to materialize (1987: 26).

In the same section of the memoir, Suleri describes how she ‘had to go back to where [she]
belonged and – past a thousand different mealtimes – try to reconstruct the parable of the
kapura’ (1987: 24). As an adult living in New Haven, Suleri discovers from her sister, Tillat,
that kapura are testicles. This revelation astounds her. However, it is not just her culinary
sensibility which is affronted, but also her cultural identity as a Pakistani living in the USA
which is also called into question:
 I must have always known exactly what kapura are, because the conversation they provoked
came accompanied with shocks of familiarity that typically attend a trade of solid
information. What I had really wanted to reply, first to Tillat and then to my Pakistani
friends was: yes, of course, who do you think I am, what else could they possibly be? (1987:
27)

Details of domestic life such as attitudes to food, its preparation and consumption, are thus
crucial to Suleri’s subjectivity, as the title of her memoir suggests. Later in the section, the
parable of the kapura takes on another function as Suleri extrapolates from her life to the life
of her ‘home’ nation. Here Suleri uses the food trope to comment on the vicissitudes of
Pakistani politics:

So, long before the kapura made its comeback in my life, we in Pakistan were bedmates with
betrayal and learned how to take grim satisfaction from assessing the water table of our
outrage. There were both lean times and meaty times, however; occasionally, body and food
would sit happily at the same side of the conference table (1987: 29).

In Meatless Days, Suleri’s use of this aesthetic element does not have the effect of
sentimentalizing her ‘home’, nor of expressing a profound sense of loss and nostalgia.
Rather, Suleri’s pointed style, idiosyncratic humour, and unusual use of metaphor, enrich her
memoir, inter-weaving her life-story with commentary on national politics, gender roles,
family dynamics and the process of migration to the USA.

3. In praise of exemplary female relatives

In what might be described as a typical feature of women’s writing, these authors represent
female characters with strength, wisdom, capacity for suffering and a talent for storytelling.
Sometimes the praise or reverence is in the form of characterization (the older female
relative, usually a grandmother or widowed aunt is mentor to the female protagonist),
sometimes it takes the form of overt tribute to an actual relative, living or dead. Moreover,
power dynamics within patriarchal family structures too frequently comes under the
spotlight. In particular, woman-to-woman relationships within families are intensely
dramatised.

Zuleikha Mayat, South African author of A Treasure Trove of Memories: A Reflection on the
Experiences of the People of Potchefstroom (1990), has written a narrative that is more a memoir of
a community than of the self.7 In this memoir Mayat recalls the arrival of her grandparents
from India, and their settlement in the town of Potchefstroom, in the late nineteenth
century, and then she describes the life of this community in apartheid South Africa. The
double dislocation of Indian immigrants in South Africa (from the ‘homeland’, and then
within the new ‘home’ due to forced removals8) made the need for continuity even more
urgent in this particular diasporic location. Women, according to Mayat played the major
role in preserving traditional cultural practices in the diasporic location. She describes how
the women of her family used memory to keep the image of the past ‘home’ alive. These
memories were transformed into stories, narrated by the women whilst performing domestic
chores, extending their role of nurturers to that of educators as well:
 It wasn't story telling, but a more sacred duty that mothers and aunts seemed to be
performing. As sustainers of family traditions, we learnt the fundamentals of our faith in
their laps. Before being handed over to a teacher or Maulana, we already knew our kalimas
duas and the Arabic alphabet (1990: 63).

In these vignettes, Mayat praises her female relatives, describes domestic scenes and
everyday life, and expresses her views on the preservation of ‘traditional’ cultural practices,
lauding some elements of tradition as reconstructed through memory while simultaneously
deconstructing the notion of a traditional housebound Muslim woman that may be offered
up by simplistic notions of tradition. This complexity is clear in this portrayal of her mother:

As custodians of family and community traditions, they were busy cooking, entertaining,
sewing, arranging receptions and keeping daughters in tow. This was my mother's life too,
when she had arrived from India, heavily cloaked in a burkha, but as long as I can
remember, she was a picture in motion (1990: 158).

Mayat's mother, who migrated from India, had to adjust to life in South Africa and to her
husband’s assimilation into the host culture. She is, like Meena Alexander’s amma, mindful
of her prescribed gender role, and ironically cultural change is first brought about for
Mayat’s mother, through adherence to old conceptions of wifely duty:

His ... insistence that they sit at a table, and instead of the communal khooncha, eat from
separate plates! All this was new to her. Daily she adapted to a new situation. She never
protested nor questioned the pronouncements. To obey your husband was to win his love
and confidence (1990: 71).

However, Mayat's mother is not hampered by 'traditions' - her adaptation to the diasporic
home was prompted, paradoxically, by an adherence and defiance to tradition. Alexander, in
the final section of her memoir made a similar revelation about her mother, amma. Here,
amma is allowed to tell her own story and thus reveal her hitherto imperceptible strong will.
Amma illustrates this with an anecdote about how she sold her valuable wedding sari and
then donated the funds to a mission hospital and school. In a similar gesture of self-sacrifice
and defiance, Mayat's mother, as a result of an economic depression in South Africa, decides
to take off her burkha and help in the family shop in town, becoming the first Muslim
businesswoman there to do this. She achieves this in addition to domestic chores such as
cooking. In contrast to Alexander’s writing, Mayat’s narrative lacks an overt feminist critique
of gender roles (however, flawed or limited Alexander’s critique may prove to be). Instead,
Mayat’s more subtle style is to present the portrait of an adaptable, competent, transnational
woman, a purveyor of 'traditional' culture who is also capable of a defiant feminist gesture,
stepping from the world circumscribed by the burkha into the world of male versions of
trade and commerce and reconfiguring both in the process.

The notion of sisterhood is also a common theme this literature. In Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart (1999) and The Vine of Desire (2002) the lives of central
characters Anju and Sudha are narrated. They are cousins whose sisterly bond surpasses all
other loyalties and desires. In Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) the hugely divergent lives of
sisters Nazneen and Hasina are narrated, mainly through their epistolary relationship, but
Nazneen’s is the central consciousness developed in the novel. A similar dual formation is
found in Farida Karodia’s Daughters of the Twilight (1986) and Other Secrets (2000). The
eponymous daughters are Meena and Yasmin, sisters growing up during South Africa’s
twilight years of apartheid. It is the character Meena whose interior life is explored in the
narrative, but the external actions of Yasmin drive the plot of this novel. This representation
of female relationships, matrilineal formations and supportive sisterhoods is an important
political element of the aesthetic, as it depicts a solidarity and sorority despite differences
between women.

There is a danger that this glorifying and celebration of women as domestic heroines and as
custodians culture may well be a lingering symptom of the patriarchal practice of confining
women to the home or designating their role as domestic drudges. Such designations may
prove counter-productive and limiting for diasporic women, as Sandra Ponzanesi warns us:

There is a particular cult of domesticity which tends to fixate women to home as a timeless
space whereas men tend to be associated with mobility and notions of progress. As far as the
condition of migration and diaspora is concerned women are often called to preserve their
nation through the restoration of a traditional ‘home’ in the new country. This idea of home
entails the preservation of traditions, heritage, continuity; there is even an intense emotive
politics of dress for some communities. (Ponzanesi 1998:7)

But the appreciation of women by women writers is by no means facile or without a

nuanced critique of the limitations and triumphs which result from such a ‘cult of
domesticity’. As Mayat’s portrait above reveals, her mother was in constant motion,
challenging the notion of non-agentic Muslim women. In many of these texts diasporic
South Asian women are shown to make their own choices regarding the preservation of
homeland culture and the adaptations to modernity which their dislocation necessitates.
Ultimately, what is highlighted, perhaps even celebrated, is not the triumph in one or other
sphere, but the multiplicity of talents and influences that these women wield in their new
homes.

4. Intertextuality and cultural translation

This element is used evocatively, sometimes effusively to capture the richness of a culture,
and to enact its preservation, to allude to its esoteric concerns, to set up contrasts, or to
zoom in on sensory details. The themes of cultural continuation and perpetuation are woven
into narratives of change, often dramatic geopolitical change or territorial dislocation.
References are made to deities, local legend, ancient myths, Hindu or Islamic scriptures or
musical traditions but these are not mere backdrops to the main narrative but are embedded
into the plot and into the narratives of the characters’ lives. They thus have an aetiological or
ethnographic value, and they reveal the tentacles that tie South Asian women to their cultural
origins. In many instances, storytelling is thematised in these narratives. There are writers
who emphasize their South Asian literary influences, thereby affirming and elucidating their
traditional homes. But in some instances when the descriptions or intertextuality has been
unsubtle and intrusive in terms of the narrative or have failed to explore the fluidity of
'tradition', these authors have been accused of cultural packaging and exoticisation.9

In the title story of her collection, On the Fringe of Dreamtime and Other Stories (1987), Jayapraga
Reddy tells the heartrending tale of displacement and loss caused by forced removals in
apartheid South Africa. The unnamed central character, now an old man, returns to his child-
hood home to reminisce but is met with suspicion and fear by the new white owners. The
past, the joy of ownership, the sense of home and security, the connectedness to place, all
become a dream and he is cast into the periphery of his world. Here Reddy captures the
tragedy of a past injustice that will haunt generations to come. She uses a description of
ritual and ceremony to capture this tragedy. The old man pauses dramatically in front of the
ruins of a Hindu temple as he shuffles away from his former home:

Nothing remained of it now except the ruins for the inner sanctum. He stood there and
heard once more the prayers and songs of a thousand devotees. The blackened ruin conjured
up the fragrant smoke of incense and fruit offerings. Here he had accompanied his family
during festivals and special occasions. At such times, the spirit of sharing and oneness was
strengthened (1987: 66).

This description contrasts with his present status as intruder and alien. In the past he
belonged and was secure in the bosom of his family and community. The details of this
description also serve an ethnographic function, reinforcing the cultural identity of the
protagonist, an identity that has been eroded by the appropriation and destruction of his
home.

Alexander too makes use of this aesthetic element, but her incorporation of mythology and
classical Indian literature into her narrative has a feminist motive. In Fault Lines, Alexander
describes how her adored grandfather, Illya, would ‘make up his own tales with a special girl,
Susikali, playing the heroine’10 (1992: 31). These made-up stories were a form of katha, tales
‘recited in a deep singsong voice, in a formal standing position …[or] told simply, with a
child on one’s knee’ (1992: 31). Illya’s kathas have the texture and resonance of myths. They
contain elements of local geography and lore:

Susikali had a knack for finding trouble. She raced through paddy fields in pursuit of
rakshasis, those demon ladies with long black hair. Sometimes she stole food, or plucked the
ripest mangoes in someone else’s orchard and black birds chased her all the way up the
Nilgiris. Sometimes she witnessed fearful things. She saw a man of God from Patananthita, a
priest of great faith, pick up his cassock, tuck it in t his waist, and chase after her. Or so it
seemed at first. He had long iron nails held firmly in his hand. He swung a wooden mallet
(1992: 31).

In this katha, the rakshasi is violently attacked by the man of God. The subtext of this katha
is clearly discernible. Susikali, the young heroine is complicit with the man of God in the
persecution of the rakshasis who are wild, free-spirited women. As can be expected the spell-
bound Alexander identifies with the adventurous heroine, but there is a twist. The four-and-
a-half-year-old Alexander is a budding feminist:

She didn’t like the look on the face of the man of God. That much was clear. She was me. I
was she, Susikali, exact replica of my four-and-a-half-year-old self granted the boon of
magical powers. But I was also the rakshasi. I loved the fierce glitter of that mad woman, the
power that let her leap over the rice fields swollen with water, bolt up the highest Indian
mountain (1992: 32).

Even though Alexander is grateful to Illya for entertaining her and nurturing her ripening
imagination, she subtly weaves into her katha a feminist critique of Illya’s Susikali kathas.
Both Susikali and the rakshasi transgress the bounds of traditional female roles, the latter in a
more extreme way, and Alexander identifies with both female characters, delighting in their
respective power and freedom.

Alexander also synthesizes Judean-Christian mythology with classical Indian literature. She
recalls first how Illya read to her the Malayalam or Hindi translation of the story of Adam
and Eve from the Book of Genesis. Eve’s burden reminds Alexander of another female
character who suffers bitterly because of an inadvertent mistake. The character is Shakuntala,
eponymous heroine of the famous play by Kalidasa, a poet and playwright from the city of
Ujain in India who lived sometime around the fifth century AD.

And how sweet her hand was. It was the hand of his beloved holding out the apple but as he
bit into the sweetness, all hell broke loose. And thinking of the hand of Awa [Eve], I thought
too of Shakuntala, Kalidasa’s heroine, whose sweet hand had touched her lover in the forest
(1992: 42).

Not only does Alexander’s splicing of two similar tales from different sources comment on
the richness of her cultural heritage, but it also furthers her feminist project which is to
expose the injustice of a social system (in this instance, two very different ones) which
associates a woman’s body and sexuality with shame and guilt, thus rendering her physically
and emotionally vulnerable. Eve, the arch temptress unleashes death and destruction on
humankind because of her wantonness, and the fantastically beautiful Shakuntala who has
sex out of wedlock is punished for her transgression. This use of mythology and literature,
which would have been familiar to Alexander as a child, is also effective in capturing the
richness of her Malayali, Syrian Christian, middle class background. These embedded
narratives are not mere backdrops to the main narrative.11 They are interwoven with the
narrative of the Alexander’s life and they serve a thematic function too, as the feminist
content of the myths and tales testify. Further, in the representation of Illya’s kathas
storytelling itself is thematised. In this way, Alexander employs this aesthetic element to also
comment on the role of the imagination in her life.

5. Sex, the body and marriage

The prevalence of this theme is indicative of the feminist commitment of the literature. For
instance, there are countless narratives of varying lengths and merits that detail the hardship,
and often the horrors, of forced marriages. The woman’s body as a site of control and
violence is vividly and emotively portrayed, for example through the relationship between
the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law, who, in contrast to the revered grandmother or
aunt, has become a stock character in this literature, a symbol of the internalisation of
patriarchal law and complicity (or in more nuanced portrayals, of the patriarchal bargain that
mothers-in-law have to make).

Jhumpa Lahiri’s award-winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999) contains a
story that gazes back from the diasporic location to the homeland, in particular to the plight
of women there. ‘The Treatment of Bibi Haldar’ has an overtly feminist theme, and it
explores an unusual form of resistance and a unique female subjectivity. The story is narrated
in the first person plural, creating the sense of a distinct community, which accordingly
highlights the marginalized position of Bibi. This community is described as female
(although this is not explicitly stated) and the domestic space and activities of this
community are strongly evoked. But the aesthetic element at the centre of this narrative is
the theme of marriage, the woman’s body and female sexuality.

It is not clear whether Bibi is a hysteric12 or not, but she does suffer from a mysterious,
seemingly incurable illness which renders her an outcaste in her community. At first Bibi
expresses a strong desire to be married and to give vent to her repressed sexual and
emotional needs. She also desires to belong socially, to conform and take her place in the
community of other wives and mothers. But her disability and her impoverished state thwart
these desires. As a result she lives in an abject state of dependency and vulnerability. She is at
the bottom of the social ladder: a disabled, poor, unmarried woman. However, Lahiri has
created a character with unusual will and resolve. Bibi has been denied even the
commonplace role of a woman in her society, that of a wife and mother within the
parameters of patriarchal law. Nevertheless she achieves her aims through unconventional
means and seeks empowerment and fulfilment outside those parameters. She engages in an
illicit relationship, the details of which remain a mystery, and bears an illegitimate child. Her
sexual and emotional needs met for the first time, Bibi is cured. Furthermore, Bibi is shown
to be an entrepreneur, capable of earning her own living and providing for her child.
Surprisingly, she is not shunned by the community but succoured by them in her hour of
need, thus achieving social acceptance as well. Although this conclusion to a tragic tale might
seem too glib and triumphantly feminist, it is recouped by an otherwise harsh and
penetrating feminist critique of the ill treatment of women such as Bibi Haldar in India.13

6. The paradox of continuity and change

Some of this literature reveals a profound anxiety about dislocation and adaptation to the
host culture. Here the primary focus is the diasporic condition, and gender becomes a
secondary consideration. The diasporic subject, as represented in this literature, suffers from
the tension caused by multiple affiliations but is also shown to develop in new and
invigorating ways as a result of this multiplicity.

Monica Ali’s first novel, Brick Lane (2003) traces the life of Nazneen from her ignominious
birth in a Bangladeshi village to her maturity as an independent and assertive woman on a
council estate in London. The social detail is expansive, covering immigrant life in London
and rural and urban life in Bangladesh, for various classes. The characters span three
generations, and the political scope of the novel includes racism in England and the
repercussions of 9/11. At the heart of the narrative is the construction of an empowered
female subjectivity and the articulation of a diasporic female voice, but the novel also
contains sensitive portrayals of male characters such as Chanu and Dr. Azad.

Nazneen initially experiences life in the diasporic home as imprisonment. One recourse is to
dream of Gouripur, the village of her birth, to recreate it in her imagination, and to idealise
her childhood spent in the company of her sister, Hasina. But as Nazneen realises the truth
about her mother, the circumstances of her death, and the psychological stranglehold she
has had over herself, the dreams of Gouripur fade out of the narrative. Thereafter, Nazneen
takes up her position as agent in her new location and with this new stance her longing for
the homeland is assuaged. She breaks out of the prison imposed by ‘traditions’ transplanted
from the homeland to the diasporic location; she transforms herself from village girl to
assertive bread-winner and protector of the home. But she does not abandon her cultural
heritage altogether. She still cooks Bangladeshi food, wears a sari and greets fellow
immigrants with a respectful ‘Salaam Ale-Koum’ (2003: 485).

As a member of the immigrant community, Nazneen also manages to look out from within
its confines, to the world outside. She is a newcomer to London, to the ‘west’ and so her
perspective is novel. She is puzzled and fascinated by this alien world and its apparent
contradictions. She cannot, for example, understand why the tattoo lady, a neighbour at the
council estate, was both poor and fat: ‘To Nazneen it was unfathomable. In Bangladesh it
was no more possible to be both poor and fat than to be rich and starving’ (2003: 53).
Nazneen’s view of the metropolis is refreshing in that it focuses on the unfamiliarity and
hostility of London. From Nazneen’s point of view, it is the imposing cityscape and its
stressed, white inhabitants that are exotic. In Chapter Three of the novel Nazneen bravely
plunges into the midst of the city, and is startled by her observations, as well as her ability to
negotiate this alien world.

They could not see her any more than she could see God. … She began to scrutinize. She
stared at the long, thin faces, the pointy chins. The women had strange hair. It puffed up
around their heads, pumped up like a snake’s hood. They pressed their lips together and
narrowed their eyes as though they were angry at something they had heard, or at the wind
for messing their hair (2003: 56-57).

The full extent of Nazneen’s resilience is revealed a little later in the narrative when a fit of
anger against her husband, Chanu’s ineffectuality, causes her to celebrate internally her
achievement as a non-English speaking Bangladeshi woman lost, alone and pregnant in
London:

Anything is possible. She wanted to shout it. Do you know what I did today? I went inside a
pub. To use the toilet. Did you think I could do that? I walked mile upon mile around the
whole of London, although I did not see the edge of it. And to get home I went to a
restaurant. I found a Bangladeshi restaurant and asked directions. See what I can do! (2003:
62-63).

This ability to adapt, assimilate, blend cultural influences, defy stereotypes and find
fulfilment is what confers upon Nazneen the status of heroine in this novel. What is also
significant is that Nazneen, like Hasina, arguably the other heroine of the novel, she learns to
exercise her will and take risks in order to fulfil her desires. The closing, incongruous image
of the novel is of Nazneen, in a sari about to physically step onto an ice-rink (2003: 492).
Her fantasies about ice-skating were about to become a reality, but the underlying
significance of the fantasy had already been realised. Nazneen had achieved freedom,
mobility, stability, form and grace in her new home, all the while clad in a durable sari.

Conclusion
Although an overarching pattern of aesthetic elements is discernible in a wide cross section
of prose literature by women of the South Asian diaspora, there are also some notable
differences between writers and locations. A closer look at South African South Asian
writers, for example, reveals that, despite common tropes and stylistic elements, these
daughters of apartheid, express a much more overt and fervent engagement with racial and
political themes than their counterparts in other diasporic locations. Another difference is
the growing production of popularised romance-style novels in the USA. These ‘chick’
novels combine elements of the conventional romance novel genre with a fashionable
postcolonial and feminist verve, often resulting in a crude commodification and exoticisation
of South Asian cultures. Significantly, these differences testify to the very different migratory
patterns which comprise the South Asian diaspora, and they serve as a warning against
treating South Asian women’s writing as a homogeneous literary category.

Indeed the texts’ merits vary tremendously, ranging from instances of crude polemic to
subtle and poignant evocations of both feminist and diasporic concerns. Some texts produce
stock characters and generalisations which detract from the obvious aims of the authors.
Other texts are guilty of perpetuating East-West binarisms or of setting up ‘tradition’ and
‘modernity’ in a simplistic relationship of opposition. This is of particular danger to the
diasporic writer who has lead a life of privilege in South Asia and for whom migration has
been comfortable and easy. Attempts by such writers to act as spokesperson for the less
privileged or less fortunate is sure to provoke the ire of postcolonial feminist critics. More
obviously, the tendency to jump on the band-wagon of trendy, Indo-chic popular literature
raises the issues of cultural translation and authenticity.

However, when viewed as a distinct body of literature, these writers' engagement with
diasporic dislocation, with notions of 'tradition' and with gender roles deserves praise and
recognition. This praise and recognition is especially due because these authors, to a lesser or
greater extent, belong neither here nor there, but where one is able to write and thus create a
home.

Notes
1. In this chapter the term ‘tradition’ refers to practices which originate in and are still
largely prevalent in South Asia; in some instances the term refers to orthodox
cultural practices; the term is not meant to suggest pure origins or homogeneity.
2. Feminist scholars as diverse in practice and affiliation as Elaine Showalter, Julia
Kristeva and Trinh Minh-ha have stressed the importance of the construction of
female subjectivity through language. This agency, wrought through the constitution
of subjectivity in language, signals within feminist scholarship, a shift in the focus
from the past, and past injustices, to the present and present achievements.
3. The notion of a ‘grounded aesthetics’ may be viewed in opposition to the term as
associated with the nineteenth century Aesthetic movement, mainly in France,
concerned with the supreme value of art and the perception of beauty.
4. Susie Tharu and K Lalitha also use the term aesthetic in a similar but much broader
way in their introduction to Women Writing India: 600 BC to the early 20th century (1991).
They believe that their anthology initiates the development of an aesthetic which
…must undo the strict distinctions between the literary and the social text, abdicate
the imperious functions it has been charged with over the last century and a half,
and redesign itself to orchestrate contradictions and cherish the agonistic forms of
insurgency and resistance. … It is also an aesthetic that holds the promise of the
 many worlds that will appear as the old universalism fades and begins to look dull
and simplistic …(1991: 36)
5. Alexander’s tortured account of her re-negotiation of the relationship between the
past and the present through writing is echoed by Homi K Bhabha in The Location of
Cutlure (1994):
Such art does not merely recall the past as social cause or aesthetic precedent; it
renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent 'in-between' space, that innovates and
interrupts the performance of the present. The 'past-present' becomes part of the
necessity, not the nostalgia, of living (1994: 7).
6. See also Koul, Sudha. 2002. The Tiger Ladies: A Memoir of Kashmir. London: Review,
and Kamdar, Mira. 2000. Motiba’s Tattoos: A Granddaughter’s Journey into her Indian
Family’s Past. New York: Public Affairs.
7. Caren Kaplan proposes that transnational women autobiographers are devising what
she calls an ‘out-law genre’. One such ‘out-law genre’ is cultural autobiography which
renegotiates ‘the relationship between personal identity and the world, between
personal and social history’ (1992: 130).
8. The Group Areas Act was one of the main apartheid laws. Introduced in 1950, it
separated residential areas according to race, forcibly removing black people from
their homes and re-locating them in designated areas, usually far away from the
centre of cities.
9. See Huggan, Graham. 2001. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. Routledge:
London.
10. The made-up name Susikali, has the suffix, kali or Kali – the most feared deity in the
Indian pantheon, the goddess to whom powers of death and destruction are
attributed. The Kali figure also represents the usually repressed energies of the
female psyche, whose release during festivals transgresses and social hierarchy and
normative gender roles.
11. A much more effusive example of this element can be found in Kirchner’s Shiva
Dancing (1998), where clumsy and laborious accounts of the Hindu myths of Shiva
and Sita are slotted into the narrative as a form cultural translation. These
ethnographic digressions obstruct the flow of the narrative, and appear forced and
self-exoticising.
12. Bibi’s ‘illness’ is cured by a change in her circumstances, not by medical intervention,
which suggests a psycho-social disorder akin to hysteria.
13. See also Anjana Appachana’s short story ‘Bahu’ in Appachana, Anjana. 1992.
Incantations and Other Stories. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

References
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Ali, Monica. 2003. Brick Lane. London: Black Swan.
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Bhabha, H.K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Bromley, Roger. 2000. Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Chow, Ray. 2005. ‘Against the Lure of Diaspora: Minority Discourses, Chinese Women, and
Intellectual Hegemony’, in Desai, Gaurav and Nair, Supriya (eds.), Postcolonialisms: An
 Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, pp. 589-607. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press.
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. 1999. Sister of My Heart. London: Black Swan Books.
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. 2002. The Vine of Desire. London: Abacus.
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 21
Memory of Trauma in Meena Alexander’s Texts

Jaspal Kaur Singh

Many Indian writers have contributed to the rich tradition of English literary studies, and in
the postcolonial era, their contributions impact reader not only in South Asia, but also in
many other parts of the world, particularly, and for the purpose of this paper, North
America. The taste for Indian writers and texts have spilled over from academia to the
mainstream public, as can be seen from the availability of South Asian texts to the popularity
of South Asian films in the diaspora. Not all texts, however popular their appeal, should be
easily added to the list of writers contributing to this rich tradition, or if they are added, a
postcolonial theoretical framework should be provided to readers, particularly to students of
English Literature, so they can accurately place such writers within neocolonial and western
imperialist spaces.

One such popular writer is Meena Alexander, a poet and a novelist, who was born in
Allahabad, India, lived in Sudan and England, and now resides in the United States.
Alexander, in her texts, manages to provide a fairly credible representation of the Indian
immigrant experience, yet, it is within the gaps and excesses in the narratives that her biases
and neo-colonial and westernized assumptions resurface, allowing a postcolonial critical
reading. In her autobiographical novel, Fault Lines, Alexander writes: ‘I am, a woman cracked
by multiple migrations. Uprooted so many times she can connect nothing with nothing’ (2).
In these reconnections, she manages to fetishize and provide reductive and stereotypical
images of Indian cultural practices and gender relations. I will examine her texts to locate her
diasporic experiences of revising memory and history where she adds to autobiographical
elements in her fictional representations. For my postcolonial critical analyses, I will focus on
her themes of migration, dislocation, relocation, and habitation, which form ‘fault lines,’
fragmentation, and fractures between her past and her present selves, allowing the author to
invent and reinvent, represent and misrepresent, construct and reconstruct to such an extent
that she has become one of the most taught writers in the Western academia.

Let us examine the many tactics the author uses to reinvent, revise, and represent (or
misrepresent) Indian womanhood through her diasporic experiences in the West. In he
Shock of Arrival, for example, Alexander states, ‘The shock of arrival is multifold—what was
borne in the mind is jarred, tossed into new shapes, an exciting exfoliation of the sense . . .
What the immigrant must work with is what she must invent in order to live’ (3). This shock
shows that the question of race, ethnicity, gender and nationality are all arbitrary signs to be
contested and revised, so that one can reconstruct oneself anew. Colonialism and the
subsequent decolonization movements intersect with ideas of American ethnicity for
Alexander. She attempts to write about Indian women who are not only mad, but who
through madness rewrite themselves in a maddening space produced by violence. She
doesn’t write only about women who jumped into wells to drown; the women she attempts
to write about are the ‘well jumped women’ --women with ‘saris swept up shamelessly, high
above the ankles, high above the knees, women well jumping: jumping over wells,’ (Shock
206), even if the western audience only wants to hear about ‘palm trees and back waters’
(206) of Kerala. She claims that she attempts to bring strong Indian women characters to her
texts, yet, Alexander is finally unsuccessful in negotiating the first world academic and
privileged territories in order to bring ‘well jumping women’ to the Western audience, for
she falls into the trap of fetishizing ‘oppressed third world women’ for a Western audience,
leading to voyeurism, as I shall show throughout the rest of the paper.

Alexander’s poetry shows her fragmentation in complex ways. For example, the poet writes:
‘My back against the barbed wire/snagged and coiled to belly height . . . Slow accoutrements
of habits/and of speech/the lust of grief/the savagery of waste/flicker and burn . . . Come
ferocious alphabets of flesh/splinter and raze my page/that out of dumb/and bleeding part
of me/I may claim my heritage . . . to cacophony’ (Shock 15). Such reclamation of the past to
reconstruct a new identity after a traumatic dislocation, either due to colonialism or exile, is
practiced by many writers. For example, many postcolonial poets use the hybridized third
space (Bhabha) to reconstruct and re-turn to ‘claim [their] heritage’ after the trauma of
alienation. While analyzing Cesaire’s poetry, for example, Michael Dash asserts that ‘he re-
enacts the need to reintegrate the exiled subject in the lost body [and] imagines the journey
of the disembodied subject across the estranging waters and the eventual reintegration of the
body with the pays natal.’ Dash suggests that for the subject to be reintegrated, it must first
‘overcome the initial revulsion . . . [and] must radically redefine notions of time, space,
beauty and power before return becomes possible, and must strip away all illusions . . . .
empty consciousness of all pretensions’ (332). Many male writers have used ‘verbal
muscularity’ for the ‘spiritual awakening expressed in images of revitalized physicality’ (334).
To feel whole, to be reintegrated, to be ‘fulfilled is a ceaseless task of the psyche,’ claim
Peterson and Rutherford (189). Thus, for many displaced and dislocated postcolonial and
diasporic subjects, various tactics are used to ‘reintegrate’ the ‘splintered’ psyche.

Alexander, too, explores the ‘liberatory space’ found through nationalism in third world
countries as well as in the diaspora in order to question, reconstruct and reinscribe the
‘mutilated and dismembered’ female body (Dash 334), not only her own but also many
oppressed third world women. For reanimation of the castrated and dismembered male
body, poets use the liberatory space found in revolutionary movements. Alexander suggests
that she uses the diasporic spaces created by border crossings to rewrite herself. In these
border crossings and new multicultural spaces, she finds herself marginalized and thus
oppressed as a ‘third world woman.’ She ‘borrows’ idioms from subaltern subjects and the
wretched of the earth to tell her own story and to construct herself in an alternate space—
yet, a space that has many privileges—the western academy. How far can we take
intertextuality in terms of writing on the ‘mutilated’ body of the displaced and alienated
subject? This question is particularly important for the diasporic writer, such as Alexander,
who by her own testimony was never wrenched from her home but crossed the ocean out of
choice? How is it that this artist who belongs to the ‘diaspora of hope’ uses the words of
subjects who belong to the ‘diaspora of despair’ and ‘terror’ (Appadurai Modernity at Large)?
The first diaspora—the diaspora of hope--is chosen willingly, while the last two—diasporas
of despair and terror—are never willingly or knowingly entered into.

Alexander claims and uses the memory of oppressed third world women in the diaspora to
reconstruct herself anew in the first world. Again, many artists and writers of trauma use
memory as a tool. However, one must ask--Is that memory ‘heteropathic’ or ‘idiopathic’
(Silverman 185)? Let me elaborate. In ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs,’
Marianne Hirsh elaborates on Silverman’s terms by explaining that in ‘heteropathic’
identification, the remembering subject identifies with the victim at a distance, whereas in
‘idiopathic’ identification, it appropriates the victim’s suffering, where the ‘distances
disappears, creating too available, too easy an access to [a] particular past,’ thereby creating
an ‘appetite for alterity’ (408). The artist who remembers the painful events in the lives of
victims must ‘resist appropriation and incorporation, resist annihilating the distance between
self and other, the otherness of others’ (Hirsch 407), otherwise, due to the ‘appetite for
alterity,’ the remembering subject will construct itself as a ‘surrogate victim’ (Hirsch 414).
Alexander becomes the surrogate victim when she collapses the boundaries between herself
and the ‘oppressed’ third world women who suffer gender and sexual oppression.

Alexander argues that the female Indian body, after nationalism, had to ‘bear the pitiful
burden of repressed desire and the pain of withdrawn sexuality’ (Shock 182). As nationalism
constructed the female Indian body as self-sacrificing and asexual in opposition to
colonialism’s western/westernized and sexualized liberated female body, many Indian
women internalized such myths, and indeed continue to perpetuate such colonial myths. All
the repressed sexuality of women in India is in Alexander’s memory for she says, ‘The voice
that is other grows great. It bursts through the body. It sings. The world that [women
writers] wrote from is not far from me. I bear it within. It becomes part of the memory I
need for knowledge of this new world, part of a migrant music’ (Shock 192).

Alexander’s idiopathic identification with the sexually repressed and oppressed collective
female Indian bodies constructs for us a pastiche of the Indian woman body, be it in India
or the diaspora, as she rewrites herself anew in the new world through ‘projection . . . over-
appropriation’ (Hirsch 411) at the cost of the real victims of oppression in postcolonial
spaces. While her images are powerful and she shows that rewriting and reimagining can
occur through violence and the eruptive narrative spaces, she does not belong to the
‘diaspora of despair’ (Appadurai) as she would like her audiences to believe. Alexander
comes from an upper-middle class background, and because of her privileged background,
she does not belong to the ‘diaspora of despair,’ but the ‘diaspora of hope,’ as she was never
‘wrenched’ from her homeland, but took to the many border crossings for personal and
individual gain and empowerment.

Let us explore some examples of her ‘idiopathic identification’ (Silverman) and her easy
construction of a pays natal that for many Indians, born in Myanmar or what is now Pakistan,
for example, was brutally wrenched from them. In the Shock of Arrival, Alexander calls
‘history a mad, mad joke’ (119). She is a person of the diaspora of hope, in Appadurai’s
terms (Modernity at Large), as ‘[she] did not leave [her] motherland because of terror or
political repression. [She] was not torn away from [her] ancestral home by armed militants
(Shock 116). Instead, her story is that her well-educated and well-to-do father wanted to teach
in another country, ‘far away’ ‘across an ocean and a sea . . . . a country in North Africa’
(Shock 116).

Growing up in a well-to-do Syrian Christian family in Kerala, Alexander recalls her

childhood of contradictory plentitude marred by memories of sexual abuse. When she was
five, her father took the family to Sudan, where she grew up, and, at the young age of
thirteen, attended the University of Khartoum. Eventually, she studied in England at the
University of Nottingham for her Ph.D. She taught at Delhi University, Central Institute of
Hyderabad, Hyderabad University. Now, she is a professor at Hunter College and the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Yet despite of all these possibilities,
she writes,

What might it mean to look at myself straight, see myself? . . . My voice splintered in my ears
into a cacophony: whispering cadences, shouts, moans, the quick delight of bodily pleasure,
all rising up as if the condition of being fractured had freed the selves jammed into my skin,
multiple beings locked into the journeys of one body. (1)

So how does she write herself back into wholeness? What are her traumas, besides going
through multiple migrations? Her repressed sexual abuse by her grandfather splintered her
sexuality, but her fragmented identity, which she claims is due to her multiple migrations,
and which she ‘sutures’ back with the ‘thread of memory,’ seems flawed as it fails to
recognize the privileges that clearly help her in this enterprise. While her images are powerful
and she shows that rewriting and reimaginings can occur through violence and the eruptive
narrative spaces, she does not belong to the ‘diaspora of despair’ (Appadurai) as she would
have her audiences believe. For in spite of belonging to the diaspora of hope, she continues
to ask, ‘am I a creature with no home, no nation? And if so, what new genus could I possibly
be’ (Shock 116). What genus, exactly? What becomes of people who are part of these
diasporic sensibilities, who for one reason or another, whether they acknowledge it or not,
are interpelleted due to ‘modernity at large,’ belonging to the diaspora of hope, despair, or
sorrow (Appadurai)? Do these three dwell in separate spaces, or do these spaces collide,
intermingle, and cross fertilize?1

In spite of the awareness that no one forced her out of India, in Alexander’s fragmented
psyche ‘words [recoil] back into a vacant space . . . [which is a] place of waste, dingy detritus
of a life uncared for, no images to offer it hospitality’ (Shock 116). As a woman, this
fragmentation has led her toward ‘tale telling’ where she has to ‘unlearn the fixed positioning
she was taught’ (Shock 117). Unlearning takes place in many parts of the world that she
travels to. Alexander cites the tipsy houses that she dwells in, ‘houses to be born in, houses
to die in, houses to make love in wet, sticky sheets, houses with the pallor of dove’s wings,
houses fragrant as cloves and cinnamon ground together,’ yet she is unable to name any of
the houses as empowering, for ‘her tongue has grown thick’ (Shock 119). This thickness
occurs due to the suffering she witnesses. In Sudan, the acrid smell of tear gas invades her
shivering body. In England, she writes a thesis about memory, ‘while [her] mind cuts loose
from her body and circles empty space’ (Shock 120). In Palghat, in her ancestral home, she
‘becomes mute,’ wrapped in ‘reams of paper’ and shit (Shock 120). In New York, where her
house is ‘split through, a fault in the ground where she stands, [her] soul is auctioned off,’
and this split and fragmented psyche, looking for its home, calms down through the
remembered road between ‘Tiruvella and Kozhencheri,’ and the feeling of home this road
provides (Shock 121). The alienated subject remembers an idealized space for reconstruction.

Still, whenever she crosses a border, she dies a little (Shock 93), and out of this death, a new
life emerged ‘tearing up the old skin’ toward a new consciousness (Shock 93), which includes
a desiring sexualized subject. Alexander states that when the body turns into a ‘brutal
instrument’ in the ‘surreal theater of cruelty that fractures identities, [leading] to the sudden
eruptions of sexual desire [and] small explosions of pleasure, the second language of violence
serves to force into visibility the longing for love’ (Shock 86). The body becomes the site for
cruelty, the site of passion and longing and the site for sexuality. When the body sinks into
nothingness, into a void, it forces ‘us back into the fraught compact between body and
language,’ and it is only ‘in the teeth of violence that we can speak the unstable truths of our
bodies’ (Shock 78). Alexander interchanges the meaning of the body and the soul, as she sees
woman as ‘prisoner of her sex’ (Shock 67), like her imaginary ‘mad’ aunt Chinna (Shock 52).

The new consciousness born of violence leads Alexander into marrying a white American
man and moving to the United States of America and eventually making it to the ivory
towers in New York. Here, in this new space, eruptive and volatile, she can name herself
and even her sexuality anew. ‘And the possibilities for female expressivity becomes
multifarious, even verging on the explosive’ (Shock 83). She must translate herself anew in
these conflicted spaces. Sexuality or the lack of it becomes the trope of modernity for her.
Even though in the History of Sexuality, Foucault envisions a space for ‘bodies and pleasures’
that go beyond ‘sex desire,’ he laments that for the modern person, ‘truth,’ is inscribed in the
body and soul and can only be recovered ‘through sex’ (155). Each person, argues Foucault,
must pass through sex ‘in order to have access to his own intelligibly (since it is
simultaneously the hidden element and the productive principle of sense), to the totality of
the body (since it is a real and menaced part of it, and symbolically constitutes the whole),
[and] to his identity (since it joins to the force of an impulse the singularity of history)’ (155-
6). He adds that while in earlier times it was love that the West discovered and deployed,

[bestowing] on it a value high enough to make death acceptable . . . nowadays, it is sex that
claims this equivalence, the highest of all. And while the deployment of sexuality permits the
techniques of power to invest life, the fictitious point in sex, itself marked by that
deployment, exerts enough charm on everyone for them to accept hearing the grumble of
death within it. (156)

Examples of such investments in sexuality, even through the ‘grumble of death within’ the
subject as it comes into words are abundantly present in Alexander’s texts.

In America, Alexander sees modern and sexualized subjects, who reclaim their bodies,
sexualities and souls as ‘the [women] who [were] permitted everything’ (Manhattan Music 2)—
and compares them to the third world women—‘whose veins were etched with centuries of
arranged marriages, dark blue blood pouring through. Sandhya, the protagonist of Manhattan
Music, could point to a plot of land bounded by granite walls and name ancestors who had
owned land for generations . . . Then too, she remembered the cemeteries where her
grandparents were buried, the houses that held them, the rites under which they were
married’ (Manhattan 4). Draupati, her modern intellectual friend, the hybridized and diasporic
subject, permitted sexual freedom, must bring Sandhya, the oppressed Indian women, into
her sexuality and identity. Draupati will ‘learn’ her to be a liberal and sexual Indian woman in
the West, as in the West, potential sexual fantasies are actualized, leading to ‘liberation’ and
‘true’ womanhood, or so the myth goes! While the mythical Draupati’s unveiling and
shaming failed due to her ‘purity’, the unveiling or sexual liberation of the westernized
Draupati is to be emulated by diasporic Indian women, especially Sandhya! Female sexual
liberation as western and to be emulated is represented in Manhattan Music, while Fault lines
showcases oppressed third world women with their oppressive arranged marriages and
abusive husbands.

And while the author herself roams the earth as if it belongs to her—‘Allahabad, Tiruvella,
Kozencheri, Pune, Khartoum, Cairo, Beirut, Jerusalem, Dubai, London, New York,
Minneapolis, Saint Paul, New Delhi, Trivandrum,’ she claims to be suffering the trauma of
exile and its consequent fragmentation, while trying to rewrite herself back into a whole
through memory. She calls herself ‘a nowhere creature,’ who has no ‘home, no fixed address,
no shelter’ (30). When she left India, she writes: ‘My life shattered into little bits and pieces.
In my dreams, I am haunted by thoughts of a homeland I will never find. So I have turned
my lines into a different aesthetic, one that I build up out of all the stuff around me,
improvising as I go along’ (27). She is an improviser, she can rewrite herself anew, from
fragments to wholeness, from nothing—‘a woman cracked by multiple migrations [who] can
connect nothing to nothing’ (2)--to all the privileges of the first world!

Alexander’s prose is full of descriptions of places she traveled to, the well-known people she
had met along the way; it is also liberally peppered with vignettes of the suffering masses and
oppressed women, for whom she suffers. But first, her own pain is reflected in comments in
her ‘Khartoum journal’ from Fault Lines that she provides as witness to the misery she went
through: ‘If you want me to live as a woman, why educate me?’ ‘Why not kill me if you want
to dictate my life?’ ‘God, why teach me to write?’ She suggests that these lines are not really
aimed at God, but at her mother. ‘The fault,’ she writes, ‘lay in the tension I felt between the
claims of my intelligence—what my father had taught me to honor, what allowed me to live
my life—and the requirements of a femininity my mother had been born and bred in.
Essential to the latter is an arranged marriage’ (Fault 102). While it would appear that she
finds, as an educated woman in Sudan attending parties, meeting boys, and sensing her
sexual desires, the idea of arranged marriages might not appeal to her, but in actuality, she
finds fault with the very institution of arranged marriages. In fact, she admits to her mother,
‘Amma, those dreams of an arranged marriage almost destroyed me’ (Fault 208). She cannot
understand why her mother settled for one. Even her maternal grandmother had married a
‘man of her choice’ (Fault 208)! She asks her mother bluntly, ‘So how did you feel when your
own marriage was arranged’ (Fault 206)? She seems to indicate that she married David
Lelyveld to escape such a fate. In between the narrative, we read about bride burning:

As adult women we were facing the reality of women in arranged marriages—housewives

and government workers, college lecturers and doctors, all young women married in
accordance with their parents’ wishes—who were being burnt to death when their families
of origin could not meet the demands of extra dowry. An exploding stove here, a burst can
of kerosene there, matches that mysteriously caught flame when held to a dupatta or a pallu.
(Fault 209).

While such crimes as dowry deaths are a burning issue and need to be addressed, her
conflation of arranged marriages with crimes against women suggest that if arranged
marriages were to be replaced with ‘love’ marriages or marriages of choice, crimes against
women will disappear. Additionally, when such crimes are explained away as a ‘Punjabi
thing’ by her mother, and not much to do with poverty or the scramble for material goods in
the social climbing milieu of New India, Alexander persists in her exposé of the oppressed
third world women: ‘in your days,’ she states, ‘there were women wells. Women jumping
into wells’ (209), pregnant and unmarried women jumping into wells ala Maxine Hong
Kingston’s ‘No Name Woman’ in The Women Warrior.

In Khartoum, she thinks about the possibility of marrying the rich Samir and being driven
around in a car, living in the large house in Khartoum North, and as other married Sudanese
women do, she would indulge in

shopping trips to Alexandria and Beirut for slippers and cosmetics, even Rome and Paris
every now and then; I could have the sweet-scented halava run over my legs and arms
ripping off the small hairs, so my skin felt as smooth as a newborn baby; I could place
cotton balls with rose attar or Chanel No. 5 on my skin. (Fault 134)

But something gives her pause: ‘But what would become of me, my mind, myself?’ Positing
the ‘traditional’ lifestyle of married Sudanese women as mindless and in order to escape the
‘web of traditional life’ in India, she chooses an exhilarating life of ‘adventure’—‘go to
England, young woman, they all said. Then you can return to India’ (Fault 135).

What can she do as a woman of the Indian diaspora to empower herself? She can ‘make
herself up, and this,’ she says, ‘is enticement, the exhilaration, the compulsive energy of
America. But only up to a point. And the point, the sticking point,’ she continues, is her
‘dark female body’ (Fault 202). This dark female body is yet again conflated with the dark
female bodies of oppressed women in the third world, the ones that are cliterodectomized in
Sudan, the bodies that jumped into wells in Kerala, the Punjabi women who are burned for
dowry, even the women picking up ‘shards of glass’ in the aftermath of the 1973 flood in
Pune: ‘women picking up bottles, wire, paper, anything but stones, to recycle them for a few
paise, this with the right hand while the left scrounged around for scraps of food that might
have been thrown out of the houses nearby: rice, dal, chapattis, half-cooked vegetables’
(144). Her idiopathic identification and ‘appetite for alterity’ enters her body, making her a
surrogate victim. She writes, ‘Seeing all this, I could not eat and grew very thin’ (144).
External violence resonates with internal violence, leading to irruptions, allowing the
narrator to construct a history through identification, but not ‘at-a-distance’ (Silverman). In
the United States of America, her fragmentation and exile come in such forms as the dirty
subway system and the homeless man wandering the cold night air in Manhattan--her
identifications with the ‘third world’ in the first world. ‘My life was so torn up into bits and
pieces of the actual that depended on the poems, irruptions of the imaginary to make an
internal history for me’ (125). In this new history, Alexander is the surrogate, oppressed third
world woman, who, through her own individual endeavor, has liberated herself from
oppression.

There had been an on-going critique within postcolonial studies regarding the reception and
consumption of literary text written by diasporic authors within the western academy. Dirlik
argues that ‘the intellectual brain drain from the Third World to First World was itself a
specific effect of global capitalism, although the “beneficiaries” obfuscate their class
privileges by opportunistically appropriating subaltern or marginal positions’ (540).
Alexander’s voice becomes a metonym for the oppressed and marginalized Indians and
Indian women in India as well as in the United States of America, thus eliding her many
privileges. She was part of the First World in the Third World, and plays the part of the
Third World in the First World.
Dirlik elaborates upon the common cultures of such people who share in privileges,
regardless of where they are located.

The globe has become as jumbled up spatially as the ideology of progress has temporally.
Third Worlds have appeared in the First World and First Worlds in Third. New diasporas
have relocated the Self there and the Other here, and consequently borders and boundaries
have been confounded. And the flow of culture has been at once homogenizing and
hydrogenising: some groups share in a common global culture regardless of locations even as
they are alienated from the cultures of the hinterlands (Dirlik 581).

As a postcolonial artist and intellectual, who teaches at an elite institution in the United
States of America, her claim to marginality is troubling. Alexander’s claim to the status of
victim as an oppressed and displaced Indian woman mocks and indeed elides the problem
that many immigrant Indian women face. For example, Indian female domestic workers who
are brought to the United States just to work for the elite Indians are often ill-treated yet
their problems go underreported and unacknowledged. This is not to deny the ruptures and
issues that migration offers but to recognize that the issues facing women are also ruptured
by class, by the conditions of migration and a range of other factors that intersect with
gender. The danger is then not that Alexander gains sympathy but she becomes the mythic
migrant figure in whom resides trauma and suffering—she becomes the spokeswoman for
the oppressed Indian women elsewhere.

‘To put it bluntly,’ states Dirlik, ‘postcoloniality is designed . . . to cover up origins of

postcolonial intellectuals in a global capitalism of which they are not so much victims as
beneficiaries’ (Dirlik 581). While looking at the ‘transnational cultural production and
reception’ of texts by postmodern and postcolonial feminists, Grewal and Kaplan critique
‘certain forms of feminism [that] emerge from [the feminists’] willing participation in
modernity with its colonial discourse and hegemonic First World formations that wittingly
or unwittingly lead to the oppression and exploitation of many women’ (2). I argue that
Alexander ‘misrecognize and fail to resist Western hegemonies’ (2), which actually reinforces
eurocentricism; instead of debunking and destabilizing stereotypes of the passive and
suffering Indian womanhood, Fault Lines and Manhattan Music ‘authenticate’ them because a
‘genuine’ Indian woman feels them on her body and then inscribes them in the body of
popular texts. Thus, the idea of the West as liberal and liberated becomes dominant and
hegemonic. And ‘for this hegemony to be sustained, its boundaries must be rendered more
porous in order to absorb alternative cultural possibilities that might otherwise serve as
sources of destructive oppositions’ (Dirlik 582). Hence space is created for Alexander and
her texts, which, while seemingly critiquing colonial and neo-colonial power structures, are
actually helping in reinforcing them.

Rey Chow critiques the postcolonial intelligentsia writing about the ‘oppressed third world
woman,’ suggesting that when they write and discuss such oppression, they need to ‘unmask
[themselves] through a scrupulous declaration of self-interest,’ because their acts are ‘tied less
to the oppressed women in [third world] communities “back home” then to [their] own
careers in the West’ (603). They must write ‘against the lure of diaspora’ (605), for ‘any
attempt to deal with “women” or the “oppressed classes” in the “third world” that does not
at the same time come to term with the historical conditions of its own articulation is bound
to repeat the exploitativeness that used to and still characterizes most “exchange” between
“West” and “East.”’ (605). How can Alexander reframe her writing to face up to her
‘truthful relationship to those “objects of study”’ (Chow 603) and create some critical space
with them so as not to continue such exploitation?

Since Alexander seem to lack critical distance from the ‘objects of study,’ and because of her
‘idiopathic identification,’ distances seem to disappear; within this desire, past and present,
self and other, East and West, appear to merge. Because of Alexander’s ‘overappropriate
identification’ with the other, boundaries collapse, creating a too available and easy access.
In such a scenario, she is unable to work through her sexual abuse and only ends up ‘acting
out,’ through her rhetoric of otherness, which leads to retraumatizing—for example, her
nervous breakdown in England (Fault 141)--due to her lack of self-reflexivity and critical
distance from the Other. When one lacks critical distance from the other, one represses what
is real and turns instead to idealization (Silverman 74-5). Alexander’s idealization of her
‘choices’--her marriage to David Lelyland, her writing, her work, etc. --the ‘normative nature
of unconscious idealization’ allows for ‘libidinal’ affirmation of what is culturally accepted.
She tells her mother she married David, so that she could come home (Fault 208).
Idiopathic identification allows for such affirmation. Although Alexander does not
‘depoliticize’ the relationships of self and other, of first world exploitation and third world
oppression, she ‘[masks] the pleasure’ (JanMohamed 23) she derives from her position in the
Western Academy.

Alterity is fetishized (JanMohamed 20) as Alexander is unable to keep the distance from the
oppressed and fetishized objects she gazes at and interweaves into her own history. She ends
up ‘acting out,’ rather than ‘working through’ her trauma of sexual abuse, exile and alienation
(Hirsh 414). I suggest that Alexander’s fractured gaze becomes complicit with the West’s
desire for its other as she lives in the first world and functions ‘not only as [native] but
spokespersons for “native” (and I add native women) in the “third world”’ (Chow 589). This
is because in the Western Academia, many intellectuals of color achieve a particular status
due to their positions ‘as cultural workers/brokers in diaspora’ (Chow 589). Such intellectual
and writers, taking their ‘“raw materials” from the suffering of the oppressed’ become ‘exotic
minors’ (Chow 601).

Throughout this reading, I have shown Alexander’s ‘appetite for alterity’ (Silverman 188)
where she is unable to separate the pain of the other from her own, and in her
overidentification, her attempted critical analysis of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism are
rendered ineffective; such texts reinforce eurocentricism where the writer stands in as a
representative of the oppressed and exploited Other. To be truly critical, Alexander must
“retroactively” read Indian women to ‘painstakingly reverse the processes through which
[she has] arrogated to [herself] what does not belong to [her], or displaced onto another what
[she] did not want to recognize in [herself]’ (Silverman 118); otherwise, she only ends up
repeating the scenario of oppression. ‘Such a re-viewing can have only a very limited efficacy
. . . it is a necessary step in the coming of the subject into an ethical or nonviolent relation to
the other’ (Silverman 3). Alexander is unable to acquire that distance from India and is
unable to ‘respect the otherness of the [third world] bodies’ (Silverman 2) and hence her
gaze simply confirms ‘dominant values’ of western desires. She must consciously
acknowledge that she is the agent of representation, otherwise, her ideals of marriage and
love, of freedom and choice, oppression and liberation ‘congeal[s] into a tyrannizing
[exoticizing] essence’ (Silverman 2). In spite of moments of critique of colonialism, neo-
colonialism and globalization, her representations exploit the marginalized and fetishized
others due to her positionality, which destabilize and subverts the political possibilities of The
Shock of Arrival and Fault Lines. If Alexander declares her self-interest in her representations
of the oppressed third world woman, if she ‘unmasks’ herself, will her texts be rendered any
less problematic and voyeuristic? I do not believe so, for

such declaration does not clean our hands, but it prevents the continuance of a tendency,
rather strong among ‘third world’ intellectuals in diaspora as well as researchers of non-
Western cultures in ‘first world’ nations, to sentimentalize precisely those day-to-day realities
from which they are distanced. (603)

Such distances lead either to idealization or to re-remembering, the outcomes of which are
‘competing narratives’ of ‘“development” or “underdevelopment”—one of celebration,
[and] the other of crisis’ (Gikandi 609). Additionally, and ultimately, as postcolonial
intelligentsia and artists in the West, what women of color ‘can do without is the illusion
that, through privileged speech, [they are] helping the wretched of the earth’ (Chow 605).
Thus, for a postcolonial critical reading and teaching of Alexander’s texts, we, as academics
and critics, need to provide the audience with an accurate and correct socio-cultural and
political context of not only the texts, but also of the writers, who, as agent of
representation, are really in positions of power vis a vis the exploited subaltern subject that
they come to embody.

Notes
1. In my case, as a woman who was born in Burma or Myanmar, who lived in India,
Iraq, and now the United States, not all of these migrations were willingly
undertaken. My parents, who were born in Burma, ‘returned’ to India during 1946,
only to flee from Rawalpindi due to the partition of India, back to Burma. My forced
departure from Burma to India due to the brutal Ne Win régime, and as a stateless
citizen even in the land of my ancestors, makes me a person who belonged to the
diaspora of despair as well as terror (Appadurai). In Iraq, where my son was born
during the Iran-Iraq war, I saw despair and death everyday, as the tankers rolled and
jets sortied while I awaited the birth of my son. Then I was forced to move out of
Iraq due to the terror of the continued war, back to my adopted nation, India. In the
US, where I came in 1984, not because of political persecution, even thought the
Sikh massacre touched each and every Sikh person, I became part of the diaspora of
despair and terror, twice exiled, ‘homeless’ in India and finally marginalized in the
U.S. Such trauma and alienation, reflected and appropriated in Alexander’s texts,
seem to wound the author, leading to retraumatization due to the repetition
compulsion (Hirsch on Trauma).

References
Alexander, Meena. 1993. Fault Lines. New York: Feminist Press at the CUNY.
----------------. 1997. Manhattan Music. San Francisco: Mercury House.
----------------. 1996. The Shock of Arrival. Boston: South End Press.
Appadurai, Arjuna. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:
U of Minneapolis P.
Chow, Ray. 2005. ‘Against the Lure of Diaspora: Minority Discourse, Chinese Women, and
Intellectual Hegemony’, in Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair (eds.), Postcolonialisms: An
Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, pp. 589-07. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University P.
Dirlik, Arif. 2005. ‘The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global
Capitalism’, in Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair (eds.), Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of
Cultural Theory and Criticism, pp. 569-88. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University P.
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, An Introduction: Volume 1. New York: Vintage
Books.
Gikandi, Simon. ‘Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality’, in Gaurav Desai and
Supriya Nair (eds.), Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, pp.
608-34. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University P.
Grewal, Indrapal and Caren Kaplan. 1997. Scattered Hegemonies. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota
P.
Hirsch, Marianne. 2002. ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public
Fantasy’, in David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky (eds.), Ways of Reading,
pp.400-427. Boston: St. Martin’s Press.
JanMohamed, Abdul. 1995. ‘The Economy of Manichean Allegory’, in Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths, and HelenTiffin (eds.), The Postcolonial Studies Reader, pp.18-24. London:
Routeldge.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. 1989. The Woman Warrior. New York: Vintage.
Silverman, Kaja. 1996. The Threshold of the Visible World. London: Routledge.
 22
Meta-Mobilis: The Case for Polymorphous Existence in K.S.
Maniam’s Between Lives
Bernard Wilson

And this – as I see it – is also the role of the author within his ancestral background: he is
the complex ghost of his own landscape of history or work. To put it another way, his poem
or novel is subsistence of memory.
WILSON HARRIS1

It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
URSULA K. LE GUIN

Introduction
The Indian-Malaysian novelist, playwright and academic, K.S. Maniam has been his country’s
most highly regarded English-language writer over the last quarter of a century. The thematic
concerns of Maniam’s oeuvre have increasingly reflected the dilemma, not just for Malaysia’s
diasporic Indian population, but for all of its principal ethnic groups: the angst which so
often accompanies transformation, and the hope for an often intangible but nevertheless
crucial sense of unity – the transformation of cultures and, in many instances, the
sociopolitical repression of languages – but also the forfeiture of the opportunity for soul-
sharing and a style of existence sans frontières which has its roots in past mythologies and,
equally as importantly, the landscape itself. It is through simultaneously negotiating the
present, past and future, through journeying back to lost myths and narratives while creating
new ones, Maniam suggests, that one may regain a lost sense of the multiple layers of self
and begin to imagine the Malaysian nation as a polymorphous yet truly collective entity.

K.S. Maniam writes from a state of perpetual transience, addressing a complex sense of
discordance that resides not only within Malaysia but within himself, and it is this at times
overwhelming but artistically fertile diasporic strangeness that ensures that his prose comprises
an array of competing and often seemingly incompatible voices and histories. Maniam
fashions parables of the Indian émigré, of renunciation, return and re-birth, and it is absence
that propels his fiction: absence of human connection, of belonging, of equality, of voice.
Maniam’s approach to Indian diasporic existence, then, is paradoxical in its positive and
negative connotations but also multitudinous in its application in that to be geographically
mobile is to seek to eliminate borders: borders that are cultural, national and racial, but also
borders that are spiritual, temporal, chronological. In light of these considerations and recent
postcolonial theory dealing with cultural location and diapora, this essay will analyze K.S.
Maniam’s Between Lives (2003),2 a text which in itself is an exploration of the sacred spaces
that connect ancestral heritages, competing histories and environment as a vision towards
the rediscovery of a polymorphous self and the possibility of nation.
The novel, Between Lives constitutes the third installment of a diasporic narrative that began
with the bildungsroman, The Return, two decades previously. In a departure from the dominant
perspectives of The Return and In A Far Country, however, Between Lives provides a distinctly
female vision, weaving the principal narratives – one first person, one third person – of two
Malaysian women of Tamil-Indian descent: Sumitra, a young urban professional who in her
position in the Social Reconstruction Department (SRD) counsels and relocates ‘subjects’,
(the SRD’s specific and reductive term for persons unwilling to accede to the Department’s
modus operandi) and Sellamma, one such ‘subject’, an elderly woman who refuses to vacate her
rural dwelling in the face of encroaching resort development. The novel spans, through
overlapping stories, British colonization, Japanese occupation, Independence, Insurgency,
and contemporary Malaysia, but uses these conventional historical sign-posts as an almost
incidental milieu for the more problematic historicity that is revealed through Sellamma’s
story of her family’s attempt to belong to the landscape (a theme which, despite some
variations in approach, remains prominent in all three novels) and Sumitra’s gradual
realization of the problems that beset contemporary Malaysian society. Familial
reconciliation, the partial resolution for the protagonist of In A Far Country, remains central
to this text, and the use of Hindu mythology as fertile ground for Malaysian allegory, present
in much of Maniam’s writing, is expanded in Between Lives in which the Ramayana forms a key
touchstone to understanding the novel’s purpose and inner mechanisms. The second crucial
function of the text is to provide a sociopolitical commentary (in particular through the
depiction of the Social Reconstruction Department, or SRD, and its machiavellian practices)
which denounces what Maniam views as the insidious forces that constitute a neo-colonialist
modern Malaysian society. The depiction of totalitarian methodology, more briefly alluded to
In A Far Country, is now central to the conflict within the narrative; the SRD reinforces the
pervasive climate of denial in Malaysian society, a state of disavowal that is shown to derive
not purely from political- or self-censorship, but as much from a societal malaise which
decentralizes self-identity in its denial of origins and neglect of the land on (and in) which
Malaysians live. Though the dialogue of political and social propaganda, inseparable as it is
from the exhortation to modernize, is implicitly denounced by Maniam it is the silences – the
unquestioning acquiescence born of apathy or fear, the willing submission to the seductive
forces of consumerism and global ideologies – that contain greater mistruths and betrayals
because they embody an abrogation of individual and communal responsibilities.

Polymorphous Existence
I have discussed in other essays focusing on Southeast Asian literature the problematic
position of the diasporic individual and his or her need to paradoxically remember and forget
moments of origin while looking toward a collective future, a journey to nationhood which
guards against the obliteration of personal history.3 In Between Lives the forgetting that the
nineteenth-century French theorist, Ernest Renan advocates as essential to forging
nationhood4 (and the elimination of the histories of immigrant or colonized ethnic groups
that this entails) is clearly the overt imperative of the hegemonic political mechanism, despite
its superficial celebration of ethnic difference. This strategy, combined as it is with the
increasingly materialistic pursuits of modern society, insulates the dominant culture and is
contrasted with Maniam’s belief that nation can only be realized through a kind of
polymorphous existence that entails a complete exploration of memory combined with the
retention of a physical and spiritual connection to the Malaysian terrain. As such, Maniam’s
commitment to acknowledge the individual and his or her heritage and ancestral mythologies
does not endanger collectivity, but approaches nation in similar terms to the historian John
Lukacs, who defines it as ‘manifest[ing] certain personal traits, especially since it is a more
organic phenomenon than a state. Its character traits are nothing more and nothing less than
tendencies: but these tendencies underlie, and on occasion supersede, other tendencies, other
historical conditions’ (Lukacs, J. 1968: 216). In essence, Maniam is depicting diasporic
existence as a form of cultural and chronological osmosis: his characters exist in, and travel
through, multiple modes of history and narration, the interaction of the variant and
competing discourses that form individual and national consciousness. Within the Malaysian
context, but with broader ramifications, he focuses on what Foucault terms a:

more radical history, that of man himself – a history that now concerns man’s very being
since he now realizes that he not only ‘has history’ all around him, but is himself, in his own
historicity, that by means of which a history of human life, a history of economics, and a
history of languages are given their form (1994:370).

In an introduction that may be thematically bracketed with the grandmother, Periathai’s

emergence from the land in The Return and which provides an ironic variation to that portrait
of immigrant arrival in colonial Malaya, the elderly woman, Sellamma, is described by
Sumitra as an obstruction to the progress of modern, materialist Malaysia. The prose
immediately establishes the territorial concerns that provide the key conflict and bond
between the two principal characters:

The old woman lives, or should I say, hovers about the land, valuable land, according to
some quarters, stretching from the laterite trail to the river and to the fringes of a jungle. It’s
a bit of scenic country, which I suppose gives it its value, and sits there right in the middle of
their plans for a few blocks of condominiums, and a theme park. I’ve been given the task of
persuading her to leave the land, and get her into the welfare home in town. (1)

The novel provides a gradual narrative unfolding of Sellamma’s and Sumitra’s entwined past
and present – women who, gender and race apart, are seemingly antithetical; the elder
woman exists almost entirely through the memories of lost family and community, while the
younger is dedicated to ‘redefining’ these memories to expedite Sellamma’s acquiescence to
development and relocation. Guilty of, in Department-speak, ‘Obstructive Occupation of
Land’ (15), Sellamma’s passive resistance rapidly provides an obsessive focus for Sumitra,
who thereby comes to understand the need for a deeper national consciousness. Unlike
Lloyd Fernando’s tragic symbol of nature and nurture, Sally, whose willingness to embrace
linguistic and racial heterogeneity results in her betrayal and destruction in the 1976 novel,
Scorpion Orchid,5 Sellamma (similarly to Periathai in The Return) acts as a conduit through
which to re-establish links with ancestral identity and landscape in the face of a sterile
present, a recognition of ancestry which Maniam clearly advocates as a necessary touchstone
for all ethnic groups and, paradoxically, the only way in which one may negotiate a
contemporary hybrid identity. Like Conrad’s Kurtz, but in antithesis to that archetype of
imperial aggression and environmental destruction, she articulates an organic heritage
forgotten – a voice that ‘seems to come from a bodiless source, steadily, mesmerizingly …
from a great distance’ (3) and provides an alternative to the sanitized versions of social and
political progress in Malaysia.
Sacred Landscapes
I want, initially, to examine Maniam’s treatment of the Malaysian landscape and, in
particular, his use of Hindu mythology as interconnected diasporic paths to rediscovering
self and achieving nation. Despite his strong interests in Hinduism and animism, Maniam is
less concerned with organised religion per se than with its fabric of mythology and cultural
narrative. Though Hinduism is a well from which Maniam has drawn in previous writing –
the cosmic dancer Shiva Nataraja as a key motif in The Return is one such example - Between
Lives is more closely imbued with Hindu mythology than previous texts. Aspects of the exile
of Rama are mirrored not only in the personal journey of Arokian and his family, but also in
Sellamma’s relationship with Sumitra in contemporary Malaysia6. The Rama-Sita grove
positioned at the centre of Sellamma’s land, symbolic of the core of ancestral memory and
myth and of a pure symbiosis between human and land, is surrounded by an atrophy and
neglect that reflects contemporary Malaysian society, the venality of which is far removed
from dharma (the Hindu and Buddhist moral law which is the soul of nature and the
sustenance of all existence7) and from the self-effacement and sacrifice embodied in
Lakshmana (referred to in the concluding section of the novel), qualities crucial to Maniam’s
national vision.

But it is particularly the influence of the deity Sita (as earth-mother goddess and symbol of
harmonious domesticity) on Sellamma, her sister Anjalai and, ultimately, Sumitra, which is of
fundamental importance to the narrative, and which permeates the multiple-female
perspective. The regeneration of the land, like the nurturing of a national ethos, must be
both spiritual and physical, and, similar to Chinese-Malaysian author Lee Kok Liang’s Flowers
in the Sky8, Maniam’s prose is invested with symbolism that is both sexual and sacred. The
intertextuality of the Ramayana, itself evolving and borrowing from disparate traditions and
comprising multiple narratives, provides a heteroglossic template for much of the prose
fiction of the Indian diaspora9 and one from which Maniam can explore oral, literary and
visual histories in Between Lives. The description in Between Lives of the Ramayana positioned
amidst ‘neatly-lined officious-looking books, one called General Orders,10 the Mahabharata,
leather-bound volumes of the Vedas,11 Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, and Malay and
English dictionaries’ (47) signifies the eclectic and competing narratives which define
Malaysian-Indian diasporic identity. Other books mentioned in the text – Alcott’s Little
Women, Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Narayan’s The Guide – point to the anxieties of the
female Malaysian-Indian in a transitional society and serve to emphasize not only the
problematic position of the colonial/postcolonial subject circa Malaysian Independence, but
also what Maniam views as the initially confused spatial location of the diasporic Indian
female positioned between Western feminism/liberalism and the ancestral expectations of a
‘modest, wifely ambition’.12 Sellamma’s role as medium for rival but interlocking narratives
expresses the labyrinthine, hybrid interconnectedness between language, self and nation in
Malaysia:

[Sellamma] herself sits opposite me, and begins chanting in a deep and remote voice. It isn’t
like anything I’ve heard so far. It’s no more just a single voice, but several, beginning slowly,
and working up to fragmented episodes and incidents. The camphor and the joss-stick
smells are beginning to affect me – she feeds the brazier as she chants – and I feel a coolness
spreading all over my scalp. It must be the heat, I tell myself, and try to move away, but
those tireless voices mesmerize and hold me back. I see shapes coming into my confused
 mind, hear bodies throwing themselves about, then ordinary voices raised in quarrels,
sudden, angry departures, tearful reunions, awkward reconciliations, and something else, a
kind of fearful emptiness. (81-82)

Landscape frames the thematic concerns for many contemporary Southeast Asian writers
and for Maniam the Malaysian landscape, when unfettered by what he sees as needlessly
speculative development and quasi-ecotourism, is an animistic force which provides its own
narrative within the text. This consistent narrativization of the Malaysian terrain
mythologizes the land but also invests it with a latent fertility and thwarted potentiality, a
‘rotting abundance’ (46) that reflects Maniam’s view of present-day Malaysia. In the novel,
the close association of Sita with the rural landscape13 ensures that its betrayal and violation
in the face of encroaching modernity, inimical to the traditional indigenous values of the
kampung, is rendered on an intensely private level that is akin to a rape of earth-mother
sanctity. The symbolic river cleansing that continues Sumitra’s metamorphosis and
engenders an almost metempsychosist connection between Sumitra and Anjalai Akka
(Sellamma’s absent sister) in Sellammma’s mind further entwines past and present in a
sacramental narrative:

We climb up, and sit there letting the water drip from our hair, and flow down our sarung-
clad breasts, past our bellies and thighs, and back into the river … I really don’t know how
to explain this to anyone, let alone myself, I remember saying to myself, and giving in to the
experience. I’m suddenly aware of a teeming noise and a teeming silence. Though I’ve been
itching to reach out for the thundu to dry myself, I resist the desire. I sit still, like her, and
wait for whatever it is that is supposed to happen. After what seems like an eon – the cold
water must have numbed my sense of time! – I hear the old woman not so much sigh as
softly invite some kind of visitation (that’s the only word I can find for the time being). It
comes, slowly, this pleasurable heaviness – is the sarung drying against my body making me
bloodless? – like a mist, to brush, first our shoulders, and then to spread to the rest of our
bodies. Then the head becomes light, and the eyes become clear with an impersonal lucidity,
so that when I look at the old woman on this slab of stone, I see her not as a person but as
some gesture outside time; out of the corner of my eyes, I see Nanda is flesh and fur, and yet
only some memorable heaving. I hear myself breathe, and yet only feel a certain indifference.
(66)

The potent image of body flowing back into land, acting as a metaphor for the inseparability
of self and country, continues the examination of polymorphous existence that is also central
to other Anglophone Malaysian literature such as Lloyd Fernando’s and Lee Kok Liang’s
prose, but which in Maniam’s writing is more clearly stabilized by a bond with perceived
indigenous cultural traditions (which are in themselves, and somewhat ironically, fluid and
protean constructs). The novel, as its title suggests, has a particular Hinduistic relevance –
the progress of the soul through a series of incarnations – and is again a nomadic narrative
that reflects on the dichotomy between spirituality/rurality and materialism/urbanization.
The theme of the variant forms of exile remains but, although concerned with ethnic
division and the realisation of a collective national identity, the text also emphasizes
individual accountability. Maniam suggests that the individual’s personal and communal
responsibility is, if I may paraphrase Seamus Heaney, to dig14 in order not only to re-establish
a sense of origin but to penetrate the indifference that permeates contemporary society. The
digging that is advocated by Maniam in this novel is thus manifold: a religious and ancestral
obligation to bring forth the abundance of the land in a return to Tamil-Indian and Malay
traditions; an exfoliation to reveal the disparate but interconnected histories that make up
self and nation; the piercing of the dual metaphors of silence and darkness – both repeatedly
evinced in the text – to reveal the faux egalitarianism of social conditioning and modernity in
Malaysia; and as emblematic of the writer’s duty to uncover truths and deceptions in
Malaysian society and to challenge the establishment, functions whose difficulty in Malaysia
local critic and writer Kee Thuan Chye has likened to ‘a dog barking at a mountain’.15
Sumitra’s role with the Social Reconstruction Department, conversely, is to peel back the
layers of self, not to discover truth, but to eradicate difference and restructure identity.
Skilled at locating ‘the problem, the social forces behind it, the subject’s fears and anxieties,
and, most importantly, the solution’ (17) she is nevertheless covertly contemplating the
façade of this society, an inhibitive silence that eliminates deviation from government-dictated
norms.

Sellama’s and Sumitra’s use of the Malaysian hoe (the changkul), then, becomes a distinctly
Malaysian metaphor for reconnecting with a lost heritage and for investigating contemporary
Malaysian society:

‘Appa always said be part of the handle, and you’ll be part of the earth,’ she says, looking at
me as if I should remember…I must look ridiculous, but I feel freer as I swing the changkul
this time and bring it down. It sinks into the ground and, as I pry up a wedge of earth just
like the old woman, I feel the changkul becoming more comfortable in my grip. I raise it
again and knock the wedge into loose soil. Not bad for a first try with a real changkul! I
think, and move on to the next furrow. The old woman follows me, working slowly, so as to
keep an eye on me. I struggle on, and then break off for a rest. The old woman carries on.
I’m surprised by the strength in that old body. It can only be moved by some secret
ambition, I think, maybe something like my grandmother’s strong desire for longevity. I
stand there, thinking of the report, and willing some kind of skill into my hands. I pick up
the changkul and struggle through the furrow to her side. I continue to struggle beside her,
but my body is beginning to move less awkwardly. Then we are bringing the changkuls down
together, and in the pause between the swings, I listen, as I’ve seen the old woman do, to the
singing silence. (62-63)

The exploration of this rich cross-cultural ancestral fabric in Malaysia is, in Maniam’s writing,
partly a reaction to the post-independence political directives which, while not advancing
monoculturalism, do equate to a national identity that is inequitably dominated by Malays
and a Malay perspective, and one which has allowed only for a limited and censored voice
from the other ethnic groups within the country. As such, Maniam is responding to the
conventional histories of Malaya/Malaysia that have been dominated by British, and later,
Malay perspectives. In Between Lives, I would argue Maniam has employed, in Nietzsche’s
terminology in The Use and Abuse of History, ‘a combination of three modes of historical
consciousness: the unhistorical, which comprises the power of “forgetting”, of limiting one’s
horizon; the historical, which is what we understand by conventional history...and finally, the
superhistorical – a sense that allows for a greater cultural vision, one which encompasses art
and religion’ (1957:71). It is, in particular, this superhistorical mode which provides individuals
in Maniam’s text with a soul and sense of self – one which identifies with the cultural
perspectives and the mythologies that are so strongly a part of his ethnic heritage, but which
is also responding to a perceived ostracism of immigrant cultures in Malaysia, and looking
forward, in hope rather than conviction, to an inclusive multicultural national unity.16
Continuing the thematic strain begun in The Return and In A Far Country, then, the story of
Malaysia’s immigrant Indians, in particular, but also of all Malaysians, is a chronicle of
individual and national incompleteness. Arokian’s admirable though unrealistic quest to
make his adopted country ‘better than the one in the Ramayana’ (89) embodies the utopian
dream of the diaspora. His desire to ‘build a house to fit the ways of life here’ (96), one
which is equal to that of the Malayan, Pak Mat’s, encapsulates the quest for Malaysian
egalitarianism – a hope for, if not the integration of ethnic groups, a mutual respect that is
contrasted against the colonizing, exclusive symbol of the white thurai’s ‘bungalow standing
majestically on the slopes of the hill’ (96). Cross-cultural miscommunication, evidenced in
one instance by Pak Mat’s stern refusal of food from the young Sellamma (98) which
suggests the ignorance of immigrant ethnic groups of the dietary requirements of Muslims,
causes initial Malay resistance to acceptance, but Arokian’s sacrilizing of the land identifies
the essential rurality of the Tamil-Indian and Malay heritages and goes some way toward
validating his Malaysianess in the eyes of the bumiputra17. It follows that immigrant ethnic
groups cannot take root in Malaysia or experience true belonging without the tacit Malay
acceptance of hybridity as the essence of the new Malaysian nation, nor can these same
immigrant groups hope to transplant ancestral cultural mores without significant adaptation
and immersion in the dominant culture:

He went away on his bicycle again, and this time returned with plants she hadn’t seen or
hard of: pandan, serai, and daun puchok or some such sounding thing, in effect, those
vegetables and shoots Malaikaran families commonly grew to eat with their rice. The plants
either grew healthily for a while and then died suddenly or just didn’t take root. Her father
shook his head, and concentrated on the crops he knew. Then Pak Mat appeared, as if to see
how her father was progressing. They walked over the land, looking at the new bunds her
father had started, the girls following them quietly. Pak Mat looked at her father, scratched
his head, and sighed. After that he began to come almost every other day. The plants her
father had brought from the nearby kampungs somehow began to grow again or when he
planted a fresh batch, grew without any sickness touching them. (106-07)

In Between Lives, in particular, Maniam’s vision of a Malaysian nation is one in which

individuals may retain the sanctity of ancestral heritage while acknowledging the salutary
effects of interculturality. Such a position offers a stability derived from cultural origins that
offsets the uncertainty of a marginalized present and hybrid future but draws positives from
each area, a stance that provides a solution to Fernando’s concerns of heterogeneity
threatening valuelessness18, and is at variance with Rushdie’s advocacy of total hybridity at the
expense of purity. The Satanic Verses, as an example of Rushdie’s diasporic focus, in his own
words,

celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and
unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices
in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melange,hotchpotch, a bit of this and
a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the greatest possibility that mass
migration gives the world and I have tried to embrace it. The Satanic Verses is for change by
fusion, change by conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves (1992: 394).

The deference with which (most specifically Indian and Malay) ancestry is treated in
Maniam’s novel however, provides a substructure which counterbalances what he sees as the
often overwhelming eclecticism of hybridity. Such deference, which may in some instances
be criticized for its tendency towards confusing cultural roots with a false notion of a pure
cultural genesis that has never existed, nevertheless retains a poise between ethnic origin(s)
and interculturality that is still essentially inclusive of all ethnicities.

Arokian’s dream of recognition and cohabitation, then, continues the migrant narrative of
longing and belonging that is both Malaysian and universal and which is conveyed through
multiple dialogues of call and response in Between Lives: between drifter and settler, colonizer
and colonized, between ethnicities, across generations. Despite progress towards a poly-
ethnic Malaysian empathy, Arokian is ironically frustrated by Malaysian Independence, which
unravels the tenuous bonds between the principal three Malaysian ethnic groups formed in
response to British and Japanese colonization. The sense of poly-ethnic unity achieved
through confrontation with an imperial other now gives way to divisive and racially exclusive
rhetoric:

‘The Belanda people came,’ Pak Mat said. ‘Then the British, and your people and the
Cheenans, the Japankarans, then the British again. How to be themselves? the Malaikarans
ask.’
‘My people and the Cheenans?’
‘That’s how the Malaikarans are talking, Arokian,’ Pak Mat said. ‘Our people, the other
people.’ (185-86)

Just as other characters in Maniam’s literature (most notably Muthu, the protagonist in the
short story ‘Haunting the Tiger’19) unwittingly repeat the colonizing process through their
desire to possess the land rather than immerse themselves in it, so too does the post-
independence push towards exclusive bumiputra identity by Malays repeat, through ethnic
exclusionism, the mistakes of colonization. While Pak Mat’s words express legitimate
concerns over establishing a distinctive Malay identity that has been subjugated by repeated
invasions, the inclination tends towards absolutism on ethnic lines, planting the seeds that
will repeat the colonialist elitism of pre-independence.

This quest for a liberating sense of self and nation that is poly-ethnic but which does not
deracinate is best symbolized through the nurturing luminescence that accompanies one of a
succession of epiphanic moments within the novel:

Yes, there it was, their dream, a vast teeming of breaths, and a vast teeming of shapes, all
around them. Then the light appeared, larger than the largest tier-lamp their mother owned!
Its warm brightness fell on age-ringed tree trunks, beaks of colourful birds pointing towards
some distant attraction and, in the shadows of the nearest trees, the whiskered face of the
tiger, the gentle eyes of the deer, and the golden, coiled heap of the snake. (127)

Though Maniam’s mythologizing of the land as a path to nationhood has its genesis in
Hinduism, it is nevertheless distinctly Malay(sian) in its trinal symbolism of tiger, deer and
snake as central to the diasporic consciousness – providing the link between the homeland
of past (India) and the imagined homeland of future (Malaysia).20 Anjalai’s and Sellamma’s
trip into the jungle to remove themselves ‘from the marks other people made’ and to ‘find
[their] dreams’ (124) through a sensory regeneration, then, is a clear national allegory for a
Malaysia emerging from colonization, an allegory that is extended through Sellamma and
Sumitra who, in present-day Malaysia, also pursue ‘the darkness [that] lies in the silence’.
(199) It is a pilgrimage that involves a return to the oedipal moment of relearning and
reordering memories in an attempt to envision national coalescence, a syncretism that is not
antithetical to retaining distinct ethnicities, but which avoids a simplistic binary of self and
other. The continued exploration of polymorphous existence in Between Lives, then,
transcends temporal existence and negotiates a metaphysical realm that defines self through
a collective aboriginal consciousness. The scattering of Sellamma’s ashes is connotative of an
attachment that goes well beyond immediate physical or psychological inclusion, and which
resides in a sacred memorialization of the land and the manifest histories it contains.

The Politics of Exclusion

While Maniam’s novel, though, promotes a conjoint remembrance of the sacrosanctity of the
land through the shared rural traditions of Tamil-Indian and Malay cultures as a potential path
towards collective national identity, it also embodies a plea for mutual inclusion that is directed
at the dominant cultural power, and identifies venality and self-interest behind the platitudes of
modernization and ethnic integration in contemporary Malaysian society. Sumitra’s position
within the Social Reconstruction Department (SRD) is to enforce governmental directives
which, as I have discussed in relation to Renan’s prescription for nationhood, are aimed at
forgetting – a role that necessitates, as she tacitly notes, a core element of misanthropy:

You stumble to a cold panel, and sit on a chair that’s a mortuary slab. When you switch on
the equipment, red, blue and green lights blink and stare at you. By the time you push the
tape into that super machine, you’ve forgotten who you are. That’s the paradox behind the
concept of the complex: be dehumanized so you can respond to anything that sounds
remotely human. (24)

In coercing citizens to operate within a sanitized present and abandon any memories that
may represent a challenge to the societal status quo, the SRD functions as a dual symbol of
neocolonialism and modernity. It argues that a silent conformity to governmental directives
will ensure a harmonious ethnic co-existence – the obverse of which is the eruption of
violence that will surely ensue should Malaysians identify too closely with their discrete
ethnicities, as evidenced (the Department argues) by the interracial riots in Singapore in the
1950s and Malaysia in 1969. Such a proposition, as Maniam has indicated previously21,
remains highly contentious in Malaysia, where marginalized ethnicities view the dominant
cultural group as hypocritically claiming successful ethnic integration while effectively
practising exclusionist policies in areas of civil and social law under the twin banners of
affirmative action for Malays and the urgent necessity for modernization/urbanization.22
Thus, the continuation into the twenty-first century of political directives that in the decades
immediately following Independence justifiably redressed the privileges given to the Chinese
under British rule and in part sought to negate the economic power of Chinese Malaysians, is
now perpetuating those same British errors under the banner of advancement for Malays
and (supposedly) all of Malaysia.

In this context, Sumitra’s job description within the SRD is effectively that of mnemonic
neuter: to ensure that, in the department’s pejorative term, subjects primarily exist in the
immediacy of a submissive and non-interventionist present. The emergence of a more
strident Malay nationalism in the 1970s, an ongoing response to the country’s history of
prolonged colonization but clearly also a reaction to the violence of 1969, lingers in the
inclinations towards totalitarianism that may be witnessed in contemporary Malaysia.
Though the Department Head, an O’Brien-like figure of alternating benevolence and
menace23, describes the employees of the SRD as a fully integrated ‘kuih lapis, the many-
layered, multicoloured, local cake, not the Englishman’s basket of coloured eggs’ (156), the
sub-text of the metaphor contains a quasi-egalitarian manipulation, the basis of which is a
selective and self-serving interpretation of history and a control of language and culture that
ironically and deliberately apes the imperialist models of subjugation to which Malaysia has
been subject over the past centuries. The placebo of a hybrid, melded collectivity, and the
endorsement of materialistic over-dependence, camouflage the deliberate subversion and/or
extirpation of links with a shared organic past and disparate core identities, and are devices
to facilitate the creation of a national identity which has at its root an unquestioning allegiance
to the controlling political power. The Department is a paradigm of the paradox of identity
in contemporary Malaysia – having stripped individuals (across all ethnicities) of their
cultural foundations and association with the land, it becomes a contradictory symbol of
(false) nurture and security for its inhabitants:

The place, together with the shut-off expressions on my colleagues’ faces, acquires a cocoon-
like closeness. My colleagues are not just workers struggling at their tasks, but figures moving
with a ritual certainty towards some sense of completion. The hours seem to fall to the
bright, glossy floor like … pencil shavings, and my colleagues’ faces now flower in that
absorption I saw this morning, but with an almost defiant glow. Their hands hover over the
keyboards like so many bandmasters’ wands, and the screens fill with the flutters of their
effortless command. Their backs and shoulders are held in that poised ease that comes from
some inborn confidence. (221)

But the crucial differentiation in the novel is between selective and collective memory and
Maniam’s complex depiction of the relationship between self and nation becomes clearer if
one uses as a touchstone Lloyd Fernando’s comments, written three decades earlier and
immediately subsequent to the interracial riots of 1969. In an essay in which the central
discussion concerns the effects of modernization on literature and language in Southeast
Asia, Fernando defends the study of literature (seen by many as a colonial anachronism), but
qualifies his defence by stating that:

the most signal lesson of modern industrial civilisation is that virtually unlimited benefits can
ensue for those who develop and extend their hold upon the real world. We in South East
Asia have not been masters of our own destiny these last few centuries because that hold
was uncertain. And the challenge we have taken up, especially in Malaysia and Singapore, is
to strengthen and extend that hold in every direction almost without limit. What is at stake is
too absolutely crucial for us to do anything but devote our major efforts towards this end.
But our problem is equally the pain of an expanding consciousness...We must examine the
relation between our past, our present and our future in the hope of discovering a truer line
of continuity, so that we may see to it that our consciousness never erupts again as it did in
the riots last May (1969), but rather is disciplined to take in the new without hurt (1986: 99-
100).

What Fernando is expressing a hope for (and it is a desire with which Maniam clearly
concurs) is that the leadership of Malaysia, in focusing on strategic goals for the future, does
not then interpret history in purely conventional or, worse, manipulative terms. The
expanding consciousness – the polymorphous existence if you will – of which Fernando speaks,
then, may be managed through reference to Nietzsche’s three modes of history:
remembering historical lessons learned while attempting to forget past interracial grievances;
breaking the chain of colonization but, in response to the threat to the cultures of
developing nations that globalization poses, not severing – but revering – the disparate links
to the origins of cultural and artistic knowledge in this society.

Conclusion
Maniam’s novel, in accordance with Fernando’s entreaty, advocates a Malaysian nation that
is comprised of, and viewed through, the foci of multiple histories rather than a selective
poly-ethnic history that perpetuates the dominance of one ethnic group over others. The
proposal, however, is far more than the understandable (and laudable) desire to promote the
voices of marginalized ethnicities but, rather, employs in Maniam’s own words ‘personal
history, communal and national history and finally an awareness in the individual that
transcends [all of these], which I call a mystical experience of the larger personality that
resides within us’. It follows that the elimination of cultural, artistic and spiritual histories is
interpreted by Maniam as a violation of the sacrosanctity of this larger personality. The
achieving of nation then, as Sumitra finally understands, will only be realized when these
denials are confronted:

We trembled at what we saw, as you’ll tremble at what you read. But we’re not ashamed. Not
at the suspicions, jealousies, the mistrust; the false self-confidence, the cringing subservience,
and the self-deception. They’re painful to recall, but they’re also our memories, our past
selves, now not to be veiled over by some comforting, superficial light. (385)

Thus the conclusion of Between Lives crucially posits the construction of nationhood in
absolute connection with the fundamental moral obligation of each individual to
acknowledge his or her ethnic and organic origins by traveling to what is referred to in the
text as the ‘alien spaces’ (221) of the mind. In an exhortation to ‘follow every twist and turn
of our memories, fearlessly’ (388) Maniam argues that the key to creating a true National
Kampung (385) – that is, an inclusive national space – is not only to confront the past in
totality, but to exist through multiple levels of culture and language and, indeed, through
multiple and simultaneous chronological, historical and spiritual planes, because the
evolution of a poly-ethnic community cannot take place without understanding, and living
through, its hybrid, diasporic genesis. A definition of Malaysia, then, must be preceded by
self-definitions born of stability but harnessed to mobility: the first stage of imagining nation
is the resurrection of the moribund selves.

Notes
1. From an introductory quotation in Samuel Durrant’s essay, ‘Hosting History: Wilson
Harris’s Sacramental Narratives’ Jouvert, 5.1, 2000. Available from:
http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v5i1/samdur.htm
2. All further references are to this edition and are included in the text.
3. See, in particular, my discussion of some of these aspects of K.S. Maniam’s writing in
‘Memory, Myth, Exile: The Desire for Malaysian Belonging in K.S. Maniam’s The
Return, “Haunting the Tiger” and In A Far Country’, Textual Practice, 2003 (2): 391-412.
4. Ibid: pp. 391-92.
5. Malaysian author and academic, Lloyd Fernando has published two novels dealing
with his country’s modern genesis: Scorpion Orchid (1976) and Green is the Colour
(1993).
6. Rama, together with Sita and Lakshmana, are exiled in the Chitrakoot Forest for a
period of fourteen years. Though Rama is the protagonist of the Ramayana, I would
conjecture that the sub-narrative of Sita’s faith, and the testing of that steadfastness
and courage clearly influences the choice of the plural female perspectives of
Sumitra, Sellamma and Gowri in Between Lives.
7. The true heroic qualities of Rama, according to the beliefs of Hinduism, stem from
his adherence throughout his life to the rules of dharma.
8. An author, politician and lawyer, Lee Kok Liang made prominent contributions to
Anglophone Malaysian literature for four decades until his death in 1992. Flowers in
the Sky, first published in 1981, provides a Malaysian variation on the Confucian
principles of yin and yang through its examination of balance and counterbalance on
multiple philosophical, physical and cultural levels.
9. I have in mind here the Sanskrit epic technique of embedding stories within stories,
twinned with the motif of exile, which may be witnessed, in particular, in the fiction
of Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul and Bharati Mukherjee, among others.
10. In an email to me dated 28 November 2002, Maniam states that General Orders ‘used
to be prescribed reading ... for those entering the civil service. It was supposed to be
the handbook for model behaviour and to provide rules for dealing with the public.
Its inclusion [in Between Lives] was meant to be ironic. Su’s father, if anything, is
exemplary [in terms of the rules of the handbook]. His behaviour is showcase or
display behaviour. Behind it all is one big corruption’.
11. It could be speculated that the sacrimentalization of the natural Malaysian landscape
and the importance of the familial and environmental bonds that form central
themes in Between Lives and a great deal of Maniam’s other prose fiction have as their
partial source of inspiration the Vedas, which comprise invocations to the One
Divine and the divinities of nature – including Sun, Rain, Wind, Fire – as well as
prayers for social rites such as matrimony and prosperity.
12. In an email from K.S. Maniam, dated 26 January 2003.
13. In Hinduism, Sita is variously referred to as the goddess of the harvest, and of the
earth, and as the Corn Mother. Her name translates literally as ‘furrow’.
14. I have in mind the allusions to rural tradition and ancestral heritage expressed in
Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’ but also, in particular, the complex and multiple
social and artistic responsibilities of the poet/writer expressed in the lines: ‘Between
my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I'll dig with it’.
15. For an assessment of the difficulties facing the contemporary Malaysian writer, see
Kee Thuan Chye. ‘Dilemma of a Dog Barking at a Mountain: Pragmatist-Idealist
Dialectic and the Writer in Malaysia’. In: M.A Quayum and P.C. Wicks (eds.)
Malaysian Literature in English: A Critical Reader, pp. 67-72. Kuala Lumpur:
Longman/Pearson Education Malaysia.
16. I have, in this paragraph, drawn in part from Aruna Srivastava’s enlightening
treatment of the representation of Foucalt’s, Nietszche’s and Gandhi’s historical
modes in two of Salman Rushdie’s novels in 1991, ‘“The Empire Writes Back”:
Language and History in Shame and Midnight’s Children’ in Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin
(eds.), Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism, New York:
 Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 65-78. Although, according to Srivastava, Gandhi’s
interpretation of history(ies) posits myths and mythologies apart from Nietszche’s
three modes of historical consciousness, I would argue that the realm of myth and
mythology can just as appropriately be placed in the mode of superhistorical, given
that Nietszche’s distinction implicitly allows for the fictive and mythologizing
elements inherent in art and religion.
17. The term bumiputra, translated from the Sanskrit bhumiputra, literally translates as
‘sons of the earth’ or, in Bahasa Malay, as ‘princes of the earth’. Its resonance is
twofold in its negative and positive ramifications: it may be viewed not only as part
of the excluding and divisive Malay(sian) political process but conversely, in its more
pure form in Maniam’s eco-narratives, as a crucial reference point for an eclectic but
collective future that is inclusive of all ethnicities in Malaysia and their relationship(s)
with the landscape itself.
18. For a more complete reference to this perspective in Fernando’s fiction and
academic critiques see my essay, 2000, ‘“Do You Wish to Join This Society or Not?”:
The Paradox of Nationhood in Lloyd Fernando’s Scorpion Orchid’, Kunapipi, XXII (1):
11-16.
19. See my discussion of this in ‘Memory, Myth, Exile: The Desire for Malaysian
Belonging in K.S. Maniam’s The Return, “Haunting the Tiger” and In A Far Country’,
Textual Practice, 2003 (2): 391-412.
20. In an email from K.S. Maniam dated 29 January 2003, he notes that one reading of
these symbols might be as follows: the tiger represents Malaysia itself, but also age
and wisdom, the deer may be seen as a link between India and Malaysia, and the
snake, in this context, does not mean material wealth but rather, ‘the wealth that a
sheer sense of belonging to a country could bring’.
21. In 1993, Maniam commented: ‘The political structure in Malaysia is now being
dominated by Malay ideology … This existing structure is bound to affect the
activities, goals and progress of all these communities primarily because each is going
to be overlooked to a certain extent, through one major community trying to pass its
values and sense of social structure onto other people’. Wilson, B. 1993-94. ‘An
Interview with K.S. Maniam’. World Literature Written in English. 33.2 & 34.1: 18-19.
22. Writing in 1981, Tham Seong Chee observed: ‘Malay dominance in the political
process has led to two important political consequences. One is the implementation
of development policies in the educational and economic spheres favouring Malay
participation. The other is the use of Malay cultural and political symbols as the basis
for national identity and unity. The concept of Malaysian national culture stresses,
therefore, the role of Malay culture as the foundation (teras) of that culture’. Tham
Seong Chee, 2001. ‘The Politics of Literary Development in Malaysia’. M.A. Quayum
and P.C. Wicks (eds.) Malaysian Literature in English: A Critical Reader. Kuala Lumpur:
Longman/Pearson Education Malaysia: 38. In the following two-and-a-half decades
the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) has maintained its political
dominance and influence in developmental strategies which are advantageous to the
ethnic Malay group.
23. I am referring here to the Inner Party Member in George Orwell’s critique of
totalitarianism, 1984.
References
Fernando, Lloyd. 1986. Cultures in Conflict: Essays on Literature and the English Language in South
East Asia. Singapore: Graham Brash.
Foucault, M. 1994. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York:
Vintage Books.
Lukacs, J. 1968. Historical Consciousness: Or the Remembered Past. New York: Harper and Row.
Maniam, K.S. 2001. ‘Fiction into Fact, Fact into Fiction: A personal Reflection’, in M.A.
Quayum and P.C. Wicks (eds.), Malaysian Literature in English: A Critical Reader. Kuala
Lumpur: Longman/Pearson Education Malaysia.
Maniam, K.S. 2003. Between Lives. Kuala Lumpur: Maya Press.
Nietszche, F. 1957. The Use and Abuse of History. New York: Liberal Arts.
Rushdie, S. 1992. Imaginary Homelands. London: Penguin.
 23
Exilic Dispositions and Dougla Identity in Laure
Moutoussamy’s Passerelle de vie (The Bridge of Life)

Brinda Mehta

Every voyage is potentially a voyage into exile, a voyage to the ‘end of the night’ –
Georges Van Den Abbeele

The quest for female identity constitutes an important leitmotif in French Caribbean
women’s writing from Martinique and Guadeloupe in novels such as Hérémakhonon (Maryse
Condé), Juletane (Myriam Warner-Vieyra), Je suis martiniquaise (Mayotte Capécia), Mon examen
de blanc (Jacqueline Manicom), La métisse caribéenne (Arlette Minatchy Bogat), Passerelle de vie
(Laure Moutoussamy), among others. This search is situated within negating tropes of
colonization, departmentalization, sexual and racial alterity, assimilation, and migration to
demarcate the liminal spaces of exile’s physical and psychological trajectories, providing the
female characters with potentially ambivalent referential paradigms of self-definition.
Succumbing to the alienation, isolation, and frustration of their exilic dispositions at home
and abroad, these heroines express their conflicting reactions of anguish and resistance to
Otherness through suicide, nervous breakdown, illness, and madness as symptoms of a
gender-determined response to the tensions and ambiguities of French Caribbean or
Antillean (post)-coloniality in their countries of origin.

While most of these novels focus on the dilemmas confronted by Afro-Caribbean female
characters, writers such as Manicom, Moutoussamy, and Minatchy-Bogat have created
important narrative spaces for the inclusion of the experiences of Francophone Indo-
Caribbean and mixed-race Indian/African dougla women to broaden the scope of ethnic
and gendered negotiations of identity. Within this context, Laure Moutoussamy’s Passerelle de
vie (The Bridge of Life) marks a crucial intervention in these discourses on gender, race, and
mixed-race affiliations through the protagonist Déméta who problematizes French
Caribbean engagements with creolization on the one hand, while inserting the necessary
intersectional positionalities of dougla identity and Caribbean Indian-ness or indianité on the
other. In so doing, the novel adds the marginalized dimension of gender to existing models
of Antillean multiculturalism articulated in terms of Créolité and Coolitude, as well as to the
more nationalist identity politics of Négritude and Indianité.

This intervention is particularly important given that dougla identity in the French Caribbean
lacks the specific political, social, and cultural resonances of its Anglophone counterpart in
Trinidad and Guyana, where it is articulated in terms of ‘douglarization,’ ‘dougla poetics,’
‘dougla aesthetics,’ and ‘dougla in-betweeness’ in the work of Caribbean scholars and writers
such as Rhoda Reddock, Shalini Puri, Kamala Kempadoo, Ramabai Espinet, and others.
Referring to douglarization in Trinidad, Grant Stoddard and Eve Cornwall argue: ‘The
“douglarization” of Trinidadian culture can be read as a form of creolization, but as a form
of creolization in its most general and inclusive sense which decenters the African origins of
Creole culture and foregrounds the ongoing syncretic process of cultural formation. It also
highlights the power struggles inherent in those processes’ (1999: 213). These theories have
validated the inevitability of racial contact between Indians and Africans, despite the
somewhat problematic connotations of the word dougla denoting ethnic impurity.1 At the
same time, the term dougla has also seemed to be a little less polemical in its usage than the
word creole attempting to allay fears about the cultural assimilation of Indians in a
predominantly creolized social fabric in Trinidad. By highlighting the ‘Indianess’ inherent in
the word, Shalini Puri’s influential work on dougla poetics attempts to ally fears about the
cultural assimilation of Indians in a predominantly creolized social fabric in Trinidad. In her
article, ‘Race, Rape and Representation: Indo-Caribbean women and Cultural Nationalism,’
Puri argues that ‘the figure of the dougla could provide a vocabulary for figuring disallowed
Indian identities; furthermore, they could offer ways of reframing the problematics of black-
Indian party politics, and race and gender relations’ (1999: 272).2 Puri’s dougla poetics is a
way of ‘seeing’ the Caribbean differently beyond a white/black binary that excludes the
potential for mixed race ancestry. Traditional scholarship on and in the Caribbean has
tended to locate the region’s specificity within a black/white-dominated historical paradigm
stressing the primacy of European and African experiences. This dialectical imbalance has
obscured the subtle ‘chiaroscuro of brownness’ that characterizes the Indo-Caribbean
presence by promoting cultural invalidation and illegitimacy. Proposing the dougla poetics as
a form of ‘racelessnes,’ Puri inscribes it within an enabling trope of expanded dialogue and
cultural recognition; in so doing, she also reverses the negative connotations of the term
dougla, symbolizing bastardization and ethnic impurity, into a revised locus of identity. In
fact, the Indo-Guyanese critic Kamala Kempadoo associates her own dougla-ness with a
borderland identity which predicates the need for racial ambiguity in an increasingly
transcultural world (1999: 107-09). Kempadoo draws strength from her mixed-race identity
by locating it within the parameters of a transnational dynamic. The borderland as the site of
racial convergence transcends the limitations of racial absolutism, whose boundaries are
fixed and impermeable. Instead, the borderland, as interstitial space, favors a certain
subjective claiming in-between dominant discourses on race. In this way, Kempadoo
reaffirms her hybridized identity as an Afro-Indo-dougla-Guyanes woman who has inhabited
Caribbean diasporic space in England, Canada and the United States by celebrating the story
of the multiple hyphen. She states: ‘I could see myself as a chameleon, with no fixed
appearance and no sense of an essential self, yet could enjoy the multiple spaces available
due to the simultaneous inhabiting of different cultures’ (1999: 107-8). Associating her
dougla identity with a simultaneous vertical and horizontal expansion over multiple cultural
zones, Kempadoo accommodates her dougla-ness by converting marginality into relational
mutuality, thereby claiming a more inclusive positionality. The absence of such a theoretical
framework in the Francophone context has consequently marginalized the presence of
biological douglas who are omitted from discussions of Antillean identity either as chappé or
échappé coolie in Martinique or bata coolie in Guadeloupe. This omission has also impeded a
truly prismatic reading of Francophone Caribbeanness through the lack of cultural and
theoretical ‘intimacy between the shared experiences of Indians and Africans in terms of
labor exploitation, and the historical conditions of Indian indenture and African slavery.

Although the use of the term dougla in the French Caribbean context can appear to be a
semantic imposition remaining alien to the region’s politics of naming it nevertheless offers a
more affirming locus of diasporic identification in the absence of satisfactory nomenclature
in Martinique and Guadeloupe. In Martinique, the term échappé coolie evokes the ambiguity of
double entendre, whereby the escape (s’échapper) from coolie servitude as a form of resistance
to subalternity or la négrité also connotes an escape from or disavowal of one’s Indian
historicity at the same time. This ambiguity is further compounded by bastardization (bata) in
Guadeloupe, thereby revealing the inadequacies of both French and Creole to appropriately
name this constituency. Until these languages convincingly recreate themselves through
‘indeterminate’ vocabularies that extend beyond literalness, the term dougla represents the
only viable alternative to characterize this identity. As a signifier of diasporic affinity and
postcolonial subjectivity, the word dougla temporarily unites the Anglophone and French
islands in a trans-Caribbean linguistic rapprochement accepted by some and rejected by
others on both sides of this particular Caribbean ‘divide.’

Moreover, the subsuming of Francophone dougla-ness under racialized characterizations of

creole blackness or Indian bastardization inherent in the appellation ‘batazendien’ reveals an
inherent invisibility and illegitimacy that places this constituency in a state of tentativeness or
limbo caught between dominant paradigms of frenchness, blackness, and indianness. For
example, the dougla protagonist of Arlette Minatchy Bogat’s novel La métisse caribéenne
continually migrates between racist colonial markers of alterity, alternatively characterized as
‘coolie Malabar, négresse, zambo, bata coolie’ (Malabar coolie, negresse, sambo, coolie
bastard [12])3 by locals whites or béké, Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean communities
alike. Her resistance to categorization reveals the inadequacy of the colonial tongue to
transcend its negating binary logic that situates identity in an either or paradigm of
oppositional conflict. Moreover, the traditional framing of the Caribbean in terms of a
white/black dialectic has further predicated the assimilation of other ‘indeterminate’
identities under blanket characterizations of creoleness and métissage or racial mixing (as
mentioned earlier) to reveal a partial engagement with the process of creolization understood
in terms of Edouard Glissant’s relational poetics, the deliberations of the Créolité school of
Bernabé-Chamoiseau-Confiant, and Benîtez-Rojo’s repetitive transmutations. These scholars
frame creolization within a locus of perpetual hybridity and endless possibility as evidence of
an on-going process of exchange, renewal, and transformation, without necessarily including
gender as an important variable in the process.4

In this analysis, I would like to determine whether the dougla quest for identity leads to an
avowal or disavowal of one’s mixed-race heritage. How do Francophone dougla women
writers represent dougla difference in the absence of literary, political, and cultural points of
reference? What is the link between psychological exile and truncated roots as symptoms of
negated identity and the internalization of racialized paradigms of self-expression? For
example, the female protagonist of Jacqueline Manicom’s Mon examen de blanc, who ironically
bears an Indian name Madévi or the great goddess, betrays her alienation through an initial
and overt negation of her Indian ancestry, yearning to lactify her skin through psychological
associations with racial dominance.5 In Laure Moutoussamy’s Passerelle de vie, the question of
psychic alienation is further complicated by tropes of illness and exile as the only grid to
interrogate ‘alternative’ identities located within the racialized spectrum of Europe and the
homeland Martinique. Consequently, how do the political realities of colonialism and
departmentalization further negate the affirmation of these identities that do not necessarily
include whiteness as a dominant racial signifier? Are questions of creolization destabilized
when Africa and India displace European whiteness as primary reference points? What are
the implications of such a displacement, and how do they manifest themselves in narrative
form, especially in women’s writing?
The Bridge of Life is the ‘coming to consciousness’ story of a dougla woman from Martinique
who leaves home for the insecurity of exile in France. She leads the life of an actress
immersed in French culture and surrounded by European friends from France and
Germany. Her affair with a German man reveals all the tensions inherent in a white
man/woman of color relationship even though the couple seeks solace in each other’s
company to combat loneliness, alienation, and exile. The death of a common friend Willy
nevertheless triggers a wave of nostalgic memories. Willy’s death ‘shocks’ Déméta into
remembering her own father’s demise and her inability to spend his dying moments with
him. Death ironically becomes a point of motivation to connect the protagonist with her
repressed Indian heritage as she reflects on her ambivalent identity as a dougla from
Martinique, and a female immigrant in France. Moutoussamy’s novel situates the protagonist
in a conflicted space created by a confounding landscape of historical erasure, cultural
invalidation, rejection, and European exoticism. Forced to identify as a black woman based
on the visibility of her racialized difference in Europe, where ‘elle ne passait pas inaperçue’
(she did not pass unnoticed [119])6 Déméta’s search for self inscribes itself within the
alienating politics of Otherness that both accentuates the precariousness of a non-white bi-
raciality, while simultaneously revealing the erasure of her Indian heritage. The successful
fruition of her quest is thereby contingent upon the recovery of the obscured Indian past
that can only be reconciled after the death of her father, and the invalidation of colonial and
nationally-determined categories of acceptable/unacceptable citizenship. In other words, the
protagonist must reconcile with her father’s memory and feelings of guilt for having missed
his funeral in Martinique, as well as negotiate her displacement in spaces that oblige her to
masquerade her identity in acts of posturing or misidentifications with French and German
referents.

******

Juliette Sméralda-Amon highlights the major historical void that surrounds the history of
Indians in Martinique, attributing this ambivalence to the relatively fewer number of Indian
indentured workers who were brought to the island to work on the sugar plantations after
the abolition of slavery in 1848; their rapid assimilation into dominant Creole culture
through marriage with black women; the greater cruelty demonstrated by the French
colonizers toward their colonial subjects in terms of cultural erasure; the eclectic selection of
Indians from the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu; high mortality rates; economic,
territorial, and political disenfranchisement through minority status; and a lack of diasporic
solidarity due to the fragmentation of family and communal life as a result of dispersal on
remote and disparate estates.7 This history of separation was further complicated by the
negative perception of Indians as manipulable colonial pawns used as scapegoats of colonial
treachery and black resentment in their tertiary position as a newly recruited foreign labor
force. Indenture was seen as a stumbling block to the emancipation struggles and democratic
ideals of the newly-freed blacks and people of color who lost their negotiating power with
the colonials once the Indians were brought to Martinique as an easily-replaceable work
force. Ostracized for their racial and cultural difference, and the ambiguous status they
occupied within the colonial machinery, Indians were further relegated to marginal
representation through a denial of civil and legal status until the activism of an Indo-
Guadeloupean lawyer Henri Sidambarom reversed the existing laws of naturalization in
favor of Indians on February 9, 1914.
Sméralda-Amon’s work demonstrates how Indians became objects of hostility when they
were excluded from all spheres of public life, scorned and rejected for their ‘exotic’ ways,
systematically placed on the fringes by a society that refused to acknowledge their presence
as co-workers and fellow citizens, and stigmatized for their allegedly favored status with the
béké and elite of color for having thwarted attempts at black self-determination. The
ambiguity of indenture corresponded with the ambiguity of the representative value of
Indians, wherein Indian alterity was both a source of marginalization and a paradoxical
ground for miscegenation in the absence of Indian women. The fewer numbers of Indian
males together with their rapid assimilation into the dominant creolized framework through
marriage resulted in a further eclipsing of Indian culture negated by dominant paradigms of
‘acceptable’ Caribbean cultural authority. Fragments of the Indian past were either
geographically dispersed and confined to isolated rural pockets on the estates or obfuscated
by Creole cultural dominance to produce a culture in-alienation of its own truncated roots,
and a constituency of Indo-Martinican Creoles with its mixed-race dougla offspring.

******

The protagonist Déméta is consequently situated at the confluence of these exilic passages as
the daughter of an Indian father and a black mother. Exiled from an essential part of herself
due to the machinations of history, Déméta experiences an existential void in her life
characterized by feelings of incompletion, and rootlessness as evidence of a nomadic errancy
or search for a sense of place. As the novel reveals: ‘Tout ce vagabondage de l’esprit vers les
îles prouvait bien que Déméta se languissait dans la grande métropole … qu’elle n’avait pas
encore ses vrais repères’ (Her spirit that kept wandering back to the islands proved without a
doubt that Déméta was languishing in the big metropolis …that she still hadn’t found her
true bearings [121]). Déméta’s search for ancestral affiliations ironically locates her within a
no-man’s land of existential disaffiliations to produce a physical and psychological crisis
embattling the self in an unresolved internal and external conflict. These disjunctions create
a divided self that remains cognizant of its own foreignness as it mediates cultural and racial
codes within a dominant European polity. Valérie Orlando describes the ‘disconnected
isolation’ (40) that these heroines experience when racialized and cultural differences
marginalize them ‘on the borders of the norm, the accepted, and the nominative of cultural
definition’ (34). Relegated to peripheral representation, Déméta’s identity becomes a signifier
of performative praxis, a spectacle to be objectified for and by European cultural
consumption in the name of assimilationist politics and its subsequent obfuscation of
origin(s).

Déméta’s insecurity finds its ontological roots in a dual historical void that erases Indian
ethnicity and dougla identity simultaneously by situating these markers of Caribbean
difference outside representation. The search for origin thereby reveals foundational
impasses highlighting her disinheritance in and by history symbolized by ‘le grand fleuve du
néant’ (the great river of nothingness [184]) and the father’s death. Two primordial levels of
erasure create gaping wounds represented by truncated memories or ‘mémoire trouée’ (88),
tentative affiliations with the unknown, exile’s dislocations, and the permanence of death.
Kristeva refers to this state of disaffiliation as the outsider’s ‘distressed knowledge’ (1991: 10)
located in the mind’s conflicted landscape of parallel re-membering and alienation. This
exilic wound charts memory’s enabling and disabling trajectories as the source of physical
and psychic destruction on the one hand and, the path to reflection on the other. This
course nevertheless reveals two irrevocable disjunctions: the impossibility of reconciling with
the father, and the historical blocks that continue to fragment Indians and Africans in the
Caribbean despite reconciliatory discourses aimed at greater interethnic cooperation. As
Keith Walker asserts: ‘This literature is a representation of a liminal state (where) there is a
yearning for reconciliation of the warring strivings and paradoxical impulses as one lives on
the hyphen of cultural identity’ (1999: 37). Consequently, the negotiation of the hyphen
represents Déméta’s efforts to mediate the margins as she struggles to achieve her dual
historical subjectivity as an Indian and African woman from the French Caribbean.

As mentioned previously, the novel inscribes Déméta’s dougla liminality within the cyclical
configurations of death and memory. As she confesses: ‘La mort de Willy avait entraîné des
nostalgias, des prises de conscience’ (Willy’s death had provoked nostalgia and awareness
[184]). Her journey of self-discovery begins with the traumatic double passing of her father
and a close friend Willy as she attempts to bridge the gap between life and death in memory
(hence the title of the novel), a prelude to reconciling a contested identity in reality. As Trinh
Minh-ha claims: ‘Identity is a way of re-departing. The return to a denied heritage allows one
to start again with different re-departures, different pauses, different arrivals’ (1991: 14).
These journeys must chart their own seascapes to avoid colonial misnavigations and
misleading points of orientation to demonstrate how Déméta’s personal right of passage can
only be achieved upon the recognition of two Middle Passages (both Indian and African)
that have characterized the Caribbean’s history of confluence. The protagonist bemoans her
prior lack of awareness: ‘Ma coolitude ensemence ma négritude . . . J’étais trop jeune et trop
ignorante de ma richesse . . .’ (My coolitude fertilizes my negritude . . . I was too young and
too ignorant about my richness [180]).

This ‘douglarized historicity’ becomes a site of reclaiming and redefinition as the protagonist
recalls her father’s epic journey across the kala pani or black Atlantic to Martinique where he
meets his African wife and creates a new Francophone polycentricism amid racism and
social disruption. These multiple beginnings nevertheless bear the scars of traumatic intent
as Indo-Caribbean history emerges tentatively from the lost archives to make its imprint on
the Caribbean landscape. The history of these saffron men and women ‘les hommes
safranés’ [189) exposes its internal and external fissures as a reaction to the unresolved
trauma of separation from India, and involuntary assimilation in Martinique. The protagonist
wonders whether Indian identity can emerge from the recesses of a stolen memory (178) and
from dehumanization represented by the appellation ‘coolie’ or indentured worker. Can
Indo-Caribbean history ever establish its epic passage by transcending its marginalized coolie
status to resound like ‘le cor du héros victorieux’ (the horn of a victorious hero [175])? How
does a community rise from servitude to subjectivity? What are the internal factions that
either impede or enhance self-definition as a stepping-stone to cultural pluralism? The story
of Déméta’s father provides the necessary clues to these interrogations, stimulating the
daughter’s own reflections on the French Caribbean’s multicultural positionality today. In
other words, Déméta must gain knowledge about her Indian heritage before she negotiates
bi-culturality, a process wherein the past’s repressed traces can only achieve a certain
ascendancy through the mnemonic process.

In the act of remembering, the father’s kala pani story attempts to reverse its displaced
historicity to become a founding Caribbean text. This narrative traces the routes of Indian
migration to Martinique through an individual trajectory that both complements and
complicates the particularities of the Antillean experience articulated in terms of hybridity’s
‘third space,' a site of multiple discursive positionings. As Homi Bhabha states: ‘The
importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third
emerges, rather hybridity. . . is the ‘third space’ which enables other positions to emerge.
This third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of
authority’ (1990: 211). The third space is the very space of Caribbean diasporic positionality,
a medium to give voice to the Indo-Caribbean experience on the one hand, while creatively
(and politically) mediating and rewriting ‘accepted notions of subjectivity, otherness, and
modernity’ (Murdoch 2001: 3). The insertion of the kala pani’s ‘third space’ in Caribbean
historiography thereby reveals the ontological urgency to recover a primary loss
characterizing the Indo-Caribbean predicament in Martinique. As Khal Torabully affirms:
‘For the Indian descendants, there was no real founding text for their indentureship, and
their presence on the islands . . . was vitiated by a cultural uneasiness bordering on
frustration. Expressing their presence in the Caribbean society remains an intense desire for
them, in view of participating fully in it’ (2002: 151). In the novel, this desire for recognition
instead of assimilation takes the form of the father’s kala pani lament that provides the basic
script of ‘coolie historicity.’ This narrative reveals its multi-layered textuality in an expansive
diasporic narrative that embraces the seven seas themselves, as evidence of the transnational
scope of the Indian trajectory. The novel highlights the idea of expansiveness: ‘Ce coolie de
bò kannal narrait la traversée des sept mers avec une sagesse touchante’ (This coolie from the
northern canal recounted the crossing of the seven seas with moving wisdom [187]).

The novel associates Indian history with a wounded memory that simultaneously bears
indelible scars from the past as a result of the traumatic trans-Atlantic crossing and the
father’s almost immediate poisoning by a so-called ‘friend’ in Martinique; it also exposes a
dead end future without hope, as a symptom of trauma’s impermanent resolution. As the
novel indicates: ‘Muselé et intégré, le coolie, dans sa solitude sans rêve pour l’avenir’ (The
coolie was muzzled and integrated in his silence without any dreams for the future [178]).
Trauma’s migrating trajectories do not lead to spatial and social mobility; rather, the
impermanence of the present provokes deep insecurities betraying the angst of losing one’s
cultural sanctity in the process of assimilation. Cultural adaptation enforces spiritual
desecration in the adopted land as rituals lose their sanctity through accommodation. The
novel exposes the falsifying of tradition as a survival strategy: ‘Célébration falsifiée
aujourd’hui, détournée dans sa teneur. Et le son du matalon ne résonne plus que pour des
rites impurs à notre connaissance’ (Falsified celebrations today, deviating from their original
intent. And the sound of the matalon drum only resounds for rites that are impure to our
understanding (181]). The idea of ritualistic contamination is related to its diasporic
perversions in Martinique when Indians are forced to betray their Indianness in silence as
punishment for having undertaken and survived the kala pani taboo, to be discussed later.
This betrayal is synonymous with cultural disinheritance, a paradoxical sign of coping and
surviving under difficult circumstances.

At the same time, Indian survival strategies also reveal unconscious recreations of the
threatened past in the present through irrepressible traces of memory taking root in the land.
The Indian indentures were primarily an agricultural labor force whose connection with the
land remained visceral despite the oceanic journey. The earth or maati as the divine matrix is
an integral part of the rural Indian ethic providing an umbilical connection to life itself. As
Torabully indicates ‘La maati, pour le rural indien, est trace de son existence, sens de son être
sur terre . . . L’Indien aime posséder la terre: dans sa cosmogonie translatée, c’est sa façon de
re-créer L’Inde ombilicale, le centre de son être’ (The maati, for the rural Indian represents a
trace of his existence, a sense of his being on earth . . the Indian likes to possess land: in his
translated cosmogony, it’s his way of recreating umbilical India, the center of his being
[1996: 63-63: my translation)]). The feeling of being rooted to the land both physically
through agriculture, and spiritually through ritual becomes a method to appease the pain of
historical uprootedness even though the politics of cane reveal their disabling intent.
Indenture’s replacement of slavery was intended to sustain a nefarious sugar plantocracy that
dispossessed Africans and Indians by varying degrees of inhumanity, alienating both
communities from themselves and each other through rivaling albeit unequal territorial
claiming.

For the Indians, a sense of immediate identification with the land becomes crucial to survive
homelessness in the face of cultural marginality, as depicted in the novel. The recreation of
familiar home space defines the ontological need to establish subjectivity in diaspora as a
means of transcending the inescapable cycle of indenture and its non-negotiable routes, a
point of no return evoked in the text (197). The desire to establish umbilical affinity with
India indicates a simultaneous confrontation and contestation of exile. Consequently, the
creation of a customary landscape of rice paddies (197) carves the displaced geography of
the ancestral land onto an unfamiliar territory. These connections between home and
diaspora are established via fragrant tracks of memory when comforting spice routes provide
well-known points of orientation amid exile’s confounding dislocation. The novel describes
the richness of the Indian spices: ‘L’ambre du massala, le velouté du safran, balayés par les
vagues de l’exil ont poussé le coolie à recréer ses odeurs nostalgiques’ (The amber hues of
massala, the velvety texture of saffron, swept by the waves of exile urged the coolie to
recreate his nostalgic fragrances [197]). The rich texturing of spices represents the complex
layering of Indo-Caribbean history, a memorable palimpsest revealing a community’s
abjection and corresponding resistance to exploitation and ostracism. The novel compares
the Indians to resilient reeds that may bend under pressure, while refusing to capitulate at the
same time: ‘Tel un roseau, le pauvre coolie pliait sans jamais tomber. Il se redressait après
chaque épidémie, aussi solide que le dit roseau’ (Like a reed, the poor coolie bent over
without ever falling down. He picked himself up after every epidemic, as resistant as the
aforementioned reed [200]).

However, this sense of Indian historical plenitude is minimized by its confinement within
negating tropes of Caribbean nationalism and multiculturalism based on partial inclusions
and self-centered exclusions. The narrator bemoans the erasure of the coolie narrative in
revolutionary discourses on unstable identity and multicultural opacity promoted by the very
ethos of creolization, whereby ‘in the effort to recover their unrecorded past, contemporary
writers and critics have come to the realization that opacity and obscurity are necessarily the
precious ingredients of all authentic communication,’ according to Françoise Lionnet (1989:
9). In terms of Francophone Indo-Caribbeans in Martinique, the search for obscurity has
ironically imposed a degree of historical obscuring revealed by the narrator: ‘Elle regrettait de
ne pas entendre d’aucuns, parler de l’engagement du coolie, dans cette grande révolution des
îles. Pourtant, il y avait contribué ce pauvre coolie, en crachant poumons et en vidant son
âme dans la sueur, pour la prospérité’ (She regretted the fact that no one had spoken about
the engagement of the coolie during this great revolution on the islands. However, this poor
coolie had also contributed to the prosperity of the islands by busting his lungs and
emptying his soul into sweat [186]). By contributing to the national productivity of the
island, coolie labor dispels any myths about the peripheral commitment of the early Indians
toward regional welfare on the one hand, and questions the democratic intent of creolization
on the other.

The narrator wonders if the Indo-Caribbean experience and its corollary mixed race
permutations will ever earn their rightful place in the racialized spectrum of creolization or
whether they will continue to be erased from the national imaginary. She affirms: ‘Ils ont
gagné, eux aussi, leur droit au cordage de la créolisation’ (They have also earned their right to
the cordage of creolization [190]). This signifying chain nevertheless exposes its missing links
threatening to undermine creolization’s truly diversifying intent in relation to Indians and
douglarized Caribbeans. Is creolization a reflection of the national consciousness or, as
Torabully asks: ‘Is the development or reformulation of an Antillean national consciousness
likely to take place parallel to, rather than to include the rehabilitation of the East Indian
component?’ (2002:12). Does the Indian component constitute a separate or integrated track
in the creolized imaginary of contemporary Martinique or will Indians be condemned to
repeat the traumatic displacement of Otherness experienced by their ancestors? Will
memory’s associative value keep trauma alive in a series of involuntary reenactments
relegating Indian identity to the perpetually irreclaimable? Will an Indian-centered discourse
of belonging or indianité offer a script of belonging for disenfranchised Indians just as
Négritude offered a locus of cultural, political and ethnic relocation for alienated blacks in
diaspora?

These questions betraying Déméta’s uncertainty of location prompt her to interrogate the
Caribbean’s authorizing discourses and their capacity/incapacity to engage in a truly
participatory cross-cultural poetics of identity. While Négritude positioned the very ‘essence’
of black cultural and political sensibility as an anti-colonial, anti-racist discourse espoused by
the founding fathers ‘Césaire, Damas and Senghor’ (185) in the 1940s, the exclusion of
gender and mixed race identity from Negritude’s politics of self-determination nevertheless
revealed its inadequacy to reflect the Caribbean’s gendered cultural heterogeneity.8 Similarly,
Indianité as the Indian response to cultural affirmation betrayed a similar nationalistic intent
by marginalizing women through purist notions of ideal womanhood, and discriminating
against other ethnicities, blacks in particular, as a defensive reaction to rapid assimilation and
cultural invalidation.9 The novel reveals the closemindedness of the Indian community:
‘“Dans la “colonie” indienne où vivait Déméta étant gamine, personne ne parlait des
“autres”: ceux qui n’en étaient pas membres’ (‘In the Indian “colony” where Déméta was
raised, no one talked about the “others”: those who were non-members’ [185-86]). Neither
Negritude nor Indianité provide Déméta with a self-affirming mirror through their
nationalist claims to ‘pure’ origin and unadulterated blood symbolized by ‘la race pure
indienne’ (the pure Indian race [186]). The Indian resistance to racial mixing alienates
Déméta further when her dougla identity characterizes her as the mother Marguerite’s little
black likeness (186).

Victimized by racial profiling, Déméta’s Indianness is further negated by the community’s

pervasive racism that ironically deprives her of paternal roots, while criminalizing the
mother’s blackness through racism. The community refers to Déméta in derogatory terms to
accentuate its resistance to difference, distinguishing her from pure-blooded Indians who, in
turn, further reinforce the idea of the dougla’s cultural bastardization and racial
contamination revealed in the negative appellation ‘lotchyo.’ As the novel indicates: ‘Ce mot
“lotchyo”,désignait la couleur de la noix de coco trop caramélisée pour la préparation de
confiserie. Ce n’était certes pas une parole de bienvenue, ni d’acceptation’ (‘The word
“lotchyo” was used to describe the color of highly caramelized coconut used in the
preparation of sweets. This was certainly not a word of welcome or acceptance’ [186]). As
the sweetened product of her parents’ love, ‘cette amour débordante qui les unissait’ (this
overwhelming love that united them [186]) Déméta is nevertheless transformed into an
object of communal repulsion when her overt ‘caramelized sweetness’ becomes an
unpalatable item to be rejected by local consumption instead. On the other hand, the novel
also exposes racism toward Indians in the form of the father’s poisoning by a friend who
apparently hated his Indianness (171), and the repeated derision and scapegoating endured
by Indians as they struggled to cope in a hostile environment. This disdain is reflected in a
popular Creole song whose dissonance reveals cultural misunderstandings about Indian life,
prejudice, and racialized stereotyping: ‘Kouli pat fin… louli manjé chyen. Yo ka manjé
razyé… mi yo ka mandé la charité…’ (Coolies with slender legs… coolies who eat dogs.
They eat grass destined for beasts… they ask for charity [183]).

******

The protagonist’s exclusion as a dougla woman situates itself on internal and external levels.
The overt marginalization of Indian history is complemented by an inherent rejection of
dougla historicity, leading Déméta to seek an outer departmental, diasporic affiliation with an
Indian intellectual from Mauritius named Khal Torabully, and his theory of coolitude. She
hopes to find a possible response to her irreconcilable identity within the parameters of
coolitude, a theory aimed at transcending the limitations of local identity politics by
embracing a larger diasporic consciousness, while retaining Indian distinctiveness at the same
time. Torabully describes the new esthetics of representation: ‘Coolitude is an aesthetic
blend, a kind of mix of a complex culture, bringing to the imaginaire a part of the other. It
calls to attention “Indianness” in relation with “Otherness” as a premise which leads to a
transcultural awareness. This is in keeping with the fundamental attitude of creolization . . .
We must understand that in those texts of creoleness which often do not integrate coolies as
fully fledged literary creations – a fact that does not live fully to the promises of creolization
- a mirror is held to History, a moment of History, when the struggle between the
descendants of slaves and the descendants of coolies was real, each fighting to carve out a
place in the plantocracies’ (2002: 168). Based on an interplay of cultural complexity,
coolitude proposes to fill in the gaps left by creolization in terms of the Indian presence by
establishing the necessary parity between converging historicities. Building on Glissant’s
theory of identities in mutation, coolitude ‘imagines’ the impossible through the possibility
of ‘crosscultural vagabondage’ (2002: 194) between and among cultures to eliminate any
fixed notions of identity or cultural essentialism. Through the unpredictability of perpetual
negotiation and ‘chaotic’ transmutation, coolitude envisages a pluralistic world of
unimaginable difference(s) in which racial self-centeredness gives way to transformative
relational intersections with the Other. For Torabully, coolitude provides the necessary
bridge between negritude, créolité and indianité through its emphasis on an egalitarian
cosmovision. The narrator pays tribute to Torabully for having unveiled the true universality
of the islands (186) by formulating a theory that decentralizes the one -dimensional scope of
nationalism on the one hand, while rectifying the geographical and historical limitations of
creolization on the other.

The optimism of Torabully’s theory should not, however, eclipse the fact that Indians in
Martinique are still considered a minority culture despite some semblance of social mobility.
Can a minority culture ever ‘imagine’ its egalitarian footing with hegemonic power structures
in Martinique and France to truly participate in the poetics of coolitude? How do Indo-
Caribbeans and douglas write themselves into a translocational script without the necessary
political agency? While Torabully’s work emerges from within a context of Indian cultural
and political dominance in Mauritius, can disproportionate historical subjectivities lay claim
to a universal decenteredness or the lack of fixed origins in the Caribbean? Are these
relations confined to the realm of the imaginary rather than to lived praxis wherein these
associations are ‘assumed rather than demonstrated’? (Paget Henry 2003: 4). Can coolitude
mediate the exilic tensions between Indians and Africans in a true ‘poetics of relation?’ Can
Martinique ever conceive of itself as a dougla nation that embraces a politics of
reconciliation beyond Indian assimilation and Caribbean departmentalization? In Tout-monde,
Glissant himself states that while the combination of Indian spices or masalè constitutes an
important component of Francophone Caribbeanness its subsequent insertion into the
dynamics of dominant creolization has not led to a creative massalafication of cultures
ironically (1993: 477). Instead, creolization has effaced the positionality of Indians within this
combination as further evidence of their marginality, thereby revealing creolization’s
truncated affiliations with relational theory. Moreover, coolitude’s eclipsing of gender has
added another level of invisibility for Indo-Caribbean and dougla women in its inability to
open crucial spaces for gender negotiations; in so doing, it has colluded with the male-
centeredness of Négritude, Indianité and Créolité to displace Caribbean women in general,
and Indo-Caribbean/dougla women in particular from the politics of representation.

By calling for truly relational models of ‘expanded creolization,’ Moutoussamy’s literary

articulations position the dougla imaginary as a possible site for these indeterminate
identities, revealing their ‘irreversible duality’ (79) in a rich and continually self-perpetuating
interchange of potential. Can the dougla imaginary provide a politicized healing narrative to
appease the brutality of colonization experienced by both Africans and Indians in the form
of slavery and indenture to create a mutual space for dialogue and cooperation? How do
communities deal with internalized trauma before engaging in cross-cultural exchange?
Referring to the Indian and African communities in Guadeloupe, the narrator of La métisse
caribéenne states: ‘Pourtant, ces deux communautés étaient installées sur ce morceau du globe,
exilées, blessées, fouettées, prisonnières, mais encore, esclaves ou engagées, pensez-vous
qu’il faille oublier . . . oui ou non, mail il faut surtout panser et couvrir les plaies ouvertes,
d’une étoffe de paix’ (However, these two communities were installed in this part of the
world, exiled, wounded, whipped, imprisoned, but still, enslaved or indentured, do you
think it is necessary to forget . . . yes and no, but it is above all essential to bandage and
cover open wounds with the fabric of peace [11]). As suggested in La métisse caribéenne, the
covering of festering wounds only leaves permanent scars as violent reminders of a history
of inhumanity. These cover-ups provide partial healing without treating the rawness of the
very root of trauma. Can the dougla imaginary provide the basic vocabulary to articulate this
deeply integral pain that resists translation in conventional language even though biological
douglarization remains a fact of life in Martinique? Will French ever recreate itself to become
a dougla tongue as a possible medium of reconciliation? How can the dougla imaginary
insert itself into current discourses on creolization to further expand the existing parameters
of Relation? Will Martinique’s dougla historicity ever acquire the status of a permitted
historicity in which the creolized ‘douglaspeak’ becomes another mother tongue?
Moutoussamy’s novel raises more questions than it provides answers to indicate that these
interrogations still remain at a very preliminary stage of deliberation.

The novel falls short of exploring these questions due to a series of irreparable historical and
cultural ruptures concretized in Déméta’s mysterious illness resisting medical treatment and
psychological appeasement. This malady assumes the form of an incurable malaise or
festering ancestral wound related to a ‘guilty’ historicity written out of the French
Caribbean’s diasporic opacity. The novel exposes the source of this guilt: ‘Déméta avait
toujours pensé que c’était la mort de son père qui avait déclenché en elle la maladie. Elle
s’était sentie coupable…… coupable d’avoir quitté son pays, son père n’était pas
d’accord….. coupable de ne pas avoir compris qu’il voulait lui parler, il avait quelque chose à
transmettre’ (Déméta had always thought that her father’s death was the source of her
illness. She had felt guilty…. guilty for having left her country, her father was opposed to
it… guilty for not having understood that he wanted to talk to her, that he had something to
transmit [171]). This guilt is a symptom of the unresolved exilic dispositions that consume
father and daughter in a circular trajectory, ironically uniting them in death. Death
nevertheless provides the essential bridge to launch a kala pani life story that begins and ends
in exile for the father as he leaves India for the Caribbean; the daughter repeats this exilic
journey several years later when she emigrates to France.

Torabully indicates that guilt defines the Indo-Caribbean experience whereby ‘the soul of the
Hindu who left the Ganges was doomed to err perpetually, as it was cut off from the cycle
of reincarnation’ (2002: 164). In addition, the crossing of black water was associated with
contamination and cultural defilement according to Hindu belief. The traversing of large
expanses of water led to the dispersal of tradition, family, class and caste classifications, and
to the general loss of a ‘purified’ Hindu essence. Kala pani crossings were initially identified
with the expatriation of convicts, ‘low’ castes and other ‘undesirable’ elements of society
from the mainland to neighboring territories to rid society of any visible traces of social
‘pollution;’ those who braved the kala pani were automatically compromising their
Hinduness. Ironically, the kala pani’s ‘purification of the pariah’ (Torabully 2002: 163) leads
to the father’s marginality in diaspora, just as Déméta’s pariah status as a dougla woman in
Martinique confines her to the liminality of the racialized and sexualized subaltern in France.

The guilt of exile punctuates the kala pani narrative in Moutoussamy’s work to demonstrate
how Indo-Caribbean communities are born into exile. The traversing of the black waters by
the first Indians has come to symbolize the primordial journey into exile, wherein Indo-
Caribbean origins have reflected the precariousness of uprooted affiliations, as in the case of
their Afro-Caribbean counterparts as well. In the novel, however, the very existence of
Indians is defined by their exile and foreignness from which only death can provide the
ultimate release. The narrator evokes her father’s memory: ‘Désormais restitué au
NIRVANA, Gento tu circules enfin, libéré du grand calvaire de l’exil’ (Finally restored to
NIRVANA, Gento you are finally in motion, liberated from the immense burden of exile
[176]). Nirvana as the very transcendence of exile, and the ultimate resting-place for the
father situates itself at the opposite end of the kala pani spectrum. This passage marks the
continuum between life and death in a fragmented narrative that translates the anxiety of
(non)-belonging represented by the ambivalence of losing one’s birthplace, and the
consequent angst of assimilation in the adopted land. In other words, the initial trauma of
ancestral separation initiated by the father is repeated in cyclical frequency throughout the
novel until death’s inevitability confronts the family in a trans-Atlantic movement between
Indian, the Caribbean, and France.

The novel reveals the failure of diaspora in the final musings of the protagonist for whom
diaspora’s intersectional positionalities have lead to impasses rather than creative
cooperation. The narrator states: ‘Dans la communauté antillaise de France, il n’y avait
aucune coordination entre les associations . .. Chacune voulait fêter à sa manière “son
abolition” . . . La diaspora antillaise, par manque d’entente, de consultation, avait sauf rares
exceptions, raté quelque peu cette grande rencontre’ (In the Antillean community of France,
there was no coordination between the associations . . . Every organization wanted to
celebrate its own ‘emancipation’ . . . The French Caribbean diaspora, with a few rare
exceptions, had missed out on this historic meeting, on account of misunderstandings and a
lack of coordination. [203]). These exilic histories do not find common cause in their
diasporic ‘double disjointedness,’ wherein décalage, according to Brent Edwards, should
provide ‘a changing core of difference; it is the work of “differences within unity,” an
unidentifiable point that is incessantly touched and fingered and pressed’ (2003: 13). These
differences do not inspire bilateral movement through political and cultural linkages; instead,
they represent the alienating dissonance of competing subjectivities that favor dominance
over Relation in a self-canceling paradigm of isolation and missed opportunity. The
protagonist internalizes this sense of isolation when the novel concludes on a note of
introversion and resigned desolation to reflect exile’s triumph over Relation: ‘Déméta elle,
est déjà installée dans la sienne, et le monde peut continuer à tourner’ (Déméta was already
settled in her (solitude), and the world can keep turning [207]). Her indifference betrays an
innate retraction from her surroundings as she waits to be liberated from exile’s
disorientation, and the psychological trauma of truncation.

In conclusion, The Bridge of Life reveals the protagonist’s attempts to overcome the physicality
of exile as an Antillean woman in Paris as she struggles to mediate her mixed race dougla
identity in diaspora. The negating factors of immigration, nationhood, race, and gender bias
hinder the process of individuation to suspend the protagonist in an existential vacuum. This
point of no return is the very space of exile that presents a non-reflecting mirror of
misidentification and cultural marginalization instead. Excluded by creolization’s male-
centered identifications of cultural pluralism, the protagonist exhibits a profound state of
alienation occasioned by historical erasure and exclusive nomenclature. Her search for
validation amid the French Caribbean’s multicultural spectrum reveals the limitations
embedded in the region’s supposedly liberating discourses that lack the necessary semantic
power to articulate her intersectional African-Indian identity. She remains trapped within the
ambivalent politics of Otherness, a stranger to self and surroundings imprisoned by the
confines of the inadmissible. In this way, Moutoussamy’s novel highlights the need for a
gender-specific deliberation beyond creolization, a discourse in which a gendered exilic
identity can successfully negotiate the bridge of life to find a permanent sense of home.
Notes
1. See Shalini Puri’s article ‘Race, Rape and Representation: Indo-Caribbean Women and
Cultural Nationalism.’ Cultural Critique 36 (May 1997): 119-63 and Rhoda Reddock’s
essay ‘Jahaji Bhai: The Emergence of a Dougla Poetics in Contemporary Trinidad and
Tobago.’ In Identity, Ethnicity and Culture in the Caribbean. Edited by Ralph Premdas. St.
Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies, School of Continuing
Studies. 1999: 185-210.
2. Consult the essays in Matikor: The Politics of Identity for Indo-Caribbean Women. Edited by
Rosanne Kanhai. St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies,
School of Continuing Studies. 1999. Shalini Puri’s article ‘Race, Rape and
Representation: Indo-Caribbean Women and Cultural Nationalism,’ and Kamala
Kempadoo’s essay, ‘Negotiating Cultures: A “Dogla” Perspective’ are to be found in this
collection.
3. Arlette Minatchy-Bogat. La métisse caribéenne Guadeloupe and Martinique: Ibis Rouge
Editions): 2004. All subsequent references will be made to this edition.
4. Consult Antonio Benîtez-Rojo’s The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern
Perspective. Trans. James Maraniss (Durham, NC: Duke UP): 1992 and Edouard Glissant’s
Poetics of Relation. Trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press): 1997.
Glissant’s ‘poetics of relation’ has been inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s
notion of the rhizome described in Glissant’s text as ‘an enmeshed root system, a
network spread either in the ground or in the air, with no predatory rootstock taking
over permanently . . . The notion of the rhizome maintains, therefore, the idea of
rootedness but challenges that of a totalitarian root’ (1997: 11). The idea of rhizomatic
spatiality embraces the horizontal expansiveness of Creoleness as a synchronic system of
cultural mutations that give the Caribbean and its diaspora its unique ontological
positioning. The rhizome as a moveable centre or as a multiplicity of concentric circles
traces ex-centric migratory movements across geographical frontiers and within
nationally determined boundaries, wherein transversal motion facilitates a sense of spatial
mobility and spatial indeterminancy. In a similar fashion, Benîtez-Rojo’s ‘repeating
island’ recreates itself constantly through a ‘meta-archipelago’ configuration that ‘has the
virtue of having neither a boundary nor a center’ (1992: 4), thereby constituting an
aquatic rhizome that extends the geography of cultural possibility. The meta-archipelago
as a series of ‘island bridges’ (Benîtez-Rojo 1992: 4) spanning the horizontal expanse of
the Caribbean Sea and its transatlantic navigational routes provides a fluid diaspora space
of cultural cross-currents and aquatic movement undermining closure in island insularity.
5. See Adlai Murdoch’s article ‘Writing India in the West Indies: Indo-Caribbean
Inscriptions in Trinidad and Guadeloupe.’ CLR James Journal 9.1 (Winter 2002/2003):
116-146. Special issue on Indo-Caribbean/Afro-Caribbean Thought. Edited by Paget
Henry and Brinda Mehta.
6. Laure Moutoussamy. Passerelle de vie (Guadeloupe: Ibis Rouge Edition): 2000. All
subsequent references will be made to this edition. All translations into English are my
own.
7. Consult Sméralda Amon’s ‘Interview: la question de l’immigration indienne.’
http://www.indereunion.net/actu/amon/interamon.htm Retrieved June 9, 2005: 1-4.
Also refer to her book La question de l’immigration indienne dans son environnement socio-
économique martiniquais, 1848-1900. Paris L’Harmattan. 1996.
8. See T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s book, Negritude Women. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. 2003.
9. Consult my book, Diasporic (Dis)locations: Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the ‘Kala
Pani’ (Kingston: University Press of the West Indies): 2004 for a more detailed analysis
on the objectification of Hindu women in and by nationalist ideology.

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