Innovative Departures: Anthropology and the Indian Diaspora [1° ed.] 1138501778, 9781138501775

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INNOVATIVE DEPARTURES

This volume brings together analytical insights from modern social and cultural anthropology to unravel the processes of globalisation in the twentyfirst century through diasporic migrations. Developments in anthropological theory and method are traced from the heritage of Enlightenment to the present times, with special reference to India. While firmly anchored in the local experience, the narrative of diasporic migrations presented in this book ranges widely to cover comparisons across the world and is informed by an interdisciplinary focus. The author deals with the issues of ethnicity, identity and modernity in a transnational and geopolitical context. The innovative and multidimensional thrust encompasses major themes and research methodology. The work includes important case studies and a detailed empirical exploration of the multicultural societies of Malaysia and South Africa. Authoritative and accessible, this book will be essential reading in contemporary anthropology, especially for scholars and researchers of sociology, social and cultural anthropology, diaspora and migration studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, international relations, foreign affairs and public policy, as well as think-tanks and government bodies. Ravindra K. Jain is a former Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has also taught at the University of Oxford and held several other research and teaching positions. He has been Emeritus Fellow, University Grants Commission; National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research; Tagore National Fellow; and T.H.B. Symons Fellow in Commonwealth Studies. He was previously Chairman, Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists (INCAA) and received the Life Time Achievement Award of the Indian Sociological Society (2013). He is on the editorial boards of the journals South Asian Diaspora and Global Networks. His published works include South Indians on the Plantation Frontier in Malaya (1970); Indian Communities Abroad (1993); The Universe as Audience: Metaphor and Community among the Jains of North India (1999); Between History and Legend: Status and Power in Bundelkhand (2002); Indian Transmigrants: Malaysian and Comparative Essays (2009/2011, which won the G.S. Ghurye Book Award); and Nation, Diaspora, Trans-Nation: Reflections from India (2010). Among his edited volumes are Text and Context: The Social Anthropology of Tradition (1977); Adversity to Advantage: The Saga of People of Indian Origin in South Africa (2010); and The Making of a Museum (2013). A festschrift, Dual Identity: Indian Diaspora and Other Essays, was published in 2013 in his honour.

INNOVATIVE DEPARTURES Anthropology and the Indian Diaspora

Ravindra K. Jain

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Ravindra K. Jain The right of Ravindra K. Jain to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-50177-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14489-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For blossoms of a shared arbour, sisters: Sheena and Champak, brother: Ashok

CONTENTS

Preface and acknowledgementsix Introduction

1

1 Horizons of anthropology

6

2 Anthropology yesterday and today

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3 Anthropology and diaspora studies: comparative perspective 

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4 Anthropology and diaspora studies: data and interpretation 

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5 Race, ethnicity and identity in diaspora

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6 Nation and trans-nation in diasporic geopolitics

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7 Diasporic integration and social justice in South Africa

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8 Contemporary Malaysian Indians

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C ontents

9 Ascription, aspiration and achievement: Malaysian Indian trajectory

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Conclusion: anthropology at home and abroad

Bibliography147 Index165

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book represents the latest milestone in my journey into the Indian diaspora. The journey has been guided by an anthropological perspective and, therefore, I discuss in the initial chapters of this book broad contours of that perspective. In all my writing on the Indian diaspora there has been an intermeshing of description and analysis, of ethnography and theoretical interpretation. In this task I have been helped by the comparative approach in socio-cultural anthropology conceived as a process of cultural translation. Readers of my earlier collections of essays on the themes of diaspora and transmigration (Jain 2010a, 2011a) may easily recognise the leitmotif. I hope that the cumulative relevance of these studies to the social anthropology and sociology of India, the South Asian region and, indeed, for global diasporas would become progressively evident. In writing this book, as in earlier volumes, I have accumulated many debts. I have learnt immensely from my many anthropological colleagues in INCAA (Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists) besides the stimulus received from ANU (The Australian National University), JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Oxford University where I have played the longest academic innings. Interactive wandering in the global Indian diaspora has meant the forging of enduring bonds with numerous friends. I am particularly grateful to A. B. Shamsul, Denison Jayasooria and T. Marimuthu in Malaysia; Brij Maharaj and Anand Singh in South Africa; Kusha Haraksingh, the late Ken Parmasad and Brinsley Samaroo in Trinidad; Vinesh Hookoomsing, Soorya Gayan and Uttam Bissoondoyal in Mauritius. This by no means pretends to be an exhaustive recall; the omissions may indeed be even more salient than the inclusions. And to my very many other interlocutors closer at home in India and abroad

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I owe not an apology for not acknowledging them by name but seek a ‘bye’ since each one of them knows – ‘in their heart of hearts’ as we say in India – how much I owe him or her. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to the team at Routledge who have spared no efforts to shape up this book from the beginning to the end.

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INTRODUCTION

*** The aim of this collection of essays is to resuscitate the anthropological approach – theory, method and fieldwork practices – in the description and analysis of contemporary socio-cultural processes. The fact that, in one way or another, this entire text is set in the context of India does not imply that I am making a case for an ‘Indian Sociology or Anthropology’. Irrespective of its deployment in a particular nation or region, anthropology as a discipline (and here I speak primarily of socio-cultural anthropology) is a unified body of knowledge, a human science. Each and every social formation, in its continuity and change, does contribute to the augmentation of anthropological knowledge. There can be no solecism in not regarding certain selected sectors of social formations to be more or less privileged. Although a distinction ought to be made between idiographic (broadly historical and factual or descriptive) studies and nomothetic (broadly theoretical and generalising) ones, however, of equal importance to the distinction thus made is its complementarity. There has been a tendency in conventional anthropological scholarship to claim that ideographic contributions emerge from indigenous anthropologists and nomothetic ones from foreign researchers studying ‘other’ cultures. However, this differential emphasis is, and can be, seriously misleading in the current state of the play. There could be no justification for the view that ethnographic data emerges primarily from the indigenous practitioners of anthropology and theoretical analysis from non-indigenous ones. In other words, description and analysis, ethnography and theory are not the exclusive preserves of East or West or North or South, in the arenas and practitioners of anthropological knowledge. I speak of the ‘arenas’ and ‘practitioners’ conjointly because methodologically socio-cultural anthropology in its contemporary avatar

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does not distinguish between an anthropological ‘object’ (arena) and an observing ‘subject’ (practitioner). These conventional dichotomies have been overcome through a firm recognition of inter-subjectivity and reflexivity in the practise of human science (see Carrithers 1992; Herzfeld 2001). Nowhere is this paradigmatic revolution in contemporary anthropology more salient than in the practice of modern fieldwork which is in the nature of a mutual dialogue between the observer and the observed; it is a conversation, a discourse. Is it any wonder, then, that divested of its strong positivist undertones and overtones, modern anthropological fieldwork and general approach are being embraced widely in all social sciences and humanities, ranging from contemporary history, political science, linguistics, philosophy to even literary studies? Anthropologists, therefore, more than many other specialists in the human sciences, are able to claim for themselves quite legitimately that multidisciplinarity is not merely an outgrowth but a foundational aspect of their vocation. What is true of ethnographic data collection in anthropology imperceptibly seeps into its theorising. The problematic of this give-and-take between anthropology and other social sciences, for instance, was debated in the mid-century of the last millennium (see Gluckman 1964), and that discussion continues to this day (see, for two ‘Indianist’ examples, Bardhan 1990; Dube 2007). These self-same impulses of modern anthropology, namely, the unhinging of the subject from typified geographical locations – thus caste type-cast as Hindu Indian, chieftainship as Polynesian and totemism as Australian aboriginal – (see, in this context, Ortner 1984; Appadurai 1988) and the dialectic between description and analysis (see, Barnes and Epstein 1961; Evans-Pritchard 1962) characterise interpretation of continuity and change in global socio-cultural phenomena. One of the decisive fallouts of globalisation and its attendant sociocultural processes has been the transformation of anthropological objectives from the study of the exotic to the different and the diverse. Again, the practice in conventional anthropology of studying ‘other cultures’ has been transformed, as explained in Chapter 1, into a study of ‘the self-in-the other and ‘the other-in-the self’. This epistemological shift is related to what was mentioned earlier as inter-subjectivity and reflexivity as the twin pillars of anthropological method. The first two chapters also purport to show, among other things, how meaningless it becomes in this context to distinguish between anthropology as the study of other societies and cultures and sociology as the study of ‘one’s own’. This realisation has another powerful implication. In the context of the anthropology and sociology of India one should not, 2

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therefore, run away with the generalisation that anthropology is being absorbed into sociology. Not to be able to distinguish between the specific nuances of the two disciplines in approach and presentist intellectual histories (i.e. by doing history backwards) would be to impoverish the conceptual and methodological kit to understand contemporary socio-cultural processes in India and elsewhere. Further, it may not be necessary here to cite the many references in regard to the current lament among Indian anthropologists and sociologists alike about the sad plight of their disciplines in the academia today. Rather than join that chorus, however, I endeavour to show in this modest presentation how anthropology in India, in collaboration and not in conflict with sociology and other social sciences, might touch new horizons. The overall tenor of this book represents my current interest in anthropological and sociological themes related to contemporary Indian society and culture and its diaspora. I label this emphasis ‘innovative departures’ in a double sense. First, in the substantive dimension, the study of comparative diaspora, for instance, has been taken up by sociologists and anthropologists in India only recently though its potential to understand the dynamics of national and transnational socio-cultural changes in the lives of overseas migrants and their cohorts in India is a conspicuous and outstanding feature of our globalised existence today. For the most part, extant studies of Indian diaspora seem unduly descriptive rather than comparative and analytical. I hope my analyses will show how thinking ‘out of the box’ is catalysed when an interior (national or regional) perspective is juxtaposed to an external vantage point. This indeed is the second, methodological, lesson of comparative socio-cultural anthropology which I endeavour to illustrate through the medium of diaspora studies that have occupied my anthropological attention for a good part of the last fifty years. The concept ‘diaspora’, though originally of Jewish origin, has now come to designate relatively stable and numerous transnational migrations and settlement of communities from variously conceived homelands. I use the phrase, ‘variously conceived homelands’, advisedly because diasporics are typically footloose; there are second, third and more laps of migration after leaving the original homeland. Moreover, circular migrations characterise the diaspora both vertically (i.e. in relation to the various homelands) and horizontally (i.e. in relation to diasporic co-ethnics in multiple locations). To account for these eventualities in the analytics of diaspora, Dufoix (2008) has used the concept of ‘referent origin’ in particular narratives of diaspora. As the anthropology of diaspora has advanced, these characteristics have 3

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been added to Safran’s (1991) pioneering six-point model that lays down the features of a diaspora, namely, dispersal from the original homeland and retention of collective memory; vision or myth of the original homeland; partial (never complete) assimilation in the host society; idealised wish to return to the original homeland; desired commitment towards restoration of the homeland; and, continually renewed linkages with the homeland. My characterisation of diaspora in this augmented sense thus resonates with one meaning of the title of this book where ‘departures’ are the enduring element while the ‘arrivals’ of the diasporics remain transitory, if not melancholic in a deeper sense, to paraphrase the title and meaning of one of V. S. Naipaul’s novels (Naipaul 1987; see also Hansen 2012); they remain an ‘enigma’, a puzzle. Even while considering the diasporics’ departures from homeland (s), there emerges a problem in conceiving the nation(s) as the encompassing or ‘container’ identity for the populations concerned. A lively debate has centred round what have been called ‘methodological nationalism’ (discussed by Wimmer and Schiller 2002) and the historical isomorphism between the nation-state and anthropological conceptualisation (see Herzfeld 1987). Indicative of resolutions to such nationalistic impasse in studies of diaspora and transnationalism are the multi-sited study of Axel (2001) on the Sikhs, Eisenlohr (2007) on the almost recondite ancestral Indian culture and the language ideology of Bhojpuri in contemporary Mauritius, Hansen’s (2012) demonstration of the socio-cultural remove between India and the Indian diasporic community in Durban, South Africa and Willford’s (2006) disavowal of meaningfully reconstructing Malaysian Tamil rituals as a recent or distant borrowing from South India. These are all examples from studies of the ‘Indian diaspora’ but they indicate a direction in which diasporic studies, in general, need to move away from methodological nationalism (or even internationalism) to a transnationalist plane conceived in a sui generis manner (see Vertovec 1999). A recent historical study of the Bay of Bengal region (Amrith 2013) shows innovatively how an ecological perspective on transnationalism may overcome the above-stated blind spot of nationalist closure. Having conceded the hazards of an exclusively or predominantly nationalistic perspective and thus substantively going beyond my earlier approach (Jain 2010a), I would still submit through analyses contained in this volume that the contribution of the studies of diaspora and transnationalism to the sociology and anthropology of

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India should not be minimised. I illustrate the validity of such a stand both in the predominantly theoretical chapters in the beginning of the book and the mainly diasporic studies that constitute its bulk. Salient aspects of the overall direction and relevance of the approach adopted here have been discussed in the conclusion.

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1 HORIZONS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 1

The theme of this chapter is the methodology and empirical range that define the horizons of anthropology. This task seems essential if we wish to bring ourselves back to the basics of the discipline at present and in the future. I wish to proceed by three steps: (a) The intellectual differentiations, politico-cultural entailments and contemporary relevance of the Enlightenment heritage since the seventeenth century of the Christian era. These considerations are essential to trace the historical context of the anthropological knowledge-generation everywhere. (b) Moving closer to socio-cultural anthropology, the problem of understanding the ‘other’. (c) The practice of cultural translation in social anthropology.

The Enlightenment tradition: culture and politics In the Enlightenment tradition, principles such as the tenets of scientific rationality and formal aspects of democracy, including the commitment to basic liberal individual rights, characterise knowledge-generation and historical shaping of the modern world. I shall deal mainly with certain cultural phenomena entailed in this historical epistemological phase. However, there is an extreme political view which suggests that the main principles at issue are not those of scientific rationality or of democratic liberalism but rather the principles by which one does not occupy another’s lands and the principles by which one does not support corrupt and authoritarian regimes (e.g. see Mamdani 2004). A critique such as this tends to throw the cultural baby out with the bathwater of disreputable politics. For a start, to bring the cultural entailment back into our discourse, we need to consider what Max Weber called the post-Enlightenment ‘disenchantment’ of the modern 6

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world. What needs to be done further is to focus on the more general issue of culture’s relation to politics (see also, Asad 1986: 147–148), not to dismiss the cultural surround of politics which is a tendency on the part of Mamdani and much of the traditional Left. Bilgrami (2006: 3591–3603) attempts one such critique to emphasise the integrated position that links politics to the cultural and intellectual stances of the Enlightenment, and in what follows I shall build mainly on his critique before evaluating its bearing on anthropological epistemology. While analysing the epistemological breakthrough instantiated by the European Enlightenment it is logically demonstrable that one should distinguish between a ‘thin’ notion of rationality – one that is uncontroversially possessed by all (undamaged, adult, human minds) – and a ‘thick’ notion of rationality, a notion that owes to specific historical developments in outlook around the time of the rise of science and its implications for how to think (‘rationally’) about culture and politics and society. We must ask what these specific historical developments are. Let us first note that in the dominant Western worldview there is the commitment to the notion of thick rationality and also the slippage between it and the ‘thin’ notion of rationality. Some so-called occidentalists have resented the harm that Western colonial rule perpetrated in the name of rationality. Even in the views of the critics (cf. Buruma and Margalit 2004) of these ‘occidentalists’ there is justification for this resentment, though ironically at the same time, these critics dub them as ‘enemies of the West’. And it is precisely against this background of the history of ideas that one should look for the rational epistemology (the ‘thin’ scientific rationality) of a tract like Gandhi’s thought-provoking Hind Swaraj written more than 100 years ago. Gandhi insisted and argued at length that the notion of rationality, which was first formulated in the name of science in the seventeenth century and developed and modified to practical and public domains with the philosophers of the Enlightenment, had with it the predisposition to give rise to the horrors of modern industrial life, to destructive technological frames of mind, to rank commercialism, to the surrender of spiritual casts of mind and to the destruction of the genuine pluralism of traditional life before modernity visited its many tribulations upon India. As he often claimed, it is precisely because the more authentic pluralism was destroyed by modernity, that modernity had to impose a quite unsatisfactory form of secularist pluralism in a world that it had itself ‘disenchanted’, to use the Weberian rhetoric. Before this disenchantment, which for Gandhi had its origin in the very scientific rationality (‘thick’ rationality) that the critics of ‘occidentalism’ applaud, there was no need for such artificial forms 7

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of secularised pluralism in Indian society. The pluralism was native, unselfconscious and rooted. Finally, and significantly, let us note that the critique of the mainstream ‘thick’ scientific rationality of the Enlightenment was not intrinsically external (e.g. latter-day Gandhian or ‘Islamist’); it had been powerfully articulated within the dissenting Enlightenment tradition of Europe itself but this dissent has to be understood in a subtle way. As Bilgrami (2006: 3596) puts it: It should be emphasized at the outset that the achievements of the ‘new science’ in the seventeenth century were neither denied nor opposed by the critique I have in mind, and so the critique cannot be dismissed as Luddite reaction to the new science. What it opposed was a development in outlook that emerged in the philosophical surround of the scientific achievements. In other words, what it opposed was just the notion of ‘thick’ rationality . . . The dispute was about the very nature of nature and matter and, relatedly, therefore, about the role of deity, and of the broad cultural and political implications of the different views on these metaphysical and religious concerns. We do not have to go into the metaphysical and religious niceties of the dissenters’ arguments (e.g. Newton/Boyle vs. ‘pantheists’ like John Toland and convergence of their thoughts with spiritual activists like Gandhi) but highlight the fact that they thought of the world not as brute and inert but as suffused with value. That they happened to think the source of such value was divine ought not to be the deepest point of interest for us. The point rather is that if the world was laden with value, irrespective of their being religious or not, human beings would face normative (ethical and social) demands in relation to it. We shall discuss in the next section the epistemological consequences of conceiving these normative demands as coming not merely from our own instrumentalities and subjective utilities. The image is that of an ‘enchanted’ world requiring from us a normatively constrained engagement with it. If, on the contrary, the world was conceived as brute and disenchanted, distant and external to our own sensibility as in the ‘new science’, there could be no engagement with it; our observation of it could only take the form of mastery and control of something alien, with a view to satisfying the only source of value allowed by this outlook – our own utilities and gain. Without going into the details of the dissenters’ thought and its continuing relevance for anthropology as a human science, I may only 8

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mention a remarkable number of literary and philosophical voices of the ‘radical’ Enlightenment – Blake, Shelley, William Morris, Whitman, Thoreau (and others of the non-traditional Left) – down to the heterodox Left in our own times, voices such as those of Noam Chomsky and Edward Thompson. These contemporary dissenters, inheritors of the ‘radical’ Enlightenment, have refused to be complacent about the orthodox Enlightenment’s legacy of the ‘thick’ rationality that the early seventeenth-century dissenters had warned against. To end this discussion of the deep and far-reaching consequences of the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of the Enlightenment, let me again cite Bilgrami (2006: 3597): The conceptual sources that we have traced are various but they were not miscellaneous. Religion, capital, nature, metaphysics, rationality, science are diverse conceptual elements but they were tied together in a highly deliberate integration, that is to say in deliberately accruing worldly alliances . . . It is a travesty of the historical complexity built into the thick notion of scientific rationality . . . to think that it emerged triumphant in the face of centuries of clerical reaction only. That is the sort of simplification of intellectual history which leads one to oppose scientific rationality with religion . . . without any regard to the highly significant historical fact that it was the Anglican establishment that lined up with this thick notion of rationality in an alliance with commercial interests and it was the dissenting, egalitarian, radicals who opposed such ‘rationality’. It was this scientific rationality, seized upon by just these established religious and economic alliances, that was later central to the colonizing mentality that justified the rapacious conquest of distant lands. To sum up, my discussion above was geared to examining in some depth the historical and ideological context of anthropological knowledgegeneration and to situate in this context the dissenting voice of one Indian epistemology, that of Hind Swaraj by Gandhi. I shall return to this last point later.

Beyond subjectivity/objectivity, ethics and values: the epistemology of studying self and the other In this second step of my argument concerning the anthropological epistemology, I connect the historical and ideological delineation of the 9

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previous discussion to certain key issues in the practice more specifically of socio-cultural anthropology. The fundamental issue at stake here is the epistemological perspective on the nature of what is being studied. In what follows, I shall shed initially, for heuristic purposes, the overtly political surround and tackle directly the ethical implications of the view of ‘matter’ espoused by the dissenters included in the ‘radical’ Enlightenment and by Gandhi. These anti-‘thick’ rationality philosophers argued that it is only because one takes matter to be ‘brute’ and ‘stupid’ (to use Newton’s own terms) that one would find it appropriate to conquer the same with the most destructive of technologies with nothing but profit and material wealth as ends, and thereby destroy it both as a natural and humanitarian environment for one’s own habitation. In today’s terms one might think that this point was a seventeenth-century precursor to our ecological concerns but though there certainly was an early instinct of this kind, it was embedded in a more general point (as it was with Gandhi too), ‘a point really about how nature in an ancient and spiritually flourishing sense was being threatened’ (Bilgrami 2006: 3596). I have already stated in the previous section how the dissenters thought of the world not as brute but suffused with value. It follows, therefore, that a ‘scientific’ methodology based on this conception would lead to a normative engagement with the world that is, such engagement would demand an ethical understanding of the matter. This view connects up directly – particularly because it relates to the study of human beings in the sciences – with the question of ethics in scientific rationality. The epistemological context of the following discussion is the anthropological and philosophical discourse in the study of the ‘other’ in socio-cultural anthropology. Let me begin with a brief critique of the anthropological construction of the ‘other’ which is conceptualised as having ‘characteristics which are alien to the western tradition’ (Pandian 1985: 6). Modern socio-cultural anthropology, hanging by the tailcoats of the orthodox Enlightenment view of ‘thick’ scientific rationality, began to contrast and alienate the cultures which were different. The primary role of anthropology was a process of inventing the ‘human other’ in order to develop a theory of humankind. Based on the notion of perceived differences, and through a cognitive process involving observation, collection of data and theorising, socio-cultural anthropology posited a plethora of human others dominant among which were ‘the fossil other, savage other, black other and the ethnographic other’ (Pandian 1985; cited in Sarukkai 1997: 1406). These ‘others’ stood, respectively, for an inferior human in the paradigm of native children as against the adult West (ideology of infantilism); backward African 10

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or even Indian people; the existence of non-Whites as evidence and validation of racism; and make ethnography ‘work’ as a reflection of economic and social dynamics of relationships of the dominant West and the subordinate non-West. According to a somewhat extreme critique of this early anthropology, in all these biased judgements in the name of the scientific discovery of the ‘other’, it seems that ‘eliminating prejudice would be eliminating anthropology’ itself (Pandian 1985: 92). The model of epistemology of the physical sciences forsook the notion of responsibility from the objective domain. The point I am making here is foreshadowed in my discussion of the previous section; to put it in the present context, it is the thematisation of the ‘other’ in an ethical domain. It is the ethical imperative, an acknowledgement of the demand of the other that creates the responsibility towards the other. In anthropology the abnegation of this ethical responsibility is patent. The process of the anthropological ‘stranger’ seeking to define the native has made the native alien while upholding the autonomy of the Western self. The nature of the other in this view is very clear: it is other as ‘not-self’. ‘The initial anthropological other suffers continuously from this violence, a violence of the refiguration of the constitution of the native self . . . This other in this case is all the ethnographer is not. It is this otherness of the ethnographer’s self that this kind of ethnographic study yields and not the self of the native. Coupled to this is the distancing of subjectivity in staking an epistemological claim to anthropological observation which further risks losing the “essence” of the native’s self. This activity is in its most fundamental sense an objectification of the natives which in the process ends up objectifying the impartial observer himself/herself’ (Sarukkai 1997: 1407). Even in participant observation, the observing self continues to remain the epistemological ‘not-other’. As long as the gaze of the observer searches out for structures untold and hidden by the natives, it becomes a violent act. Violence arises here in the sense of not heeding the ethical call of the other, the ethical call which demands responsibility of the observing self towards the native other. Thus in participant as well as non-participant anthropological observation, the other is constructed and not realised on a pre-categorical level. Only epistemological categories of the other as ‘not-self’ and the self as ‘not-other’ remain. Both these categories continue with the supposition that there is no responsibility to the other and remain deaf to its call. Such an abrogation of responsibility is only because the epistemological models are understood to be so. But this obviously does not serve the anthropological concern and opens anthropology to the charge of colonialism. 11

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Postmodernist philosophers who have addressed the problem of alterity or the notion of the other (in relation to the self) enable the anthropologist to appreciate at once the phenomenological depth as well as certain insurmountable difficulties in our ethnographic methodology. This appears patently clear in the context of current philosophical universe of discourse of alterity. For example, according to Degnin (1995) the ability to distinguish humans from animals is by acknowledging the human other as other, and this other is more fundamental than any human activity, which is always premised on thinking in terms of categories. However, it is the responsibility towards the other that even makes ‘dialogical speech and reason’ possible. In his reading of Levinas (1981), Degnin situates the importance of the ‘face of the other’ as evoking the subject. It is the call of the other as one like oneself which begets this ethical responsibility. Thus, ‘the other is the first truth, but not in a cognitive sense. Rather this truth is the experience of the ethical call that eventuates prior to and is constitutive of reason, metaphysics and discourse’ (Degnin 1995). This leads to the crisis of representing the other, an epistemological conundrum which the anthropologists have debated intensely since the late 1980s (cf. Clifford and Marcus 1986). From a philosophical angle, as Sarukkai (1997: 1407) puts it, ‘The deeper problem here is one of representation. The other is represented, and perhaps even constituted through this representation in the way of the subject. It is the process of representing the other which subsumes it into the intelligibility of the subject and negates its identity.’ As a next step, philosophers like Levinas (1981) draw us to the recognition of the ethical (ethics not as ordinarily understood as system of morals and prescriptions), not a theory of ethics but of the orienting the subject towards acknowledging and responding to the ‘ethical’, before it is categorised by knowledge. Getting deeper into its philosophy, the Derridean ‘differance’ (Derrida 1978) would be an ideal word to describe this other – not only is the other different but it is also in perpetual postponement. Thus in order to be ‘true’ to the other, ethnography should base itself on the concept of ‘differance’ rather than one based on difference. Arguing in this vein, and positing the notion of ‘trace’ in order to understand the other – and the inevitability of trace pointing to the impossibility of having a ‘final’ reference which does not refer to anything else, a presence of absence marked through with the trace of the other – we come to the ethical directedness of deconstruction which above all becomes ‘an openness towards the other’ (Kearney 1993).

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It is a vexing problem for us ethnographers/anthropologists as to how one integrates the notion of ethical responsibility, in a deep philosophical sense, within an epistemological system. While there is no easy answer to this puzzle, a spin-off of the preceding philosophical discourse for us is in Sarukkai’s (1997: 1408) words ‘it opens us to the illusion of complete and closed description of any “object” of inquiry. It also suggests that anthropology should find different paradigms of knowledge which are based on the critique of western metaphysics’. As socio-cultural anthropology moves away from being a study primarily of the strange and the exotic to the study of the ‘self’, the obverse of our long heritage of critical engagement with the other can drive home a salutary epistemological advantage. Anthropological studies of ‘other-in-the-self’ and of ‘self-in-the-other’ can be fruitfully undertaken by incorporating autobiography and fiction, respectively, in the repertoire of our methodology. A move such as this would also recover the anthropologists’ lost anchorage to the humanities. Further, it would bridge the chasm in certain anthropological quarters between Western and non-Western (sometimes articulated as foreign and indigenous) methodologies. As I have argued elsewhere (Jain 1998a), if our phenomenal world is being increasingly shaped by interculturation rather than acculturation, then the ‘in-between’ (subsumed sometimes in the trope of hybridity) could well inform and also augment our anthropological epistemology of the present and the future.

The practice of cultural translation in social anthropology This is my third and final methodological step in exploring anthropological epistemology for our times. In this exploration we move even closer than in the previous section to the consideration of a time-tested practice in social anthropology, namely that of cultural translation a’ la Evans-Pritchard, Godfrey Lienhardt and their students at Oxford who succeeded by repudiating the then natural science model of observing, classifying, typology-building and generalising into laws the comparatively collected ethnographic data for social phenomena and institutional facets thereof, namely, kinship, religion, political systems etc. Godfrey Lienhardt’s paper, ‘Modes of Thought’, is possibly one of the most subtle and the earliest example of the use of the notion of translation explicitly to describe a central task of social anthropology. Lienhardt (1954: 97) says, ‘The problem of describing to others how members of a remote tribe think then begins to appear largely as one

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of translation, of making the coherence primitive thought has in the languages it really lives in, as clear as possible in our own.’ Let me here note briefly that Lienhardt’s use of the word ‘translation’ refers not to linguistic matter per se, but to ‘modes of thought’ that are embodied in such matter. To take a few quick steps in the direction that we are now following, the shifting of the focus of anthropological/ethnographic searchlight from exotic and primitive societies to what are generally called ‘our own’ societies (including, for example, tribal societies in India) brings about a radical transformation in the practice of cultural translation from that in the study of colonial to post-colonial societies, communities and culturally diverse groups in general. M.N. Srinivas (1996: 656–657) has commented on it in somewhat implicit terms about this change as reflected in the Indian anthropologists’ study of cultural differences between rural and urban, tribal and peasant or even between different castes living in close proximity in common neighbourhood such as the one where Srinivas himself (the anthropologist) grew up in the city of Bangalore. Sarukkai (1997: 1408) has mentioned the same transformation in respect of the nuanced contrast between an Indian anthropologist’s and a foreign anthropologist’s study of an Indian tribal group. However, it does not seem necessary for an anthropologist to draw a sharp line between an Indian and a foreigner. What has actually happened in this methodological transformation is nothing else than the new dialectic between the study of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ that we analysed in the previous section. Whereas more commonly this transformation is seen as the absorption of Indian anthropology into sociology, I would here insist that this paradigmatic shift is essentially anthropological, a shift that I earlier described as the obverse of the colonial anthropology’s focus predominantly on the study of the self through the other to the post-colonial focus on the study of the other through the self. As I have argued in some detail in some of my substantive writing (Jain 1998a: 352; 2002a: 141–142), it marks the vindication of the anthropological methodology of cultural translation in a new key, overcoming the debilitative arguments against it (cf. Asad 1986: 141–164) as being confined to an anachronistic colonial anthropology. This is also the principal reason why the Western angst epitomised in the ‘crisis of representation’ (cf. Clifford and Marcus 1986) passed by Indian anthropology without even a ripple.

Current trends and future anthropology In the foregoing I have probably sketched an over-optimistic scenario of socio-cultural anthropology in India. To be on the side of caution, 14

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let me retrace my steps somewhat and suggest that the transformation that I have spoken about is only partly visible in the present though it augurs well for the future. What I mean by sounding a note of circumspection is occasioned by the oft-repeated and somewhat justified accusation that neocolonialism still has a grip on the anthropology and anthropologists of India. In my view the diagnosis of such a malignancy in certain varieties of anthropology in India needs to be carried a step further into time, namely, right into the first decade of the new millennium. In global terms, this conjuncture may properly be described as the aura of neo-liberalism that I may phrase as the intellectual ‘slum dog millionaire syndrome’. To put it cryptically for Indian anthropology/ethnography, this conjuncture is revealed in the poverty of our definitions and priorities and the richness of borrowings and imitations. One of the early intimations of the symptoms of this malaise was presented briefly but with prescience in an article, ‘Science and Swaraj’, published way back in 1968 (Uberoi 1968: 119–123). Have we attained a modicum of ‘swaraj’ in our anthropological epistemology? Consider in this context my discussion in the second step about the centrality of ‘self’ in this epistemology (not to be confused with alien tropes of individualism and identity that permeate popular contemporary social science discourse). I shall illustrate my critique by one example. ‘The Importance of Being Inconsistent’ is the title of the Rajiv Kapur Memorial Lecture given recently at the India International Centre in New Delhi (Gupta 2008: 2–17). It is an assessment of Gandhi’s sterling contribution to liberal democracy in India. One doesn’t know whether it is a coincidence or a borrowing, the title of the lecture has an uncanny resonance with the central notion and title, ‘the virtues of inconsistency’, in the American social scientist Craig Calhoun’s essay in the entirely different context of the pluralistic ethos of contemporary Europe’s political and socio-cultural identity (Calhoun 2001: 35–55). My critique of Gupta’s contribution is twofold: first, what are his arguments for Gandhi’s ‘inconsistency’, and second, what exactly is this ‘liberal democracy’ that Gandhi gave to India and is the panacea for the governance of modern Indian polity? Gupta’s neglect of the traditional Indian concepts like anekantavada (the many-sidedness of truth) is amazing. That this philosophical concept had a profound effect on Gandhi’s thought and action is widely acknowledged (see, Basham 1971: 22–28). This is a point that Gupta seems to be unaware of, and which leads to his assuming the lack of a ‘full-blown philosophical system’ in Gandhi. Further, the presumed chasm between theory and practice (‘his position of straying away from a systematic 15

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philosophy but insisting more on practice’, p. 3) and Gupta’s own valorisation of (an American notion?) of liberal democracy leads him to ridicule ‘empty gestures such (as) prayer meetings or spinning the charkha’ (pp. 14–15). In relation both to Gandhi’s ‘consistency’ and disillusionment with an imported notion of liberal democracy, we must lend our ears to hear Gandhi’s dissenting voice apropos the received view of the superiority of Western industrial civiliasation and his steadfast commitment to ahimsa (non-violence). It is surprising indeed that in his analysis of ‘inconsistent’ Gandhi, an absolutely foundational text like Hind Swaraj (1909) eludes Gupta completely. Similarly Gupta is oblivious of the necessity to critically analyse the current US projection of the notion of liberal democracy as a rationalisation and legitimisation of its cold war intellectual hegemony in the guise of neo-liberalism, almost a nonsequitur of democracy (see also Bilgrami 2006: 3600).

Positive counterpoints Can I suggest certain positive counterparts to the rather negative critique delineated in the foregoing that would salvage the aura of optimism indicated in my penultimate remarks? I shall give three brief examples, the first from the recent writings of two Indian anthropologists struggling with the problem of defining and ameliorating tribal groups in contemporary India, the second from recent researches on rural-urban-state interface and the third from my own continuing work on the anthropology of Indian diaspora. Vinay Srivastava’s (2008: 29–35) critique of the concept of ‘tribe’ in the draft national policy demolishes bit by bit the borrowed ‘universalist’ definition adopted by the framers of the national policy. He contextualises tribes in India and their social, economic and cultural differentiations within the macro-framework of the tribals’ self-­ identities and aspirations, issues of marginalisation and mainstreaming, economic penury and public awareness. Birinder Pal Singh (2008: 58–65) tackles the thorny question of the ex-criminal tribes of Punjab by subjecting this issue to a thorough historical review-cumcritique; again, like Srivastava he does not succumb to the allure of didactic universalist definitions nor of the bureaucracy-induced official diagnosis and prediction concerning issues at hand. These are precisely the examples of trying to understand the tribes within a dual framework of ‘self-in-the-other’ and ‘other-in-the-self’. Unlike the prejudices of those anthropologists who have tended to see the tribals as exclusively the ‘other’ and exotic, the anthropologists cited here squarely 16

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countenance the Indian reality where these marginally culturally different groups have nevertheless always been part of the changing Indic civilisational ethos. These works are the signposts of Indian anthropology in a new key and the harbingers of self-assured reconfigurations of the time-tested anthropological method of cultural translation. As a second example, I outline certain current practices in the anthropology of India as they touch upon the rural-urban-State interface. We have intimations of fieldwork in contemporary rural Gujarat (Naz 2012: 97–101) where a young anthropologist successfully manoeuvres with multiple identities to penetrate the skin of outwardly hazardous communal politics. This informed ‘participant objectivation’ (Bourdieu 2003: 281–293) signals a trend towards new ethnography where one notices the deployment of the techniques of reflexivity and ‘poetics’ (Herzfeld 1985, 2001: 259–276) among respondents in the field that transcends, refines and amends the crude common sensical divide between ‘perceptions’ and ‘reality’ in popular politics that our media of mass communication regularly churns out. A poetic notion, in the technical sense, concerns ‘the means in which significance is conveyed through actual performance . . . (S)ince it cuts across the boundary between speech and other forms of action, we can also let it dissolve for us the entirely artificial distinction between linguistic or symbolic and political concerns’ (Herzfeld 1985: xiv). A similar trend of nuanced ethnographic reporting is evident in a brief field-based article on Karnataka rural scenario (Nair 2012: 24–26) where a combination of the tacit pursuit of neo-liberal developmental policies and state penetration in the lives of the villagers results in the articulation and support of categories that are ultimately counterproductive for radical social change. An example she gives is that of school buildings and other apparatus in village school built by the push and influence of the locally affluent caste, but also the simultaneous employment as school teachers of the educated sons of that very caste who are there to enjoy the assured monthly salary but couldn’t care less for the discipline and commitment needed in school teaching. These evidences alert us to the conjuncture in India today and tomorrow where mere methodological reiteration of subaltern consciousness, supposedly untouched in rural and tribal areas by city and State influences, would no longer configure the space of anthropological enquiry. Partha Chatterjee, one of the pioneers of the subaltern school has recently recognised in a self-reflexive mood that the arm of State bureaucracy has touched the life worlds of the Indian masses sufficiently to prompt readjusting our sights towards the project of a post-subaltern approach (Chatterjee 2012: 44–49). More could be said about the significance of the visual, 17

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particularly iconographic and cinematic media, as database in the ethnography of the new conjuncture. However, at this stage I would encompass these present and future trends as reposing in the anthropological dialectic between ‘self-in-the-other’ and ‘other-in-the-self’ about which I spoke earlier. As my third example, I touch upon only one aspect of my anthropological analysis of the Indian diaspora, namely, the contrast and dialectical relationship between what I call ‘non-modern’ civilisations and ‘settlement societies’; the former like the Indic civilisation supplied immigrants to the latter – countries such as the former plantation colonies of Western imperial powers, for example Mauritius, S. Africa, Trinidad and Tobago (and other countries of the Caribbean), Malaysia, Fiji etc., as well as to the ‘New Societies’, the colonising countries and present-day multiracial societies, namelyUnited Kingdom and increasingly other European nations, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. This global paradigm is anchored firmly in the longue duree (to use Fernand Braudel’s concept) of a historical relationship between the Old and New World civilisations on the one hand and the post-1492 (i.e. post-Columbus) societies (my ‘settlement societies’) on the other hand. I have spelled out in my analytical writing the characteristics of this global classification and relationships and drawn out their implications for an understanding of difference and translation, hybridity and creolisation and multiculturalism in the comparative study of Indian diaspora (cf. Jain 2010a, 2011a). The anthropological epistemology of this research is rooted in the human science approach – a blending of the social sciences and the humanities – that I have attempted to outline in the foregoing.

Discourse analysis A methodological ancillary to my observations on the dialectic between the self-and-the-other, the deep philosophical question of the ethical responsibility of the observer to the observed, and the need to get away from an ‘illusion of complete and closed description of any “object” of inquiry’, is the current practice of conceiving the anthropological objective as a study of discourses. Neither the static concept of culture nor the inherent contradictions and contestations in the meaning of that concept would escape the practice of a ‘discursive’ anthropological approach. Moreover, discourses would encompass textual with behavioural sources of data and analysis. As to what might constitute

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discourses and their manifold gains for field-anthropologists, I cite Oivind Fuglerud (1999: 15–16): I see discourses as linguistically mediated configurations of meaning, systematically constructing and reconstructing the objects, which they speak of. Seen against our traditional understanding of “Culture”, the concept of discourse has two characteristics, which should be emphasized. The first is that it helps overcome the timelessness, which has been part and parcel of our anthropological concept of culture. Discourse is something, which by nature is always changing and any outline given should openly admit only to be a freezing of history at a particular moment in time. The second is that it questions the distinction, built into the culture concept, between a realm of ideas and material realities. Discourses are never totally coherent, they are not closed universes of meaning, but always strive towards tantalization by aligning themselves with aspects of reality – demarcations, regulations, institutions, practices, which also legitimate non-linguistic means of control. They are in other words intrinsically linked with the exercise of power.

Thin scientific rationality with language as the model An indication of practicing thin scientific rationality, a notion with which I began this chapter, in contemporary anthropological epistemology can be provided by the example of contemporary ethnography. To explicate the methodological relationship between anthropological fieldwork and its contextual implications in literate and ‘classical’ societies like contemporary India and Greece, let me highlight my redaction of certain features of an important commentary by Michael Herzfeld (2013) on my edited book, ‘Text and Context: The Social Anthropology of Tradition’ (1977b). The overall ambience of these countries and their regions is that of ‘glocalisation’, namely, the sociocultural reflexivity of citizens is marked by belongingness at once to the parochial context of locality and the international setting of the nation-state. Stated in terms of a linguistic model of interpretation the ‘facts’ gathered, selected and narrated to and by the anthropological ethnographer in these arenas are all ‘representations’. Since the anthropologist’s informants in these settings aver their experiences as participants in the semantic universe of the locality as also reflected

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upon by that of the hegemonic nation-state, their narratives of the ‘facts’ appear as both assertions and denials. For the anthropologist, the discursive universe of the informants, therefore, contains exposure as well as concealment. If the ‘cultural intimacy’ of the informants’ reflexivity is marked by a duality or contradiction, so must it be that of the reflexive anthropologist who cultivates ‘social intimacy’ with the informants as a fieldworker. The anthropologist’s weapon of interpretation therefore is doubt rather than certainty; as Herzfeld puts it, he or she does not so much speak truth to power (the latter as the ‘official’ interpreter) as to speak doubt to truth. The anthropologist has to participate in the informants’ indeterminacy and uncertainty rather than become complicit in the official classifications and certainty of the bureaucrats whose semantic procedure is based on a reduction and preservation of their teleology as tautology. Epistemologically, therefore, Herzfeld advocates the anthropological practice of verbal and non-verbal symbolic etymology in the glocalised arena thus conditioned, taking inspiration from the linguistic model of subversive etymologies configured by the semiology of Vico and Umberto Eco, rather than succumb to the official (or ‘political’) and conservative philology of Cartesian positivism. The officially stated ‘obvious’ truth is thus squarely confronted and subverted by the anthropological fieldworker. This, then, is the preferred procedure for relating text to context in contemporary ethnography and social anthropology. And it resonates with the epistemological condition of post-modernity in our times.

Note 1 Originally published as ‘Anthropology in India as Human Science: Methodology and Empirical Range’, in Ajit K. Danda and Dipali G. Danda (eds), Anthropology in India: Current Epistemology and Future Challenges, pp. 79–98 (Kolkata: Desktop Printers, 2010). Used with permission.

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2 ANTHROPOLOGY YESTERDAY AND TODAY 1

*** In this chapter I reproduce with minor editing my survey report (Jain 1985: 1–50) on ‘Social Anthropology of India: Theory and Method’ prepared for the Indian Council of Social Science Research. As the methodological trajectory of social anthropological developments in, and of, India historically this chapter supplements Chapter 1. Discussion of the contribution of diaspora studies to anthropology do not figure in the main text of this chapter but are significantly incorporated in the Epilogue, titled ‘Alternative Voices in Anthropology’ which is based on my inaugural address (Jain 2012: 8–16) to the Indian Anthropological Society. The chapter as a whole can be read as symptomatic of my own engagement with the growth of the discipline of social anthropology in India.

Social anthropology of India: theory and method Box 2.1 The development of anthropology appears, in fact, to be suffering from a chronic discontinuity which leads one to wonder whether each step forward is not followed by a step back. Under different forms, occasionally caricatural ones, personal commitment, which is total by definition, demands the sacrifice of anthropology as a scientific specialised-activity discipline subject to its own rules and bound to an international community of scientists. Louis Dumont (1979)

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The distinction between social anthropology and sociology at the level of theory and method is extremely tenuous, particularly in the context of ‘Third World’ countries. And yet, precisely for the reason that the distinctive disciplinary traditions of the two subjects are obliterated in our practice there may be some merit in proposing a heuristic definition of social anthropology that would carry us a part of the way in distinguishing it meaningfully from sociology. We propose to employ this definition to the extent that it is serviceable in its original formulation; its subsequent modifications will be notified and explained. The aim of social anthropology, a discipline emerging in the West, is the holistic comparative understanding of societies, cultures and civilisations of the ‘non-modern’ types. The notions of holism and comparison can be explicated only with reference to the theory and method of the discipline. Methodological considerations are also germane to the elicitation of the ambitions – as distinct from the limited aim set forth above – of certain brands of social anthropology in the avant-garde of an encompassing Human Science.

Functionalism and culture history Holism in socio-cultural anthropology referred initially to the nineteenth-century evolutionist approaches subscribing to the World Growth theory. In this perspective customs and practices from diverse cultures, societies and civilisations were used to reconstruct a global (and in that sense holistic) paradigm of successive stages in social evolution. The scheme was unilineal. Data from the ethnology of India were freely used in such reconstruction (see Morgan 1870: 394; Rivers 1906). It was not until the evolutionist paradigm and its successor, the diffusionist one (for the application of the latter to a work in Indian ethnology see Rivers 1924), were challenged by the growth of functionalism – apparently in total opposition to the World Growth and ‘spread’ theories – that holism in anthropology assumed its current incarnation. As is well known, the rise of functionalism in anthropological theory went hand-in-hand with the stress on intensive fieldwork through participant observation. And herein lies a basic ambiguity concerning the notion of holism in anthropological theory and practice. With the practice of the ethnography of India as our choice example, we shall progressively illustrate the varying degrees and extent of success in theory to disentangle and then relate – at an appropriate level of abstraction – the naive view of the fieldworker that societies and 22

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cultures were concrete wholes given in nature and the view that there were ‘systems’ or structures which had to be considered as if they were wholes. The latter view was, moreover, conceived as a means to an end, the end being comparison and generalisation. The ambiguity referred to above is illustrated in the work of Malinowski, whose contributions as a fieldworker are rightly hailed but those as a general theorist equally widely discredited. And although, as some critics have suggested, his fieldwork practice itself contains remarkable theoretical insights, his attempts at general theory, besides being unsuccessful, are by a wide margin divorced from that practice (Firth 1957). Comparison and generalisation, the two approximate goals of early functionalist anthropology, were so bogged down in cultural detail that, despite Malinowski’s attempt in later years to define the institution as a ‘concrete isolate of cultural activity’ and thus provide a tentative framework for comparison, the dominating tendency among many of his students, including those in India, remained towards ‘grab-all’ ethnography. It has often enough been pointed out that anthropological studies in India graduated from a tribal stage to that of caste and peasantry (Sarana and Sinha 1976). This is at best only a half-truth since a critical scrutiny of works of early Indian anthropologists, especially those belonging to the epoch of the Bengal Renaissance (see the bibliographies compiled by S. K. Ray 1974), show that from the very beginning of their careers as professional anthropologists, scholars like N. K. Bose, T. C. Das, S. K. Ray and K. P. Chattopadhyaya wrote not only on the tribal cultures of India but also on topics related to the Hindu tradition, Indological subjects and those concerning ‘reform’ and ‘progress’ in the Indian society of their time. We shall deal with the civilizational perspectives of these anthropologists more fully a little later, but let us first examine the nature of anthropological ‘holism’ in the writings of a prominent academic anthropologist, D. N. Majumdar (1903–1960). Majumdar’s work as an anthropologist neatly illustrates the process of graduation from tribal studies to those of caste and even of urban communities. In his ethnographic work Majumdar studied cultures rather than problems. Deeply influenced by Malinowski, ‘he did not distinguish between the terms of content and function . . . and the formal integration of Ruth Benedict’(D.P. Mukherji 1962: 9). He was a functionalist fieldworker, with little interest in theory; such theory as does emerge from his ethnography is of a clinical variety (Parsons 1957). His orientation as a general anthropologist, especially his active practice and advocacy of physical anthropology, seems rooted in his early training at Calcutta University. 23

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Malinowski’s concept of culture, building on a Theory of Needs, is itself fairly consonant with the paradigm of a general anthropology as an integrated Science of Man (Piddington 1957: 49–50). No wonder, then, that Majumdar responded sympathetically to that orientation and studied the racial bases of tribal and caste populations in India. The shock of discovering the ‘other’ in the tribal cultures of India or the urge to relate these cultures in meaningful way to Hindu civilisation, was in his case subsumed by an exploration of their racial differences. Those Indian scientists (including early academic anthropologists) affected by the renaissance resulting from India’s interaction with the West shared a particular view of Science. In an appreciative commentary on the orientation and contributions of N.K. Bose (1901–1972), Andre Beteille points to Bose’s self-image, first and foremost, as an anthropologist, that is a ‘field scientist’, and then adds the gloss: ‘But as an heir to the Bengal renaissance he could not fail to be sensitive to the classical heritage of Sanskritic ideas’ (as mentioned in Bose 1975: 2). Our point is that even Bose’s scientific outlook may profitably be assessed in the light of the ‘Bengal renaissance’. Positivism was the reigning deity of scientific method in this period (cf. Sarkar 1937). Although explicit epistemological or even methodological discussion is absent from Bose’s work – this militated against his self-image of a field scientist rather than an ‘armchair’ scholar – it is possible both from his book of essays first published in 1929 (Bose 1953) and from an address given in the last year of his life (Bose 1972) to reconstruct the logical basis of his scientific thought. Accurate observation, the building of hypotheses and further investigation in their light – all this either through fieldwork or from sojourns into history – constituted the main process of the scientific method with an explicit acknowledgement of its time-tested success in ‘highly standardised sciences’ like physics and chemistry. To take an example, the institution of caste was like an object ‘out there’(of course among people) whose roots lay deep in the economic substructure of society, while the purity or pollution of occupations were only markers or labels that distinguished one class (read ‘caste’) from another. Bose explicitly says: ‘In thus trying to pull at the roots of the caste system, as if it were a plant, we discovered which of the roots held it firmly to the soil, and which were secondary roots, or merely ornamental appendages’ (Bose 1972: 5). That his ‘holistic’ stance referred to the phenomenal nature of the object rather than the subjects (observer-observed) is further emphasised in his stress on descriptive rather than explanatory concepts, although he expresses this as advice to distinguish carefully between the two. His scientific credo is expressed in his own words: 24

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‘We must be careful to distinguish between how a thing happens, and why it takes place. The ultimate why may perhaps remain unanswered; but there is no reason why, through a kind of intellectual laziness we should refrain from treading upon new grounds, even if it lies within the spheres of psychology or biology’ (Bose 1972: 7). Surely, then, in Bose’s scheme of social anthropology as a science, if explanation is to be provided at all it will necessarily have to be of a reductionist kind. It is interesting to note that even when Bose writes about reversing the process of scientific inquiry, that is about proceeding from concept to observation rather than the other way around, his notion of culture remains substantive and enumerative in the Tylorean tradition. His explication of the concepts ‘cultural trait’, ‘trait complex’ and ‘distribution of a trait’, with Indian examples (Bose 1953: 12–61), is reminiscent of Wissler’s ‘culture-area’ formulation. Social anthropology here becomes indistinguishable from culture history. Apparently Bose’s initial training as a human geographer was a powerful influence on his later theory. As regards Bose’s fieldwork, Beteille (in Bose 1975: 12) has observed the distinction between his extensive fieldwork and the intensive fieldwork of the Malinowskian tradition. Beteille goes on to justify the former kind of fieldwork as more suited to the needs of Indian anthropologists. While not denying the special characteristics and value of fieldwork combined with political activism as in Bose’s case, the dangers of making a virtue of a necessity should be borne in mind. Bose himself would have undertaken intensive fieldwork of the classical anthropological kind among the Juangs of Orissa had he not come under police suspicion. We may only speculate on what his contributions to anthropological theory and method might have been had that project not been interrupted; but it is not too much to expect that they would have been less refractory and diffuse than they actually became. Strictly in terms of contributions to method and theory, the kinship between N. K. Bose and the American A. L. Kroeber (Beteille in Bose 1975: 2) may seem less like a post hoc rationalisation. The combination of anthropological holism with a comparative perspective (Kroeber 1944) is surely lacking in Bose’s framework, however revelatory it may be of the process of Indian civilisation. In a theoretical work analysing comparative methods in social and cultural anthropology, Gopala Sarana (1975: 15) mentions two justifications for anthropology being called a comparative discipline: One of the two justifications of this is following: By convention and established tradition of doing fieldwork in a culture 25

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other than one’s own, the anthropologist uses a comparative framework in his study. In other words there is much implicit comparison both in data-gathering and data-processing . . . . The second justification for anthropology’s being a comparative discipline is for work in the library than in the field. From the days of unilinear evolution anthropologists have utilized the available ethnographic materials to serve many different ends. There are marked differences in the ways these ends have been attained. The common feature of all these ventures is the fact that, with very few exceptions, they all involve inter-cultural or cross-cultural explicit comparison. If we examine the work of the first generation of Indian anthropologists the twin modalities of comparison mentioned above (implicit and explicit) are seen to coexist in an attenuated form. Anthropologists like D. N. Majumdar, N. K. Bose and Irawati Karve (1905–1970) did not venture to do fieldwork outside India. Within India, however, they often chose to study societies and cultures which were unfamiliar to them given their own socialisation and upbringing. Hence some kind of implicit comparison constituted a feature of their anthropological fieldwork. They also undertook explicit comparison, combining the results of their own field studies with library resources: thus we have Majumdar’s general comparative writings on primitive tribes; Bose’s comparative treatment of Indian tribes, the peasantry and of urbanisation processes in Bengal and Orissa; and Karve’s classic Kinship Organization in India, first published in 1953. The fact that comparisons such as those undertaken by Bose and Karve were all situated in India and were, moreover, attempted within a framework of Indian cultural history did elicit the protest from latter-day structuralists (see Dumont and Pocock 1957, for a critique of Karve) that the comparative analysis remained substantive and did not move to an adequate level of abstraction. Implicit in this criticism was also, we believe, a dissatisfaction with inadequate grounding in intensive field studies.

Structural-functionalism and cultural anthropology Mention has already been made of W.H.R. Rivers’s ethnological study The Todas (1906). Rivers did his fieldwork among the Todas in the winter of 1901–1902 and his interest in India continued almost until his death in 1922. His posthumous work, edited by W.J. Perry, Social Organization (1924), was intended to be delivered as a course of lectures in Calcutta University. Two of his students, G.S. Ghurye and 26

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K. P. Chattopadhyaya, came to play an important role in the development of sociology and social anthropology in India. His influence on Indian anthropology and sociology continued, through Ghurye and Chattopadhyaya, well into the 1940s (Srinivas and Panini 1973: 185). It is relevant to note that Rivers began as an evolutionist in the tradition of L. H. Morgan, but in 1911 ‘announced his conversion from the evolutionism of Morgan to a belief in the widespread character of diffusion and the necessity for ethnological analysis of culture’ (Srinivas 1958: xi). In 1923, when Rivers’s reputation was at its peak, A. R. RadcliffeBrown advocated the distinction between ‘The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology’. Srinivas who had been a student of Ghurye but was subsequently to study with Radcliffe-Brown is emphatic about the superiority of Radcliffe-Brown’s position over that of Rivers. ‘If any single essay can be called the charter – to use a favourite word of Malinowski – of modern British social anthropology, it is undoubtedly “The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology”. It was a charter of revolt when it first made its appearance’ (Srinivas 1958: xi–xii). In the social anthropology advocated by Radcliffe-Brown both ‘holism’ and ‘comparison’, the two characteristic features of the discipline, had been given a precise but narrow meaning. For a time, the structural-functionalist model of holism continued to provide descriptions of tribal village entities but little wonder that the same notion of structure ill-served the study of tribes and caste villages (see Bailey 1962: 258–260). Srinivas’s twin major contributions, namely, the study of Indian villages and the relationship between religion and society (or Hinduism and the caste system) succumbed to the RadcliffeBrownian narrow structural-functionalism and were soon superseded. At about the same time as village studies by Srinivas and some of his social anthropological colleagues, a significant departure from the oldstyle ethnographic portrayal of the village community is represented by S. C. Dube’s pioneering approach to the anthropological study of rural society in India (Dube 1955). A striking feature of this study is its easy and graceful incorporation of the structural-functionalist style of analysis without cluttering the field data with half-baked concepts and pet theories. Dube had been advised by a senior British social anthropologist (who will remain unnamed) to analyse his field data in the form of a chapter each on the major castes of the village (personal communication). He not only refused to do that but invested his analytical description of village social structure with enough flexibility to enable subsequent studies of social change (Dube 1958). His critique of the concept of dominant caste in studying rural factionalism derives its potency from the fact that the analytical underpinnings of his 27

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approach represent a strong continuity with a proven though largely unstated theoretical stance of a veteran fieldworker (Dube 1968). In the 1950s there was a convergence between the structuralfunctionalist influence of British social anthropology and the methodology for the study of the ‘little community’ as enunciated by Robert Redfield of Chicago University in determining the course of village studies in India. Brief critical comments on this convergent development are available in Saberwal (1979: 245–247). The overall context of his discussion is an exploration of the reasons and conditions which led to a befogged sociological perception of secular inequalities in India. While we are not concerned with that argument here, we may assess his characterisation of theory and method in the American cultural anthropology of the mid-twentieth century and its pervasive and uncritical adoption in the study of Indian society. First, the American tradition was oriented ‘rather loosely and inclusively’ towards the study of culture in contrast to the sharper British concern with social structure and the even stronger Marxian tradition of analysing linkages between economic structures and other social dimensions. This study of culture, having some affinity with the humanistic tradition of scholarship, purported to explore cultural diversity in a theoretical framework strongly rooted in the doctrine of cultural relativism. Second, the functionalist premise that cultures were integrated wholes led to the methodology of studying these wholes through faceto-face fieldwork in residential communities of not more than 1,000 people. In the Indian village studies which this perspective encouraged, ‘the village was seen to provide a random sample of Indian society, much as a glass of water would provide a sample from the flow of a river’. The premise of the integrated village also led to the neglect of disruptive conflict. The approach accommodated a study of procedures and norms governing the management of conflict but failed to focus on conflicts of interest as such. Third, the theoretical linkage in the cultural anthropological perspective between micro-studies and macrostructures was extremely tenuous. There was some attempt to conceptualise, on the one hand, the links between the village community and the Sanskritic tradition and, on the other, to discern forces like Western education, factories, electoral politics etc. acting upon the village community; ‘but there was no analytic framework for the larger whole wherein the interlinkages of these miscellaneous sources might be located’. The macroframe work, when consistently handled, was either a projection of the units of micro-analysis on to the wider field (a case in point being 28

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Srinivas’s predilection for ‘caste’) or was set in a universe of discourse concerning economic development, with entrepreneurship as its main lever (such as in Singer 1972). Fourth, unlike the ‘anti-historical’ stance of British social anthropology, the attitude to history in the cultural anthropological approach was positive. In the Indian context, however, there was a carryover from the archival and oral-history sources utilised in the study of American Indian societies. Thus while sporadic attempts were made by American anthropologists to concern themselves with local history (Marriott 1953) or with the civilisation (Singer 1969) or its sacred texts (Orenstein 1970), there was lack of concern with ‘the historical experience of the middle range’. The above characterisation does less than justice to certain disciplinary features and constraints of socio-cultural anthropology, and it veers dangerously close to being a selective statement of the discipline’s methodological premises tailor-cut to suit an ‘Indian sociologist’s’ ideological imperatives. Without prejudice to Saberwal’s mention of methods and theories purportedly more powerful than the anthropological ones to analyse conflict of interests and ‘secular inequalities’, it is appropriate to highlight an error of omission and one of commission in his critique. One of the major contributions of socio-cultural anthropology from the mid-twentieth century onwards has been in the comparative study of values and belief systems – not to mention that of ‘rationality’ itself. In this respect the pioneering studies of EvansPritchard in British social anthropology and the seminal work of Robert Redfield and his associates to gather together peasant societies and civilisational structures within the ambit of American cultural anthropological approaches have been particularly influential. The essays included in Traditional India: Structure and Change (Singer ed. 1959) provide a good illustration of essentially exploratory, innovative and collaborative exercise sponsored by the University of Chicago Program on Comparative Studies of Cultures and Civilisation under the direction of Robert Redfield. It was an American publication but had contributions also from Indian scholars. Remarkably enough, the integration of the volume does not derive from the categories for the study of traditional civilisations enunciated at length by the editor in his preface. The concepts of ‘tradition’ and ‘civilisation’ – resonant and multivocal in their immanence in the Indian context – could not but be harnessed in the anthropology of India. The ethno-methodology of Ghurye and Bose derived from this exploration; it was not the case that, as Saberwal puts it, ‘When early in the 1950s, American anthropologists began to work in India, with distinctive traditions in theory, 29

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method, and substantive concerns the impression rapidly grew that they would sweep all before them’(Saberwal 1979: 245). Much the same can be said of the study of village communities. Whatever were the class origins of the nationalist movement, there is a certain sense in which the Gandhian precept and practice transcended them (in the context of Indian ‘tradition’ and ‘civilisation’ if one likes). One needs to mention only Bose and Elwin to make the point that the concerns of socio-cultural anthropology in India in the 1950s may not be typified as a foreign and, much less, a parasitic outgrowth.

Tradition and ideology: the impact of structuralism A deep-seated concern with tradition, it needs reiteration, has been a prominent feature of indigenous social science thinking in India. The notion of tradition has entered this thinking in two ways: quite apart from being a substantive area of concern in the study of Indian society, culture and civilisation, tradition asserts itself as a cognitive style in the very methodology of Indian social science research. As Yogendra Singh perceptively points: ‘Whether sociology is a science with an accompanying universalistic package of categories and techniques of research or whether it is a specific cognitive style marked by a mode of apperception or reflexivity in observation and comparison of structures, social relationships and ideas, are questions which have been debated right from the inception of sociology in India’ (Singh 1979: 291). In this perspective it is relevant to note the philosophical theoretic orientation in Indian sociology associated with Lucknow school in the contributions of Radhakamal Mukerjee, D. P. Mukherji and A. K. Saran. Most of these contributions are confined to the period 1952– 1960, as in subsequent years only A. K. Saran remained a proponent of this orientation. On a continuum between universalistic and particularistic orientation in sociology, Radhakamal Mukerjee could be placed at the former end, A. K. Saran would be at the latter extreme, while D. P. Mukherji would be in-between (Singh 1979: 294). Radhakamal Mukerjee thought Indian social institutions to be unique and found the sociological categories of the West inadequate for the interpretation on Indian reality (Becker and Barnes 1961). Nevertheless, taking a cue from Indian reality and modes of conceptualising it, he elaborated a universal series of concepts and general categories which not only integrate sociology internationally but also include other disciplines in the natural and social sciences (Mukerjee 1960). The dialectic between tradition and modernity is a key feature of D. P. Mukherji’s thought (Madan 1978). He is ambivalent on the 30

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question of the universal and particular nature of sociological categories. He is affectively oriented towards Marxism, but leans heavily on the ‘particularistic’ model of Indian sociology with its emphasis on tradition and history. His notion of dialectics, which he recommends as an important analytic device, never takes on the universalistic meaning which it has in popular interpretations of Marxist theory. We shall not examine at length the views of A. K. Saran. As summarised by Yogendra Singh (1979: 296–298), Saran’s position which is particularistic in the extreme – hearkening to ‘First Principles’ of ‘Wisdom Uncreate’, representing the reincarnation of traditional postulates in modern Indian social thought (Saran 1960: 1015) – amounts to the ‘total rejection of sociology’. The position he takes vis-à-vis Dumont and Pocock repudiates, also, the comparative methodology of social anthropology (Saran 1962). Here we wish to argue that a central concern with the Indian tradition is what places Louis Dumont in the same category as the Indian sociologists mentioned above. All he has done is to wed this concern with a rigorous anthropological methodology of comparison. Although this is the most prominent feature of Dumont’s writing, ironically enough the fact has been obscured by the characterisation of his work as that of a social anthropologist and of a foreigner. The social anthropological avocation of Dumont also explains in a large measure why he himself has not disavowed (or, as some would say, has instead capitalised upon) his identity as a French and, in general, a Western interpreter of Indian society. This facet needs a little elaboration. Although it is no part of our definition, most conventional characterisations of social anthropology would include a concern with other cultures (to use the title of an influential textbook in the English-speaking world) as a differentium specificum between this subject and sociology. That we have not characterised the subject-matter of social anthropology in these terms, nor would Dumont or any other serious anthropologist like to stick to such rigour today is only a concession to the actual practice of the discipline in our times; as Andre Beteille has said, a consistent application of this criterion would mean, ‘what anthropology is to an American will be sociology to an Indian, and what sociology is to an American will be anthropology to an Indian’ (Beteille 1979: 11). However, along with Levi-Strauss and Evans-Pritchard, Dumont is reluctant – and rightly so – to throw away the advantages which ensue to social anthropology because of its radically comparative perspective. Indeed, the most distinctive contribution of Dumont to anthropological methodology has been to globalise comparison. In some of his writings (Dumont 1975, 1979) he has defended this methodology 31

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against ‘ideological’ attack. We shall first clarify Dumont’s emphasis on tradition through the study of indigenous ideology and then revert to the closely related question of comparison in his methodology. The strength and limitations of his ‘structuralist’ approach may be assessed in this perspective. The discussion of ‘ideology’ is a constant burden in Louis Dumont’s main work, Homo Hierarchicus(1970). Since this term is used with various shades of meaning in the sociological literature, it is useful to spell out what Dumont (1970: 263) means by it: The word ‘ideology’ commonly designates a more or less social set of ideas and values. Thus one can speak of the ideology of a society, and also the ideologies of more restricted groups such as a social class or a movement or again of partial ideologies bearing on a single aspect of the social system such as kinship. It is obvious that there is a basic ideology, a kind of germinal ideology tied to common language and hence to the linguistic group or the global society. There are certainly variations – sometimes contradictions – according to social milieu, for example, social class, but they are expressed in the same language . . . . the sociologist needs a term to designate the global ideology, and he cannot accept the special usage whereby ideology is limited to social classes and given a purely negative sense, thus discrediting ideas or ‘representations’ in general for the sake of partisan aims. From this positive characterisation of ideology in general, Dumont moves to the specification of global ideology in India as contrasted with that in the modern West. In an increasing degree of specificity, two sets of binary opposition are drawn in Table 2.1. Dumont’s characterisation of Indian ideology and its polar contrast with Western one is not achieved by hypothetico-deductive reasoning or through introspection. True to his anthropological avocation, Dumont arrives at it by a complex process of combining a rationalist epistemology with empiricism, a process which brings into focus Table 2.1  Binary Oppositions Indian Holistic Hierarchical

Western Individualistic Egalitarian

(Source: By author)

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the interplay between ‘ideology’ and ‘fact’, or, as Dumont and Pocock 1957: 11) expressed it earlier, by taking care, ‘not to mix up facts of “representation” with facts of behaviour’. For Dumont and Pocock, the primary object for sociology of India is a system of ideas; it is a matter then, broadly speaking, of a ‘sociology of values’ (1957: 11). How is this to be achieved for Indian sociology? In their initial perspective, which cast the die for Dumont’s subsequent ideas, two germinal suggestions are made which are exemplified in detail in Homo Hierarchicus and other writings. First, on a substantive plane, the indissociability of a sociology of India and Indology is asserted. The position taken is substantially similar to that of the Indian sociologists referred to earlier; the only difference in the case of Dumont and Pocock is that they refer exclusively to the work of French savants (Mauss, Bougle, Mus and Dumezil) and to the British social anthropologist, Hocart, in support of this rapprochement. There is an unmistakable tendency in this exclusivism of source selection to regard these sources as being more insightful than the writings of indigenous ‘Indologists’; thus there is only a single footnoted reference to Kane, and no mention at all of Coomaraswamy (a glaring omission not only in this initial statement but also throughout Dumont’s corpus, including Homo Hierarchicus). The explanation of this partiality, inter alia, lies in the second, methodological, tenet of Dumont and Pocock. This tenet, in a nutshell, is their espousal of structuralism, ‘The notion of structure’, say Dumont and Pocock, ‘ïs indispensable’(1957: 14). Indological studies are insufficient by themselves for discovering the ‘whole’ in the interior of which relations can be studied as a structure. For this one needs a sociological perspective. Sociological observation, in turn, as refined by modern social anthropology, insists that things be seen from within (as integrated in the society studied) and from without. In the initial elaboration of this dichotomy (within/without), Dumont and Pocock (1957: 12) explained: Evans-Pritchard invites us to consider the movement from one point of view to the other as an effort of translation. This translation in fact involves fusing language of inquiry and the language of the monograph in one, constructing new concepts which englobe the two. In this task it is not sufficient to translate the indigenous words, for it frequently happens that the ideas which they express are related to each other by more fundamental ideas even though these are unexpressed. Fundamental ideas literally ‘go without saying’ and have no need to 33

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be distinct, that is tradition. Only their corollaries are explicit. The caste system for example appears as a perfectly coherent theory once one adds the necessary but implicit links to the principles that the people themselves give. The methodology enunciated by Dumont to add ‘the necessary but implicit links’ to the principles given by the people themselves is what has caused endless controversy. At a more concrete – perhaps oversimplified – level Dumont has been taken to mean, almost wholly, that the conscious and articulate expressions of the indigenous ideology – native models, be they popular or textual – are not self-sufficient for structural understanding since they need to be complemented by an ‘external’ point of view (an answer to the question why ‘indigenous’ Indologists take a backseat in his scheme), and the debate has narrowed down to the tenability or otherwise of the internal/external dichotomy (see Dumont 1966; Madan 1966; Singh 1979: 297–298, 306–307). We believe that Dumont’s insistence on the external point of view boils down to a reiteration of the comparative perspective in structural anthropology, its specific modality being the one practiced, exemplified and successfully emulated elsewhere, by Evans-Pritchard in his monographic and theoretical studies (see Douglas and Douglas 1975). But Dumont has definitely gone beyond Evans-Pritchard’s insight in that he ventures on to global comparison. This is discussed in some detail later. While we are still on the point of Dumont’s concept of ‘structure’ it is striking, and at first reading somewhat puzzling, to find statements like, ‘Here we have the good fortune to find ourselves faced with a universe which is structural to a very high degree’ (Dumont 1970: 40). The reference, of course, is to the society in India. The point here is that, as Dumont (1967) has pithily remarked elsewhere, ‘a deeper understanding of structure passes through culture’. His sustained effort to discover the principles of caste and kinship in India both through empirical observation and textual study led Dumont to formulate – in contrast to the Western individual agent – the idea of an agent formed by a pair of individuals: a pair of allies or of brothers-in-law, or in turn the pair constituted by a superior and an inferior. This pre-eminence of a relation over elements – the quintessential characteristic of ‘structure’ for Dumont – is, therefore, not merely the structuralist’s figure of thought but an essential feature of Indian reality. Thus the ‘holism’/‘individualism’ bipolarity in Dumont’s global comparison is not solely formal but rooted in culture. This departure

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from the formal structuralism of Levi-Strauss has been duly noted, so much so that in a review of theories of culture Dumont is bracketed not with the continental structuralists but with American students of cultures as symbolic systems, for example Clifford Geertz and David Schneider (see Keesing 1974: 78–79). More recently Dumont himself has disavowed the need for a necessary distinction between social and cultural anthropology; while taking an encompassing view of ‘ideology’ he says, ‘Thus all systems of ideas and values, are referred to as ideologies, or in the American fashion, as Culture, or even as society; no distinction is made between social anthropology and cultural anthropology’ (Dumont 1979: 785). Dumont’s obsession with ‘structure’, ‘ideology’ and, finally, ‘hierarchy’ is all of a piece; they constitute the media for a deep comparativist understanding of the Indian tradition. If we judge the value of his approach by results, it has paid rich dividends in the study of religion, caste and kinship; the contributions he has made to the study of economic institutions, relations of power and territory, and to contemporary Indian history has been both meagre and severely constrained by the imperatives of an approach which has been criticised by anthropologists (primarily interested in studying institutional spheres of the latter sort) as ‘culturological’ (Bailey 1959) and as one which might be very well attuned to the study of ‘ideas’ but is deficient in that it neglects the study of ‘interests’ (Beteille 1969). The limitations of Dumont’s structuralism in delineating agrarian relations and regional history have also been discussed (Jain 1975a, 1977a). We have pondered over the salient features of theory and method in Dumont’s work at some length because his approach, in its own right, represents a most comprehensive and sustained structuralist attempt to study traditional Indian society. Inasmuch as ‘holism’, ‘comparison’ and the understanding primarily of ‘non-modern’ societies, cultures and civilisations are the distinctive hallmarks of social anthropology as a discipline, Dumont’s contributions to general anthropological theory and method have gained increasing recognition. As far as social anthropology and sociology in India (not necessarily of India; see below) are concerned we are in partial agreement with Singh (1979: 298) who observes, Indeed the publication by Dumont and Pocock of Contributions to Indian Sociology (1957–1966) evoked a selfconsciousness among Indian sociologists, which was not entirely in tune with the kind of ‘universalistic’ postulates they

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had intended to project. Its main impact has been retroactiveness rather than of approval or acceptance. Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus also falls into the same category. Although a high level review symposium on this book was organised in Contributions to Indian Sociology: New Series, it failed to make an impact on Indian sociology. However, in our view, a verdict on the methodological impact of Homo Hierarchicus cannot be given in isolation. Viewed in relation to the total corpus of his work, Home Hierarchicus undoubtedly represents a high-water mark and the echoes of Dumont’s argument and overall approach have reverberated widely in sociology/social anthropology. To narrow it down to two spheres only, if Indian sociology includes not only sociology in India but of India, the impact of Dumont has been substantial. Second, while it is true that his entire approach has not been swallowed hook, line and sinker, it has proved to be a tremendous catalyst in the innovative applications of a structuralist methodology in selected spheres of Indian society, namely, ritual and symbolism, kinship and marriage, caste and sect. This may be seen, initially, in relation to an observation made earlier about a development in Dumont’s approach itself, namely, an increasing rapprochement between his structuralism and cultural analysis. Ever since their inception, theories of culture have been a mainstay in American anthropology. The challenge in recent years has been to narrow the concept of ‘culture’ so that it includes less and reveals more. As Geertz (1973: 4) argues, ‘cutting the culture concept down to size . . . (into) a narrow, specialized, and . . . theoretically more powerful concept’, has been a major theme in modern anthropological theorising. Keesing (1974: 74–81) speaks of four ‘focal areas’ into which recent rethinking about ‘culture’ falls: 1. Culture as adaptive systems, 2. Culture as cognitive systems, 3. Culture as structural systems and 4. Culture as symbolic systems. Types 2 to 4 may all be bracketed together as ideational theories of culture. These are the ones which, in combination with structuralism (mainly of the sorts associated with Dumont and Levi-Strauss) have begun to make an increasing impact on the anthropological study of Indian tradition and ideology. Obviously, this impact is prominent, first and foremost, in the work of American anthropologists studying caste and kinship (Leaf 1971; Inden and Nicholas 1972; David 1973; Fruzzetti and Ostor 1976; Barnett 1976). To be more precise, their theoretical orientation represents a synthesis of Dumont’s structuralism and D. M. Schneider’s 36

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cultural analysis (Schneider 1968, 1970, 1972). Similar in concern, though somewhat different in theory and method, are ‘ethnosociological’ studies of caste (Marriott and Inden 1974; Marriott 1979). The recent work of an Indian anthropologist, R.S. Khare (1975, 1976a and b), on kinship and on Hindu culinary and gastronomic systems is also closely related to the mainstream theoretical trends in American anthropology of studying culture as symbolic systems. The particular combination of structural and cultural approaches in the primarily American studies of the kind mentioned above makes a heady, and indeed an explosive, mixture. In this synthesis, Dumont’s notion of hierarchy is retained, and so also its redaction as a relationship between the encompassing and the encompassed. The ideological principle of the caste system is based on opposition between the pure and the impure; this too is accepted. But whereas the crux of Indian social representations is revealed to Dumont in ‘relation’ through a subtle blending of cultural and formal perceptions (vide, his perception of the ‘agent’ in Indian society), the American cultural analysis posit ‘the person’, an entity, comprising code-substance or substance-code, as the existential unit of action. The conception of the ‘person’ is at once ‘monist’ in that no distinction is made between the actor and his actions, but persons are also ‘dividual’ or divisible in that they absorb and give out heterogeneous material influences (coded substances). These are ‘ethnosociological’ discoveries about Indian culture (Barnett 1976; Marriott 1979). The parting of ways between structuralism and cultural analysis could not be more complete, whether or not the proponents of the latter realise it. The difference goes right to the heart of the comparative base in the two conceptions. In this context, let us first note a significant convergence in the theoretical derivations of American ethnosociologists and cultural analysis. Their comparative perception – a prerequisite of any anthropological point of view as we have noted all through – is based on the absolute cultural contrast, in the realm of kinship and ranking, between the American ideology of a marked separation between substance and code (part and parcel of the Western ‘dualist’ conceptions) and the Indian ideology of the person where substance enjoins code and viceversa (an integral feature of Hindu ‘monist’ thought). Let us grant also that this apperception of cultural difference builds systematically on a prior in-depth understanding of the analysts’ own culture (note, e.g. the uniform indebtedness of all these researchers to Schneider’s work, American Kinship: A Cultural Account, 1968). Incidentally, recognition of this methodological procedure absolves ethnosociologists from a simple-minded charge that they smuggle in by the backdoor 37

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the ethnocentric distinction between themselves and ‘natives’, such as Beteille (1974: 704) has made: The British made a simple distinction between themselves and the natives; when they studied themselves sociologists, when they studied the natives they became social anthropologists. I think that there is a tendency for Americans to make a similar distinction, though not as explicitly. When they study the core of their own society and culture they are sociologists. When they study other societies and cultures, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America (or marginal groups in their own society), they tend to become ethnosociologists. As we have pointed out, whatever may be the proclivities of self-styled ‘sociologists’ vis-à-vis ethnosociologists, those cultural anthropologists who have attempted ethnosociological studies of caste and kinship in India cannot be shown to have operated with dual standards concerning themselves and the natives. Their allegiance to a comparative approach, with all its imperfections (to be discussed below), is at least a methodological guarantee that ethnocentrism be reduced to minimum, if not totally eliminated. And this brings us back to the methodology of comparison as between the structuralists on the one hand and the cultural analysts-cumethnosociologists, on the other. As regards the latter, the perception of cultural difference in the concept of the ‘person’ in American and Indian ideologies is disturbingly close to being a statement of the conventional cultural relativist position (for a critique of this position see Jain 1976). To put it crudely, code and substance are conjoined in one case (India) and separated in another (America); the ‘person’ as coded-substance in one case (India) and as code and substance in the other (America) is dividual in the former and individual in the latter. From these crucial ideological contrasts, and implicated with them, follow other differences of meaning and integration in two cultures. Some of the crucial questions arise in the area of the relationship between cultural ideology and social morphology. Here there is a subtle difference between the ethnosociologists and cultural analysts typified by Marriott’s and Schneider’s students, respectively. The former have developed an ethnogenetic view of the caste system (Marriott and Inden 1974; for notes towards a critique see Jain 1975b: 192); the latter have taken a more complex position. To take the example of the papers on Bengal and Tamil Nadu referred to earlier (Fruzzetti and 38

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Ostor 1976; Barnett 1976), cultural analysis is attempted by abandoning the genealogically defined framework of ‘kinship’ but at the same time retaining the hierarchical notion of caste. The resultant analysis thus goes a long way to meet Schneider’s latest percept of pure cultural analysis ‘uncontaminated by the study of its social system’, but what is gained in terms of a ‘super-abstract’ understanding of culture (non-­normative rules, i.e. those which are not ego-centered, being appropriate to decision-making or interaction models of analysis, but are system-centered) is lost by contextualising these rules to bounded social units (kindred, descent line, sub-caste, caste etc.). The nagging problem is that of conceptualising ‘form’ which is perhaps true of ‘cultural’ studies in general. This remains an insuperable difficulty; in the context of Indian social anthropology the notion of ‘person’ as an entity in contrast to that of ‘relation’ (hierarchical or otherwise) comes in the way of suitable formalisation of comparative purposes. The notion ‘person’ remains substantive and, hence, procrustean. Rather than arrive at categories of comparison in terms of entities (a latter-day version of ‘trait’ and ‘trait-complex’ in cultural anthropology, it would seem), the structuralists have given formal paradigms. The task is thus spelled out by Dumont (translated by Douglas and Douglas 1975: 337): To assess the ultimate value of a particular approach in social anthropology, we can ask how far it works towards transcending the obvious differences between the so-called ‘primitive’ societies, and those more complex ones which can be called ‘traditional’, on the one hand, and the modern type of society on the other . . . (It) is not enough to adopt modern Western categories, even with modifications; rather the modes of thought of the two universes must be subsumed under categories that fit them both. (Emphasis added) Evans-Pritchard’s formulation of the ‘segmentary structure’ in The Nuer is one such category. Among the Nuer, groupings (territorial or ‘political’ groups, patrilineal descent groups) at different levels coexist all the time, but they are manifest only alternately, according to the circumstances. The permanent reality is the tendency towards fission and fusion. As Dumont has convincingly argued, Evans-Pritchard’s major emphasis is not on groups as entities: ‘In particular there is no unilineal 39

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group which could properly be called “corporate”, through existing permanently as a persona moralis holding goods in common’ (Douglas and Douglas 1975: 335); on the contrary, Evans-Pritchard starts from ‘groups and relations between groups’ to relativise the groups and shows that their very existence arises out of their relations. This perception of the ‘segmentary structure’ serves Evans-Pritchard well in analysing factual ‘opposition’ that is conflict, as in the blood feud among the Nuer, but underlying these factual oppositions he also sees conceptual oppositions, oppositions in the structuralist’s sense. This dual sense of ‘opposition’ can be understood as an outcome of the dialectic in which the social anthropologist engages: analysis of the particular (the Nuer) and augmentation of the general (theory). Evans-Pritchard’s formulation of the latter task, stated in the conclusion to The Nuer, is clearly that of a structuralist. ‘Social anthropology’, Evans-Pritchard (1940: 266) writes, ‘deals at present in crude concepts: tribes, clan, age-set, etc . . ., representing social masses and a supposed relation between those masses. The science will make little progress on this low level of abstraction, if it be considered abstraction at all, and it is necessary for further advance to use the concepts to denote relations, defined in terms of social situations, and relations between these relations’. As evidence of its worthiness as a category for translation (a modality of comparison), the structuralist notion of segmentation has been crucial to the understanding of the caste system (see Dumont 1970: 42; Beteille 1964; Pocock 1972; Parry 1979). As a principle of structuralist analysis, it has potential also for the study of modern industrial societies and the international system (see Uberoi 1974: 144). We may, finally, explicate Dumont’s own notion of ‘hierarchy’ not only as a specific feature of cultural ideology in Indian and other traditional societies but as a general category for comparison or ‘translation’. It has already been noted that the cultural dimension is retained by Dumont. However, in this respect Dumont (1967) calls his approach ‘typifying’ in contrast to the ‘classifying’ one of cultural relativists and others. Our attention now turns to his refinement of the notion of ‘hierarchy’ as a structuralist’s tool for comparison or, in other words, its contribution to general theory. The key operation here is relativisation, in a sense closely akin to Evans-Pritchard’s formulation of segmentation as a structural category, but on a global scale. Let us recall that Dumont has given a positive meaning and a pivotal role to ideology in the study of society. In the study of Indian society, particularly of the caste system, a hierarchical ideology orders social

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relationships but not exhaustively because there are residues. Dumont (1970: 37–39) writes, Any concrete, localized, whole, when actually observed, is found to be decisively oriented by its ideology, and also to extend far beyond it . . . . in our case (that of the caste system in India), in every concrete whole we find the formal principle at work, but we also find something else, a raw material which it orders and logically encompasses but which it does not explain, at least immediately and not for us. This is where we find the equivalent of what we call relations of force, political and economic phenomena, power, territory, property etc. Those data which we can recover thanks to the notions we have of them in our own ideology may be called the (comparative) concomitants of the ideological system. These observed phenomena initially grasped as ‘self-evident’ thanks to ‘our own’ (i.e. Western individualistic and egalitarian) ideology but not valorised in the holistic and hierarchical ideology, do however, need to be first related to the plane of the latter ideology and thereafter. ‘From observation and ideology we deduce by “subtraction” the residual empirical component of each observed phenomenon’ (Dumont 1970: 38). Clearly, then, comparison is entailed even in the encompassing perception of hierarchy, that is along with its concomitants and implications. Thus the politico-economic domain, the sect and the individual find a place in the Indian hierarchical universe below the threshold of consciousness, as non-ideological residuum (as totalitarianism etc.) and of hierarchy (as class, ‘power’, racism) find a place in the Western egalitarian universe below the threshold of consciousness. According to Dumont (1970: 340, see also comparative diagram on 1970: 233 and demonstration on pages 806–817): The postulate for comparison used here can be expressed as follows: all societies contain the same ‘elements’, ‘features’ or ‘factors’, it being understood that these ‘elements’ can be in each case be located either in S (Substantive; above the threshold of consciousness) or in a (adjective; below the threshold of consciousness) and are profoundly altered by their position. This last condition naturally removes all ‘reality’ from the ‘elements’ and on this condition ∑S+∑a=Constant. This amounts in practice to saying that in any society there will

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always be found that which corresponds to a residual way (in a) to what another society differentiates, articulates and valorizes. It is possible to see that the structuralist comparison proposed above does not rest on the qualities of entities but on their position, so much so that the ‘reality’ of the entity as such becomes a fragment. Unlike the notion of the ‘person’, that of ‘hierarchy’ is premised on a comparative procedure which introduces a universal principle at the global level. In his later writing Dumont (1979: 806) raises and answers the next logical question, ‘But can we assert the presence in every culture of universal components? For lack of substantial elements, these will be types of relations. We have the distinctive opposition. It is clearly a fundamental acquisition. I shall demonstrate through an example that to this opposition must be added a second type, hierarchical opposition, or the encompassing of the contrary as the relation between an ensemble and its part.’ We earlier mentioned the significant role which Dumont’s approach has played as a catalyst in the anthropological studies of ideology and tradition in Indian society, and have demonstrated by the example of American scholars’ cultural analysis the nature and extent of a successful blending between their own methods and the structuralist ones. We have highlighted the greater potential for formal comparisons and theoretical gains in Dumont’s approach compared to that of ethnosociologists and cultural analysts. It remains now to consider certain Indian experiments with structuralism to explain/ understand Hindu social representations (ideas) and institutions. In these researches there is very little attempt, explicit or implicit, at comparativist understanding. A study like that by Veena Das (1977) characterises well enough an approach to ‘Indian Sociology’ in a somewhat narrow sense, more ‘sociological’ than ‘anthropological’ in that there is no comparison stricto sensu. ‘The purpose of this study’, says Das (1977: 1), ‘is to examine Hindu caste and ritual from the point of view of cultural meanings associated with their institutionalized manifestations’. In a brief review of the main trends of social/cultural anthropological research in India up until the decade of the 1970s, I had observed (Jain 1971), The overall trend belongs firmly to structural-functionalism and social and cultural change . . . As the Indian amnesia to structuralism recedes, this approach is marked by extreme 42

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scepticism rather than ambivalence (Leach 1970). The approach to sociology/social anthropology from linguistic philosophy, on the other hand, has struck a responsive chord in at least two native students of Indian society and culture (cf., Saran 1960 and Madan 1967) who refer approvingly to the thought of “later Wittgenstein”(p. 1026) and to Alisdair McIntyre (p. 91) respectively. It seems reasonable to expect that a discussion of civilizational studies within the context of approaches from linguistic philosophy, literature, and history will prepare the ground for a new meeting of minds in anthropological theory. In the seventies, the continued publication of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology (New Series) provided an excellent forum for meeting of minds between Indian and foreign anthropologists engaged, among other themes, in the challenging task of theoretical innovation and refinement to comprehend ideology and tradition in India.

The time dimension: continuity and change In the foregoing three sections we have examined various attempts to comprehend, anthropologically, the nature of Indian society, culture and civilisation. The discussion in these approaches of the time ­dimension – both continuity and change – may no longer be postponed. It is in this respect that the comparative paradigms of sociocultural anthropology have been put to the most severe test and many doubts raised as to their interpretive efficacy.

Design and process in civilisations: ‘Warm’ societies and cultures We have earlier typified the approaches of Indian anthropologists like N.K. Bose and Irawati Karve as being indistinguishable from culture history. Bose’s (1961: vii) general view on evolution is as follows: There is no justification for a belief in pre-determination in the matter of historical evolution, and also no justification for a permanent emphasis upon any particular factor in the matter of determining the course of that evolution. Anthropology helps us in the study of the part played by various factors involved, and in observing if they have been constant or been different under different situations. 43

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In the present context of discussion, Bose’s notion of the process of Indian civilisation will serve as our main focus. The relationship between tribal and non-tribal population is a case in point. The process of interaction, including the absorption of tribal peoples into the Hindu fold, has been going on for centuries. Hindu society itself has been built over the ages by the integration of various communities. The key to an understanding of the interaction between tribal and non-tribal people lies, according to Bose, in the different types of productive systems under which they lived. Thus, he does not classify the numerous tribal groups living in India by race, language and religion, but by mode of livelihood. Similarly, as we have noted earlier, according to Bose it is the monopoly of a particular occupation by each caste, the economic substructure of the system, in which its roots lay deep. But in the delineation of process he strictly adheres to his nondeterministic view of evolution. As Beteille has summarised Bose’s position, ‘. . . while the conditions of the absorption of tribal communities into Hindu civilization are to be sought in the economic sphere, the manner of this absorption is dictated by other considerations. And it is the manner of absorption that is crucial to an understanding of Hindu civilization’ (Beteille 1975: 19). This is where the ideals on which Hindu society was constituted come into picture, and the task of the anthropologist is that of making the actions of men intelligible in the light of their ideals. Bose was cautious to note that the ideals by which a society is governed are not always realised in practice and also that ideals, just as productive organisation and technology, do not remain unchanged forever. However, he believed and sought to demonstrate through a combination of observational data gathered in the course of his extensive fieldwork, excerpts from classical Hindu texts and epics, the evidence of inscriptions and styles of temple architecture, family histories, documents pertaining to caste associations and tribal movements etc., that the Hindu socio-ideological scheme of the four varnas, the tripartite classification based on the three qualities or gunas of sattva (purity), rajas (valour) and tamas (darkness) and the Brahminical dispensation of absorbing communities into the caste system by providing and protecting occupational monopolies for each caste were the key features in the design and process of Indian civilisation. The Muslim impact on India did not alter substantially the basic features of Hindu society and ideology whereas the British impact did. The reason for this, according to him, is that the British brought with them a new technology and a new system of production which the Muslims did not. Muslim society and culture could be accommodated within the broad scheme of the 44

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traditional order; but the new forces of production unleashed by the British shook this order to its very foundation. There is a certain unevenness in Bose’s analysis of design and process in Indian civilisation. The pre-British period is conceptualised, by and large, in terms of tradition while the subsequent developments up to the contemporary times are viewed as social history. We may define ‘tradition’ as ‘an indefinite series of repetitions of an action, which on each occasion is performed on the assumption that it has been performed before; its performance is authorised – though the nature of authorisation may vary widely – by the knowledge, or the assumption of previous performance’(Pocock 1972). The immanence of the Brahminical model to which Bose makes constant reference is, according to him, the repository of tradition in Indian society and culture. Temporal processes like the absorption of non-Aryan, including tribal, communities into the Hindu fold are subsumed by this model. Although there is a tendency in Bose’s analysis to interpret the Hindu texts literally, that is rather than their stating traditional ideals and formulae, as reflecting social reality, the historical reconstruction of the past is done basically with the help of inscriptional and architectural evidence. Even the past is seen as more or less frozen, an aspect of tradition. This procedure which is probably methodological – cultural historical in the anthropological sense, biased in favour of ethnohistory – does bring out certain crucially significant features of the social organisation of tradition in India, namely, the nature of pre-industrial urbanisation and the organisation of artisans and their crafts, to name only two. And, yet, the valorisation of the dominant Hindu model which is textually articulate leads to a suppression of the specificity of tribal socio-economic formations. This is ironical in that Bose always upheld his self-identity as fieldanthropologist, was particularly keen in precept and practice on the meticulous study of material culture and, as we have noted, emphasised the classification of the tribal people by mode of livelihood. We suspect that in this case – as to a certain extent in the case of Louis Dumont whose structuralist analysis of Hindu texts has been potted and illustrative rather than monographic in the manner of Veena Das – the marriage between Indology and anthropology has not been an altogether happy one. The problem is aggravated in Bose’s case in that in his hands the Brahminical model is a voluntarisitic tool, for example Bose (1975: 165–166) said, At the same time there is no reason to believe that the Brahmins had only evil designs. We cannot but wonder at the 45

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tolerant spirit and organizational skill which they showed in recognizing other people’s rights to their own customs. The sad thing is that they never succeeded in giving to the vanquished a place equal to their own. It is the relationship between ideals and material forces which Bose discusses in the context of the process of Indian civilisation. One might argue that by salvaging from his framework the relationship between ideas, techniques and social organisation in Indian cultural tradition, a valuable contribution can be made to the anthropological study of civilizational process in general. Baidyanath Saraswati and N. K. Behura (1966), directly inspired by N. K. Bose, made a fine study of pottery techniques in peasant India and Saraswati has continued in his explorations of Indian civilisation (Saraswati 1975, 1977). If such studies are extended in a semiological direction, the connections between ‘things, action, and ideas’ could be explored (see, for earlier examples, Bose 1961; Dumont 1952). These would have a direct bearing on the study of civilizational process in a comparative perspective. On the substantive side tribal or primitive symbolic representations will be given their due place in the process of Indian civilisation without being subsumed in a necessarily asymmetrical relational paradigm such as that of ‘Great Tradition, Little Tradition’. From the viewpoint of anthropological comparisons, studies of the design and dynamics of tradition promise to fill an outstanding lacuna. There is an ongoing debate about the ‘historicity’ of cultures. Particularly in structuralist thought much attention has been given to the relations between temporality, history and the synchrony/diachrony division. In some part this is no doubt because of the interchanges between Levi-Strauss and Sartre (Levi-Strauss 1966, especially ­Chapter 9). In his discussion of Sartre, Levi-Strauss makes certain points that are worth sustaining. One concerns the reservation he makes about history as a ‘code’. Another is his identification of certain fundamental contrasts – contrasts which concern problems of time and history – between small, relatively ‘unchanging’ societies and the more developed ones: between cold and hot societies. In a sense Levi-Strauss is right when he speaks of history as a type of code, and Sartre is also right when he insists that it is just a code like any other. For history, as an interpretation or analysis of the past, involves the application of a conceptual apparatus of some sort: while history as temporality, or the occurrence of events in time, is an inevitable feature of all socio-cultural forms. What is at issue is not just time, nor

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history, but also historicity: consciousness of ‘progressive movement’ as a feature of social life of certain societies, above all those of the post-feudal West, in which that consciousness is organised actively to promote social change. In contrast, Levi-Strauss has spoken of primitive societies as ‘machines for the suppression of time’, and of ‘reversible time’ in those cultures. The point is that time elapses in a sequential way in all societies, but in those in which tradition is pre-eminent, processes of social reproduction are interwoven with different forms of awareness of past, present and future than in the contemporary industrialised world. Bose’s interpretation of the process of Indian civilisation in the pre-British era as ‘tradition’, biased in favour of ethnohistory, contains more than a hint for the conceptualisation of a ‘missing link’, as it were, in the series of different forms of societal and cultural awareness of temporality and attendant organisation of consciousness to promote social change. For Levi-Strauss – a ‘pupil’ and a ‘witness’ of the savages – with his philosophical panache for binary oppositions and the image of the Neolithic Age as the threshold of the optimum well-being for mankind, the hot/cold dichotomy serves as the encompassing framework for situating societies and cultures in relation to time. He is virtually silent on the placement of non-modern civilisations in this scheme. The potentialities inherent in the writings of Bose and his followers (see, Saraswati 1975 and 1977; Sinha 1959) on the design and process of Indian civilisation, conjoined perhaps with the image of the Medieval Age as the threshold of the optimum well-being for mankind (which may be discerned in the thought of A.K. Saran and Ananda Coomaraswamy), could be creatively utilised as a distinctly Indian contribution to fill this gap in comparative anthropology. The operationalisation of the above possibility in anthropological research is not easily achieved. But thanks again to the fact that Bose started as a human geographer, the ecological and environmental parameters of the socio-cultural units he investigated – tribes, castes, communities, metropolis or civilisation – are always held in the foreground. In developing the Bose tradition in a scientific direction, first, the ideas or ‘ideals’ of the Hindu tradition, studied semiologically and ethnohistorically, ought to be placed in their full ethnographic context. This much is recognised even by a formal structuralist like LeviStrauss who writes apropos the analysis of myths, ‘Symbols . . . never have any intrinsic significance. Their meanings can only be “positional” meanings, and it follows that they cannot be available to us

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in the myths themselves, but only by reference to the ethnographic context, i.e., to what we know about the way of life, the techniques, the ritual and the social organization of the societies whose myths we wish to analyze’(Levi-Strauss 1963b). Further, beyond the conventional ‘ethnographic context’, if one takes the framework of cultural adaptationists (in which it is not difficult to recognise a kinship with the spirit of Bose’s enquiries), a promising research methodology presents itself for the analysis of socio-cultural systems as representing the social realisations or enactments of ideational designs-for-living in particular environments. This framework may be summarised in the words of Roger Keesing: What cultural adaptationists are talking about are . . . sociocultural systems-in-environments. It is these systems that are adaptive or maladaptive, that are subject in some way to natural selection. Ideational designs for living, patterns of shared meanings and systems of knowledge and belief, are crucially important subsystems of ways-of-life-in-environments. The latter are complex systems in the cybernetic sense, in which complex circuits connect ecological, demographic, ideational, and other subsystems. How these circuits are interconnected, how information ramifies through them, and how homeostatic processes and directional change operate are (or can be) empirical questions for investigation, not articles of faith and ideological polemic. (Keesing 1974: 82) A thorough-going empirical application of one such approach – more behavioural than structural – in the synchronic study of an Indian village has been attempted by Leaf (1973). He relies mainly on communication theory and eschews any evolutionary concerns. However, the comparative study of a socio-cultural system-in-environment at two points of time, pre-British and contemporary, could yield valuable hypotheses concerning the structure of tradition and its precise relationship with homeostatic processes and directional change in Indian civilisation. The recovery of ‘ethnographic context’ for the pre-British period will no doubt present formidable problems, but these could partly be overcome by a thorough study of extant records and documents written in the vernacular and by selecting an area where British penetration was late and relatively peripheral, for example the former Native States (see Jain 1975a, 1979).

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‘Complex’ societies: history as boundary condition and rapprochement with sociology We earlier referred to the convergence in the 1950s between the structural-functional paradigm of British social anthropology and theoretical developments in American cultural anthropology (methodology for the study of ‘the little community’, ‘the folk-urban continuum’ and the ‘Great Tradition, Little Tradition’ interaction) as it began to influence, initially, the character of village studies in India. Following from this development, in the 1960s there were further theoretical shifts in social anthropological studies of India which, from the viewpoint of British social anthropology, were subsumed under the rubric, ‘the social anthropology of complex societies’(see Eisenstadt 1961; Banton 1966). We shall focus on two key features of this development, namely, the recognition of history as a boundary condition and increased rapprochement with sociological theory. We may begin by examining the bearing of this emergent paradigm on our heuristic definition of social anthropology which was given at the outset. As regards the objects of social anthropological enquiry, the focus was narrowed down on ‘societies’ while the cultural or civilisational dimensions were treated in a secondary capacity. Typical, for example, is the attitude of Bailey (1964) who disagreed fundamentally with an approach to social anthropological/sociological explanations ‘from culture’ but recognised that an elementary knowledge of Hindu culture and Hindu values was indispensable. Furthermore, the societies or ‘social fields’ (see later) which were now the main objects of description and analysis were not conceived to be primarily of the ‘non-modern type’; rather their earlier characterisations as ‘primitive’ or ‘traditional’ gave way to emphasising their ‘transitional’ character. As we shall see in respect of the manner in which the time dimension was built into models for the study of such transitional societies in continuity and change, neither the label ‘pre-modern’ nor ‘complex’ is quite appropriate to designate the class of objects for social anthropological study in terms of the new paradigm. If the former is obsolete, the latter is amorphous. As regards the ‘holistic’ nature of the units of study, one finds almost complete rupture between the functionalist view of societies and cultures perceived somehow as wholes given concretely in nature and progressively, the structural-functionalist view of holism as an analytical device, that is the theoretical conception of societies and cultures ‘as if’ they were wholes. In the new paradigm there is explicit recognition

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that the small social fields isolated for description and analysis, and approached by the anthropological technique of participant observation, are encapsulated in larger structures. Indeed the problem of ‘closure’ is discussed with considerable methodological sophistication (Gluckman 1964). Finally, the aim and method of anthropological comparisons undergo considerable revision and scaling down. The aim no longer is the discovery of general laws of social structure and functioning. As Barnes and Epstein 1961: 210) comment: For Radcliffe-Brown, the goal of social anthropology was the discovery of social laws. One of the reasons he remained lukewarm towards plans for tackling the study of complex societies was his expectation that regularities in social life which he believed to exist in tribal society would, of necessity, be absent in complex societies, or at least would be much harder to uncover. Despite Radcliffe-Brown’s assertion that few, if any, social laws have yet been established, there are many social anthropologists who still hope to find them, even in complex societies. Others of us are content to describe social life as perceptively as one can, without worrying too much about the discovery of social laws. The method of comparison as a process of cultural translation, as the subsuming of the particular under the general and the augmentation of the general by further study of the particular, is best seen in the dialectical relationship between description and analysis in anthropological practice. As Barnes and Epstein remark apropos Eisenstadt’s ‘sociological’ separation between description and analysis, ‘Indeed we would argue that description is “merely” analysis using yesterday’s categories, just as analysis is “merely” description in terms of tomorrow’s categories’. For a concrete application of this comparative procedure, see Barnes’s ‘African Models in the New Guinea Highlands’ (1962). Viewed from inside the discipline, the new paradigm of theory and method in social anthropology was fashioned in response to the altered study-situation. Initially the social anthropologists had studied islands and other small tribal communities in India, Australia, the South Seas and North America. Even when they moved to the larger tribes and nations of Africa they were still dealing with relatively isolated, and in a sense complete, societies. Later they began to study rural communities and villages in Europe, America and Asia, and factories and sets of relations such as peer-groups of adolescents in cities; here they 50

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were clearly dealing with subsystems or domains which are contained in large social systems. In conducting these studies, methodological debates concerning mechanisms of boundary maintenance and the relationship between micro-units and macrostructures were conspicuous by their absence. During the same period, when political and economic developments began to reduce the isolation of tribal communities, particularly as their members were drawn into towns and industrial employment, change was studied in terms of ‘culture-contact’, ‘acculturation’ and ‘detribalisation’. In one of the rare discussions of methodological issues raised by the new study-situations, that by Gluckman (1964) and his associates at Manchester University, it is still asserted that ‘an interest in custom (a composite of social interaction, belief and values) is the attribute, derived from its tradition, which social anthropology applies to small social fields’. This typification of social anthropological interest in the altered study-situation seems unduly biased in favour of continuity rather than change in the paradigm of the sixties, especially as it glosses over certain rediscovered continuities with sociological theory. The new paradigm of the sixties should not be thought of as a fullblown theoretical system. Indeed a striking feature here is the generation of ‘theories of the middle range’ applied within a ‘general orientation towards substantive materials’ (Merton 1958: 87–88). In concrete terms, the earlier ‘tight’ models of social structure and culture were abandoned. The traditional techniques and concepts did not suffice to deal with all the problems inherent in the material. New concepts were evolved and old ones refined. There was emphasis on sets of relationships and action patterns in situational contexts rather than on regulative mechanisms necessarily always embedded in concrete groups. While innovative borrowing from sociological theory was considerable, there was a good deal of linkages formed with other social science disciplines. The latter tendency was particularly marked in the growing specialisations within social anthropology – particularly the growth of political anthropology and economic anthropology as subdisciplines – and in progressive suppression of ‘total’ societal and cultural studies to thematic or institutional studies and, finally, to problem-oriented studies; most of the social anthropology studies of Indian society deriving from this trend have been listed by Yogendra Singh (1979: 301–304, ‘Structural Theoretical Orientation’). The specific tribal studies are listed by Vidyarthi (1979: 52–60). We may briefly glance at the distinctive contribution made through these conceptual innovations to the social anthropological analyses 51

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of Indian society. These analyses legitimately belong to the domain of ‘micro-sociology’, a term used early by Firth (1951) to designate method in social anthropology. F. G. Bailey’s monographic studies in Orissa (1957, 1960, 1963) exemplify the analytical utility of concepts like ‘summation of roles’ and ‘social field’. In a separate paper (Bailey 1962) he has also discussed these concepts in demonstrating the limitations of a solely structural explanation in social anthropology and the means of overcoming them. To illustrate, a tribal region can be comprehended by means of a single system of relationships and regarded as a single structure. This single structure is an abstract of all the different kinds of activities: for example, our description of ritual activities which link the several villages of a tribal region, will be found to be inextricably bound up with political activities, and will probably be expressed in the idiom of kinship. A single coherent set of values covers all the relevant fields of activity. All activities – ritual, political, kinship – have the same boundary since, in a sense, they are one unspecialised activity. Translated in terms of relationships, the lack of specialised activities leads to multiple relationships: a single relationship carries many interests. Alternatively, we may say that there is a high degree of summation of roles (Nadel 1957). In the study of caste village also, broadly the same set of concepts will be found applicable. However, the moment we come to deal with relationships which pass between one multi-caste village and another, the various activities involve a partially different universe of people and the relationships are not multiple but specialised and single-interest: there is a low degree of summation of roles. Finally one cannot fit any single structure over this larger field and pretend that it has an explanatory value. For Bailey, the crucial point in this distinction is that the conventional conceptual framework of social anthropology can deal satisfactorily with the former type of social system – with structures – but has not yet found an explanatory framework to deal with the second type of social system. ‘Indeed, we are not even justified in calling it a system, for we do not know that every part is linked with every other part; it is for this reason that the vague concept of a social “field” is used’ (Bailey 1962: 260). In a structural analysis, explanation consists in showing how conflicts are contained and prevented from changing the structure. In a social field different types of activity do not fit over one another – they may be more or less insulated from one another or they may contradict and bring about change. The concept of ‘social field’ as contrasted with that of ‘structure’ is used by Bailey to characterise the distinction between ‘complex’ and ‘simple’ societies. In his analysis of 52

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social change in Orissa villages he constructs an ideal-type baseline of the ‘traditional’ caste system characterised by summation of roles and discerns the process of transition in terms of a transformed model of social field in which most relationships are specialised and singleinterest and there is a low degree of summation of roles. There is no historical analysis proper of this change, because history is treated as a boundary condition in the model both of structure and social field, but in two different ways: the structure as baseline is set up as an ideal ‘or, less cautiously . . . an antecedent state of affairs’ (Bailey 1962: 261). The time dimension in the ‘social field’ enters processually, that is as a syndrome of social action over time, described and analysed as ‘events’ in the course of extended participant observation of the activities of the people. Bailey, it seems, recognises the self-imposed limits of his structural analysis in delivering linear, historical change. The emphasis in such analysis is rather on elements of continuity in the changed situation. Thus Bailey (1962: 274) says, In our research into complex sectors of society, we have to behave as if in fact our chosen sectors were a simple society. We have to ask to what degree are apparently specialized singleinterest relationships in fact multiple relationships, and, secondly . . . to what extent do the different single-interest relationships, which are linked through the role relationship under observation, affect one another. For example, to what extent is the politician’s behaviour influenced by ties of caste or kinship? . . . There is no single structural framework to fit over a complex society. The different kinds of activity – political, economic or religious – do not have the same boundary. But they do overlap with one another, and it is in this area of overlap that the possibility of our making a significant contribution to the understanding of complex society exists. Another pair of concepts evolved to analyse ‘complex’ societies in the sense understood by Bailey is that of ‘social network’ and ‘action-set’. For example, Mayer (1962, 1966) who graduated from a village study to a ‘village-outward’ study to one which he labelled ‘town-outward’ in the Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh. Mayer (1962: 269) recognised in the village study itself the need of the concept of field in ‘an attempt to solve the problem of studying a complex society, in which there is no single system which subsumes all of a village population’s social relations. It is an attempt to distinguish the actual and potential 53

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ties of the villagers with the outside in various frames of reference. The extent of a field is imprecise, and depends on individual decision, but even if another term is thought better, the study of rural India seems to demand a concept of this kind’. In his ‘town-outward’ study, still employing the anthropological technique of intensive fieldwork, Mayer chose to concentrate on a relatively small area of activity, namely, the political process. Refining the field concept in this particular context, Mayer (1962) posited that the political acts of the individual occur in one or more of three fields: (i) as the member of a primary group, for example the Dewas Congress Working Committee or the Dewas Municipality, in which there is faceto-face contact, (ii) as a member of an extended group, for example the Dewas Congress Party and (iii) ‘as a component of what might, following Barnes (1954), be called a network. This is a social field, the units of which “do not make up a larger social whole; they are not surrounded by a common boundary” (Bott 1957: 53–59). Both Barnes and Bott (Barnes 1954: 43;Bott 1957: 93–94) distinguish between the “total network” and the part of it composed of kin, neighbours, and friends. I would go slightly further, and suggest a distinction of different networks according to these frames of reference (e.g., political, caste and kinship) all being parts of the total network.’ Although Mayer’s own interest as a student of political process is in the political network, that is as a field of potential relations of an uncoordinated kind in the political frame of reference, he also refers to parallel conceptualisation in the kinship frame of reference. The kinship network would be an unbounded residual context of interaction within the bounded subcaste. It should be firmly held in mind that ‘social networks’ comprise of links between persons in society. From a morphological point of view, the anchorage of the network is most conveniently taken to be an individual. Interactionally, writers like Mayer have laid emphasis on the content of the links in personal networks. (For a discussion of the characteristics of networks see Mitchell 1969.) Most writers have used the notion of personal networks to analyse their field material in relation to two different problems. The first of these relates to the flow of communication through networks, especially in relation to the definition of norms. A second way in which personal networks have been used is illustrated by Mayer’s (1966) conception of an ‘action-set’ as a special kind of instrumentally activated personal network. In other words Mayer analyses the use that people make of network linkages in order to achieve desired ends. Here the linkages are used for the flow of goods and services rather than the flow of information. 54

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This type of network, called the ‘action-set’ comprises a certain number of linkages existing in the total network in a community which may be mobilised for a specific and limited purpose. This mobilisation implies some transaction between the person at the centre of the action-set (in this case the candidate seeking election) and the persons in the action-set. In Mayer’s words: ‘This transactional element distinguishes action-set linkage from network linkage’ (Mayer, 1966: 122). In terms of the specific situation that Mayer describes the transactional elements were in particular what he calls ‘patronage’ and ‘brokerage’. In patronage the support is bartered for some specific promise: the resources had to be husbanded and awarded to influential people who would bring many votes with them. Brokerage on the other hand meant mediating between a person in the action-set and some other person with whom the candidate has special contacts. Mayer outlines the characteristics of the Dewas electoral action-set as follows: (a) many different outgoing links were mobilised but the incoming relationships were all the same, namely, electoral support; (b) the links were sometimes based on group membership, for example members of the wrestling gymnasium or a group of religious worshippers, but they might have been distant kinship or caste membership. Some links were between employer and employee, creditor-debtor or storekeeper-customer; (c) it contains intermediaries or paths of linkages leading out from ego; (d) it is a bounded entity, unlike the total network. It ends with the voters in the ward; and finally (e) it is not a permanent entity, it exists only until the election. Noteworthy conceptual refinements of the concepts of social network and action-set have been made in relation to the analyses of fielddata from transitional situations studied first-hand by sociologists and social anthropologists of India. Srinivas and Beteille made an important methodological point in illuminating the relationship between the institutional structure of a community and the total network. From viewing the concrete network of interpersonal relations of a number of individual actors, we have been led to talk about networks pertaining to different institutional areas. Such networks in a complex society cut across the boundaries of communities and corporate groups, and in fact, serve to articulate them to wider social systems. And once we shift from the individual actor and his network of concrete interpersonal relations to the productive system and its corresponding networks we move from ‘subjective’ network of the actor to the ‘objective’ one of the observer (Srinivas and Beteille 1964: 167). K.N. Sharma showed through his detailed village study in North India how ‘the resource networks and resource groups are a product 55

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of the “field” which has arisen between the traditional collectivities, on the one hand, which are becoming ineffective in fulfilling the interests of individuals and the formal organizations, on the other, which have been injected into the structure without clear-cut definition and acceptance of roles of authorities in these organizations, but which, nevertheless, affect the people vitally’ (Sharma 1977: 185). Mark Holmstrom followed Mayer up to a point in analysing municipal election in an ‘urban-village’ of Bangalore, South India, in terms of transactionally oriented action-sets but extended the range of reasons for joining an action-set as transactional or interested, ideological or relatively disinterested and mixed. ‘This would extend the concept’s explanatory range by allowing us to compare action-sets composed, either throughout or in certain areas (central or peripheral), of links of one type or the other’ (Holmstrom 1969: 78). Finally, we should note the powerful impact which concepts like the ones discussed above have made on methods of data collection in fieldwork. Although the full potential of ‘the extended case-method’ (see van Velsen 1967) is still to be realised in the analytical description by the Indianist social anthropologists (for partial exceptions, see, Bailey 1957, 1960; Jain 1970), situational analysis has become a standard procedure in Indian ethnography. In a recent analysis of industrial entrepreneurs in Faridabad township near Delhi, M.N. Panini has cogently demonstrated the superior value of collecting meaningful data by means of networks as against the conventional method of sample survey (Panini 1977).

Historical change: the ‘Neo-Episodic’ cognition of time ‘Classic social science . . .’, observed C. Wright Mills, ‘neither “builds up” from microscopic study nor “deduces down” from conceptual elaboration . . . (It takes up) substantive problems on the historical level of reality’ (Mills 1959: 128; emphasis added). Conceptual developments in social anthropology discussed in the previous section represent attempts to come to grips with substantive problems in transitional societies but the manner in which this ‘transition’ is conceived, devoid of macrolevel historical specificity, leaves much to be desired in the analysis of social situations ‘where key decisions are taken outside the milieu; where “commanding heights” exist; where the decisions may be taken by remote elites rather than by men in face-to-face relationships; where the decisions may be imposed and one-sided’ (Worsley 1961: 219). There is growing awareness among contemporary social anthropologists not to read off history as a mere boundary condition, as was done 56

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for example by the social anthropologists of the Manchester School in distinguishing between historical change and situational change (Mitchell 1966: 44) and by confining their analyses only to the latter. As Worsley argued apropos the limited perspectives of anthropologists studying ‘complex’ societies, field studies in rapidly changing societies require a basic understanding of the manner in which these societies are closely affected by the growing interdependence of the world, and concepts are required to analyse processes of change that are highly specific to particular types of social formation and to particular phases of social development. If social anthropology is not to be reduced to the status of a mere technique of studying limited milieu within an unexamined general social framework, it needs to forge linkages with sociology and related social sciences. It is not a matter of chance that it was a social ­anthropologist-turned-sociologist, Peter Worsley who produced the first comparative study of emergent nations of the Third World, all affected by the universal phenomenon of colonialism in structurally homologous ways (Worsley 1964). With considerable time-lag, a similar tendency has appeared among Indianist scholars, namely, Gough (1977) and Saberwal (1974, 1979). Saberwal’s recent work is strongly oriented in the direction of social history. On the other hand, the study of colonial transformation of the tribal society in Middle India by the historian, K.S. Singh, draws significantly on the framework of anthropological theory (Singh, K. S. 1978). It is a mark of the maturity and integrity of contemporary Indian anthropologists specialising in tribal studies that they have stubbornly refused to be enticed by imported analytical models derived from historically and culturally specific situations. The historically specific reality of caste-tribe relations in India, for example, has been studied both synchronically and diachronically. At the same time, however, the anthropological approach has not been abjectly capitulated to social history. A good example is Surajit Sinha’s study of the process of tribal integration into regional capsules under the superstructure of small states often headed by tribal derived Rajput chiefs (Sinha 1962). In subsequent years, considerable attention has been given to the periodisation and classification of tribal movements (Mahapatra 1972; Sinha 1972; Roy Burman 1974). What we mean by adherence to an anthropological perspective in these studies is well illustrated by the concern for recording ethnohistory and assimilating it into the interpretation of linear social change. We have earlier pointed out that the ethnohistorical dimension in the Bose model of tradition seems unduly biased in favour of the Brahminical ideals. A consequence of this has been the ease with which his approach to tribe-caste interactions 57

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can be seen to fall in line with portmanteau culturological models of ‘Great Tradition, Little Tradition’ and ‘Sanskritisation’. As Surajit Sinha argues and illustrates: There is an underlying assumption in Bose’s proposition that, on the whole, this process of slow integration provided the tribes with sufficient economic, social and cultural security as not to generate large-scale rebellion. My own impression is that in spite of this general pattern of harmony the tribals are not without an awareness that they were looked down upon and given a low status. It is not for nothing that the Kharia (Savar) of Purulia have a myth that the Brahmans stole the sacred thread from them and, therefore, although they ate beef and accepted food from some of the lowest Hindu castes they do not do so from the Brahmans. (Sinha 1972: 413) The assimilation of ethnohistory with the study of linear social change is not easily achieved. It means, in effect, the construction of an anthropological vision of history. In this connection it is worth citing at length from B. K. Roy Burman’s critique of tribal ethnography (1968–1972) reported in a survey undertaken by L. P. Vidyarthi (Roy Burman, typescript n.d.): Vidyarthi’s survey shows a singular lack of awareness among the ethnographers of the global upsurge of ethnicity among the historical tribal societies. Though the anthropologists continue to swear by comparative method, there is little evidence of the same in the treatment of the tribal societies vis-à-vis the nation societies. But why? There should be a serious heart-searching. When the methodology is twisted whom do we really serve? Can the limitations be overcome if scholars belonging to other disciplines, history or economics for instance, are encouraged to write on tribal ethno-history, ethno-economy and so on? But the historians or economic historians also do not appear to have risen Minerva-like full-grown messengers of new hope. Certainly they have an edge over the anthropologists, in perceiving the epochal dimensions of the tribal situations. But they have their own biases and stereotypes. They are guided by their insight derived from the non-tribal societies in interpreting the historical evidence in respect to the tribal societies. There is a danger of tribal studies moving into another 58

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blind alley. One of the barren frames of analysis is the transformation of the tribes into peasants. Certainly this is what had happened in the archaic civilisations, or in the feudal politics of Europe. At that time, the only advanced technique of production available to the tribals was settled agriculture; and the market relationship that ensued telescoped into a relationship of subjugation to centres of political power. But is it true today? Even in an incompletely industrialising country like India, agriculture is inextricably linked up with world industrial network; the ethos of industrial democracy is very much in the air. Besides, the welfare state operates to diversify livelihood pattern of the population. The tribes therefore do not just become peasants; they become multinucleated social entities, without losing their distinct identities. They become proto-nations. Without sensitising themselves about these historical realities, the ethnographers of tribal societies are writing about the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation. Obviously the stereotypes and myths which have come to be associated with the frameworks of little tradition-great tradition, sanskritisation, urbanisation, industrialisation and so on, could not have continued unchallenged had methodologies of research received more meticulous care. Ironically enough, it is the same methodologies of research, and particularly the comparative method of social anthropology, whose lack in Indian ethnography Roy Burman deplores, that come up for the most severe criticism by those who have moved farthest away from the Neolithic and the Medieval to what we may call, after Gellner (1964: Chapter 2), the Neo-Episodic cognition of time. Ideology cannot, in the end, be kept out of social science methodology: the social anthropologist/sociologist interprets phenomenal reality in relation to whether he stands primarily for the primitive, the traditional or the transitional (industrialisation and nationalism) and how he relates the one to the other two. His vantage point sets inexorable limits to the practice of sociological explanation and understanding as cultural translation.

Epilogue: alternative voices in anthropology Let me begin with the trite observation that there is now a unity of the social sciences, more so in an age where the globalisation of infrastructures has to be accompanied by – if not already there – a globalisation of the mind. Second, the old chestnut of a disjunction between theory 59

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and application in the social sciences (not to speak of a heuristic separation) has to be discarded. Third, agency, subjectivity, reflexivity and pro activity have come to stay in our apprehension of social reality. Bearing on these matters, there is a pithy observation of my social anthropological mentors at the Australian National University, where I was a doctoral student more than half-a-century ago: ‘Description is analysis in yesterday’s categories and analysis is description in tomorrow’s categories’ (Barnes and Epstein 1961). Fourth, though a point in anthropology and sociology as old as the hills, we must look at dynamics and change, conflict as well as cohesion. An approach with this awareness would also enable us avoid reifications and essentialisms in analysis. Finally, I would like to say a few words on the necessity of problematisation to move beyond defining the phenomena for the sake of definitions (often purportedly of universal application). This is my preamble to the problematic of locating alternative voices in anthropology. The need to hear and record alternative voices in anthropology arises from the ideological hegemony so far of the dominant and dominating Euro-American voices in the subject. There can be no social science without an ideological underpinning. As I shall explain in greater detail a little later, there is need to weave something normative or ideal in our problematisation. Here, surely the ideology of the researcher raises its head, and we shall have to confront it frontally, by doing what Gunnar Myrdal (1944) suggested years ago, namely, by making our implicit assumptions and biases open and explicit. The second manoeuvre that I would suggest for taking ideology on board along with our methodology is a thorough contextualisation of the problem at hand. This too is nothing new but merits iteration because the parameters of this preliminary step have changed – our contextualisation today demands ‘glocalisation’, to use a somewhat inelegant but useful term. The defining of and a reliance upon context that is spatio-­temporally bound needs a philosophical justification in any endeavour that claims to be scientific. An early framework for setting scientific activity in socio-cultural anthropology was provided by Radcliffe-Brown (1952) when he distinguished between idiographic and nomothetic enquiries. According to Radcliffe-Brown, ‘In an idiographic enquiry the purpose is to establish as acceptable certain particular or factual propositions or statements. A nomothetic enquiry, on the contrary, has for its purpose to arrive at acceptable general propositions.’ Radcliffe-Brown went on to say, ‘We define the nature of an enquiry by the kind of conclusions that are aimed at.’ This rider is where we part company with RadcliffeBrown, for, as theoretical and methodological advances in anthropology have shown incontrovertibly that there is a deep-seated complementarity 60

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between idiographic and nomothetic enquiries or, to simplify, between history and theory. This should have been clear to anyone who would speculate on the ethnographic base of social anthropology, something that E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1962), for example, showed brilliantly in conceiving social anthropology as a kind of historiography and the purpose of comparison in it as cultural translation to illumine design and structure rather than general propositions in imitation of natural science. Moving further ahead in the same direction – and taking into account the postmodern condition of contemporary social studies – there can be no definite teleology in the systemic study of society and culture, much less the reduction of a presumed teleology to tautology, as in most Cartesian and ‘official’ versions of positivistic social science. We must guard against throwing the baby away with bathwater, however, or, to wit, erase from our comprehension the valuable distinction – and complementarity – between idiographic and nomothetic modes of enquiry. What I am suggesting now is that whereas the ‘glocalised’ contexts of our problematic in socio-cultural anthropology today are to be conceived idiographically, (the relationship between the text and the context for the ethnographic fieldworker becomes highly contingent), the methodologies of comparison, abstraction and verification, as in various models provided by language, and hence structuralism, phenomenology, etc., remain nomothetic. This is precisely the cusp where the debate about ‘indigenisation’ of anthropology is located. To hark back to what I said earlier, let us make as explicit as possible the biases, constraints, norms and ideals which undergird the formulation of problematic (namely, gender equality, freedom of speech, eradication of poverty, repulsion of violence and racism etc., see Bilgrami 2012). But let us also not forget to delineate in as great a detail as possible the context – geographical, ecological, historical, cultural, political, economical etc., – in which the problematic are set. The solutions, on the other hand, would have to, by scientific necessity, be cast in the framework of nomothetic enquiry. By distinguishing, at this level, between idiographic and nomothetic research-endeavour, we shall also circumvent, if not resolve or dissolve, the crisis of representation that is a nagging issue in humanistic epistemologies (see, Clifford and Marcus 1986; Radhakrishnan 1996, 2007). Our alternative voices thus will not be based on jettisoning, rather than retaining, nomothetically, the trajectories of prevailing voices. But what is the value addition that ‘alternative voices’ give to anthropology? And here I refer to a position taken by me via the route of diaspora studies (in which I have been engaged for over half a century now) in distinguishing between what I call ‘(non-modern) civilisations’ 61

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(see Dumont 1964a, 1975) and ‘settlement societies’ (Jain 2010). Put simply, the contrast between the two terms in the context of Indian diaspora, historically speaking, is between the point of emigration for modern South Asian diasporics, that is their home territories (in this case the Indic civilisation) and that of immigration, that is, host societies which I have designated as ‘settlement societies’. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, using the term ‘non modern’ to characterise the Indic civilisation enables us to posit a kind of neutral ground from which to distinguish between processes of modernity and modernisation (based on interculturation and acculturation, respectively; discussed a little later). Also from this vantage point we can incorporate instances of the so-called modernisation of tradition (Singh 1973) and invention of modernity (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) in contemporary modernity. Further, a neutral startingpoint remains sensitive to a post-modernist non-teleological perspective in contrast to most modernist formulations of social change. An additional methodological gain would be the un-yoking of the recent isomorphic binary ideologies (‘West and the Rest’; colonisers and the colonised) of conventional anthropological interpretations and hegemonic nation-states (Herzfeld 1987). There has always been a two-way interaction between civilisations and settlement societies. Also, this is methodologically important; the distinction and relationship between the two notions is heuristic. Empirically, the past history of civilisations would be marked by a settlement society’s configuration and the present as well as future evolution of settlement societies, as we all know, is characterised by a modern, technologically advanced and post-industrial civilisation. In terms of cultural dynamics neither of the types is stuck at the historical dividing line (say AD 1492 in the case of North America). And yet the settlement society concept is also a device to control the entropy of the civilisational ideal often expressed in the reincarnation of the antiquated nineteenth-century belief that contemporary civilisations represent the acme of all human development and progress. The grandiose concept of civilisation – both modern and non-modern – is thus moderated and restrained by the notion of settlement society. At the same time, however, the aggrandisement of settlement societies that have grown into modern civilisations, as opposed to the ‘non modern’ ones, also cries out for justice; sample George W. Bush’s neo-­ colonialism (ironically in precisely the areas – Iraq and Iran – that were the cradle of non-modern civilisations). Before moving to a brief critical assessment of anthropological studies of non-modern civilisations in transition from what I called value 62

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addition through alternative voices, let me begin with a simple but comprehensive definition of anthropology that I gave in 1985 and which has, to the best of my knowledge, gone unchallenged so far. I wrote: ‘The aim of socio-cultural anthropology, a discipline emerging in the West, is the holistic comparative understanding of societies, cultures and civilisations that are primarily of the “non modern” type’ (Jain 1985). Let me state at the outset that this is a working definition and a ‘classical’ paradigmatic one. Empirically, the characteristic ‘non modern’ has been transformed beyond recognition. Even in the 1960s anthropologists started talking of ‘complex societies’; convergences with other social science disciplines, especially with sociology, became increasingly unavoidable as anthropologists studied street-corner societies, industrial and urban situations, large-scale migrations, diasporas etc. But in terms of its theoretical orientations and techniques of study something of the legacy of small-scale, face-to-face societies and of ‘custom’ as Gluckman (1964) put it, remained the hallmark of anthropological studies. And, in fact, these techniques were carried over into complex fields; thus today in the anthropological practices of ‘multi-sited ethnography’ (Olwig and Hastrup 1997) and ‘cultural intimacy’ (Herzfeld 2005) a new retort is being heard. While the self-styled sociologists called theirs ‘a bird’s eye view’ and the anthropologists’ ‘a worm’s eye view’, anthropological students of diaspora reply that they take ‘a jet’s eye view’ of socio-cultural reality. Sample the beginnings in AD 2000 of the transnational studies journal Global Networks by Blackwell, Oxford, edited initially by the anthropologist Steven Vertovec. Let me now retrace my steps and consider what the present and future anthropologists may contribute to the study of civilisations, initially of the ‘non-modern’ type, in many Asian countries. I begin with the Indic civilisation and the Great Tradition-little traditions interaction conceptualised by the Chicago school of anthropology. It would seem valid to say that during a process of interaction between the great tradition and several little traditions over the millennia, a civilisation like India cannot be said to lack a common will, that is in contrast to the colonial plural societies of J.S. Furnivall’s (1948) conception. The self-same religious, architectural, anthropomorphic and social structural patterns and symbols recur in India as a ‘palimpsest’ (Lannoy 1971) that may be predominantly ‘Hindu’ in origin but which effectively cut across religious, communal, ethnic and caste boundaries. As such, what Cohn (1971) characterises as the study of cultural communication in understanding the Indian civilisation was initially helped by the concepts of great tradition and little traditions and of universalisation and parochialisation of culture (Marriott 1955; 63

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Singer 1972). In a cultural historical framework, the longue duree of civilisation distinguishes it from the short timespan of settlement societies. Besides the former having a sort of common cultural will, it also enables a ­synthesis of various disparate cultural elements which is a ‘blend’ rather than a mere ‘mixture’. (The symbiosis and syncretism between Muslim and non-Muslim cultures in India are an evidence of this process.) This, in cultural terms, seems to be the relationship between India and Bangladesh, though their citizenships are distinct. At the conceptual level, however, even the above-stated anthropological paradigms are ideographic rather than nomothetic or, to use linguistically derived epistemological categories, remain ‘paradigmatic’ rather than ‘syntagmatic’ (Ardener 1971). Even as cultural history, there are two main criticisms of the particular way in which the process of cultural communication has been conceptualised by the anthropologists of the Chicago school. First, though lip service is paid to the mutual interaction between the great tradition and little traditions, in fact, the former is treated as hegemonic over the latter. The difficulty seems to be that in this cultural historical civilisational teleology, acculturation, which is an asymmetrical and hegemonic process has been emphasised over and above ‘interculturation’, which is arguably a much more powerful and prevalent symmetrical process over time (Jain 1986). A critique of the ‘sanskritisation’ process of cultural change in India is that a number of protest movements were simultaneously active during the last 100 years of Indian history than the movements of change with lower castes imitating the cultural practices of the higher castes that the process of sanskritisation implies. The second big gap in the culturally asymmetric paradigm of cultural change in India is that politico-economic factors of change, namely, those involved in building the Indian nation (in the last 200 years) and the Indian State (in the last seventy years) are completely obfuscated. It would pay analytical dividends to initially demonstrate the isomorphism between hegemonic anthropological and nation-state paradigms and then unravel their contingent relations empirically in ethnographic contextual arenas. As regards protest movements, we have contributions on the profound impact of the Ambedkarite and other protesting Dalit movements in contemporary India. The problematic of the nation-state ideology and practice in contemporary Indian society is more complex. There have been thinkers such as Gandhi and Tagore who were wedded to the truly authentic non-modern (i.e. inimical, as it turns out, to the Westphalian Treaty European paradigm of nation-state formation, see Bilgrami 2012) idea of civilisation and/or nation. Then there 64

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were ideologues like Savarkar – Hindu fundamentalists – who were staunch advocates of the majoritarian religion-based Hindu nationstate in India. It is salutary to probe, critically, these tendencies, which had been obscured by the ethnocentrism implied in the imposition of a dominant and secularist Euro-American nation-state paradigm for Asian countries. Finally, in any discourse on alternative voices, there would be a need to highlight the interpretive significance of oral and literary sources in the anthropological analysis of societies (see Jain 1977b for an early intimation of this approach). These efforts, let it be said, are geared in the first place to innovate and augment idiographic studies but they presage important paradigmatic value additions in the nomothetic aspect as well. The incorporation of textual data in the body of contextual analyses also conforms to the imperatives of a discursive or discourse-centred approach in social anthropology as stated in Chapter 1.

Note 1 This chapter is partly based on ‘Social Anthropology of India: Theory and Method’, in J. V. Ferreira (ed), Survey of Research in Sociology and Social Anthropology1969–1979, pp.  1–50 (New Delhi: Satvahan, 1985) and ‘Inaugural Address: Anthropological Locus of Alternative Voices’, in Ajit K. Danda and Rajat K. Das (eds), Alternative Voices of Anthropology, pp. 8–16(Kolkata: Indian Anthropological Society, 2012). Used with permission.

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3 ANTHROPOLOGY AND DIASPORA STUDIES Comparative perspective1

*** Modern Indian diaspora began in the third decade of the nineteenth century. In geopolitical terms it can be divided into the following zones: the Southeast Asian zone, the South West Indian Ocean (Mauritius, Reunion, Madagascar and South and East Africa), the South Pacific (Fiji, Australia and New Zealand), the Caribbean (especially Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname), the North American (­Canada and the United States), the European (United Kingdom and other European countries) and the Gulf. It numbers about twentyfive to thirty million people. It is a valid question whether this diaspora can be thought of in singular or plural terms because, on the one hand, it is transnational, the whole of the South Asian subcontinent being the unified point of emigration, and, on the other hand, it is subnational or regional (hence the Telugu, Malayalee, Tamilian, Gujarati, Sikh or Punjabi diaspora from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal). The multiplicity is compounded if we look at the time periods (e.g. ­nineteenth- and twentieth-century diasporas), the voluntary or involuntary motivations of migration, the sex ratios involved and the occupational categories (labour, white collar, business, service etc.). Further complications arise if we take into account the present-day Government of India classification of the Indian people abroad: the NRIs (Non-Resident Indians), those Indians abroad who either currently hold or have ever held an Indian passport and the PIOs (Persons of Indian Origin) who are citizens of countries other than India but have had Indian progenitors up until certain generations (in this case up to four). However cutting across all of these classifications, including that between the elementary and complex structures (Jain 2002a), is the conceptual and analytical unity of the Indian diaspora, as indeed of all diasporas (including African, Chinese and Jewish), as a ‘diaspora 66

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space’ (cf.Brah 1996: 208–210). Concretely, this diasporic space is evidenced, for example, in the twice-thrice or multiple migrations or the foot-loose character of Indian and other diasporas. Beyond history, geography and government policy in relation to motherland and fatherland societies, on the one side, and host countries, on the other, in comparative and analytical terms the diaspora as a third space may also be constructed in terms of three parameters or contexts: the personal trajectory of the analyst, the national location or locations of emigration and immigration of the populations involved and the international settings which have affected the nature of diasporas throughout contemporary history (cf. Wang 1999; Jain 1994b; Helweg 1986). In this respect, a preliminary comparison of the broad characteristics of African, Chinese and Indian diasporas is interesting. (The Jewish case is, in some respects, sui generis in the sense that a telos for Jewish diasporic urges has been found in the third space as the new nation-state of Israel.) Although there is still a continuing African diaspora in that people of African origin continue to migrate, say, from the West Indies to United Kingdom and United States, and similarly there are migratory inter-island movements in the Caribbean and beyond, yet if one were looking at the origins of African diaspora, especially to the New World, it was intrinsically related to the history of slavery and slave trade. In this diaspora both as a matter of history and of perceptions of that history the emigrant population was effectively cut off from the taproots of mother societies as is evidenced, for example, in the almost total loss of African languages in the diaspora. If we make a distinction between diaspora networks and the ‘diasporic imaginary’ (Mishra 1995; Mckeown 1999: 322), the former are almost totally lacking in the African case and in spite of this, or perhaps aided and abetted by this omission, the diasporic imaginary as evidenced in the ‘negritude’ ideology is put to high relief. The Rastafarian linkage of Africans in the Caribbean, for example, with the Ethiopian charismatic figure of Haile Selassie or the continuance of Shango cults in the diaspora are perhaps more palpable though still largely ideological linkages. What is remarkable about this continuity is its ecumenical homogeneity, including ‘black is beautiful’ and common cultic manifestations as in the Rastafarian movement, everywhere. Just as in the case of Haile Selassie, whose individual charisma is the dominant modality, is the haunting of the African diaspora by the Jamaican figure of Bob Marley’s legend and music. It is interesting to note that the Chinese diaspora space the world over is much more concrete, and network-oriented. Mckeown 1999, for example, makes an excellent distinction between earlier Chinese 67

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diasporic ‘sun’s rays’ networks and later ‘cobweb’ ones. The Chinatown in the diasporic space everywhere from Vancouver to Sydney to Calcutta is a middle-class business-oriented location in stark contrast to the Harlem ghetto of the Blacks (cf. Anderson 1993). This is because the process of Chinese diaspora, in contrast to the slave trade–regulated African diaspora and the colonialism-constrained Indian diaspora, has been autonomous rather than shepherded. It has also responded to a zigzag rather than linear or cyclical (as in the case of the Jewish) temporal movement in relation to the motherland. Wang Gungwu (1999), for instance, traces the fascinating trajectory of the Chinese diaspora being a sojourn (huaqiao) in the beginning, with shades of discontinuity or accent on adaptation to different environments (huarenor huayi) in the middle, to a return to the sojourn conceptualisation (huaqiao) in the wake of contemporary capitalist development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Why we look upon this trajectory as a zigzag rather than cyclical is because the relations between overseas Chinese territories including Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the PRC had been conflictual for a long interim period right up to the present. Shades of huaren or huayi (adaptation to different environments) have thus existed all through the contemporary history of Chinese diaspora. From the PRC point of view, the outlying Chinese territories have appeared during the Maoist Cultural Revolution as a fifth column. Hence, it is not ideological or cultic cement, nor is it the ‘diasporic imaginary’, but concrete networks of surname associations, secret societies, banking operations and Kapitan-recruited groups of workers with shades of such groups being recruited even today from the PRC to export processing zones in Malaysia and Mauritius2 that have been the hallmark of Chinese diasporas. If one were to make a comparative matrix of the three diasporas, the African, Chinese and Indian, along the criteria of the diasporic imaginary (A) and the diasporic network (B), the result would appear somewhat as given in Table 3.1: Table 3.1  Diasporic Matrix Diaspora

African Chinese Indian

Criteria A: Diasporic Imaginary

B: Diasporic Network

+ – +

– + +

(Source: By author)

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Given the two pluses, the overdetermination of ‘Indian-ness’ in the Indian diaspora is noteworthy. However, a closer examination of the nature of A and B in the Indian and Chinese cases is instructive. The first factor to emphasise is the difference in the history of the two diasporic nodes. As already mentioned, the autonomous character of Chinese diaspora is in contrast to the colonial character of Indian diaspora. Colonial constraints marked the recruitment, ideological (e.g. nationalism) and even the post-colonial preferences and adaptations to various locales globally in the Indian case. Thus, the unity and continuity of the English language, for example, a repository of much current diasporic writing in English by Indian expatriates, stands in stark contrast to the Chinese preferences for their own language and dialects. Hence, paradoxically enough, while Indian diasporas are ethnically heterogeneous they appear continuous and unified, thanks to the colonial heritage of the English language. The Chinese diasporas, on the other hand, precisely because of the lack of an ideological unity (witness the minus status of their diasporic imaginary) are homogenous in their characteristics of network formations. Thus, the unity of the diasporic imaginary in the Indian case is parallel to the unity of the diasporic network among the Chinese. Conversely, the heterogeneity of the diasporic imaginary of the Chinese is parallel to the heterogeneity of the diasporic networks among the Indians (namely, there are Gujarati, Sikh, Telugu, Tamil etc., networks which, by and large, do not cut across each other). Since the nostalgia of the diaspora is a crucial defining element (cf. Safran 1991), the ‘Indian’ diasporic imaginary in Indian diaspora leads to the overdetermination of concern with Indian-ness. This is the reason why, in the case of even second- and third-generation Indian youth in the diaspora, it is not Americanisation or Westernisation that is strikingly obvious. Instead, we have developments such as the children and grandchildren of Gujarati Patels many of whom own motels in middle America wish to study Sanskrit at Harvard or in the movie, My son, the Fanatic it is the UK-born Muslim young man who is irresistibly drawn to Islamic fundamentalists while his India-born father is conspicuously liberal and pragmatic. The above-stated comparative matrix may help set at rest certain dilemmas and doubts that arise in regard to the kind of Indian cultural inputs relevant for Indian diasporics. Let us take the specific case of Singapore. Gopinathan and Saravanan (2000) discuss the findings of a Tamil Language Review Committee, established in 1999 by the Minister of Education. An advisory committee headed by an Indian MP justified the need for Tamil speaking elite so that they 69

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may understand and appreciate Indian values, culture and worldview and, importantly, understand and view the modern world from an Indian perspective. Our authors go on to say, ‘while one can point to some success with regard to the maintenance and spread of Tamil in Singapore’s Indian population only a tentative judgment can be made with regard to cultural activity’ (p. 7). To my mind, the situation in Singapore is typical of variations in multiculturalism as an instrument of the nation-state policies. The Singaporean selection of Tamil for state support stems from the imposition of a Chinese linguistic model upon the Indian diasporic population. When our authors raise two connected issues, ‘it is not clear what aspects of Tamil culture are to be appropriated for use in Singapore’ and second, ‘how is one to understand the call to understand and view the modem world from an Indian perspective’ (p. 8), they are giving the game away. First, in the views of our authors there is an unfortunate disjuncture between language and culture; as we know from cross-cultural diasporic experience the two act hand in glove. Second, Tamil and ‘Indian’ are being used interchangeably. The fallout of these emphases, if not blind spots, in the appraisal of the progress of Tamils in Singapore, is that the needs and desires of the Indian youth (including the Tamilian ethnic group) remain unaddressed. As for remedies, I suggest that (a) we shift the emphasis from the elites to the youth, (b) we encompass the Tamil ethnic group into the Indian and (c) for pedagogical purposes we shift the emphasis from Tamil to English. Before I come to the specific plans in this direction of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) experiment, let me dilate a little more on the lessons to be learnt from the sociological study of the Indian diaspora, in general. This would further focus on the specifics of the Indian diasporic experience to supplement what has been said above about the comparative matrix of African, Chinese and Indian diasporas. One may attempt to do what Professor Wang Gungwu has done admirably for the Chinese diaspora that is to crystallise a pattern based on the personal trajectory of the analyst, the national factors as they impinge on both the diasporic and home situations and the changing character of international relations within which diasporic identities are set. To set up a rough paradigm, I would postulate vertical and lateral axes of the Indian diasporic processes. The former refer to the homeland/host society’s relations and the latter to the interdiaspora relations. If one studies contemporary history backwards, certain characteristics of Indian diaspora and settlement today can be taken up and explained as parts of processes happening yesterday. 70

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To illustrate the dynamics at the vertical axis, we may examine certain specific continuities and discontinuities that result from a ‘double synchronic picture’ (Dumont 1964b: 9). First, regarding the continuities, there is cultural persistence from home to host societies (cf. Klass 1961). There are contacts between the personnel of the two locations (Vertovec 1989). There is a burgeoning middle class both in India today and, among Indians in the diasporas, both old and new (Jain 1998a), as a result of socioeconomic mobility. Finally, there is continuity between home and abroad in terms of cultural hybridity and consumerism (Breckenridge 1995). In short, there is a common youth culture. But at the vertical axis itself there are marked discontinuities between home and abroad. In a historical perspective whereas home is the seat of an old non-modern civilisation, abroad are ‘settlement societies’, essentially post-1492 ones (cf. Jain 1994b, 1997, 1998a). Furthermore, whereas images and figures of homeland in the diaspora are shot through and through with fantasy (Jain 1998a) even the imaginings of the diaspora at home are, to that extent, stark and realistic, often enough on the side of an unrealised and unrealisable utopia. To illustrate, while the longue duree of civilisational history collapses into an imagined present for the diasporic (thus Indian students from Trinidad and Tobago who come to study Sanskrit at Varanasi looked in vain for the sylvan woods in which the sages of the yore taught!), the native Indian is often a victim of unscrupulous travel agents promising a land of plenty abroad which often enough turns out to be a dreary and trying socio-cultural landscape for the newly arrived immigrant. Finally, there is a set of contrasts, which may be termed the politicisation of culture at home and ‘culturalisation of politics’ in the diaspora. The cultural nationalism espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in India, for example, is grist to the mill of political propaganda and party political manoeuvring. In the Indian diaspora, including conflict-ridden instances such as Sri Lanka, and Fiji, Indian culture is used not as a means for attaining political power but for identity maintenance and enhancement through the building of temples, preservation and propagation of Indian languages, demands for more time for ethnic programs in the electronic media and so on. The above account of the vertical dimension needs to be supplemented by the lateral, that is the inter-diaspora relations. Although it is true that there is no such contemporary cross-cutting ideology like ‘negritude’ for the entire Indian diaspora, there is an instant recognition of common attitudes among the young Indian diasporics 71

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vis-à-vis the mother country. My evidence is largely anecdotal such as the reported conversation between an Indian South African researcher and her male counterpart from Trinidad and Tobago, whom she met at a hotel in the Indian city of Chennai. The two research students instantly hit off with each other in their opinions of the ‘native’ Indians and so comforting was this discovery of identical views that they formed a lasting friendship. Interestingly enough, this ‘othering’ of the natives and diasporas is mutual. I have heard of young Indian women who have experienced the shopping tastes and display of clothes by diasporic Indian women referring to the latter as buyers of ‘diasporic sarees’. At a more formal level too there is a globalisation and obliteration of distinctions, again mainly among the youth, such as between the PIOs and NRIs. An instance is the BBC transmitting peak-hour radio programs to Mauritius composed of items like hybridised popmusic laced with Asian-English language conversations located in the British setting of South Asian diaspora. In situations such as these there is not only lateral commonality but also hierarchy. Whenever Indian diasporic commonality is at issue, a gradation appears along the history of colonialism and capitalism within which the different countries of immigration are located; the hierarchy from top to bottom runs somewhat like this –United States and Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius and Nepal. At least this was my firm impression while listening to the deliberations under the aegis of umbrella organisations like the GOPIO (Global Organization of the People of Indian Origin) about common diasporic Indian matters, such as the issue of PIO cards by the Indian government. It goes without saying that distinctions such as vertical and lateral axes of diaspora are primarily heuristic. Contemporary currents of post-coloniality, globalisation and transnationality obliterate in practice distinctions such as those between the NRIs and the PIOs and between the cultures, especially the youth cultures, of India and abroad. However, the needs and desires of graduate-level students in the diaspora may be seen as configured by the criss-crossing of the vertical and lateral dimensions (or the diaspora as a ‘diasporic space’ mentioned at the beginning). These may briefly be enumerated as (a) identity dilemmas, (b) the questions of what and which ‘Indian’ culture, (c) the generational divide, (d) marginalisation in the host societies and the need to counter it and (e) awareness of the dynamics of changes, both vertically and laterally. To meet this felt need and demand, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, the largest Open University in the world, is embarking on an experiment to formulate a curriculum and devise 72

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its transmission by means of the latest information technology. Here it is possible only to give an indication of the curriculum in the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology. The accent would be on society and culture in continuity and change. There would be three broad thematic divisions (courses in IGNOU terminology): institutional patterns, politico-economic processes and worldviews. The institutional patterns (Course 1) would include social stratification, religion and society as well as family life and kinship. These would be followed by an outline of current political processes (Course 2) such as the implementation of state affirmative action in favour of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and backward classes, the social consequences of liberalisation and structural adjustment in the Indian economy since 1991 etc. The section on worldviews (Course 3) would discuss the rise of the middle class and consumption of modernity, representations of indigenous and hybrid cultures in performing arts and literary writing as well as the impact of electronic media explosion on global society in South Asia and its diaspora. The Appendix gives an outline of a diploma program of study ‘Indian Society and Culture at Home and Abroad’ proposed by IGNOU.

Appendix Rationale: The study of social order and change in India is in need of recasting to account for the current surfacing and influence of ethnicity and separate cultural identities. Earlier conceptualisation of Indian society and culture in terms of a civilisational model (unity in diversity paradigm) has marginalised cultural identities, which do not belong to mainstream social order. As a result, the flux in contemporary socio-economic and political order is not adequately explained and hence the need of an alternative way to interpret socio-political and cultural dynamics in India. At the same time the issues of globalisation and minorities are surfacing both within and outside India. The proposed diploma in ‘Indian Society and Culture at Home and Abroad’ addresses the twin problems by refurbishing the civilisational model in an analytical way by including insights gained from studies of population mobility within and outside India. Objective: To provide a polygenic understanding of Indian society and culture, with a dynamic view of socio-cultural transformation, spread across India and the Indian diaspora and to evolve an analytical perspective on the issues of globalisation and minorities. 73

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Target groups: These include undergraduates in India and abroad (especially of Indian origin and those interested in Indian society and culture). Reaching out through open learning mode we hope to address to a clientele, spanning from India to the Indian diaspora. Eligibility: 10 + 2 or equivalent certificate of education (for Indians)/ A level or equivalent certificate of education abroad. Duration: A minimum of one year and maximum of three years Medium of instruction: English Program structure: A multimedia package of 3 courses of 8 credits each and project work which is a course of 8 credits by itself. The diploma program of study is of a total of 32 credits (IGNOU has set 1 credit to be equal to 32 study hours). Delivery system: Through Indira Gandhi National Open University study centres in India and its outlets abroad Evaluation: Through assignments and a term-end examination Funding: A small grant for developing the course material can possibly come from the Centre for the Study of Indian diaspora at Central University, Hyderabad. Need for the program: A request for such a course came from Israel in 1994–95, from South Africa in 1997 and from the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India in 1999. Status of course preparation: The course material already developed comprises the themes of institutional patterns and current political processes. The remaining course material will be prepared with the help of a team of qualified international consultants in sociology and social anthropology who have already been identified and contacted.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on ‘Indian Diaspora and the Prospect of Open Learning: A Perspective on Modern Social Science Learning From India’, in Michael W. Charney, Brenda Yeoh and Tong Chee Kiong (eds), Asian Migrants and Education: The Tensions of Education in Immigrant Societies and Among Migrant Groups, pp. 185–192 (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, 2003). With permission of Springer. 2 Author’s field observation.

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4 ANTHROPOLOGY AND DIASPORA STUDIES Data and interpretation1

*** In this chapter, I discuss the diversities in the Indian diaspora under three major rubrics: •

External (demographic features, geographical zones, old and new diasporas, occupational diasporas); • Internal (socio-cultural bases of regional, linguistic and religious categorisation of diasporic Indians abroad); and • Circulation (reflecting interrelationship between external and internal diversities). Interpretatively, this discussion is rounded off by concluding methodological notes on family resemblances and blurred genres of ethnicity, modernity and globalisation in the era of transnationalism. These ethnographical and methodological reflections purport to open a new frontier in the anthropology of diasporic studies from the perspective of India.

External features Although Indian traders, entrepreneurs, travellers and religious missionaries have been travelling overseas since the beginning of the third century CE, especially to Southeast Asia and the east coast of Africa, the modern Indian diaspora began to emerge in the third decade of the nineteenth century with Indian labour migrating to the plantation economies of Mauritius, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the Anglophone, Francophone and Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. In the Pacific, migration to Fiji started in the 1870s and more recently, mid-twentieth century labour migration to the Gulf continues

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to this day. As contrasted with the old diaspora, the ‘new’ diaspora dates from the 1950s and 1960s to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States, and more recently to other European countries. This diaspora, initially comprising economic migrants of working-class and white-collar occupations, really came into its own in the post-1960s period with an increasing number of professional migrants, including information technology specialists. The population of the modern Indian diaspora2 is estimated to be about thirty million. It can be conveniently divided into six major geographical locations, though migrants from India are found in nearly all parts of the world. These locations are: Africa and Mauritius, West and Southeast Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. Perhaps, in a more eco-geographical sense, one may delineate the Indian Ocean zone and the Asia Pacific zone. My own fieldwork experience refers to Malaysia, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Mauritius and Australia, though I have liberally used primary and secondary sources of information relating to these countries as well as for comparative references to other parts of Indian diaspora, especially in United Kingdom, United States and Canada. My fieldwork among Indo-Fijians was carried out in Australia. I have not counted as fieldwork my brief stopovers or conference attendance in many other parts of the world. Before outlining my comparative approach to studying Indian diaspora, let me provide brief profiles of Indian communities in the countries that are the main focus of my research in this chapter. The sequence of listed research sites is broadly dependent on the time spent on each. The Indian population of Malaysia and Singapore is roughly 2,400,000 and 470,000 respectively. Indians constitute 8.7 per cent of Malaysia and 9.1 per cent of Singapore population. The sub-ethnic composition of the Indian population in both these countries consists of majority Tamils and minority communities of Telugus, Malayalees, Sikhs, Punjabis and Sindhis as well as a few hundred Gujaratis, Bengalis and Oriyas. For census purposes Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Nepalis are included among Indians. The modern Indian diaspora in Singapore dates from 1819 and in the Federation of Malaya from the 1840s onwards. At a conservative estimate there are at least ninety community associations among Indians in Malaysia and a smaller number, but still active ones, in Singapore. The occupational structure in both these regions is changing at a rapid pace. Though the majority of ethnic Indians are rural-based and working class, there are also a sizeable number of urbanites and professionals, in proportion to their percentage in the total population. 76

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Lawyers, doctors, teachers and civil servants are prominent among the professionals, while in the working class the proportion of blue-collar workers over semi-skilled and skilled workers has increased in recent years. My longitudinal study of Indian plantation labour (in the early 1960s and published in 1970) and ex-plantation workers in Malaysia (in 1998 and published in 2009) confirms this trend. Very recently the Indian minority in Malaysia has been in the vanguard of a movement of affirmative action for the socioeconomic uplifting of the marginalised and poor. Known as the Hindu Rights Action Force or HINDRAF (which held its first national rally on 25 November 2007), this movement is widely regarded by social science experts on Malaysia to play a vital role in the Malaysian general elections of March 2008 by wresting from the ruling coalition five states for the opposition political parties. The Indian community in Trinidad and Tobago dates back to the year 1845, when the ship Fatel Razack, with 225 indentured Indian labourers, men and women, landed ashore. Along with the then majority Black population (ex-slaves) and their White masters – the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese – this sparsely populated island was to see the burgeoning of East Indian3 communities, mainly Bhojpurispeaking North Indians who would attain an absolute demographic majority over the Blacks by the late nineteenth century. Today, IndoTrinidadians and Afro-Trinidadians are almost 80 per cent of the population, with the former constituting the country’s largest ethnic group (approximately 40 per cent), numbering 525,000 persons. In the Caribbean region as a whole though, the Blacks outnumber the Indians, except in Guyana and Suriname where the percentage of PIOs is 43.5 and 38.7 respectively. In contrast to the diaspora experience of South Indians in Malaysia, who have begun to gain some degree of mobility only recently through a partial dismantling of the plantation system, the East Indians of Trinidad gained mobility from the status of plantation labour to a class of cane farmers in the early twentieth century. Thus an incipient Indo-Trinidadian middle class (primarily comprising Christians and Muslims) had begun, at the turn of the twentieth century, to enter the higher echelons of society through education and business. But the majority of Indo-Trinidadians was rural, poor, and had little education before the oil boom (1974–1983). The situation in the late 1980s was markedly different. In her analysis of social mobility experienced between 1960 and 1989, Rhoda Reddock (1991: 223) concludes that according to the three indicators of occupation, education and employment, ‘Indians in general have been experiencing the most significant degrees of mobility overall.’ 77

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Most Asians in South Africa are descended from Indian indentured labourers who arrived in the nineteenth century to work in the sugar cane plantations of what is now the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The first such batch of Indians came on board the Truro in 1860. A minority are descended from Indian traders who migrated to South Africa from the Gujarat region of India. The city of Durban is home to the largest Asian population in sub-Saharan Africa. Mahatma Gandhi worked as a lawyer in the city in the early 1900s. In fact, South Africa has the largest population of people of Indian descent, who are born in South Africa and not migrants. In contrast to Indians in the United States, for example, most Indians in South Africa are of fourth- or fifth-generation descent. In relation to the total population of South Africa, though, Indians, numbering 300,000, constitute only 2.7 per cent. The majority of Indian South Africans are Hindus, but there are a significant number of Muslims and Christians as well. Perhaps the defining characteristics of Indian South Africans today are their skill and talent in business. A good proportion of Indians make their living in the business world, as entrepreneurs and traders. In fact, given the proportion of the Indian population, they are over-represented in the country’s business community as compared to other ethnic groups. Indo-Mauritians are people of Indian descent living on the island of Mauritius, where they represent a majority, comprising 68 per cent of the population. Their total population is estimated to be 855,000. A majority of Indo-Mauritians are of Bihari descent. There is a significant migrant population in Mauritius of Bhumihar Brahmins4 who have made a mark for themselves in different walks of life. They are still in touch with family members in India, and there are many instances of marital relations between them in order to keep their cultural heritage intact. The first of these Indians arrived at immigration depots in 1834 to work in sugarcane fields as indentured labourers. They were mostly from Bhojpuri-speaking areas (both Hindus and Muslims) and to a much lesser extent from Gujarat and Bombay. Tamils and Telugus came some decades ago, at the start of the nineteenth century, presumably brought by the French as skilled workers. They are the ones, having migrated to Mauritius especially from Pondicherry, who are responsible for construction of churches, mosques and kovils (temples) in the capital city of Port Louis. Most Indo-Mauritians speak Creole, the lingua franca, but a large number also speak Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. Of the entire Indo-Mauritian population, North Indian Hindus comprise 52 per cent, South Indian Hindus another 25 per cent and Muslims (from all parts of India) form most of the remaining population. 78

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Migrants of Indian origin have the largest impact on Mauritian life, dominating the economic and political domains of the island. IndoMauritian family life was portrayed in 2005 in the Hindi film Dil Jo Bhi Kahey with Amitabh Bachchan playing the lead role (see Jain 2009a: 192–196). Now I deal with the remaining two rubrics (internal and circulation) in tandem.

Internal characteristics and circulation Many migrant communities of Indian origin have shown a tenacious capacity for diasporic integration with their host societies. However, without too much stake in the national politics of their receiving countries, they have retained crucial aspects of their Indian background, their cultural baggage. One finds a broad adherence among these Indian migrants to normative life in foreign lands. These norms may not be altogether unfamiliar though the land they inhabit and the culture of people they live with is full of surprises and revelations. Many of the traders carry on activities, quite mundane, tactfully. For instance their financial transactions across national boundaries may not be through normal banking procedures but traditional credit exchanges, like the hawala mechanism (Ballard 2005). Compliance with the constitutional morality of the nation-state is their first charge; but innovation, often known in the sociological literature as the invention of tradition, is not far behind though inconspicuous. There are examples of economic negotiations conducted in the course of ritual activities among the Jain communities of East Africa (Banks 1992) just as ‘ritual auctions’ take place to determine ritual precedence of families and individuals among rural and urban Jain communities in India itself (Jain 1999). The business communities, professionals and other skilled workers operating through intra-territorial boundaries of newly developed nations constitute a ‘frontier’. Thus during the apartheid regime in South Africa when official external relations with India were cut off, Indian South African traders utilised their familycum-business networks with relatives in the neighbouring states of Tanganyika, Zambia and Tanzania to indirectly channel financial investments with India (Dotson and Dotson 1968; Voigt-Graf 1998). There are, of course, obvious differences between the new frontiersmen of Indian diaspora and heroes of the American frontier (see Turner 1893/2010), but there also may be a certain similarity. It has been argued (see Jayawardena 1968) that nineteenth-century Indian transmigrants did not, by and large, look for adventure and enterprise in foreign lands. While this is generally true of emigrant 79

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labour communities, a case can be made for calculated risk-taking and entrepreneurial spirit and strategies among the long-distance migrating communities of Indian traders (Banks 1994). There are also constraints with which this section of migrant communities must conform. Indian trading communities of Sindhis and Marwaris in many parts of the world and the Ismaili Khojas in Kenya and Uganda besides South Africa furnish excellent examples. How political circumspection is combined with entrepreneurial expertise through community networks and solidarity among the Ismaili Khojas of Uganda is discussed by Stephen Morris (1968). Rebellious and resistant elements are there but they are thwarted by authorities in host countries with a firm hand. Nevertheless the heroic role of these martyrs is etched in the annals of history and their stories are legendary.5 As examples of diasporic global processes in our times we can look at two instances: the already well-known Jewish diaspora beginning in the Middle East and a wave of ‘sinicisation’ sweeping through Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim. If we wish to examine the implications for citizenship in this context, one will have to look at Aihwa Ong’s (1999) work on flexible citizenship. Citizenship loyalty does cross sovereign territorial boundaries as in the case of Chinese overseas, something that conventional political science literature does not register. In Malaysia and Singapore the migrant Chinese communities have resurrected the somewhat waning value of cultural artefacts from indigenous past. Examples are the contemporary resurrection and celebration of Peranakan (hybrid) Chinese, Malay and Indian cultural heritage in Singapore and Melaka, Malaysia (Dhoraisingham 2006). These objects as powerful symbols become icons of glory and the ‘great tradition’. These moving cultural tableaux reach out to much wider, inter-ethnic, audiences than the localised communities they were originally meant to convey such messages to. They reaffirm the glory of great and powerful empires. The objects of art, architecture, entertainment, traditional costumes, folk songs and dances and vignettes of courtly life have also been restored back to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The still resonant symbolic value of this cultural heritage is being recognised in parts of South and East Asia. It seems reasonable to assume that the ‘nationalities’ cultural movement in the PRC subsequent to the Cultural Revolution has had some of its roots in circular migration back and forth between China and South East Asia.6 Visual culture has a role to play in this revival. In Malaysia, for example, the syncretic art and culture of Baba Nyonya or Baba Chinese is being displayed in national museums visited by members of inter-ethnic communities. Similarly in Thailand, the Mandarin culture 80

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has progressed among the general populace as evidence that Buddhist monastic educational institutions and tribal traditions of Thai northern borderland have blended.7 I have so far discussed the external diversities and diffusion of cultures through diasporic movements that have a bearing on the makings of contemporary world geopolitics in relation to India. It may be useful to consider the varieties of cultural pluralism internally among the Indian migrants. It is difficult to be either comprehensive or to pinpoint all the criteria of this diversity; in some ways ethnicity and sub-ethnicity define our target. Studies of Punjabi Jat community in the United Kingdom from Pakistan and India, for example, have been made by Roger Ballard (2005: 319–362, 2006, cf. also Werbner 2002). In informal mechanisms of making money the hawala system enables the entrepreneurial Jat to have a foot both in the locations of immigration and of emigration from rural areas in India. Their settlements in urban villages of the United Kingdom, culturally distinctive of their own making, have mushroomed. Their land and home-ownership patterns in London (or Toronto) show colonisation, qualitatively different from ‘gentrification’ that also coexists. The use of the term ‘colonisation’ in this context is derived from Roger Ballard’s discussion (2006) of what he calls the ‘ethnic colonisation’ by Indian and Pakistani immigrants in British and North American cities with particular reference to socio-economic mobility among these immigrants, in contrast to the patterns found among the native Whites. Their buying of houses in close ethnic neighbourhoods is dissimilar to the buying of apartments through ‘moving up’. The process among non-immigrant Whites may therefore be designated ‘gentrification’ in contrast to ethnic colonisation among immigrants. These immigrants are known for multiple linkages with associational and other political bodies. They spread out their cultural baggage and become visually conspicuous. For conspicuous examples of visual displays of their native cultural heritage by the immigrant Sikhs, see the folio of illustrations at “‘Glassy Junction’ in the English suburb of Southall (Axel 2001: 183–189). Values of bravado which sometimes turn into cases of honour killings are more common among the Punjabi ‘Jat’ communities. Startling examples of this tendency are recorded in Jasvinder Sanghera’s autobiography (2007) described as “‘forced into marriage, rejected by those she loved; the true story of a girl’s struggle to survive’. These immigrants often revel in vernacular Indian cultural media, increasingly encouraged and popularised by Bollywood. The viewership of Indian videos, music etc. has given rise to a burgeoning culture of visual media ownership and entertainment that is commercially a 81

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success story. These are the ambitious immigrants very much a part of aspiring ‘from rags to riches’ stories. In a sense their ‘colonisation’ at once cultural and economic keeps them at a certain threshold. One would call their adaptation locality/territory rooted; hence they are at once a diverse and cohesive community, South Asian exemplars of multicultural Britain. At the other end of the continuum are the ‘muted immigrants’, such as professionals, almost cowed by their new environment, and wholly conforming to it. While many migrants look askance at modernisation, a certain section of the ethnic and sub-ethnic population wholly embraces the culture of the receiving society. How this culture is refracted by their own cultural biases is a subject for further research. Very few of the Indian migrants, however, equate the receiving nationstate culture with universal cultural norms. Here the behavioural dynamics of front-stage and back-stage behaviour becomes operative as in the silences and noises of their daily existence. For example, how many newly married Indian men in the diaspora take tender care of the infants such as changing their nappies? Reluctance to engage in such ‘private’ behaviour is found precisely among those young men who in their visible attire and speech – public behaviour – conform perfectly to ‘Western’ norms. The anthropologist could be in a privileged position to view this intimate culture (Herzfeld 2005; also 2004). It would take me far outside the delineation of varieties of Indian diaspora, but anthropologists and sociologists have been working on the proliferation of regional, linguistic and caste/class associations and movements among the migrants. There is in these associations and groupings some kind of a combination of universalisation and parochialisation. By this I mean that the Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil or Telugu associations – not merely linguistic but also regional, ethnic and sub-ethnic – while at one level are confined to specific locations in various countries, they at the same time, at another level, operate as branches of worldwide bodies. Analyses of these Indian religiocultural movements affecting the politics of the Hindu rights have been made (see Hansen 1999); there is need to frame this political development in the perspective of other contemporary movements, purportedly secular in character, namely, the rise of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and its short-lived alliance with BJP in the state of Uttar Pradesh, North India showed an interesting pattern of ‘sleeping with the enemy’ (Jain 1996).8 It was caste solidarity and identity that was the common denominator in both cases, refracted through the prism of hierarchy (Baxi 2010; Dumont 1970). From an anthropological point of view this is a particularly fruitful way of conceiving diaspora 82

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as an external counterpoint to understand institutional complexity, particularly the interplay of politics and culture in modernisation. The above characteristic leads to a consideration of the transitive sacred regional geography in India. In the diaspora it is reflected in a ‘Ganga’ (the holy river Ganges in the North Indian plains) in Trinidad and an ‘Ayodhya’ (the disputed birthplace of Lord Rama, again in North India) in Fiji, to speak nothing of the proliferation of big Hindu temples (of Indian regional and sectarian derivation) in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. In India itself, the regional geography is marked by an interiority of alterity (see Beck 1972) in the caste ‘system’ leading to a structural disjuncture between the caste and non-caste social worlds. In the diaspora this disjuncture is highlighted by political deterritorialisation and the breakdown of the caste system into its elements. This process has similarities with Indian modernisation (Singh 2009; Shah 2007). In the diaspora some of its consequences are: (a) further deterritorialisation of some communities, particularly those prone to internal migration historically, for example, Marwari traders, Parsi professionals and minorities following the Jain religion, (b) mitigation of communalism; thus Hindu/ Muslim/ Christian marriages across religious communities are common, for example, in Trinidad, (c) increased scope of entrepreneurial activity among ‘successful’ castes, for example, Chettiars from South India and Khatri traders from Punjab and Delhi, (d) ethnopreunership; for example, Sindhi, Gujarati and Sikh businessmen forming exclusive networks both vertically with the South Asian base and horizontally with community cohorts transnationally and (e) utilisationof their better command over the English language for global entrepreneurship and communications. In relation to the West, perceived as the developed world, the NonResident Indian (NRI) has a ‘commodified nostalgia’ for India (Hansen 2002). At the same time, however, for some of these Indians, their distance from India represents a weaning away from the socialistic developmental model and an urge to compete in a relatively free world of competition and cultural identity assertion. This works to the mutual advantage of both the receiving and migrating sections of society in that savings are obtained through mechanisms such as outsourcing. No wonder that in the developed world of the United 83

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States, for instance, skilled and locally born Indians are regarded as model minorities. In contrast to the Indian disjuncture, the Chinese in diaspora have typically transplanted to their receiving land five basic relationships: patrilineal kinship and ties of territory, religion, business and various types of production – hailed as a source of their strength (Wong and Li 2004). Indian and Chinese in diaspora retain complex relations with the politics of their countries or origin. Chinese retain strong patriotic links to their ‘motherland’, but at least some others are happy to leave a society they see as oppressive in its political repression. A somewhat parallel divergence of view is apparent among Indians in diaspora: this comparison of the homeward views of Indians and Chinese in diaspora will require future research.

Interpretative exposition of the Indian diaspora Studies of Indian diaspora could provide a valuable lead through recourse to proper semantically sound problematisation of phenomena in the real world. For example, the collapsing world of ethnicity, modernity and globalisation may be viewed from the vantage point of diaspora studies in anthropology. These are in-between contexts that belong neither to India nor to Bharat9 just as those ‘suited-booted’ necktie-wearing Mauritian Indians discoursing on national television in Bhojpuri, the predominantly rural dialect of their forefathers from eastern India. In traditional Indian terms they are neither fish nor fowl. Similarly, take the example of cuisine in contemporary times of media and advertisement hype. Maggi noodles is a modern food. Rich people may consume this as ‘with it’ modernity, often with a discerning eye, as well as those more vulnerable to unreflective hidden persuaders. This food may have nothing to do either in the rasa (piquant) sense neither in aesthetic or as some may pretend, in a social ‘class’ sense. Similarly, the category ‘breakfast’ depends on the interpreter. To extend the argument further, race and caste, the former as Western colonial and the latter as traditionally Indian ‘non-modern’ is a fallacy. In thus distinguishing the two phenomena culturally, the ontological dimension is taken care of, but what about the epistemological dimension? Here the notion of family resemblances may provide a spur to an essentialist idea of ‘social heredity’ (Jain 1996) underlying many native concepts of stratification and hierarchy. Ethnicity, seen through the prism of diaspora, is an intermediate concept. In Max Weber’s writing (1978) there is a racial underpinning of the ethnic. He thought that the existence of mulattoes in the 84

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US population will gradually phase out this connection between the racial and the ethnic, but as he himself was to discover later, the issue was not merely demographic but socio-demographic (see his amplification of the concept of ‘status’). There was thus in the case of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ as concepts, a blurring of genres. This brings us to the notion of ‘class’ in its original sense. It belongs to the same genre as social heredity in that the idea of blue blood or aristocracy underlies it, which some sociologists have spoken of as an ‘estate’. Louis Dumont (1970) too conceded this much by drawing an exaggerated distinction between social stratification and hierarchy in his critique of ‘racism’ conjured up as a problem of the individualistic (Western) universe only. The class dimension has not been factored in at all because of Dumont’s allergy to Marxism. Similarly there is the Geertzian amphibology between Marxism and hermeneutics. In fact even the so-called literary fuzzy logic can be seen through the lens of analytical philosophy (Strawson 1992). Dumont’s view of hierarchy remains traditional because ontologically the advent of Industrial Revolution and technology ushered in modernity and science through choice and self-reflexivity (Giddens 1990) almost globally in contrast to Gandhi’s view as articulated in Hind Swaraj (see in this context an interesting article by Gavaskar 2009, comparing the Gandhian view with that of Giddens). What has all this got to do with ‘diaspora’? Let me very briefly remark that as an experimental laboratory of spatio-temporal distantiation for familiar socio-cultural phenomena, diasporic studies provide important instruments of comparison and analytical understanding. Thus, reading epistemology and ontology conjointly the phenomenal world would be better explained through the metaphor/ trope of family resemblances. This is patently the case in interpreting changes in the caste system within India, for example, as broken down in its elements. Studies of Indian diaspora, on the other hand, would show continuities between race, class, ethnicity and caste as related phenomena. This methodology when systematically pursued can throw new light on some of the old conundrums of polity and society like racism, caste in politics, dynastic politics, existence of constitutional monarchies, familism plus networks in business. I further explore interpretive issues in the next chapter.

Notes 1 Originally published as ‘Anthropology and Diaspora Studies: An Indian Perspective’, Asian Anthropology 10(1): 45–60, 2011. Reproduced with permission.

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2 The modern Indian diaspora consists of non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs), as per Government of India categories. NRIs comprise Indian citizens who have migrated to another country, persons of Indian origin born outside India or persons of Indian origin residing outside India. A PIO is usually a person who is not a citizen of India. Anyone of Indian origin up to four generations removed is a PIO. As of January 2006, the Indian government has introduced the ‘Overseas Citizenship of India’ (OCI) scheme in order to allow a limited form of dual citizenship to Indians, NRIs and PIOs for the first time since Independence in 1947. 3 Immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are referred to as East Indians to distinguish them from the older, predominantly Black population known as West Indians. 4 Bhumihars claim to be three-karma Brahmins, which means they do not officiate as professional priests though they do so at the domestic level among themselves. They are landed peasantry in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and most of the zamindars, the hereditary aristocrats, here were at one time Bhumihars. In the regional caste hierarchy they are ranked second, below the Brahmins and above the Rajputs, and are addressed as Babuji, a term by which they are commonly known in Mauritius. In Bihar they are known as the Babhan (Professor A. C. Sinha, personal communication, 18 April 2010). 5 See Jain (2002a) in a somewhat different context but referring basically to local-regional cultural diversity, the case of Bundela Rajputs of Central India. From the diaspora viewpoint common traces have been found between the Bundelkhand martial caste, such as the Bundela and castes and subcastes known as Bondiliar or Bondili or Bondililu in South India (Kolff 1990). The discovery of similar communities in Germany during the preChristian era may prove the existence of global networks at an earlier date, and on this question, archaeologists and other anthropologists are doing collaborative research. It is an early example of deterritorialisation (Appadurai 1997). Supported by archaeological investigation, this research could be the starting point of a new chapter in global history. 6 Building on the one-time dominance of Han ethnicity in China, a new paradigm of diversity in unity has emerged, although it is also true that minority nationalities were celebrated and sometimes created by the Chinese government following the Russian model of Marxist-Leninist development. 7 Just as China-dominated and mainly Buddhist representations are blossoming in South East Asia, it would be an interesting comparative exercise for students of the Indian diaspora to study the efflorescence of similar Indian/ Hindu representations in places as far apart as Malaysia, Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago. 8 The BSP is the political party based on dalit (Indian citizens belonging to the former ‘outcaste’ and economically/ritually excluded communities) support. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) represents political party comprising supporters of an aggressively Hindu socio-religious ideology and the higher caste strata. 9 The land and population of India conceived in traditional terms comprising a large number of neo-literate, especially rural folk. In popular perception Bharat in these terms is often opposed to ‘India’ which is a modern and modernising nation-state.

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5 RACE, ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY IN DIASPORA 1

*** One of the persistent emic2 preconceptions in most cultural communities of the world has been their self-conception as a ‘we group’. Often it is stated in terms of equating the community with humanity at large. As analysts of human society and culture, both in their particularities and generality, we are bound methodologically to take into account this ‘emic’ preoccupation for after all the necessity of a dialogue (the so-called dialogical approach in ethnography and social anthropology) characterises the interface between the observer and the observed. On the other hand, while incorporating these self-perceptions (emic data or what Levi-Strauss 1963, called ‘conscious models’) in our analyses and explanations, we have also to go beyond. In the latter procedure we may not only have to encompass the conscious models into ‘unconscious’ ones, to use the Levi-Straussian terminology, but also attempt ‘destructive analysis’ (Handler 1985) of emic concepts, particularly in circumstances where the actual isomorphism between the people’s models and those of the anthropological analyst pose an insurmountable obstacle in the interpretation of the phenomena in question. To put it in the framework of what Oxford anthropologists termed as ‘cultural translation’ (cf. Evans-Pritchard 1962; Lienhardt 1954), the task of converting particular differences in cultural meanings into general propositions (while retaining the particular nuances of meaning across cultures) could be accomplished only when the emic is surmounted by the ‘etic’ while at the same time preserving the essence of emic meanings. In what follows I am going to argue (after Handler) that it would be grossly counterproductive for the anthropological analyst to stop short at the convergence of words, tropes and meanings between the observer and the observed. However, further in my view, it should be underscored that the ‘destructive analysis of the familiar’ in 87

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anthropological methodology must guard against throwing the baby away with the bathwater, namely, fail to retain what is of value in the convergent tropes of cultural common sense between the observer and the observed. An example of the latter is what I alluded to earlier as the universal community common sense in the self-perception of communities the world over as being a ‘we group’, almost unique and sometimes synonymous with humanity at large. Bringing this realisation closer to a methodological perspective that we wish to advance here, a certain substratum of a belief in ‘social heredity’ underlies many a community self-perception (Jain 1996). The objection that this proposition is essentialist in nature may be offset by its analytical gains. In what follows I wish to demonstrate precisely this feature – that our proposition underlies nearly all the universal beliefs in social heredity as a relationship between difference and hierarchy3 – with limited reference to the semantic continuum between ethnicity and race as analytical concepts. The comparative ethnographic evidence is provided from the field of Indian diaspora which has occupied my research attention for nearly the last fifty years. Before proceeding with my demonstration of the analytical utility of positing a semantic continuum between race and ethnicity in the comparative study of Indian diaspora, I would like to make a further methodological observation. In fact, the observation bears on two related modalities. One, that in the study of socio-cultural phenomena we must read ontology and epistemology on the same page. In simplified terms, the spatio-temporal generation of systems, structures and events in our narratives (ontology) has to be seen as shadowed by the intellectual means of comprehending it (epistemology). In other words, to put the issue in the framework of analytical philosophy, in a scientific endeavour of our sort the ethnographer-analyst does not simply ‘abstract’ general principles from ‘raw data’ (as in most versions of positivistic natural science procedures) but tries to establish what Ludwig Wittgenstein termed as ‘family resemblances’ in the interplay between the ontology and epistemology in the study of phenomena (Wittgenstein 1953). (See in this respect the anthropologist Needham’s 1975, methodology of polythetic classification in studying the phenomenon of ‘kinship’.) The procedure is salutary also from the viewpoint of avoiding reification of concepts.

Race and ethnicity It should be easy enough to show that both the notions of race and ethnicity are refractions of the idea of social heredity. In this respect, 88

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the popular notion of race rests most blatantly on the phenotype of colour and other physical features of various shades and modalities. Its authoritative scientific distillation had been given early (Metraux 1950). In 1950, the UNESCO statement, ‘The Race Question’ signed by some internationally reputed scholars of the time suggested that ‘National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term ‘ “race” is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of “ethnic groups.” ’ Despite these scientific warnings, race as ‘racism’ continues to share a conjoint ontological and epistemological basis. Race is a commonly held trope of hierarchical differences between phenotypically perceived human groups based on ideas of social descent. On the one hand, its historical connections with colonialism and imperialism have been amply demonstrated. On the other hand, in popular imagination the idea of race also undergirds current theories of development and under-development and of hierarchical relations between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. The hierarchical mindset provides explanations not only of the superiority of the North over the South or of the West over the East as in Orientalist discourses; even its inverse figures prominently in rabid cultural nationalist discourses. This popular concept of race may be distinguished from that of ethnicity which does not always involve a phenotypical basis for difference and hierarchy and unlike ‘race relations’ is not always based on strong antagonistic relations between biologically defined groups (Rex 1973). There is, however, an overlap between the two concepts both historically and in sociological analysis as we shall presently see. In relation to the study of Indian diaspora, as I have shown elsewhere (Jain 1989), the universe of discourse in the Caribbean in general locates Trinidadians of Indian origin (Indo-Trinidadians or East Indians) in a racial framework while the social scientific analysis of Indian Malaysians has been done in terms of a multi-ethnic society. Obviously the absence of a strong signifier of ‘colour’ in the latter (Malaysian) case and its presence in many shades in the former (Trinidadian) seem to have been the main deciding factor. However, in analyses where the class and power dimensions are explicitly invoked in relation to ethnic and racial differences and hierarchy it is the continuum between the two notions which takes precedence (see, Stenson 1980 for foregrounding race and Rasiah 1999 for emphasising class in Malaysia; see also Alexander 1977 for colour and class in Jamaica). 89

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For analytical purposes, then, it would not be a mistake to use either ethnicity or race in relation to difference and hierarchy in particular geographical locations. Indeed, I would argue that if ideas of social heredity seem to be the common denominator, then it behoves sociological and anthropological analyses of particular instances to juxtapose notions, not only of race and ethnicity, but also of class, caste and culture in the spectrum of concepts deployed for delineating relationships of difference and hierarchy among groups. It can be shown in detail how the use of basically ‘cultural’ paradigms like ‘plural society’ and ‘multi-ethnicity’ in the Malaysian context has served to exclude the power dimension in emerging social processes (cf. Jain 2010b; also Jayawardena 1980 for Guyana and Fiji). Similarly, the analysis of ­British and French societies, as being exclusively based on socio-­ economic class structure, had led to the neglect of a cultural dimension, namely, ‘taste’ (Bourdieu 1984) in French society, ‘blue blood’ considerations in defining the aristocracy in United Kingdom and what Geoffrey Gorer (1957) described as the perils of ‘male hypergamy’ in the English class structure. Such instances illustrate that a notion of ‘social heredity’ applies in the so-called advanced Western societies as well. The acrimonious contemporary debate on whether or not ‘caste’ in India is the same as ‘race’ elsewhere reveals once more the solecism in the use of concepts that bear a ‘family resemblance’ to one another. In this respect the deployment of the cognate concept ‘ethnicity’ as a processual, boundary-marking-and-maintaining (rather than a corporate ‘group’ concept) marks a significant advance in the penumbra-like or sliding-scale use of sociological concepts (cf. Weber 1978; Barth 1969; Brubaker 2004; Shamsul 2008). There is, however, an analytical advantage in following through, at least ontologically, on which side of the continuum and of what range and durability a particular system of groups based on social heredity is inflected. This would depend on the ethnographic perspicacity of the anthropologist on the one hand, and, to reiterate, a readiness to read the ontological and epistemological aspects of the phenomenon on a single page, on the other hand. Thus in the changing ontological scenario of several younger generations of ‘caste-’ oriented Indian communities who have been born and brought up in the ‘race-’ oriented milieu of Trinidad or South Africa, caste ‘passes’ into race (explained in Jain 2010a). Further, this is an ongoing process. The ­second- and third-generation Indian youth in post-Obama United States show an uneasy coexistence of their ‘referent origin’ (Dufoix 2008) identities and identifications, those based on region, caste, language and religion, with those of class and race in the ‘host’ society (Shah 2009). 90

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Further, there is a historical point to be noted in the slippage between race and ethnicity in sociological analysis. The notion of ethnicity emerged in the United States to designate the non-WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) Whites, immigrants mainly from Eastern and Central Europe, to distinguish them from the racially different Blacks (Kymlicka 1989). No wonder that even today in the sociological analysis of US plural society ethnicity is regarded as an ‘inclusive’ and race as an ‘exclusive’ conceptual category (Sanjek 1994). Furthermore, there has been a tendency for this US-specific historical connotation of ‘inclusive’ ethnicity to diffuse in the analysis of disparate situations. For instance, the lingering usage of multi-ethnicity as an inclusive concept does not take into account the exclusions based on hierarchical power relations between the majority and minority in Malaysia (cf. Jain 2010a). This would show how the application of ethnicity as an analytical tool elsewhere than in the United States (e.g. in Malaysia) can carry with it the value-load of racist contamination of its founding application. The family resemblance between the concepts of ethnicity and race, when seen in the light of their ontology in the US representations, invites further reflection. It seems clear that the academic vindication of ethnicity (including the scientists’ unsuccessful bid to give the concept ‘ethnic group’ a clean chit apropos race and racialism) has to be read initially in conjunction with the history of the Black slave trade from Africa to the United States and its legitimisation in terms of ‘White’ racial hegemony and demographic majoritarianism. It is a curious paradox of our times that while in its origin ethnicity was configured in majoritarianism and dominance, its usage today is widely contextualised in minority assertion and protest. The failure of the analysts of ethnicity, by and large, to see this paradox as camouflaging racism is responsible for a pietistic distinction between race and ethnicity and even the championing of the latter as an ‘inclusive’ concept. What this analytical mindset effectively conceals is the racial basis of ethnic majoritarianism/minoritarianism and reducing it in the prevailing ‘democratic’ ethos to a minority ‘fear of small numbers’ (Appadurai 2006). It is another manifestation of victimology in identity politics of the day which I discuss later.

Ethnicity, modernity and globalisation I wish to make a further point. Diasporic movements may reveal the nature of ethnicity in the context of modernisation and globalisation processes. In other words, diasporic ethnicity bears the stamp of 91

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modernity which is spread globally. Culturally the diacritics of these conjoint processes of ethnicity, modernity and globalisation are continuous rather than discontinuous across home/host societies. To give an example, my field observation shows that many South African girls of Indian origin in the University of Durban Westville (now KwaZuluNatal) sported a bindi (red dot on the forehead) as a mark of ethnic decoration. Sporting a bindi is an Indian practice which would seem incongruous if commented upon by non-diaspora Indians when it is sported by someone – as was indeed the case in my observation – wearing jeans and not an Indian costume. And yet, even in India today, depending on the age and educational background of the woman concerned she might wear a saree or jeans with or without a bindi. Now, to brand the South African Indian student as ‘modern’/‘traditional’ would be completely arbitrary whether the person commenting is a diasporic or not. Globalisation has meant that that there is a cultural continuum between the South African Indian student and the Indian woman of our example. And this alerts us to a further continuum between modernisation and globalisation processes at large. Through diasporic conjuncture it would seem useful to employ Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances and Geertz’s concept of the blurring of genres to interpret this continuum.

The concept of identity and diasporic processes So far I have looked upon the question of racial and ethnic identification from an external point of view where the analysts’ use of concepts is a melange of emic and etic approaches. There is, however, a substantial corpus of writing on race and ethnicity from the viewpoint of the actors’ ‘self’ or psychological dispositions, and that discussion is keyed in the perspective of ‘identity’. My effort in the following remarks is to highlight the theoretical and political costs of employing the concept of identity and identities in analytical social and cultural anthropology. And while the issue is a general one in the corpus of contemporary globalised world conjuncture, I illustrate my arguments with reference to Indian diaspora studies when viewed as case studies of globalisation. My take-off point in this discussion is the influential Durkheimian school of sociology and social anthropology where the social field is characterised as being external, constraining and general in relation to the individual. My contention is that the notion of identity, intrinsically rooted in individual psychology, is squarely inimical to all three postulates of social facts as defined by Emile Durkheim. If we should 92

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legitimately trace the tradition of social anthropology to its Durkheimian roots, it is not difficult to agree with Evans-Pritchard’s oft-quoted observation that for social anthropology to build on (individual) psychology is to build on shifting sands. The classic examples of explanatory refutation of individual psychology by Evans-Pritchard himself are African societies as ‘tribes without rulers’ based on the segmentary structure, which is the political extension of kinship relations.4 With reference to the concept of identity, there are two major problems in its deployment within socio-cultural studies. First, when the concept of identity is used in a strong, psycho-dynamic sense, its location in the individual psyche has to be taken for granted. To illustrate, Eric Erikson’s (1969) analysis of ‘Gandhi’s Truth’, set in the culturepersonality school of German psychoanalysis, declares the marriage between Gandhi and Kasturba to be a failure on account of Gandhi’s confessions in his autobiography that there were frequent quarrels between husband and wife. Obviously, this is a highly biased ‘individualistic’ interpretation of an enduring relationship between a fairly traditional Indian (Hindu) couple. If we do not concentrate solely on the individual episodes of ‘quarrel’ between the two but on a lifelong socio-cultural trajectory of the relationship, the marriage between Gandhi and Kasturba has to be regarded as a success. One may debate the criteria used for success and failure of a relationship but a social science student will have to opt in favour of its social rather than individual manifestations and repercussions. This brings me to the second great hurdle in the use of identity, an individualistic concept, as a social or collective concept. One does not deny that at certain spatio-temporal points, the analyst may be permitted to speak (that also mainly metaphorically) of a common identity shared by a collectivity, but the analytical purchase of the concept thus conceived would be sorely deficient in a consideration of socio-cultural dynamics and change, namely, in the study of social processes as syndromes of social action over time. In this respect the sociological analysis in terms of ‘process, practice and power’ (the so-called three Ps, see Dube 2007: iv) surely trumps over an identitarian analysis of the social. I illustrate this weakness of the notion ‘identity’ with respect to certain selected social processes in the Indian diaspora globally. While perusing these cases one will also bear in mind the nuanced relationship between identity and identification. That the collective identity/identification of a group could be extremely tenuous and changeable is illustrated by the ‘support’ at one time by White Australians in bringing out processions in their cities for the cause of Tamilians for an eelam (mother country). Not 93

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only did such manifestations of support for Tamilian political identity evaporate with the fall of the LTTE movement in Sri Lanka, but in the same constituency of White Australia another collective Indian ‘other’, students from North India, were badly bruised and beaten on several occasions (Baas 2009). What kind of collective identity and identification are we then talking about in the analysis of such shifting scenarios of cohesion and conflict? An example of diaspora Indians from another part of the world is equally instructive. The hindutva votaries from India, with much fanfare and elan, attempted converts to their cause from among Indian South Africans. It so transpires that after initial and short-lived success, the South African constituency of Indians paid scant heed to their fundamentalist propaganda. They remained Hindus sans hindutva but also South Africans rather than getting coloured by the politicised hindutva movement of India (Hansen 2002, 2012). No amount of analysis in terms of dual or triple ‘identity’ of this constituency would be able to touch the rockbottom of social processes that sustain such resistance. Let me turn to an example from Malaysia. Here we are concerned not so much with the caste or ethnic ‘identity’ of Indians in Malaysia but with the ‘middle class’ belonging (or ‘identity’) of a section of this constituency. In respect of the recent HINDRAF movement for the socio-economic amelioration of the Indian minority, it was eagerly hoped that a consolidated leadership of the Indian middle class would take up leadership roles of the movement. On the contrary, as the continuing imbroglio and fractionalism in the rank of Indians in Malaysia soon showed up there was no unified and identifiable middle class. The great hopes for such leadership here evaporated into thin air of millenarianism and despair (Jain 2011a). Finally, I take the example of the youthful Indian community in post-Obama United States. Analysts of identity in this community have been looking at language, region, religion, ethnicity and caste to define its belonging. As I already pointed out in an earlier section of this chapter, perceptive observers have however shown the obsolescence and irrelevance of these criteria and have brought up new indices of race and class in defining socio-economic and political processes among the young Indian Americans (Shah 2009). This example again shows that the quest to be analytical in the jungle of identities may be a necessary first step but is, in the end, a wild goose chase. I should like to end this note on the political costs of harking on identities to make sense of socio-political processes. Identities, it so happens in classical social science, are ascribed rather than achieved attributes of individuals and groups. In that sense, to revert to my example of the Indian diaspora as a whole, the focus on identities, 94

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caste, backwardness, poverty etc., of the indentured migrant groups for example, were conventionally seen in the framework of a victimology. In earlier writings about the indentured labour the helplessness of the migrants was arrayed against the exploitation and oppression practised by the colonisers; hence the depiction of indenture as ‘a new system of slavery’. This analytical mindset, let me mention, has begun to be overthrown by the diasporic analysts themselves who see the adaptation, creativity and agency of the so-called victims in a framework of challenge-and-response (Lal 2005). The achievements of the diasporic adaptation have been brought to centre stage once the bugbear of inherited identities, most often covered by the trope of ethnicity, has been repudiated. I think there is a challenge here for the anthropological student of contemporary socio-political situation in India itself. For how long shall we continue to speak of the politics of caste identities? Isn’t there a danger in such analyses of an involutionary explanatory morass a way out of which is shown by the external counterpoints made available by the diaspora?5

Notes 1 This chapter is partly based on ‘Race and Ethnicity: A Methodological Note With Reference to the Study of Indian Diaspora’, in Gopala Sarana and R. P. Srivastava (eds), Studies in Social and Physical Anthropology, pp. 181–187 (Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2012) and partly on ‘Contesting Identity/Identities as a Concept in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (with special reference to India Diaspora Studies)’, in Ajit K. Danda, Nadeem Hasnain and Dipali G. Danda (eds), Contested Identities in the Globalized World, pp. 120–123 (Jhargram: Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists, 2013). Used with permissions. 2 According to Wikipedia, ‘an “emic” account is a description of behavior or a belief in terms meaningful (consciously or unconsciously) to the actor; that is, an emic account comes from a person within the culture. An “etic” account is a description of a behavior or a belief by an observer, in terms that can be applied to other cultures; that is, an etic account is “culturally neutral”.’ The claim to cultural neutrality of an etic description in this definition does not factor in the reflexivity of the actor and the observer in ethnographic encounter and in cross-cultural comparisons. See Herzfeld (2001, 2013). 3 I owe the notion of ‘hierarchy’ to Dumont’s (1970) concept of a relationship between the encompassing and the encompassed in Indian socio-cultural representations. I am using the term ‘social heredity’ as a shorthand translation of the Sanskrit word ‘samskara’ (Monier-Williams 1964: 1120). The concept of ‘difference’ may again be usefully referred to the classificatory semantic universe of Sanskrit ‘prakara’ (Monier-Williams 1964: 653). Both samskara and prakara (as also the Sanskrit word ‘samskriti’ translated as ‘culture’) are etymologically rooted in the word karshana, meaning ‘action’

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or ‘effort’; more specifically ‘the act of pushing and pulling’ (Monier-Williams 1964: 260; see also for its derivative Hindi usage, Verma 1956: 343). 4 Writing about ‘later theoretical developments’ in social anthropology Evans-Pritchard (1954: 44) says ‘This attempt to construct social anthropology on the foundations of psychology has proved to be, then and since, an attempt to build a house on shifting sands.’ For a parallel critique of the notion of the ‘índividual’ in relation to non-modern societies by Louis Dumont, see Douglas and Douglas 1975: 328–342. In post-structuralist theory Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ (Jain, Sheena 2013: 68–74) neatly avoids psychological reductionism. 5 A useful methodological article on questions of ‘identity’ written in the same vein as my note is: Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000).

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6 NATION AND TRANS-NATION IN DIASPORIC GEOPOLITICS 1

*** Delineating the context of skills, knowledge and cultural transfers and exchanges in global migration, the dialectic between transnational and the nation-state settings is at the heart of the geopolitical frame in which we can frame our analyses and discussions of Indian diaspora. Specifically, the debate is between the proponents of those who see global diasporic processes crossing nation-state boundaries in a sui generis manner and those – political scientists and nationalists in the main – who advocate, for reasons that they are able to enunciate logically, the return to the nation-state boundaries in a more or less ‘United Nations’ universe of discourse. I discern that historians and literary scholars – proponents of the humanities in the main – belong to the transnational camp and hard-nosed social scientists, especially those with a vision of political economy, subscribe to the nation-state persuasion. What are the relative merits and demerits of the two visions? And is there a justifiable complementarity between them as analytical perspectives? This is the only issue that I will broach here.

The nation-state To undertake the task at hand, I analyse, in the words of Wimmer and Glick-Schiller (2002: 30), ‘how the concept of the nation-state has and still does influence past and current thinking in the social sciences, including our thinking about transnational migration’. These authors discuss this topic critically in a universe of discourse designated as ‘methodological nationalism’ in the social sciences. Before coming to methodological nationalism, however, I would pinpoint certain empirical instances where the nation-state framework looms large in our thinking about transnationalism and globalisation.

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Generally most contributions dealing with Indian diaspora are centrally located in the context of a nation-state (e.g. India, Uganda, Iran, Malaysia, Bangladesh and the United States) or in the international relations between these nations, for example, Bangladeshi immigrants in India, Gujarati and Rajasthani migrants in the United States, Keralite and Punjabi migrants transnationally etc. In other words, either roots migration from geographical-cum-linguistic regions of a nation-state or emigrants, including refugees, between nation-states constitute the context of global migration and diaspora. Without examining their analytical framework it would be difficult to say what proportion of such contributions is biased in the direction of what Wimmer and Glick-Schiller designate as ‘methodological nationalism’. This bias refers to those analyses which fall into the trap of a ‘container model’ of the nation-state, hence reducing transnationalist phenomena to a literal relationship between and among nation-states. In the extant literature on Indian diaspora there are salutary examples where an awareness of such a trap and the side-stepping of literal internationalism are in evidence. Axel’s (2001) multi-sited ethnography of the Sikh diaspora, Eisenlohr’s (2007) analysis of Indian ‘ancestral culture’ in a sui generis localised socio-economic dynamics in Mauritius, Hansen’s (2012) observations on in situ mediations, away from any necessary nexus with developments in contemporary India among Indian diasporics in Durban, South Africa and Willford’s (2006) interpretation of Tamil religiosity in Malaysia are instances where a reference of diasporic ‘Indian’ culture back to India in ‘real time’ has been transcended in a transnationalist (rather than an internationalist) analytical frame. The latest academic contribution in this direction is Amrith’s (2013) environmentalist-cum-transnationalist interpretation of historical migrations across the Bay of Bengal, to which I will come again in detail a little later.

Transnationalist analysis What is this ‘transnationalist’ analytical frame? How has it evolved? What are some of its insights in contemporary works? Is there a danger of certain transnationalist analyses covertly falling into a biased ‘methodological internationalism’ trap? How may one reformulate the discourse of global migration, diaspora and transnationalism from an anthropological vantage point? In posing this last question, I have in mind analogically, the Wittgenstinian perspective (‘an anthropological way of doing Economics’ – where you do not only ‘look’ but ‘see’) on global migration. 98

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The beginnings of a transnationalist perspective may be traced to a relatively politically aseptic cultural ecological viewpoint in human geography. An early example of its use is found in the concept of plantation as a ‘settlement institution’. To quote its founding father (Thompson 1986: 2; see also Thompson 1957, 1959), ‘plantation becomes migration and the planting of people, and the place planted becomes a plantation’. The term ‘plantation’ in the original sense had reference not to a landed estate but to the ‘whole process of migration and settlement . . . The early use of the term corresponded to the Dutch term Volk-Planting’. For example, the earliest human component on a typical rubber plantation in Malaya (now Malaysia) consisted of immigrants – planters, supervisors and labourers. The only indigenous factor was the tract of land they jointly worked and inhabited. It was the way in which these people incorporated their statuses and purposes into the land that gave rise to characteristic social relationships among them. The estate (plantation) became a stratified social grouping (see Jain 1970: xix). In anthropology ‘the cultural ecological hypothesis’ (Steward 1936) was formulated in the study of hunting bands that later germinated in the study of plantation and peasant communities in Puerto Rico (Steward et al. 1956). It also formed the theoretical basis of Thompson’s idea of plantation as a settlement institution. The concept of cultural ecology proved seminal in that both the terms ‘culture’ and ‘ecology’ subsequently found an inter-relationship in the integrated and interpretative studies of evolutionary human behaviour (see Geertz 1973; Fox 1975; Bateson 1987). In contemporary social science theorising as well as in popular usage the term ‘ecosystem’ designates the culture and environment of any organisation, ranging from the civic and the local (e.g. a municipality) to the cosmopolitan and the trans-local (e.g. a multinational corporation, see Garsten 2003). The methodological infusion of the conceptual vocabulary of the ‘nation’ (nationality, nationalism, internationalism etc.) into the cultural ecological hypothesis is of relatively recent vintage. One may legitimately claim its original usage to be transnational in the sense that its locational parameters then were unbounded by what has been discussed as the ‘container model’ of the nation-state. This is precisely its methodological nexus where environmental history approaches (Amrith 2013) and of ‘continuous histories’ (Subrahmanyam 1997) converge with anthropological analyses of transnationalism (e.g. Appadurai 1997). There is a difference in respect of transnationalism, however, between the historians’ usages of the concept of culture and that of contemporary anthropologists. And a similar difference in 99

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usage pertains to the infusion of the nation-state context in anthropological texts on transnationalism and in certain political science writings.

Cultural ecology and transnationalism – a case study Rather than review the whole gamut of transnationalist studies of global migration to bring out their focus on cultural ecology, let me take up Amrith’s historical study, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants, 2013. The environmentalist persuasion and, hence, ecological history is pronounced in this approach. In ecology, the sea (waters) assumes an important role. The ecological interplay between the seashores and the hinterlands (the littoral) is characterised by repeated human crossings of the ocean and the progressive reclaiming of lands beyond the seashores through cultivation and building construction. Nature and human endeavour are thus seen as global factors in migration and its consequences. The story of famines and fluctuations of natural factors in sea routes (wind directions and storms) are built into the historical narrative. Ecological regions are thus conceptualised and reinvented in a novel way recalling Braudel’s studies of the Mediterranean, Subrahmanyam’s of the Indian Ocean and earlier studies of the Bay of Bengal itself by historians like Chris Baker and others. In thus reconstructing the eco-history of the terrain, particularly of South and Southeast Asia, Amrith subsumes, in a sense, the currents of colonialism and imperialism within cultural ecology. Based on such a perspective, the countries of South and Southeast Asia in Amrith’s book – India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines – constitute a continuous region for a circulatory flow of ideas, goods and people. Finally, up until the installation of the nationstate idea and its jural-political constraints following the period of the World Wars, the Bay of Bengal remained a cultural ecological region in the above sense. The aftermath of the wars saw the ‘loss’, through its partial eclipse into newly constituted nation-states, of the Bay of Bengal eco-region as an ‘imagined community’. The ecological frame in the above redaction of cultural ecology may not be disputed (though there are sceptics who would want detailed scientific proofs for assertions like the ‘rising’ of ocean waters (Amrith, Chapter 8) similar to doubts concerning climate change and global warming, but here I shall let it pass). But the anthropologist is within his disciplinary rights to interrogate Amrith’s usage of the concept of culture. I begin with a clarification. Michael Herzfeld (2013: 110), 100

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writing about political-science culturalists, such as Samuel Huntington (1996), says, ‘“The culturalists” view is that you cannot understand a political process, especially in international relations, without taking culture into account. But what they actually take into account is “cultures” – finitely bounded entities that look far more like the creations of nineteenth century nationalist ideologues or early anthropologists than the fluid processes that today’s anthropologists usually study. In a similar vein, the anthropologist Fredrik Barth (1994) has written that his concept of culture is characterised as continuous rather than discontinuous; it is wrought by variation and flux; it is contested rather than being assumed to be homogenous; and, finally, for Barth though culture was seen mainly as a boundary-making mechanism (in relation to ethnic groups), its content was not altogether unimportant. With particular reference to the cartography of diaspora, Avatar Brah (1996: 234) defines culture comprehensively as ‘the play of signifying practices; the idiom in which social meaning is constituted, appropriated, contested and transformed; the space where the entanglement of subjectivity, identity and politics is performed. Culture is essentially process . . . (The) emphasis on process draws attention to the reiterative performance constitutive of that which is constructed as custom, tradition, or value’ (Brah’s italics). While speaking of cultural syncretism among Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Buddhists in the Bay of Bengal eco-region of South and Southeast Asia, Amrith basically glosses over many aspects of the continuous and processual nature of culture, of contestations within the cultural flow and veers close to a somewhat simplistic view of ‘live and let live’ paradigm of coexistence among cultures especially in the preWorld War era but continuing to this day. As to the content of multiple cultures in the region, Amrith confines his discourse of accommodation mainly to religion and spirituality (sample the examples of local Christianity p. 179; local Hinduism p. 280; local Islam and Buddhism also p. 280).

Cultural ecology and levels of politics It is true that besides religion and spirituality Amrith is able to configure financial and trading exchanges among the diverse ethnic groups in the eco-region, but where is the political power equation in his cultural configuration? He does tackle the political question also at the end of the book but, as we shall see, in a global context of environmentally defined geopolitical scenario. There is, nevertheless, a more proximate context (missed out by Amrith): that of the nation-state 101

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building process in diasporic situations of diverse locations where the power equations are played out. To return to the Bay of Bengal ecoregion currently in the throes of country-wise nation-building processes, ethnic groups are mutually engaged in power games that can be analysed in Gramsci’s terms as ‘transformist hegemony’ (Gramsci 1971; Williams 1989). To take the Malaysian example, each ethnic minority (e.g. the Chinese and the Indians) to speak nothing of the ethnic majority (the Malays as bumiputeras) are proud possessors of their cultural heritage. But the ethnic minorities in relation to the politically dominant ruling ethnic majority face a dilemma. If they adhere exclusively to their cultural moorings and behaviour, they are looked down upon by the dominant ethnic majority as a potential fifth column in the polity. Yet they are expected to make a contribution to the common patrimony of the nation-state controlled by the ruling majority. If, then, they proceed to homogenise with the culture of the majority, they suffer ridicule by others and in their own eyes as lackeys hanging on to the coat-tails of their alien superiors/oppressors. This, then, is the predicament of diasporic ethnic minorities in the nation-state building process and it lies behind many an inter-ethnic conflict. There is no allusion to this dilemma or similar contestations in Amrith’s account. Here there is a double whammy, however. The nation-states of the Bay of Bengal eco-region with all their patterns of dominance and inter-ethnic conflicts are subordinate to yet bigger power games in the Indian Ocean/South China Sea/the Pacific Ocean arena – those between the United States, China and India. Amrith is sensitive to this environmentally defined context while bypassing, as we noted, the cultural politics of nation-building processes in the eco-region. That our author’s sights are all focused on the grand global vision of the US administration is evidenced when he cites with approval and approbation the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement made in Chennai in July 2011 (Amrith 2013: 251). Hillary Clinton had extolled the port city of Chennai to discuss India’s leadership in the region to its east not only in the historic past but even today. ‘Today the stretch of sea from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific contains the world’s most vibrant trade and energy routes, linking economies and driving growth’, she said. Amrith adds, ‘The Bay’s position as a stretch of sea from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific puts it once again at the heart of global history.’ Ironically, several parts of that very city of Chennai about whose location in the Bay of Bengal eco-region these statements were made faced a grave threat of ecological disaster in August and December 2016!

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Conclusion The message loud and clear to the students of diaspora and transnationalism is that whether we stress ecology or political economy or both, we must ground global theories in empirical instances while avoiding the pitfalls not only of methodological nationalism but of an insidious methodological internationalism as well. (See for a timely warning in relation to freewheeling globalisation analyses, Favell 2001.) For transnationalist analysis to trump both methodological nationalism and internationalism, the human ecosystems – peoples and their environments, natural and man-made – as also the observers of these systems, would have to be conceived as moving targets subject to the vagaries of geopolitics. To end this discussion on an anthropological note for research methodology to be adopted in the scenario sketched above, it would seem that sustained and long-term fieldwork in specific localities that are part of national and international arenas may provide an answer. What one anthropologist (Herzfeld 2013) describes as cultural and social intimacy of and with the informants may hold a clue to discommoding the obvious or self-evident truths publicised by the powersthat-be and echoed by the media. In so doing the social responsibility of the anthropologist-ethnographer would be ‘not so much to speak truth to power, as to speak doubt to truth’ (Herzfeld 2013: 99). He or she would then be raising questions about what increasingly powerful media present as self-evident truths.

Note 1 This chapter was originally presented as a keynote address at the International Conference on ‘Global Migration: Rethinking Skills, Knowledge and Culture’, Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism (GRFDT), India International Centre, New Delhi, 26 November 2016.

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7 DIASPORIC INTEGRATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA 1

*** Goolam Vahed and Ashwin Desai (2010) conclude a recent paper as follows: There has been a (re)turn to the language of class in many communities in South Africa if not explicitly then at least implicitly. The language of class oppression is one powerful way in which the Indian poor can begin to forge alliances with the African poor and in this process challenge both the laager of ethnic identity and poverty. The language of ‘non-racialism’ too . . . still has a powerful resonance in South Africa for many and so does the quest to build a more equitable society. Post-apartheid South Africa remains ripe with possibilities. With increasing arguments for class to be brought into the equation this may be an important stimulus for embracing identities that cross racial boundaries. Let me state at the outset, apropos the above conclusion, what I intend to do and not to do in this chapter. First, as a non-South African, whatever connotation you may attach to this statement either in terms of identity or belonging, I am hesitant and reluctant to assume the role of an activist which would be necessary to pronounce a possible solution (as against a possible diagnosis) to the crisis of social justice in South Africa. Second, as an academic social anthropologist I shall venture to present a largely microcosmic analysis of the problem at hand though within a macrocosmic universe of discourse, and, indeed, one informed by an ‘implicit’ global framework of anthropological comparisons (cf. Jain 2010a). Let me add that I broadly agree with the ideological thrust of Vahed (V) and Desai (D) diagnosis of the South 104

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African crisis though I do not discuss here, as they do, the play of capitalism and neo-liberalism defining the political system in South Africa. Part 1 spells out the various concepts. In what follows (Part 2) I narrate, based heavily on the recent historical work by Desai and Vahed or for short D&V (2010) and my own brief and provisional interpretative effort (Chapter 4 in Jain 2010a), three dimensions of the story of Indian diasporic integration in South Africa. I conclude by bringing out the implications of the historical nature of the present ‘Indian diasporic integration’ and the limits of social justice in contemporary South Africa.

Part 1 Even at the risk of sounding excessively pedagogical, let me spell out the concepts of ‘community’, ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ as used by some other scholars in their empirical work. Community is something that is constituted and reconstituted by those who belong to it. As has been pointed out, for example, by Dufoix (2008: 69–70) there is nothing ‘natural’ about community, not even in the concept of ‘gemeinschaft’ or traditional community (sometimes translated as ‘society’) as contrasted with the modern ‘gesellschaft’ or ‘association’ (cf Tonnies 1957). Dufoix (2008: 70) says, For Weber what creates community is a social relationship based on the subjective feelings of belonging to the same community . . . I add that this belief is sustained by the existence of an objective community that is socially constructed and symbolized by institutions, spokespeople, emblems and myths. We would go a step further: it is through the exercise of individual and collective human agency that communities are constituted. Moreover, in this era of neo-functionalism (or post-functionalism as some would claim) we social scientists valorise the agendas or proactive purposes of conscious human agents (manifest or latent), rather than the metaphysical telos of ‘systems’. The methodological and practical fallout of this realisation is that, if there is one change in concepts about human society and culture, it is the fact of purposive and planned transformation. The communities, to be sure, may not succeed in what they propose (unintended consequences and ‘dysfunctions’ stalk their path) but in anthropology and sociology of our times the aura of fatalism,2 often dressed up as primordial constraints had earlier remained the overarching assumption about the mainspring of actions in communities. 105

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In contemporary sociology and anthropology, however, the interpretation of ongoing social processes in communities blurs the dichotomous distinction between ‘gesellschaft’ and ‘gemeinschaft’ and leads to positing a simultaneous existence of the two (cf.Worsley et al. 1978: 342; for an empirical example from the Indian diaspora in Malaysia, Jain 2009a: 102). The classical anthropological concept of culture is best understood, in the context of communities, as the lens of a worldview through which fully formed or partly formulated aspirations are given shape. Values, functional and dysfunctional, positive and negative, solidary or conflictive for communities, remain in perpetual contestation (cf. Brah 1996). They are an intrinsic component of the concept of ‘culture’. I have tried to distinguish the concept of ‘culture’ from that of ‘ethnicity’: ‘In sociological terms, the situational and dynamic conceptualization of ethnicity in society is complementary to the reiterative performance of what is constructed as “custom”, “tradition” or “value” viz., culture . . . . It makes sense to juxtapose ethnicity and culture as twin faces of dynamics of reproduction and change, respectively, both delineate process but in terms of change and continuity’ (Jain 2009a: 62; see also Brah 1996: 234). It should be noted that the ‘situational’ theorisation of ethnicity right from Weber (1978) down to commentators like Barth (1969), Cohen (1974), Brubaker (2004) and Shamsul (2008), to name only a few, is not conceived as the cement of sustained corporate groups and is thus open to conceptualisation of change, even transformation.3 There is, however, a reactionary catch, especially in its conceptual overlap (‘family resemblances’, cf Jain 2010b) with the concept of race. There is here an interesting historical causality. ‘Ethnicity’ became a sociological tool in society in the United States as an ‘exclusive’ concept, referring as it did ‘initially’ to the WASPs and the eastern and central White immigrants, as opposed to the ‘inclusive’ concept of ‘race’ in distinguishing all Whites from all Blacks (Negroes). The application of ethnicity as an analytical tool elsewhere than United States, for example, in Malaysia or South Africa, carries with it the racist connotation of its original application. Especially when race and ethnicity as antonyms of White to non-White become (or are made) signifiers of identity and identification through the play of social class and power – not only does phenotype overtake whatever may remain of ‘pure’ genotype – they become, as masks, instruments of stereotypical springs of social action and interaction. See in this respect Weber’s (1978: 385–395, 933–935) failed optimism

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of the decline of race- and ethnicity-based status groups in United States with an increase in the population of mulattoes. The failure was socio-demographic in nature.

Part 2 Now we return to the three dimensions of Indian diasporic integration in South Africa. Indian indenture and the nature/role of cultural factors in resistance/resilience The data about Indian indenture in D&V is amenable to be seen in terms of communities comprising mainly the various ‘sub-ethnicities’ of Indian workers and occupationally/functionally constituted European bosses. The communities were marked by certain characteristics. Mainly from the viewpoint of the workers these were ‘closed communities’, ‘total institutions’ (Goffman 1961; Jain 1970; Marimuthu 2008; Beckford 1984). In terms of their recruitment and settlement experiences, the indentured labourers were de-territorialised and re-territorialised. Re-territorialisation was hemmed in by stringent pass laws which restricted movement of labourers like in a prison. These experiences have been very fully depicted as transformative in the archives detailed by D&V. There is one aspect of the psychological interpretation that I wish to add. The communities of indentured labourers (and the colonisers) strongly manifest features of what has been called ‘the Stockholm syndrome’.4 Colonisers, as kidnappers, soon in adaptation to life in the total institution became sympathetic co-dwellers and protectors in the estimation of the communities of both the labourers and their White masters. The mutual dependence, though sharply asymmetrical, provided the key to the adaptation process.5 For the indenture system in South Africa the following existential circumstances for this adaptation were favourable: (a) The emigrant indentured labourer was by and large, even in his or her village, impoverished and uprooted. (b) He or she was a denizen already of a deeply stratified society. (c) In the social code of indenture the institutionalised relationship between the labourer, the intermediary native gang leader (sirdar) and the European master on the plantations or on mines was highly personalised.

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The racial/ethnic/sub-ethnic identification made by the boss was internalised as a template of identity by the worker.6 Let me pursue my argument further in terms of ‘culture’ of these communities. In conventional sociology and social anthropology culture, broadly defined as ‘values’, is seen as the cement of social structure (cf. Beattie 1964). I remember once when I made a similar point in class, one of my students said that often enough the builder weakens the cohesive power of cement by mixing sand in it. The point is welltaken, and I have already mentioned that culture, though reproducing social structure, is contested, often becomes counterproductive and is usually a divisive element in society (see some of the new writing in social anthropology ‘against culture’ as in Abu-Lughod 1991, or the virtual ouster of culture as ‘only politics’, in Ahmad 2010). As I will try to show presently, I do not myself take this extreme (nihilistic) view of culture because recognising its distinctiveness retains in social science analysis an expressive dimension as against an exclusively instrumental one (rational choice theory). However, apropos D&V and their extensive discussion of ‘resistance’ among Indian indentured labourers I wish to endorse the ancillary concept of ‘resilience’ (see its application in analysing cultural change in Indian society, Yogendra Singh 2000). Resilience may be seen as the prerequisite of resistance. The D&V book is replete with examples of the indentured labourers’ resistance. Note in particular, the labourers’ defiance through disobedience and other ‘weapons of the weak’, even certain amount of violent retaliation as during the 1913 Strike as a response to brutal repression and significantly, instances of the women’s sterling role in defying exploitation and contributing to ‘reconstitute’ a viable community in the new setting (on this point see D&V 2010: 434–435; also Jain 2010a). However, those who take a rose-tinted view of this concept refuse to see any fault-lines (like the ones who refuse to see how many newly built roads in New Delhi give way within the first rainy season because the contractor mixed up the cement with sand). I shall give examples where the sliding scale of its meaning reduces ‘resilience’ to rigidity, orthodoxy and, indeed, a resistance to adapt and change. The resistance in cultural forms like the carnivalesque reversal of roles in processually adapted traditional Indian (Hindu and Muslim) ceremonies and rituals performed in indenture community localities of South Africa (extensively reported by D&V) may be interpreted as ‘rituals of rebellion’ (cf. Jain 1970: 400–417). The sociological interpretation of these cultural protests or resistance is often a reaffirmation of the status quo, not a radical change. Note that Gluckman (1940) proposed a distinction between ‘rebellion’ and ‘revolution’. 108

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I give a specific institutional example reported by D&V (pp. 310–312); the existence of rotating credit association (RCA) among ‘Madrasi’ indentured labourers on the sugarcane estates of Natal in the 1880s. The institution of RCA among the labouring classes has been extensively reported in all parts of the world (Ardener 1964). My culturalistic interpretation of this institution was in terms of an interaction between the ceremonial exchange-oriented Tamil society and plantation workers who are recipients of small but regular wages. I saw it as an adaptively cultural savings mechanism among Tamilian labourers in Malaya (now Malaysia). However, a parallel analysis had been given by Clifford Geertz (1961) of this institution among the Javanese workers of Indonesia. Geertz generalised it as ‘the middle rung in development’. Later on, I pushed my analysis of RCA further in terms of its consequences for the community of workers. Among other anthropological interpretations of the same institution, Sol Tax (1953) described it as ‘penny capitalism’ among the Guatemalan plantation workers and Maurice Freedman (1959) characterised its function among the Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia in the aphorism that the Chinese wage workers ‘do not only work for money but they also know how to make money work for them’. In his estimation, therefore, did this institution represent a type of proto-entrepreneurship? In my follow-up studies of Indian Malaysian estate workers and ex-estate workers (Chapter 4 in Jain 2009a) I highlighted the two faces of RCA: a traditional savings mechanism and a promoter and perpetrator of internal social stratification within a community of labourers working in the macro socio-economic circumstances of ‘closed resources’ for them. Let me return to the depiction of RCA on the estates in Natal in the early twentieth century. ‘Will Gilbert of Burnesdale Estate in Ifafa . . . wrote to the Protector on 28 December, 1907 that the sirdar had organized a lottery. When they received their money, workers invested in jewellery. The problem for Gilbert was that some workers were selling their rations to pay the lottery, and thus going hungry’ (D&V 2010: 311). Our authors (D&V) narrate RCA as ‘an astonishing story of the resourcefulness of the indentured’ (p. 311) whereas Gilbert echoing a typical Utilitarian (or in today’s terms a ‘rational choice theory’) stance criticised the practice as being quite abnormal because his workers were ‘not intelligent enough’. The resistance/ resourcefulness theory and the rational choice theory both appear incomplete, if one looked at the consequences for the community of the so-called lottery. Just to add one crucial factual detail, the RCA was both a lottery and an auction. In its latter incarnation, by far 109

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more common in the labouring communities, it was indeed a form of proto-entrepreneurship and hence nurtured a process of internal economic stratification in the community. There were no doubt other such processes, for example money-lending by the better-off workers to the poor ones, which led to the same result. To generalise, the so-called egalitarian community of indentured labourers was split vertically between those who were the few protoentrepreneurs occupying a higher stratum and those who constituted the chronically poor majority. Status discrepancy between the minority and the majority characterised the cultural nature of disputes in the ‘working class’ (cf. Jayawardena 1963 on ‘eye pass’ or prestige related disputes among the Guyanese plantation labourers of Indian origin), since life chances or social class (more accurately ‘class fractions’) based on market forces and relationships led to the socio-economic mobility of the few. Besides this mobility within the ranks of ex-indentured labourers (fully documented by D&V), there was the wider framework of social stratification, both internal and external to the ‘Indian’ community. This brings me, summarily, to the next dimension of my narrative. Historical beginnings of internal social stratification within Indian community/communities and ethnically and demographically disproportionate but limited Indian socio-economic mobility in South Africa That there was extreme social stratification within the plantation and mining communities and among the propertied and official stakeholders in the South African Community at large7 has been very well documented. As I see it, following the sociological working out of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ in the ‘total institution’, both the European boss and the native sirdar became protectors for the majority of indentured labourers. The former was a ‘benevolent’ father figure and the latter his ‘punitive’ counterpart (Samaraweera 1981). To an extent the benevolence of the European boss could be seen as being ‘subverted’ by the cruelty of the native sirdar or overseer. See Jain (1968) for an account of the early plantation community in Malaya (now Malaysia) where the native ‘head kangany’ (an amalgam of recruiter, sirdar and overseer) would lead the annual ritual procession in the estate community with the European manager following him. The barely concealed hostility of the labourer for the native sirdar (and the stories of the unmitigated cruelty of head kanganies in Malaya are legion) was partly an outcome of envy, indeed a kind of witchcraft mentality, the 110

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logic of which ran somewhat like this, ‘How could someone like us (ethnically and racially), who should “equally” be subordinate and supplicant to the White boss, exhibit an hauteur unbecoming of his status?’ If one were to sift the many complaints against management by labourers (and there is sufficient evidence in D&V), those against native sirdars and overseers would outnumber the ones against the sahebs or the European bosses. The Hindi term mai-bap (mother and father) and the Tamil term vallaikarar, indeed a semantic slippage between ‘provider of work’ (vellaikarar) and ‘White man’ (vallaikarar) in Tamil language, were reserved only for the White boss and not for any Indian, of whatever high rank. The dynamic described here explains why the popular term of address for Gandhi became bapu (father) only in India and never in South Africa and why were none of the so-called popular Indian middle-class leaders in South Africa given kinship acronyms as is only too common in India as a whole. When it comes to leadership outside the ‘total institution’, its common identity as ‘Indian’ was readily accepted for and by all immigrants from India (at that time the nationalist Indian leadership within India was fragmented as indeed it remained till the end) because they were identified as Indians by the colonisers. In this respect the coloniser employers, who were the commanding bosses of the ‘total institutions’ were quite like anthropologists, ‘in the game and out of it, watching and wondering at it’ (see footnote 5 in this chapter). By going a step further, this seems to me an explanation for the heavily European/ British and now ‘culturally nationalistic” (in sum, what Said would call ‘Orientalist’) nature of Indian nationalism and its disavowal as ideology and practice by exceptional Indian visionary like Rabindranath Tagore. If our particular construction of the South African narrative is to be judged by its interpretative results, I would now like to highlight the fact that in much of the post-indenture period and, particularly in the Apartheid era, members of the numerically small Indian South African population, in proportion to the total population of South Africa, have occupied more positions of high office and responsibility thus constituting an ‘upper stratum’. This feature was an outcome of the early formation of a proto-entrepreneurial class fraction among the Indians in solidarity with the presence in South Africa of an already entrenched affluent class of ‘passenger Indians’. I have discussed in an earlier account (see Chapter 4, in Jain 2010a) the distinctive pattern of ‘interstitial mobility’ of an Indian component in its diasporic integration in South Africa. The point that I wish to emphasise is the visibility of this Indian component for the non-Indian South Africans 111

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and consequently the perceptual and sociological role of this visibility in generalising a status image for Indians as a whole, given the dominance of phenotypically oriented perceptions in the South African plural society and the equation in perceptions and images, which have consequences for interactions, ideologies and ameliorative measures in social reality. The facts and processes of ‘Indian’ socio-economic mobility in South Africa despite the demographic and legal handicaps of this minority have been pointed out not only by sociologists but also by economists (see Padayachee and Morrell 1991; Padayachee 1999). Padayachee in particular is seized of this paradox – the South African Indians’ relatively high-status image despite severe socio-legal disabilities. In what follows I shall try and diagnose anthropologically the parameters of this conundrum. Race, ethnicity and class: social stratification and cultural politics in contemporary South Africa I shall have to be very brief in the delineation of this vast subject and confine myself to the manner in which the narrative of this theme may be advanced through conceptual and empirical building blocks already provided. I begin with the crystallisation of identities through identification by the colonial masters, of Indians vis-à-vis ‘natives’ (Africans). In this respect too the data in D&V is extremely rich. While in everyday life on estate and mining locations of Natal it was the diversity and differentiation among Indian identities that was paramount, the European colonisers – co-dwellers and ‘direct’ protectors of Indians (their common legal status as British subjects being the constant refrain in the views of professional middle-class Indian leaders like Gandhi and Gokhale) – contrasted their Indian wards favourably in skills, intelligence and ‘culture’ vis-à-vis the African natives (see, D&V, p. 273). In saying so I wish to move a step away from a crudely constructed conspiracy and ‘divide and rule’ theory based on utilitarian and rational choice explanations to the practical implications of the Stockholm Syndrome. The ‘racial’ cast of the opposition between Indians and natives became generalised. From the point of view of the actions and ideology of middle-class Indian leaders like Gandhi, there is more than a grain of truth in the critique that they were oblivious and indifferent to participation in their emancipatory movement for the underprivileged masses, of the Blacks in South Africa. The ‘racialist’ perception of ordinary White guardians of law and order is well epitomised in this quote which Indres Naidoo (1982: 41) gives from his conversation with a White policeman in pre-democratic South 112

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Africa: ‘What is the matter with you Indians? You’ve got a long history of civilization, you wore silk before the white man, and here you are jumping from tree to tree with these barbarians, what’s wrong with you man?’ In contemporary South Africa even among Indians a racially inflected class distinction prevails between the so-called FBIs (Foreign Born Indians) – the well-heeled third- and fourth-generation locally born youth and the recently arrived poor immigrants from India and Pakistan, the so-called India Papas (Jain 2010a: 120). It has been argued with some plausibility that the Indian institution of ‘caste’ has been transformed over a long period of living in racialist societies like South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago, into ‘race’ (Niranjana 2006). The plausibility for this transformation arises also from the fact that both these institutions, caste and race, are based on a common notion of ‘social heredity’ (see Chapter 5 of this book). Unfortunately, the prevailing of a ‘racialist’ explanation for the relative affluence of Indians in the perceptions of African population has been well documented in literature.8 The sociological critique of the Indian community as a ‘model minority’ in the United States too uses the logic in common perceptions of a concordance between race, colour and class. In post-Obama United States the upwardly mobile young generation of NRIs has, under various existential pressures, embraced the habitus of race and class in social interaction and perceptions (see Shah 2009) only partly replacing that of caste, region and language brought by their forebears as Indian ‘cultural baggage’. The perceptions by the Black South Africans of economic class and political power in racial terms – especially vis-à-vis the Indian minority (the particular subject of our present discussion) – has wider consequences for diagnosing the nature of social stratification and political processes in the changing circumstances of contemporary South Africa. Vahed and Desai (2010) in the paper cited by me at the beginning provide a largely macro-sociological analysis based on empirical data culled from the opinions and activities of Indians and Blacks as personally recorded by them and as reported in the media. These are ‘apt illustrations’ which in some micro-sociological and social anthropological studies have been distinguished from the analysis of ‘social situations’ through the ‘extended case-study method’ (see for the latest methodological revival of this mode of analysis, Evens and Handelman 2010). Unfortunately we do not have many examples of such analysis for South Africa (for a partial exception, see Anand Singh 2005). Here I give a preliminary description and analysis, by way of field notes and comments thereon, following a reformulated version of that approach to suit the context of South Africa. 113

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Notes dated 1 April 2010, Durban, South Africa, captioned ‘Politics as the Art of the Possible: the macro-political context of multi-cultural South Africa and the relationship between the (Black) ruling group and the (Indian) minority’. The ethnography refers to the South African (both the ruling group and the opposition) participation in the inaugural and concluding functions of Global Organization of the People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), South Africa, celebrating 150 years of the Indians’ arrival in South Africa, specifically in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. In the inaugural function held on 28 March 2010, a long speech was made by Buthulezi. He recalled his opposition, initially vis-à-vis ANC and later in alliance with the Natal Indian Congress, first to White rule and apartheid and latter to the ruling ANC. He mentioned particular Indian leaders with whom he collaborated in this struggle and opposition and ended by paying rich and profuse tributes to the late Fatima Meer. The major burden of his speech was to recall issues common to the underprivileged Blacks and Indians and the strategies adopted to solve/overcome them. Although he referred to the royal origins and lineage of himself and thus, indirectly, to the traditional claims to authority in the KwaZulu-Natal region (kingdom), he did not either refer explicitly to, nor asked the audience (almost entirely Indian), to participate then and there in symbolic acts of allegiance to monarchical authority. This was in contrast to the arrival of the King, the Chief Minister, Mayor et al. (all Black) who attended and spoke at length at the closing ceremony. They exhorted the audience (again almost exclusively Indian) to show allegiance and ‘fealty’ to the rulers (Black) by standing up and saluting the King, in the traditional Zulu manner, en masse. There were references in their speeches to the business and professional expertise of the Indians which has contributed to the wealth and well-being in South Africa. But there was no mistaking the (implicit) patronising tone adopted to convey how the minorities should ‘of course’ make contribution to the common patrimony of the (South African) nation (cf. Brackette Williams 1989). Overtly the references to the Indian contributions as well as to Black authority were made in the language and through examples of what has been called the ‘culturalisation of politics’ (see Jain 1994b; Anand Singh 1997 for its ‘Indian’ version in South Africa) but the counterpoint about the ‘politicisation of culture’ was the hidden and instrumental transcript. I think it would be analytically useful to posit the copula above as a point-counterpoint strategy by the ruling group (a reformulation of Leach’s 1954, ‘dynamic equilibrium’) to play the game of macro-politics in contemporary multicultural South 114

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Africa. The Indians in South Africa against this political backdrop appear very much like the Chinese in Malaysia who are an ethnic minority but economically more affluent than the Malay majority and other minorities such as the Indians. A South African Indian participant in the closing ceremony very shrewdly mentioned to me (almost in a whisper), ‘We have the sight of the King but very rarely. Look what a heavy price we have to pay for it.’ I think he meant, of course, the very heavy economic cost (investment?) made by the Indian community in the grand GOPIO ceremony especially the gala dinner, with the King as a participant. But I am sure he meant also, and importantly, the economic price of political subordination which the Indian community has to pay versus Black hegemony and authority. My informant concluded by saying that Africa is a very complex continent to understand. Let me add a term in the point-counterpoint political rhetoric. In extolling GOPIO as a transnational platform for Indian solidarity, the African spokespersons in this ceremony very cleverly diverted the ‘national’ rivalry and competition between the Blacks and the Indians on to the wider frame of global arena. (Thus reserving the ‘national prerogative’ to themselves and let the Indians explore transnational greener pastures!) The speeches and rhetoric invite further reflection. My reading of this social situation conforms to an impression I formed when a decision was being made at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs about which foreign countries with Indian diasporics should be included in the list of those where something resembling a ‘dual citizenship’ should be permitted. It was perceived about South Africa that though the country fares very well on the scale of affluence of its Indian diaspora (comparable to many Western countries which were actually put on the list as potential investors in India) the Ministry had decided to give South Africa a go by precisely because of its newly won Black supremacy and nationalism. Giving dual citizenship or its equivalent to South African Indians would, in other words, rub the Black ruling class the wrong way, putting the India-South Africa diplomatic relations in jeopardy. Coming back to the speeches at the concluding ceremony, the speakers made veiled references to the poverty and disempowerment of the majority (the Blacks) though unlike public pronouncements about affirmative action (for Malays or bumiputeras, ‘sons of the soil’) in Malaysia there was no mention of Black empowerment in South Africa but, interestingly enough, our speakers made far-fetched but resonant mention of parallel situations, internationally, of conflicts existing in Sri Lanka and Palestine. All this amounts to persuasion (and pressurisation) of the minorities to make a contribution 115

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to the common patrimony firmly controlled by the numerically dominant Blacks (for, after all, it is a democracy!). The above ceremonies as social situations and their semantic contexts show the rhetorical use of words about democracy, multiculturalism and multiracialism in the interaction between a ruling class and a minority. One can try to analytically penetrate this rhetoric as an instrument in the ding-dong processes of power through an overlap (‘family resemblances’) between the sociological concepts of race, ethnicity and class and, even, culture underlying almost universal notions of social heredity. In this formulation we shall have to radically modify the outmoded structural-functionalist assumptions about a metaphysical telos (consequences) of social solidarity and conflict in favour of the role of agency (namely, fluctuating strategies and tactics in political processes – a reformulation of Leach’s ‘dynamic equilibrium’).

Conclusion: Indian diasporic integration in South Africa as diagnosis The nature of Indian diasporic integration in South Africa may be summed up in two points: (a) Indians are nothing but South Africans in citizenship and legal status. They are also not vying for sovereign political power in the nation-state. They are thus in one sense ‘integrated’ into the nation-state of South Africa. (b) In terms of the interface between culture and politics in contemporary South Africa, their integration remains ‘diasporic’, first, because in the ongoing political processes they retain and deploy fragments of their Indian cultural heritage. And yet, second, their integration is characteristically ‘diasporic’ in that their internal cultural diversities (those of region, language, religion, caste etc.) are being progressively subsumed in a racially defined and perceived class structure of an ‘Indian’ ethnic community and multiethnic nation-state. This conclusion, in order to be complete in a certain sense, requires further research in at least two directions: (a) It needs the socio-demographic profile of the ‘poor’ in South Africa, particularly their racial/ethnic break-up in the Republic and in Natal. One would be especially interested in the proportion of the poor in the Indian South African population absolutely and 116

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relative to the Black population is important. We may then be able to distinguish between the statistical picture and popular perceptions of social stratification and mobility. This information could also constitute the starting point for a quantitative assessment of what we have termed the ‘interstitial mobility’ in the Indian South African community notwithstanding the socio-legal constraints of apartheid regime (1948–1994). The marshalling of such statistical information would only supplement and not supplant the analysis based on qualitative methodology employed here. (b) In the absence of substantial field research my concluding statement about the progressive subsuming of internal Indian cultural diversities within a racially defined and perceived class structure remains a hypothesis. Preliminary indications of the waning salience of such factors in social action are the severely limited appeal of ‘hindutva’ (fundamentalist Hindu religious thought and practice) and ‘Tamilian’ (regional and linguistic attachment to Tamil culture) transnational ideologies for political mobilisation among Indian South Africans. The brief ethnographic account of a social situation presented above is indicative of the direction that the field research may take to arrive at macro-sociological conclusions through the extended case study method and situational analysis. To conclude, my narrative here is a story told not in terms of identity but of the ongoing social processes. The account is in the nature of a social science probe (in comparison to a theological one, for example, based on notions of sin, righteousness, expiation etc.) as a preliminary to address the crisis of social justice in South Africa. I illustrate my method and results through an explication of the nature of Indian diasporic integration and I set this up as a case study of processes that may be read as either the ‘price’ or the ‘prize’ for the prospects of social justice in the Republic. A fuller discussion of that wider theme, even from the particular perspective presented above, remains a task for the future.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on ‘An Anthropological Critique of Indian Diasporic Integration in South Africa: Historical Processes and the Limits of Social Justice’, in Sujata Patel and Tina Uys (eds), Contemporary India and South Africa: Legacies, Identities, Dilemmas, pp.  110–127 (London, New York and New Delhi: Routledge, 2012). 2 This is what Amartya Sen (2006) calls ‘the illusion of destiny’.

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3 See in this perspective the revealing comment by Sanjek (1994: 110). Speaking of intermarriage and the future of races in contemporary United States he writes: ‘Both repressive processes of exclusion (race) and expressive processes of inclusion (ethnicity) must be accounted for on our analytical ledgers.’ 4 In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness. The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from 23 August to 28 August 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their six-day ordeal (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, accessed on 11 September 2010). 5 It is interesting to speculate the presence of this mechanism in the unconscious bias of European interpreters, their projection of the traditional caste system in India as ‘hierarchic reciprocity’ (Leach 1960; Pocock 1962) sans ‘power’ which remains the sleeping partner. 6 For a perceptive indigenous Chinese discussion of self-identity – individual or communal – as following from identification by an ‘other’ and then becoming a template for identities in general, see Wong Dehua and Li Xiaoyuan 2004. We may add that the identifier generally is someone super-ordinate in power and authority. Our Chinese authors gloss over this aspect because their argument is about Chinese ethnicities as nationalities, which are in ideal terms equal though diverse. 7 There is an interesting theory that the South African colonial state, contrasted with the nation-states of the usual European and North American provenance was built around three city-states, namely, Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg, along with their hinterlands. Further, the macrocommunity or nation-state of this description was based primarily on extractive mineral and agricultural resources rather than on manufacturing industry (Personal communication from R. Thornton). 8 For a parallel example of a sophisticated and politically influential interpretation of Malay backwardness, especially vis-à-vis the Chinese, in racialist terms, see Mahathir 1970.

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8 CONTEMPORARY MALAYSIAN INDIANS 1

*** As an anthropological-cum-sociological scholar concerned with Malaysian Indian community I may not be a complete insider, but the empirical, comparative and committed concern that I have on issues affecting this community is something that leads me to offer an analysis of the contemporary scenario. Commitment is the heart of the matter. As an academic when one looks for a research topic, the necessity of problematisation presents itself. In simpler terms, one looks first and foremost for the relevance of the research that he or she is going to undertake. And in this respect there are no purely objective or value-neutral subjects in social science research. Questions of the researcher’s ideology keep cropping up throughout. What is one to do, to make the study scientific? Quite early on in his book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), Gunnar Myrdal stated and demonstrated a considered solution, namely, making one’s implicit assumptions and biases open and explicit. To give one famous example, when Louis Dumont (1970) spoke of hierarchy and holism in Indian society and contrasted it with individualism in the West, he did not openly advocate his value preference for the former over the latter. In the event, while perceptive and sharp about possessive individualism in the West, his reading and characterisation of the Indian hierarchy remained sorely deficient because they were based on dominating unstated assumptions and value preferences. The second manoeuvre that I would recommend for taking ideology on board along with our methodology is a thorough contextualisation of the problem at hand. This is nothing new but it merits iteration because the parameters of this preliminary step have changed: our contextualisation today demands ‘glocalisation’. In what is being presented here, I shall try to follow these simple methodological rules. I will try and briefly summarise the trajectory of

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my own encounter with the Malaysian Indian community over the last fifty years. As regards one’s commitment and ideology, my diagnosis of despair and hope in contemporary Malaysian Indian community will be closely informed by such considerations.

The first encounter I started my research on the Malaysian (then Malayan) Indian community in 1961. That was the early post-Merdeka period and nearly 80 per cent of the labour on Malayan rubber plantations was of Indian – mainly Tamilian – origin. The issues on the forefront then were: • the fragmentation of rubber estates (a study taken up by Prof. Ungku Aziz and his associates in the University of Malaya), the forward march of the National Union of plantation Workers (P.P. Narayanan as the general secretary and Dr Charles Gamba as the main researcher of labour unions) and • the ever alive question of citizenship of Indian workers on Malayan rubber estates. Although the focus of my research became the micro-study of interaction between the community and industrial subsystems on a large European-owned rubber estate on the west coast (‘Pal Melayu’ in Kuala Selangor District), I was thoroughly concerned and informed about the macro-situation of the Malayan Indian community in its regional, national and international settings. In my detailed ethnography of Pal Melayu published in 1970 (both in United States and in Malaya), I described the history, the domestic group, kinship structure, economic organisation, social stratification and political processes of a Malayan Indian community in situ. These were the times when the rubber plantation community of Indians on large Malayan estates was relatively insulated and isolated from the main currents of national development. But I emphasise the adjective ‘relative’ because currents of Malayan and Indian nationalism, the advent of the Second World War and the Japanese occupation, the Emergency, and as I said before, the trade union movement, were all banging hard at the door of that insulation and isolation.

The second encounter My second major encounter was when I revisited Tamils on the Plantation Frontier in Malaysia during 1998–1999. I need not summarise 120

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the macro-level changes that had taken place in the intervening years but should mention: • • • •

the successive economic plans for Malaysia, a new dose of affirmative action for the bumiputeras, globalisation and the fluctuating economy, nearer to the concerns of the Indian population (namely, plantation workers), the big switch from rubber to oil palm, incremental employment as contract labour of Indonesian and Bangladeshi origin and • burning issues of uprooting, resettlement and rehabilitation of plantation Indians etc. I found that there was the ‘scattering and dynamic’ of the majority of the estate workers in the country. Let me sum up my findings of that visit. A fourfold typology of scattering and dynamics affecting the Tamilian population in the Pal Melayu region may be seen to serve a useful analytical purpose. It is our view that much of current writing on the Indians as a ‘poverty group’ in contemporary peninsular West Malaysia has focused on situations (i) and (iv) of our typology. The Human Rights activists and radical economists have either written about the Indians still living and working on the plantations or who are squatters in the vicinity of large towns some of whom have graduated to the status of flat dwellers in large blocks of building built up and sold by state corporations and private developers. The middle ground comprising those who have either moved into taman in close vicinity to estates like Pal Melayu and those who have settled in small towns like Kuala Selangor and Batang Berjuntai has not so far been the focus of sociological analysis. It is precisely this regional perspective that we are most qualified to restudy and report on in this discussion of culture and economy in a sector of Southeast Asian Indian diaspora. The Indian Malaysian population was among the last of the plantation enclaves of the labour diaspora from India to be dismantled. The booming rubber economy of Malaysia and a strong trade union movement among the estate workers until the 1970s were largely responsible for economic changes within the ambit of Malaysia’s economy based on the export of raw materials, namely, tin, rubber and increasingly oil palm. At the macro-level the rise of manufacturing, construction and service industry in the post-1970s Malaysia led to drastic reduction in the number of estate workers, especially those of Indian (mainly Tamil) origin and their shift to a combination of self-employed occupations and jobs as blue-collar workers. It is difficult to give an 121

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accurate estimate of the Indian estate workers’ progeny who continue to depend wholly or partly on estate jobs but if the situation in the Pal Melayu region is representative then this proportion has shrunk to about 5–10 per cent of the pre-1970s levels. As pointed out earlier, the impression that the ex-plantation labour continue to exist as a poverty group even under the changed economic scenario in Malaysia is somehow reinforced by socio-economic studies only of the families still heavily dependent on estate jobs or of slum dwellers in the vicinity of large cities. On the other hand, the above two sections of the Tamil population in present-day Malaysia have to be put into perspective by examining the out-migration from estates of groups and individuals who have become self-employed on vacant lands in the close vicinity of plantations and of those who have moved into the nearby smaller towns. The composite picture emerging from such ‘holistic’ data is that decisions to move out of plantations for the bulk of estate workers’ progeny have been proactive ones. My ethnographic analysis in the restudy of the Pal Melayu region supports the conclusion that there has been a scattering and dynamics, if not actual socio-economic mobility, in the ranks of Tamil Malaysians let loose from an earlier dependence on the plantation enclave. Cultural changes as shown by my data have been in tandem with the economic dynamics. Interestingly enough two major planks of Tamil culture, namely kindred and caste, have always responded to the exigencies of the Malaysian context – an earlier plantation one and the contemporary semi-urban and urban nexus. I have, therefore, argued against an essentialist reading of Tamilian social institutions in Malaysia even if such is the ‘emic’ view of some indigenous sociological observers in Malaysia. The culture of caste has responded differently in relation to the Adi Dravida groups still wedded to estate jobs and those of the same caste category who have become entrepreneurs in the nearby towns. The latter groups are in competition with similarly circumstanced non-Brahmins but there exists an uneasy truce between the members of these caste categories, especially in the field of religious leadership. Detailed case studies show how the institution of caste continues to influence success and failure in the economic arena. The same is true of the smaller micro-caste kindreds; particularly the ones built around the first- or second-generation progeny of pioneer migrants on plantations. But the succeeding generations show a much greater Malaysianisation and commensurate move away from traditional institutions like cross-cousin marriage, subcaste or caste endogamy or even ethnic closure of all the marriages. We may, therefore, expect bigger socio-cultural changes in the Tamilian institutional 122

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set-up in the decades to come, though much will depend on how much urge to ‘conserve’ may be unleashed, paradoxically, with the current modernising spread of information technology between Tamil Malaysians and Tamils elsewhere.

The third encounter The third major encounter occurred in 2009 when through the courtesy of Professor Shamsul Amri of KITA, I made my observations on HINDRAF and its aftermath; and it is with that event, in the spirit of doing history backwards (or presentist history) that I venture on the scenario of despair and hope in contemporary Malaysian Indian community. The salient findings of that encounter have been summed up in my KITA Public Lecture No. 1, entitled ‘Plural Society, Ethnicity, Class: Malaysian Indians and the Crisis of Political Economy’ (2010b). Here I extrapolate further from those findings. Let me at the very outset state one crucial point of my analysis: the problematique of contemporary Malaysian Indian crisis has so far been discussed within an intra-ethnic framework. What needs to be realised is that an interethnic paradigm is indispensible both for the diagnosis and amelioration of this crisis. Admittedly, this is a simple point, but it would not seem a simplistic one once its ramifications are spelled out. Further, what I shall be elaborating in the following is the vital necessity of new political model for Malaysia that would rest on the ruins of an outdated political-economic model where successive plans to refurbish only the Économy’ had led to a cul de sac. Finally, this is not a very new point either. Professor Terence Gomez expressed it with insight when he analysed recent election results in Malaysia within a statesociety framework and concluded that there had been a time warp between socio-cultural dynamic and the functioning of ongoing democratic state politics in Malaysia (Gomez 2014: 47–56). The first consideration in the limitation and nonviability of taking an intra-ethnic, namely, Indian or narrowly Tamilian, point of view is that this social field has been ridden with internal conflicts and tensions. As S. Nagarajan (2009: 383), among others, has pointed out the Indian minority’s marginal status and relatively smaller number have posed no economic or political threat to either the Chinese or Malays. As Indians were largely confined to the plantations, ethnic consciousness and solidarity did not develop as a significant basis for their identity and advancement of interests. Abraham (1997: 150–151) explains that because of these unique conditions, there has been greater emphasis on caste, social class and ideology as means of domination and 123

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control within the community. In other words, these mainly involved intra-ethnic tensions and did not compete with the Malays or Chinese. With the large-scale shrinking, if not actual dismantling, of the plantation system in Malaysia the Indians came increasingly in contact and conflict with the Malays and the Chinese. The djinni was freed from the bottle, as it were. The HINDRAF rally of November 2007 was the first major symptom of the articulation of the new inter-ethnic unrest experienced by the Indians. The list of disempowering features of Indian discontent included severe neglect of Tamil and other Indian languages in the educational system, unfair and unjust treatment of the Indians compared to the other ethnic groups in admissions to professional courses like law, medicine and engineering etc. Added to these material handicaps were the prejudicial Chinese and Malay stereotypes about Indians being a menace to society through gangsterism and other forms of criminal activities and the wide publicity accorded in the media to high suicide rates and police detentions among Malaysian Indians in gross disproportion to their numbers. Some of the same features, for example, the singling out of Indians for persecution by the police (especially by the majority Malays in the police force) and letting off the more affluent Chinese and the dominant Malays of the same crimes as Indians, have been highlighted. The question of desecration of Hindu temples has been an especially sore point. The Indian-Malay clashes at Kerling Temple (Selangor) 1978, at Kampoeng Rawa (Penang) 1998, and Kampung Medan (Petaling Jaya) 2001, have received wide publicity. What lies behind the above justified list of discontents? Scholars like Francis Loh Kok Wah (2010) have argued that the success of Mahathir’s leadership for twenty-two years and the return of Barisan Nasional Party to governmental power over the same years were due to concurrent developmentalist policies and the rise of a middle class. This may be so for Malaysia as a whole in general terms but I have argued (Jain 2010b), with the despair and discontent of the Indian minority in view, that Mahathir’s hegemonic policies vis-à-vis the Malays and the Chinese (in the latter case especially after the 1989 riots) and ‘dominance without hegemony’(to use Ranajit Guha’s phrase for the nature of British colonial rule in India) with respect to the Indian minority resulted in extreme deprivation and exploitation of that minority most of whose members were located at the lowest rung of socio-economic hierarchy in Malaysia. The disempowerment of the Indian minority under Mahathir’s dispensation is perhaps the most blatant instance of authoritarian democracy practiced for years under the BN. Enforcement of official Islam and affirmative action on behalf of the Malay 124

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bumiputeras were the handmaidens of that policy and practice. In the light of that class-based authoritarian democracy (Mahathir has gone on record to say that there was ‘too much’ democracy in India) is it any wonder that the majority of Indians – a poor minority in Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society – should explode into HINDRAF-type rally to express its discontent with state power?

From discontent to despair I shall have to be brief in my discussion of the post-HINDRAF scenario for contemporary Malaysian Indians. I submit that the confusion and chaos of the HINDRAF rally and the so-called fracture of Indian unity in its aftermath are the critical symptoms to begin an analysis of the dilemma of Malaysian Indians. If we momentarily go back into the history of Indians in Malaya, the HINDRAF rally has some resonances with a similar confused uprising – the Nathan pirali(cf. Jain 1970: 235; Stenson 1980: Chapter 3) of the 1930s – among Indian estate workers on the Malayan west coast. The current fragmentation of the Indian community, not only the contrasting versions of what took place in the rally of November 2007 and the nature of its organisation, but the splintering of its leadership into diverse political parties, is a clear reflection of the cacophony of its sources. In this diffused polyphonic melee the media became the message, and it is no wonder that the ‘noise’ of the disturbance failed to convert into the ‘sound’ and ‘voice’ of a movement. If one looks at the nature of leadership (on this more below) there still remains a yawning gap between its rural and urban constituents and there exists a dearth, both numerical and qualitative, of its ‘Indian’ component. And, as noted by me earlier, there is an existential dilemma among the lawyers and other professionals at the helm of this leadership between the pragmatism of making a profitable living in the circumstances of a neo-liberal economic set-up and the rhetoric of selfless sacrifice that needs to be articulated for the legitimation and acceptability of their leadership. The appeal to unity in face of fragmentation is again, unfortunately, based on intra-ethnic terms. There are two salient dimensions to this and, to my mind, both lead from discontent to despair. The first of these is reposing faith in middle-class Indian or Tamilian leadership. I have already spelled out the conditions of nonviability of this internal, intra-ethnic, solution. To reiterate, the Indian ‘middle class’ leaders with intentions of working for the amelioration of the community and harbingers of a proposed solution as favoured by governmental representatives as well have not, it seems to me, made a critical analysis 125

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of the ‘Indian predicament’ and are unable to think out of the box. For example, let me take seriously the historical distinction that Nagarajan (2004) makes between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Indian middle class and his belief in the efficacy of ‘networks’ of the latter. Nagarajan places activists like Jeyakumar Devaraja (2007) among spokespersons of that network of the new middle class which constitute independent NGOs with socialist concepts and views. But Jeyakumar in the article cited above rests his faith in the coming together of the poor and the disempowered of all ethnic groups. The issue of how this solidarity is possible within the existing regime of deep faultlines of hegemony and dominance, vis-à-vis the ruling group, between the Malays and the non-Malays, respectively, is not at all clear in his exhortation. Similarly, another network comprising the ‘new’ middle class mentioned by Nagarajan consists of NGOs associated with the World Tamil Relief Fund, the Group of Concerned Citizens and the Tamil Education, Research and development Foundation (Tamil Foundation). Nagarajan is sanguine about the action of this network ‘which also articulate the Tamil marginalization issue from a class perspective, but insists that the ethnic dimension must be factored in finding solutions’(2004: 5; emphasis added). This sensitivity to ethnic factors is nowhere spelled out since in Nagarajan’s analysis the question of the interface between ethnicity and class in the peculiar circumstances of Malaysia is again not addressed. Further, the reposing of faith in the international support of this network is treading on contentious grounds. The juxtaposition and dialectic between nation and transnation in the context of a diaspora minority like Malaysian Indians is a subject that cannot here be entered into in detail (cf. Jain 2010a). The analysts of political economy in pluralistic nations like Malaysia or, for that matter, Fiji, South Africa, Australia or the United States, would have to come to terms with national and trans-national locations as ‘moving targets’ in the context of rapidly changing global scenarios. The second plank of internal unity suggested by some analysts and community leaders is religion. But this, let me stick my neck out, is an extremely insidious double-edged sword. The moment religion is spelled out, in this particular case, as the faith of its majority practitioners, namely Hinduism, all sorts of acrimonious, contentious, even fundamentalist/authoritarian connotations arise. One may not agree with all the perceived inter-linkages between authoritarian democracy, ‘Syndicated Hinduism’ (hindutva), crony capitalism and sub-imperialistic leanings leading to possible semi-fascism in India today (D’Mello 2014: 36–50) but the propensity for majoritarianism in religion to harbour severe conflicts is patent, not the least in contemporary 126

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Malaysia, for example, even with reference to Islam (cf. Abdul Hamid 2010: 55–89).

Towards hope: inter-ethnic paradigm and democratic decentralisation On the positive side, the HINDRAF uprising as it presaged the 2008 Election results clearly showed that Malaysia was now ready for strong ethnically neutral opposition parties. This was a clear signal in favour of democratic decentralisation after years of authoritarian democracy. That the forked-tongue Mahathir policy of consensual hegemony among the Malays and coercive dominance among the others, especially Indians, was responsible for the outbreak of Malay-Indian animosity is revealed in the kind of intensive study of the ‘Kampung Medan clashes’ conducted by Nagarajan (2004, 2009). As he puts it, ‘Interviews with victims and residents and survey of the terrain indicate the “clashes” did not take place in the squatter settlements. Contrary to the image of them teeming with violence they were actually islands of harmony. Malay and Indian residents in these settlements have built a harmonious relationship over the decades sharing the same neighbourhood and had helped each other during troubled times’(2009: 380). What had led to violence between the Indians and the Malays was the provocation of outsiders who fanned a feeling of acrimony between the communities when the Malay-centric government policy led to the allocation of spacious single-storied built-up residences to their Malay wards and shoved the Indians into cooped-up multistoried apartments. Clearly, then, the politico-economic and land-price market considerations are of utmost importance in delineating patterns of inter-ethnic conflict, including that leading to Hindu temple desecration. The obverse of this reasoning is that there is hardly anything ‘racial’ or ‘religious’ in strained relations between the communities. Once the politico-economic causes have been factored in, the ground is clear for perceiving inter-ethnic harmony and coexistence. I have already alluded to the media stereotyping in grossly unfavourable terms of the Indian minority community. The situation is no more helped by the highly patronising tone of some of the foreign analysts of the Malaysian Indian predicament. Sample this: ‘Despite their poverty, the Indian settlers were actively dealing with the problems of supporting themselves and their families. Although most were born into grinding poverty, poorly educated and discriminated against in a myriad of subtle and occasionally brutal ways, they did not passively accept their lot. Rather, they most often demonstrated an admirable 127

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determination to better their lives by whatever means they had available to them. In most cases they were moderately successful’(Dillon 1991: 184). The writing on the wall of Malaysian developments, especially since the 2013 General Elections, suggests something else. Tinkering with intra-ethnic solutions such as the continuing moves by post-HINDRAF leadership notwithstanding, we have the emerging picture of an inter-ethnically interactive aspirational society in Malaysia. Some of these stories of ‘Building Bridges, Crossing Boundaries’ have been set in print by Francis Loh Kok Wah and his associates (2010). Much more needs to be done. Dr Denison Jayasooria’s recording of ‘National Reconciliation and Inclusive Development in Malaysia: Conversations among Civil Society Members and Public Intellectuals’ (2014) is a step in the right direction. These deliberations suggest, to me at any rate, the beginnings of an innovative ‘secular’ temper, steering away from ersatz and crony capitalism towards inclusive (inter-ethnic) solutions with a new political model. I have termed this model, modestly, as democratic decentralisation in place of authoritarian democracy. Globally, in a ‘Look East’ direction it has resonances with Japan (a combination of cultural heritage and technology), China (massive mobilisation in production and trade) and India (participative democracy).

Note 1 This chapter is based on ‘Contemporary Malaysian Indians: A Scenario of Despair and Hope’, in Denison Jayasooria and K. S. Nathan (eds), Contemporary Malaysian Indians: Issues, Challenges and Prospects,pp.  109–121 (Bangi: Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2016). Used with permission.

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9 ASCRIPTION, ASPIRATION AND ACHIEVEMENT Malaysian Indian trajectory

*** The sociological thesis of my presentation for Malaysian Indians may be looked upon as a transition from ascription towards aspirations and moving to achievements. As policy recommendation I am helped by Schumpeter’s concept of the impact of innovation as ‘creative destruction’ where creation and destruction are not polar opposites, but in a relationship of continuum. Hence it is not the same as Lenin’s famous dictum, ‘there can be no real reconstruction without destruction’, justifying total revolution. In pursuing the goal of achievement to the middle-class status for Malaysian Indians this policy is guided by the imperatives of human choice, agency and pragmatism within the macro-framework of a liberal democratic state and civil society.

Ascription Let me first look at ascription which for the dominant Hindu population of the former Malayan and present Malaysian Indian community in the past related to caste or jati and, among other statuses, as a proletarian and subaltern community on rubber plantations. In what follows I endeavour to move away, as did the majority Indian community, from the major bugbear of ascribed identity, that of caste, to new aspirations. I would first like to dispose of the old chestnut of caste in Malaysian Indian politics. I do not elaborate here the conceptual distinctions and relationship between ethnicity, class and culture. The only point that I would wish to make, however, is that ethnic identity as Indians in Malaysia and even sub-ethnic identities as Tamil, Telugu, Sikh, Malayalee, Sindhi etc., within the Indian group contribute to a rich diversity so long as it remains cultural and does not get contaminated by divisive politics.

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The same could be said of sub-sub-ethnic identity, for example, caste in the Tamilian group. I notice that in a recent Internet blog my Malaysian sociologist colleague, Prof. P. Ramasamy, has made precisely this point and, indeed asserted that caste among Malaysian Indians is of no consequence in politics though it may still have some cultural relevance in domestic and community ritual affairs. If this is so, I am very happy to note it. This observation conforms with and confirms one of my own generalisations about comparative Indian diaspora, namely, that whereas the role of caste in politics in India, for example, shows politicisation of culture, caste and its associated religious observances – as one of the markers of cultural identity in pluralistic overseas Indian settings – may be interpreted as ‘culturalisation of politics’. Let me expand my cryptic remarks about the politicisation of culture in India as contrasted to the culturalisation of politics in the diaspora. To take up, somewhat more fully, Prof. Ramasamy’s remarks about caste among the Malaysian Indians what he said was that caste was of far more relevance for Malaysian Indians of the previous generations than it is for the youth today. And, also, if I may further expand on what he said, caste was still important in the politics of parties like the MIC and the IPF. The first part of his statement is unexceptionable; this is also what I understood him to be saying. The second part needs some explanation. First, here Prof. Ramasamy is speaking strictly not as a sociologist but as a Malaysian Indian politician, as leader of a political party (Pakatan Rakyat) opposed to the MIC (or even of an all Malaysia political party, the DAP, opposed to the ruling BN of which the MIC is a component). Now, even if I concede to him the point that in the MIC leadership elections there is caste conflict – the Gounders versus the Mukkulathors – the point I would wish to make is that here it is a political tussle between two sub-sub-ethnic groups of Indians (a caste division among Tamils). Numerically, in terms of democratic party-political electoral politics in Malaysia, what consequences in terms of real parliamentary representation does this caste conflict have? We are talking here of a further minority, the Tamils (though undoubtedly a sub-ethnic majority within the Malaysian Indian ethnic group about 8 per cent of the total population of Malaysia). Further, if it be said that this minority within a minority represents the old educated Indian middle class and a smaller proportion of the upwardly mobile ‘new’ Indian middle class, this too may be conceded. But in the first-past-the-post electoral Malaysian democracy (without ethnically proportional representation) this does not constitute a significant, decisive, profile in the Malaysian parliament as a whole. 130

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Considering the above, I can only come to the conclusion that in effect what the Malaysian Indian professor is actually worried about is the perceptional message this caste politics conveys to Malaysian Indians and to non-Indian Malaysians in general, namely, that there is no unity among Malaysian ‘Indians’. However, as I have already pointed out, this caste conflict (or even between linguistic-cum-regional categories like the Telugu and the Tamil) is actually not pan-Malaysian Indian; here then is the play of the figure of thought and speech called synecdoche (where a part stands for the whole). This stereotypical illusion is further strengthened by what Malaysian Indians read about India as the prototypical situation. It is further exacerbated by those political propagandists who go on to say, that if this is the situation within the Indian ethnic group, what can we expect by way of its contribution to the inter-ethnic project of One Malaysia? In the light of my analysis, do I need to add that this is the illogic of a nonsequitur? The position with regard to caste among Malaysian Indians, on the ground, is very different from that suggested by its populist political synecdoche. This is based on my own longitudinal anthropological research of the last fifty years and more. Caste by name and certain associated behavioural stereotypes is still there. In marriage and certain communal activities there have been changes and upheavals, but by and large caste endogamy and a certain restricted amount of occupational specialisation is still practised. There is a notional ritual hierarchy of castes. However, when it comes to actual mobility among castes and large groups of castes (like the non-Brahmin and the Adi Dravida); there is evidence not only of its obsolescence but of actual reversals. About this last phenomenon, I have written ironically of ‘a caste war’ among the Malaysian Indian estate workers and ex-estate workers of Tamilian origin in the Batang Berjuntai – Kuala Selangor region of coastal West Malaysia (Jain 2011a). May I add in parentheses that this ‘war’ can be seen in analogy to what is known as ‘the war on terror’ in the parlance of global politics of our day? To illustrate, here in this region unfettered by rules of purity and pollution in their choices of occupations and interactions, the numerically dominant proletarians and ex-proletarians of the Adi Dravida castes have gained exceptional mobility even outdoing their non-Brahmin cohorts. The cinema hall in the town, the bus company and the position of priest-cummarriage registrar in the Thandayuthapani temple are owned by members of these castes. Here, if I may say so there is a message for India: in this caste war the tables are turned through socio-economic and political mobility of the traditionally downtrodden without the stultifying 131

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and caste-enhancing ‘prison-like’ political bait of Reservations for the dalits in contemporary India. The overall message, therefore, is that in the respect spoken of above, if one does not intellectually replicate and superimpose the Indian reality on to the Malaysian one, an altogether new and dynamic scenario emerges. The challenge is to counteract the entrenched mindset, the stereotypes, by ground reality. And this to my mind is what sociological research is all about as it could open up new horizons for assessing the possibilities of Malaysian Indian mobility sui generis and also in consonance with the findings of comparative Indian diasporic communities. As to the action forward, especially, for political mobility the Malaysian Indian minority would do well to not only look at the parliamentary democratic process and dispensations of the ruling party but also at the inter-ethnic NGOs. What I have said so far may be epitomised by what is widely known as the soft power of culture in politics. I termed this as the ‘culturalisation of politics’ in Indian diaspora in contrast to the better known, but slowly changing, ‘politicisation of culture’ in India itself. For the Malaysian Indian diaspora, I have discussed this phenomenon with special reference to caste or jati when it does not operate within an all-encompassing caste system. To sum up the forward looking facet of my argument thus far, not the bugbear of caste but inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic eco-geographical regions and social classes would be the framework for assessing the problems and prospects of Malaysian Indian politico-economic mobility.

Aspiration Aspirations for the community that we are discussing were signalled in the very recent past by HINDRAF (with its mixed impact), new electoral choices and social mobility processes in general. The flip side was displacement, unemployment, criminality, drugs, poverty, urban slumdwelling etc. Some issues are real and substantive others are mainly perceptional (as I would argue later) as they are bound to be in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, pluralistic society. Of course, there is a twoway interaction or interface between hard reality and the perceptions. What are the solutions, in the negative domain, of the many problems as listed above, and in the positive domain, of the moves towards mobility? The latter, as Prof. Shamsul has perceptively pointed out in the Foreword to a recently edited volume (Jayasooria and Nathan 2016), should never be judged by the numerical minority that is the Indian community in Malaysia. As political processes in the nation 132

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and moves towards professionalisation and socio-economic mobility clearly indicate, the Malaysian Indian community’s present contribution and future potential is far greater than its small numerical strength in the total population. With this in mind, let me return to the real hard problems faced by the vast majority displaced from erstwhile plantations and now constituting the lumpen population in urban slums. One way of tackling these problems, as the authors/contributors to the above-stated volume have demonstrably opined, is that the solutions are contained in the proper analytical diagnosis of the problems themselves. This leads me to the heart of the problematic, namely, the problems, prospects and processes of mobility of the majority of the Malaysian Indian community into the ranks of a Middle Class in Malaysia. In this context, we speak of the inter-ethnic or multi-ethnic situation in the nation-state of Malaysia. As sociologists, we may look upon the predicament of Malaysian Indians who constitute a considerable proportion of the socio-economically deprived community either in the perspective of an ethnic minority or in that of a deprived socio-economic lower class for which the avenues of mobility are either closed or very meagre. The latter perspective fitted the majority population of Malaysian Indians before the structural adjustment/liberalisation/ market reforms (note: this is the language of Indian economic transformation; you may substitute it with Malaysian Economic Plans) of the 1980s and 1990s. To borrow a phrase from the anthropologists of plantation economies and societies in Latin America, this was an era of ‘closed resources’ for the Malaysian Indian proletarians and subaltern groups. How has the situation changed, in sociological terms, following the structural changes that I just noted? The displacement of Indian proletarians from plantations was accompanied, whether our more radical sociological colleagues like it or not, by a simultaneous process of the opening up of resources. In other words, theoretically at least, once the fetters of an involute plantation economy were removed, along with its inevitable opening up of the market economy, there should or could have been greater opportunities for the displaced plantation workers for socio-economic mobility. What happened in practical terms? The findings here are mixed, if not ambivalent. Scholars studying Malaysian Indian poverty emphasise ‘persistent poverty ’of this class even in the changed economic scenario while, at the same time, commenting on its growing aspirations and awareness, they speak of a new ‘middle class’ emerging from this very category. My own research findings (though mainly in the Batang Berjuntai – Kuala Selangor region) resolve this conundrum through 133

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evidence that both these processes were simultaneously at work. One may therefore conclude at this stage that there was no inherent/inbuilt/ structural red-line preventing limited socio-economic mobility even among the ex-estate proletarians of the Malaysian Indian population. It will be noticed that in my sketch so far I have spoken only of the proletarians and subalterns experiencing long-term ‘persistent poverty’ as a working class. I have not considered in these remarks, about the opportunities and their utilisation by Malaysian Indians of the other classes, namely, white-collar workers, those in service occupations, traders, professionals etc. Apart from some statistics on the rural-urban divide, there is very little by way of detailed data on the incomes and savings of these classes. (I shall later make a reference to the significance of having data regarding savings by the Malay middle class during the period of economic upswing.) When we begin to break the supposedly homogeneous Malaysian Indian ethnic group into its changing and differential socio-economic profile of the present and the future, of opportunities and the outcomes, this is precisely where the political rub lies. Unfortunately the discourse of discriminatory bugbear of being a numerical and uniformly discriminated minority begins to loom so large that its situation vis-à-vis the Malaysian class structure as a whole (namely, there are Upper, Middle, and Lower classes and grades in-between among all Malaysians irrespective of ethnicity) is lost sight of. This is precisely the juncture where the disjunction between the reality and its perceptions, especially in a multicultural pluralistic society like Malaysia, sharpens and the hard reality of social class divisions gets obfuscated by stereotypes about ethnicity, minority persecution and religious divisions. To sort out the stereotypes from the hard reality – without denying, of course, the interplay between the two in the real life-worlds of people – is the task of social scientists. In this task, to revert to our Malaysian Indian case, and in its relation to the all Malaysia B40 Category (those having incomes below M$4000 a month), we should be careful to assess the distinctions between a numerical minority and a persecuted minority, between past history and present aspirations, between the older generation and the youth and between gossip and researched information. One should also be guided by the canons of social scientific comparison and contextualisation. In the above-mentioned perspective, the concept of class structure for Malaysian society that I have in mind will not be the Marxian one of more or less violent class conflict and an eventual ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. These insinuations are to my mind highly utopian rather than realistic. Also, I believe that in the contemporary world 134

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of global markets and international trade, as in the present Malaysian economy, it would seem ostrich-like to harp single-mindedly upon forces of production and relations of production moving in a dialectical fashion through an assumed linear historical process. If an intellectual paradigm is needed, even though provisionally, one would rather think of Max Weber’s writing on Class, Status and Power where market forces (for life chances or opportunities in the economy), status considerations (the choices of lifestyles, in other words, consumption and culture) and the play of power (as in the negotiations of political processes) constitute an explanatory trinity. And yet, should one make the mistake of thinking that this is a model of some ideal capitalistic economy and society, let me hasten to add that there is no such thing in the real world. The dangers of a runaway capitalism are ever so present. Peoples and nations will have to counter its ravages by whatever means possible including secular and ethico-religious ideologies and practice. The solutions to the problems that face the contemporary Malaysian Indian community have been outlined in policy recommendations contained in the Jayasooria and Nathan volume (2016) referred to above. They have been framed in the backdrop of hard data that the various contributors have provided. Thus they speak of uniform citizenship procedures, inculcation of skills to the young men and women, quality education inclusive of that in the mother tongues, entrepreneurial avenues, empowerment of women, religious freedom and so on. Let me finally say that they have not tried to brush under the carpet the various problems encountered in nation-building and statecraft of a multicultural society on the verge of economic development. All they have done is to state the aspirations for balanced and sustained developmental goals, where it will be possible for a large cohort of the B40 Category, inclusive of Malaysian Indians, to not only aspire (as they already do) but to achieve the secure status of at least ‘middle class’ citizens of the nation. The scenario they project is that of just and equitable growth for all Malaysians among whom the Malaysian Indians are a proud component.

Achievement Not merely a wishful thinking or reiteration of excellent recommendations already made, here are a few pointers for transition from aspirations to the achievement of mobility and developmental goals as I see them. To do this let me now return to aspects of the politico-economic, geopolitical and, finally, sociological, dimensions of the inter-ethnic 135

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rather than exclusively intra-ethnic solutions to the crisis of B40 category of Malaysian Indians. I am emboldened to do so because of my past and continuing research on comparative diasporas with special reference to the contemporary Indian diaspora. (1) In some of my recent writing (Jain 2011a) I have discussed the politico-economic merits and demerits of Prime Minister Mahathir’s long rule by UMNO and the Alliance in recent Malaysian history. I agree with the observation made by Dr Francis Loh (2010), that there was during that rule and policy dispensation, a spurt in the economic development of Malaysia (e.g. despite worldwide recession in the economies during the last decade of the last century, note the Mahathir move of stabilising Malaysian currency by fixing its value against the US dollar), encouragement to foreign investments and a steady rise in the incomes of the Malay middle class. In my writing I have also said that during the same dispensation the Chinese in Malaysia were – as always – left to their devices and thus retained by and large a plateau of well-being. Only the bulk of the Malaysian Indians (proletarians and subalterns) – again as always – was left high and dry. If at all, the curve of their incomes and economic well-being showed a downward slope. On the positive side, however, (and here we traverse the sociological side of the Mahathir dispensation) the moderately affluent Malay middle class, often to the chagrin of Western expatriates, was advised by the powers that be to practise Islamic restraint in consumerist behaviour. Although to the best of my knowledge no academic study exists on Malay savings during the period, one should not be surprised if their savings showed an upward curve. Here one might add the impact of the ideology of hudud (limits or moderation), of Rukun Negara (national principles) and of Malay adat (culture) in general. Needless to say, these ideas also resonate with Indian/Tamilian ethics spelled out in classics like the Thirukkural. This entire spectrum of values goes much beyond Mahathir’s regime and has been reformulated in Najib’s ‘One Malaysia’ call. The point I wish to make, and this is premised on my reading that no structural change in the Malaysian capitalist economy has occurred between the Mahathir and post-Mahathir periods of governance, is that the upwardly mobile aspirations of youth of the Malaysian Indian ethnic group (participating in the improvement of national economy as a whole) may do well to take a leaf out of

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the middle-class Malay thrift in the face of economic stability, if not actual buoyancy. In other words, rather than view their own persistent relative deprivation and hurdles to future aspirations, on the one hand, and Malay economic betterment, on the other, as a zero-sum game, it would be instructive for Malaysian Indians to focus on future secular gains through self-imposed thrift rather than harping on an imagined religious (Islamic vs. Non-Islamic) divide and deprivation. (2) I would like to make a point where the dual ethnic identities of Malaysian Indians, as Malaysians and as people of Indian origin, can be harnessed as an advantage. There is no question here of where their political loyalties as citizens lie – unambiguously with Malaysia. And yet, in socio-economic relation to India, buttressed no doubt by a sentimental attachment, and in the perspective of India’s contemporary burgeoning economy, Malaysian Indians supported by their own leadership can construe a win-win relationship between the two countries. An early sounding of such a possibility through partnership was made by the then Minister of Works, Government of Malaysia, Dato Seri S. Samy Vellu at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in New Delhi, as early as in 2003. He said: ‘There is a large pool of talent to share with the world. Fostering partnership between India and the Indian diaspora is a two-way process. The key dimension is how can there be a win-win situation from multiple players . . . Malaysians had been successful in investing and participating in infrastructure projects in India. We could further facilitate these through collaboration partnerships, which will be beneficial for both India and Malaysia’ (cited in Jain 2010a: 98–99). My argument here is that whatever the political controversy surrounding a particular Malaysian Indian leader within Malaysia then and now, the advantage of a dual identity as diasporic Indians in Malaysia beckons the B40 group, inclusive of other Malaysians, to tap the possibilities of economic buoyancy in India. These possibilities seem even brighter given the present Indian prime minister’s thrust for global, including Malaysian, collaboration with the Indian diaspora. (3) Let me now make a point that emerges not only from the Indian diaspora but from comparative diasporas globally. This is of special relevance to Malaysia, inclusive of Malaysian Indians, and indeed for the Malaysian government too. I refer to the lessons which even the non-Chinese Malaysians can learn from the official

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PRC attitude to the worldwide Chinese diaspora, the way China seduces its overseas benefactors to the mainland. There is in the PRC a largely decentralised, eco-geographically demarcated and localised approach to tap into the investment potential of countrymen settled abroad (cf. Woon 1997). The Chinese government, besides having good economic liaison with big businesses abroad, does not forget small towns, medium-sized businesses and even retailers having direct trading links with manufacturers and buyers abroad. And in this activity networking is crucial. There would be, in the case that we are discussing, vertical (inter-class) and horizontal (intra-class) networks traversing Malaysia and its various diasporas. These can be charted out and mobilised if regional businesses are informed and encouraged.

Conclusion To sum up, in conjunction with their diasporic advantage, I have suggested a few pointers to an inter-ethnic paradigm for Malaysian Indian social mobility, and as you can see this is only a preliminary to a more complete strategy which resonates with the attainable ideal of One Malaysia. Further, I wish to underline that the wider economic framework within which such a strategy is set escapes the allure of a destructive runaway capitalist development like the one that led to the mid-decade slump in advanced European and US economies during the 2010s. As I already pointed out, Malaysia had succeeded creditably in stalling such a crisis earlier, and if you needed a living exemplar of this model, we have Singapore in the neighbourhood.

An afterword A word of caution apropos the allures of an ideology of runaway capitalism: (a) Unlike the lawyer Waythamoorthy of HINDRAF, who filed a billion pound suit against the British government – nothing short of a millenarian dream – our bright Malaysian Indian minds, lawyers and other scholars, should try and procure all the documents of the formative period of the Constitution-making for independent Malaya, 1957. And, thence, if a scrupulous examination exposes complicity and collusion between the departing British authorities and a bigoted section of Malay interlocutors in a direction inimical to the formation of a basically pluralistic and liberal state, then 138

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the matter should be taken up at the highest international Court of Justice for redress. (b) It seems that the populist ferment in Malaysia today to focus single-mindedly on alleged financial corruption in high places could again be a symptom of what I call the allure of a runaway and populist capitalist ideology. This has happened in India too before, and some radical scholars in India have alleged and even tried to document the role of experts from international financial bodies like the World Bank and the IMF in exacerbating hype and gossip regarding corruption as the diabolical major cause of economic underdevelopment, hence diverting the attention away from persisting asymmetry of fiscal advantages between developed and developing economies. Here again reason, restraint and patience with an impartial judiciary should be the watchword instead of a frenzy that smacks of a witch-hunt.

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CONCLUSION Anthropology at home and abroad

*** As I write the concluding lines for this collection of essays, there are two issues around which there is a raging debate in India today, and each of these issues has an inextricable nexus with global concerns. The first of these is a very human issue in the widest philosophical sense: tolerance and intolerance of divergent views and activities as they are manifest primarily in literature (including history writing) and, relatedly, in politics. The controversy was triggered by the return, en masse, by some Indian literary writers of the awards given to them by state-sponsored bodies, either fully governmental or at least sponsored by the government, to mark their protest against mute tolerance by the state authorities of intolerance in certain quarters towards freedom of thought and expression. The ‘intolerance’ in this rebellious view took many forms – in a mild form, the castigating and repudiation of divergent views by authoritative spokespersons or supporters of the ruling powers, and in a violent – almost lethal – sense, by state inaction or indifference when authors and scholars holding divergent views including rationalist opinions against obscurantist and superstitious opinions and practices were actually shot dead in broad daylight by the reactionary and bigoted proponents of opposing persuasion. While the positions for and against the ruling powers of the day have hardened beyond reasonable debate, there is conspicuous absence of reasoned, free and frank public debate across the lines. The intellectuals in opposing camps have capitulated completely and abjectly, it would seem, to the dictates of realpolitik on each side. Where do anthropologists stand in this controversy – with divergent views as citizens, of course – but also as practitioners of a unified human science? I pose this question in conjunction with a second, related issue, on which there is some debate and widespread concern in the Indian public at large. This has to do with the Indian diaspora. 140

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The issue of the present ruling dispensation in India, especially of the present charismatic prime minister, Narendra Modi, in prioritising the concerns of and communication with Indians settled abroad over those of the Indian citizens at home who suffer many kind of disabilities within the country, has gained acute poignancy. The combination of valorising ‘long distance nationalism’ abroad with single-minded advocacy of majoritarian Hindu religious nationalism (hindutva) at home has become the over-arching ruling ideology of the Modi government. Is this face of state-defined globalisation acceptable to the anthropologists of contemporary global conjuncture? What contribution can the students of Indian diaspora as well as of abject poverty at home, for example in the case of tribal insurgency in Middle India, make to this debate? Since several of the essays in this volume have dealt with the Indian diaspora, especially in its vertical dimension (diaspora-homeland relations), let me take up this issue first. Prime Minister Modi’s recent rousing reception, by Indian diasporics in advanced Western countries – United States, Australia and Canada in particular – has been a constant refrain and cause for celebration in a number of media reports. Given the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s right-wing and corporate-friendly investor policies, has the intelligentsia in India seriously queried the reasons, characteristics and consequences of this mass euphoria? The phenomenon of globalisation by itself is insufficient to explain this massive upsurge insofar as a free-market provenance and exponential availability of communication media are concerned. The accoutrement of the twenty-firstcentury geopolitics would go part of the way to solve the mystery of an attraction for FDI investments and the seductions of a large consumer market for foreign investors in particular. However, quite apart from the economic and technological settings that favour affluent foreignerenthusiasm for India, we need to focus on the political scenario or, in other words, the advent and impact of a neo-liberal era in the much talked about ‘idea of India’ in the present conjuncture. This particular tack of the tracing of the roots and flowering of a neo-liberal political ethos constitutes to my mind the key to the current Indian diasporic euphoria by the politico-economic establishment that we seek to explore. Anthropologist Aihwa Ong (2006), writing basically about the predicament and tensions of socio-cultural changes in the political economy of Southeast Asia and East Asia, points to graded sovereignty and citizenship in the nation-states of this region. She talks about neoliberalism as an exception and exceptions to neo-liberalism. In this respect the contemporary Indian subcontinent is no exception. 141

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Let us first look at the idea of a consolidated ‘territory’ of India. India’s post-independence leadership did not uncritically embrace the principle of sovereign territoriality.1 Even Nehru, who was an advocate of self-contained territorial sovereignty for nation-states and therefore is widely known to have advised the diaspora to stick to the nationality and nationalism of their countries of adoption, continued to lobby for the Indian diaspora of South Africa not on the principle of nationalism but on the basis of universal human rights. This was in line with his ambition for a world of territorial states which are nonetheless subordinate to a higher authority of a nation-state–driven world order. Subsequently, in the post-Rajiv Gandhi period after regional leadership sorties in Fiji and Sri Lanka, the 1990s saw a decisive shift to embrace the Indian diaspora. As a transnationally oriented corporate class emerged, a new ‘global Indian subject’ was produced through the extension of the Indian nation to include, in particular, a subsection of the diaspora (termed non-resident Indian, NRI), highly skilled immigrants who began to immigrate to Western countries from the 1960s and are seen to exemplify Indian success in the global economy. The push by a new transnationally oriented Indian capitalist class resulted in a shift towards extra-territoriality in government policy especially during the BJP rule from 1994 to 2005. Creation of a new state celebration, Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), or Overseas Indian Day, a new category of overseas citizenship and, then, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, were the immediate symptoms of this shift. If we then tie this economic crisis of the 1990s with the social crisis brought about by the government’s decision to introduce reservation policies recommended by the Mandal Commission, as does Itty Abraham in his book, we get a complex explanation for the Indian government’s extraterritorial turn to the Indian diaspora than the more common explanation which rests on the potential economic contribution of the NRI to the globalising Indian economy. The NRI diaspora, as a middle-class, upper-caste elite backlash to Mandal Commission reforms favouring lower classes became a ‘site of social stability and traditional middle class order for the reinstantiation of bourgeois hegemony’. Is it any wonder, then, that the admirers of Modi in the developed Western Indian diaspora are effervescent towards a utopian corporate developmental dream of an India today and tomorrow? And, mark it, the bourgeois affinities of NRI diaspora in United States, Australia and Canada provides a complete foil to our working-class diaspora in the Middle East. The irony is that while the actual contribution of the Western-based diaspora to Indian coffers has been limited, a much 142

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greater contribution, in the form of remittances, comes from Indian migrant workers in the Gulf, many of whom are working class, lower caste or Muslim. These diasporic populations, however, have not been offered special privileges by the Indian government which, rather, has downplayed the harsh working conditions many migrant workers face in the Gulf region. That there has been a neo-liberal ensemble between present-day Indian government developmental policy declarations and the socioeconomic make-up of Western-based diaspora is further highlighted when a mid-point in the economic hierarchy of Indian diasporics is taken into account. If the affluent Western diasporics stand at the upper end of the extraterritorial neo-liberal hierarchy and the Gulf migrants at its lowest end, those of the older vintage in the Indian Ocean region (South Africa, Mauritius, Malaysia), in the Pacific (Fiji) and the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica), hang uneasily at some mid-point. If we look at the struggles of this diaspora (earlier termed as Persons of Indian Origin, PIO, to distinguish them from the NRI) their adaptation to the countries of adoption has been marked by ‘challenge and response’, a valiant struggle against heavy odds. Most of them are the progeny of an exploited indentured labour class. As to their attitudes towards India, most of them have a feeling of being sentimentally close to a ‘motherland’ rather than displaying what has been called a ‘commodified nostalgia of the NRI’ (a phrase used by Hansen 2002). Throughout the series of PBD celebrations, the representatives of PIO diaspora have complained of neglect and discrimination by the Indian authorities vis-à-vis the affluent NRIs. A question that may be legitimately raised is the step-fatherly treatment accorded by Prime Minister Modi towards these diasporics who are in Aihwa Ong’s terms ‘exceptions to neoliberalism’ rather than ‘neoliberal exceptions’ like the NRI. Let me sound a note of caution, if not warning, in relation to Indian diasporic bonhomie and euphoria in Western countries as revealed in the recent Modi travels. It is true that the conjunction of instant media coverage and Modi’s ambitious foreign policy jaunts has created the rock-star effect of the Indian prime minister’s rhetorical performances abroad. For our own times this virtual simulacrum is close to what the sociologist Emile Durkheim 1961, called ‘social effervescence’ when large congregation of aborigines physically gathered together to celebrate periodic rituals. The media hype and explosion is a doubleedged sword, however, when it comes to the fate of our diasporics in countries of their adoption and adaptation. The sad plight of Indonesian Chinese, who have been victims of state persecution at the hands 143

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of government authorities, has been commented upon by Aihwa Ong. She attributes the damning ill-will against Chinese diasporics in Indonesia squarely to the digital Internet hype. And, if the media exacerbations of communalistic Hindutva feelings in United States are anything to go by, the complicity of the social media in sustaining and giving rise to right-wing sentiments plays a similar role. Although as of now the past ban on Modi’s visit would seem to be a firmly forgotten chapter in Indo-US diplomacy, who can guarantee that a communal sceptre of persistent right-wing neo-liberal, middle- and upper-class sentiments may not come to haunt today’s celebrants at home and abroad? It is patently clear that there is not only an economic hierarchy between the affluent diasporics and the mass of the Indian people but that within the diaspora there are economic grades and inequalities causing discontent vis-à-vis the Indian government. Only if such issues are deemed as its first responsibility can the present government absolve itself of the charge of dallying with greener pastures abroad. This brings me back, finally, to the question of tolerance/intolerance vis-à-vis the ruling dispensation raised by public intellectuals in contemporary India. On this score, an anthropologist like the present author would squarely be on the side of those who uphold a ‘thin’ version of scientific rationality and democracy rather than a ‘thick’ one, if I may refer back to my initial paper in this volume. It is clear that those scientists and historians (to speak nothing of the litterateurs) who rebel against the silence, if not complicity, of the ruling establishment in the face of instances of fundamentalist intolerance are protesting against voices and activists who seem to distort the Indian civilisational heritage politically in an anti-democratic, fascist, direction. This ‘allegation’, no less, is denied by the latter but, unfortunately, no stout defence of their position, that they are not acting in bad faith, has been articulated thus far. Perhaps an honest effort to garner, preserve and augment our pluralistic cultural heritage in sync with the changing times would provide an answer to this crisis. What I have elsewhere termed as the imposed pluralism of settlement societies and intrinsic/ inherent pluralism of non-modern civilisations namely, the Indic civilisation (see Jain 1998a: 343–347), indicates a cultural and historical trajectory, and the dynamic interaction between the two in contemporary diasporic processes epitomises the direction of global changes. Anthropology, in its historical emergence, has been seen to mirror the rise of the hegemonic nation-state. This has for far long resulted in the binary, West and the Rest, the Colonial and the Colonised both in anthropological epistemology and in the arenas where it operates as a field practice. On account of its isomorphism with the rise of 144

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the nation-state, anthropological practice both in the colonial and post-colonial conjunctures has succumbed to the all too ‘obvious’ and ‘self-evident’ facts enunciated by official bureaucracies and the elites. The Cartesian positivist epistemology (‘empiricist’ rather than empirical) has played no small part in configuring this cul-de-sac. Critical anthropology today (some may like to call it ‘post-modernist’) militates against the certainty and conceptual closure of the official rules of meaning. The reflexivity of the critical anthropologist is manifest in raising doubts as against the placid acceptance of stated hegemonic certainties concerning socio-cultural representations. In doing so the anthropological practitioner does not speak ‘truth’ to power but raises doubt to ‘truth’(Herzfeld 2013: 99). Fortified by the armoury of doubts while sharing social and cultural intimacy of respondents in ethnographic practice, the anthropologist has a good chance of approximating the grasp of an open-ended universe of meaning in the chosen arena. The essays in this volume, since they are immune to a closed interpretation, strive in that direction.

Note 1 In my discussion of extra-territoriality, I am indebted to Priya Chacko’s excellent review of Itty Abraham’s book, How India Became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora and Geopolitics, Economic and Political Weekly, February 14, 2015.

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164

INDEX

Abraham, C. 123, 147 Abu-Lughod, L. 108, 147 Ahmad, I. 108, 147 alternative voices 59 – 65 Amrith, S. 4, 98, 100 – 2, 147 ANC (African National Congress) 114 anthropology: arenas and practitioners 1, 2, 103; comparison as cultural translation ix, 13 – 14, 35 – 43; discourse analysis 18 – 19, 65; Enlightenment tradition 6 – 9; human science 1, 8, 18, 22; ideographic and nomothetic 1, 60; intersubjectivity and reflexivity 2; post modernity 12 – 13, 20, 61, 145; ‘self’ and the ‘other’ 2, 9 – 14; and sociology 2, 3, 14, 30 – 3, 36, 38, 42, 49 – 57, 63; ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ rationality 7 – 11, 144 Appadurai, A. 2, 86, 91, 99, 147 Ardener, E. W. 64, 147 Ardener, S. 109, 147 Asad, T. 7, 14, 147 Australia ix, 2, 18, 50, 60, 66, 76, 93 – 4, 126, 141 – 2, 150, 158, 163 Axel, B. K. 4, 81, 98, 147 Baas, M. 94, 148 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 82, 86 Bailey, F. G. 27, 35, 49, 52 – 3, 56, 148 Ballard, R. 74, 81, 148 Bangladesh 64, 66, 76, 98, 121

Banks, M. 74, 80, 148 Banton, M. 79. 80, 148 Barnes, J. A. 2, 50, 54, 60, 148 Barth, F. 90, 101, 106, 148 Bateson, G. 99, 149 Bay of Bengal 4, 98 – 102, 147 Beattie, J. H. M. 108, 149, 150, 154 Beckford, G. L. 107, 149 Beteille, A. 5, 24, 25, 31, 35, 38, 40, 44, 55, 147, 154, 162 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 71, 82, 86, 142 Bilgrami. A. 7 – 10, 16, 61, 64, 149 blurred genres 85, 92 Bose, N. K. 23 – 6, 29 – 30, 43 – 8, 58, 149 Bourdieu, P. 17, 90, 96, 149, 156 Brah, A. 67, 101, 106, 149 Breckenridge, C. A. 71, 149 Brubaker, R. 90, 96, 106, 150 Calhoun, C. 15, 150 Canada 18, 66, 76, 83, 141 – 2 Cartesian positivism 20, 24, 145 caste 2, 14, 17, 23 – 4, 27, 29, 34 – 42, 44, 47, 52 – 8, 63 – 4, 73, 82 – 6, 90, 94 – 5, 113, 116, 118, 122 – 3, 129 – 32, 142 – 3, 148 – 51, 157 – 9, 161 caste among Malaysian Indians 122 – 3, 129 – 32 Chatterjee, P. 17, 150 civilizations 18, 22, 61, 63, 144 class 24, 30, 32, 41, 68, 71, 73, 76 – 7, 82, 84 – 5, 89 – 90, 94, 104,

165

INDEX

106, 109 – 13, 115 – 17, 123 – 6, 129 – 30, 132 – 8, 142 – 4, 147 – 8, 154 – 5, 160, 162, 164 Clifford J. 12, 14, 61, 147, 150 Cohn, B. 63, 150 comparative diasporas 66 – 72, 136 – 7 cultural ecological hypothesis 48, 99 – 103 cultural history 22, 25 – 6, 43 – 8, 64

genres; family resemblances; globalization; modernity ethnicity i, 58, 73, 75, 81, 84 – 92, 94 – 5, 105 – 7, 112, 116, 118, 123, 126, 129, 134, 148, 150, 153 – 6, 160 Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 2, 13, 24, 31, 33, 34, 39, 40, 61, 87, 93, 96, 151, 157 Evens, T. M. S. 113, 151

Das, V. 42, 45, 150 Desai, A. 104 – 5, 113, 150, 163 Dhoraisingham, S. S. 80, 150 diaspora 149, 151 – 5, 158, 160, 163 – 4; definitions 3 – 4; see also comparative diasporas; Indian diaspora; methodological nationalism; transnationalism; vertical and lateral axes diaspora networks 68 – 9; see also diasporic imaginary diasporic diversities: circulation; external; internal 75 – 84 diasporic imaginary 68; see also diaspora networks diasporic integration 104 – 17 Dillon, R. 128, 150 D’Mello, B. 126, 150 Douglas, J. 34, 39, 40, 96, 150 Douglas, M. 34, 39, 40, 96, 150 Dube, S. C. 27, 150 Dufoix, S. 3, 90, 105, 151 Dumont, L. 26, 31 – 42, 45 – 6, 61, 71, 82, 85, 95 – 6, 119, 150, 151 Durkheim, E. 92 – 3, 143, 151

family resemblances 75, 84, 85, 88, 92, 106, 116; see also culture and class; ethnicity; race; racism Favell, A. 103, 151 Fiji 126, 18, 66, 71, 75, 76, 83, 90, 142 – 3, 155 – 7 Fox, R. 99, 152 Freedman, M. 109, 152 Fuglerud, O. 19, 152 Furnivall, J. H. 63, 152

East Africa 66, 79 ecological perspective 4 Eisenlohr, P. 4, 98, 151 Eisenstadt, S. N. 49 – 50, 148, 151, 164 emic and etic 92, 87, 95, 122 Epstein, A. L. 2, 50, 60, 148 Erikson, E. 93, 151 ethnic group 40, 77 – 8, 89, 91, 101 – 2, 124, 126, 130 – 1, 134, 136, 148; culture and ethnicity 106; see also blurred

Gandhi, M. K. 7 – 10, 15, 30, 64, 78, 85, 93, 111 – 12, 149, 151 – 2 Garsten, C. 16, 99, 152 Gavaskar, M. 85, 152 Geertz, C. 35, 36, 85, 92, 99, 109, 152 Gellner, E. 59, 152 Geopolitics 81, 97, 103, 141, 145 Giddens, A. 85, 152 Glick-Schiller, N. 4, 97 – 8, 164 globalization i, 2, 59, 72, 73, 75, 84, 91, 92, 97, 103, 121, 141; see also ethnicity; globalization; modernity Global Organization of the People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) 72, 114, 115 Gluckman, M. 2, 50, 51, 63, 108, 148, 152 Goffman, E. 107, 152 Gomez, T. 123, 152 Gramsci, A. 102, 152 Gulf 66, 75, 143 Gupta, D. 15 – 16, 153 Handelman, D. 113, 151 Hansen, T. B. 4, 82 – 3, 94, 98, 143 Herzfeld, M. 2, 4, 17, 19 – 20, 62, 63, 82, 95, 100, 103, 145

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Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) 77, 94, 123 – 5, 127 – 8, 132, 138 hindutva 94, 117, 126, 141, 144 Hobsbawm, E. 62, 153 Holmstrom, M. 56, 153 identity 4, 12, 15, 31, 45, 71 – 2, 82 – 3, 87, 91 – 6, 101, 104, 106, 108, 111, 117 – 18, 123, 129 – 30, 137, 148, 150, 152 – 5, 160 – 1, 163 – 4 Indian diaspora 3 – 4, 16, 18, 62, 66 – 71, 73 – 6, 79, 82, 84 – 6, 88 – 9, 92 – 5, 97 – 8, 106, 115, 121, 130, 132, 132, 136 – 7, 140, 142, 148, 153 – 5, 158; see also civilizations; ‘non-modern’ civilizations; settlement societies Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU): curriculum 70, 73 – 4 Jayasooria, D. ix, 128, 132, 135, 156 Jayawardena, C. 79, 90, 110, 156 Jeyakumar, D. 126, 156 Keesing, R. 35 – 6, 48, 156 Klass, M. 71, 156 Kymlicka, W. 91, 156 Lal, B. V. 95, 157 language as the model 19 Leach, E. R. 43, 114, 116, 118, 157 Levi-Strauss, C. 31, 35 – 6, 46 – 8, 87, 157 Li, Xiaoyuan 84, 118, 164 Lienhardt, G. 13, 14, 87, 150, 154, 157 Loh, F. K. W. 124, 128, 136, 153, 157 Madan, T. N. 31, 34, 43, 148, 154, 157, 158 Mahathir, M. 118, 124 – 5, 127, 136, 157 Malaysia ix, 4, 18, 68, 75 – 7, 80, 86, 89 – 91, 94, 98 – 100, 102, 106, 109, 110, 115, 119 – 39, 143, 147, 150, 152, 154 – 7, 159 – 61

Malaysian capitalist economy 136 Malaysian class structure 134 Malaysian Indians 119, 123 – 6, 128 – 37, 155 – 6 Mamdani, M. 6 – 7, 157 Marcus, G. E. 12, 14, 61, 147, 150 Marriott, M. 29, 37 – 8, 63, 157 – 8 Mauritius ix, 4, 18, 66, 68, 72, 75 – 6, 78, 86, 98, 143, 151, 155 Mayer, A, C. 53 – 6, 158 Merton, R. K. 51, 158 methodological nationalism 4, 97 – 8, 103, 164; see also transnationalist analysis Mills, C. W. 56, 158 modernity 7, 20, 30, 62, 73, 75, 84 – 5, 91 – 2, 147, 149, 152, 157 Monier-Williams, M. 95 – 6, 158 Morris, S. 80, 158 Mukherji, D. P. 23, 30 – 1, 157, 158 Myrdal, G. 60, 119, 158 Nadel. S. F. 52, 158 Nagarajan, S. 123, 126 – 7, 159 Naipaul, V. S. 4, 159 Nathan, K. S. 128, 132, 135, 156 nation-state 20, 64 – 5, 70, 86, 97 – 102, 116, 118, 133, 141, 142, 144 – 5, 153, 164 ‘non-modern’ civilizations 18, 47, 61 – 2, 144; see also settlement societies Ong, A. 80, 143 – 4, 159 Padayachee, V. 112, 159 Panini, M. N. 27, 162 Parry, J. 40, 159 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 68, 80, 138 peranakan (hybrid) 80, 150 plantation: settlement institution 18, 75, 77 – 8, 99, 107, 109 – 10, 120 – 4, 129, 133, 153 – 4, 160, 163 Pocock, D. F. 26, 31, 33, 35, 40, 45, 118, 151, 159 polythetic classification 88, 159

167

INDEX

postmodernist philosophers 12, 61, 147; see also subversive etymologies race 84 – 5, 87 – 92, 94 – 5, 106 – 7, 112 – 13, 116, 118, 147, 151, 154 – 5, 158, 160, 162, 164 racism 11, 41, 61, 85, 89, 91, 148 Ranger, T. 62, 153 Reddock, R. 77, 160 Rex, J. 89, 160 rotating credit association (RCA) 109, 147, 152 Roy-Burman, B. K. 57 – 9, 160 Saberwal, S. 28 – 30, 57, 160 Safran, W. 4, 69, 160 Sanjek, R. 91, 118, 160 Saran, A. K. 30 – 1, 43, 47, 160 – 1 Sarana, G. 23, 25, 95, 148, 155, 158, 161 Saraswati, B. N. 46 – 7, 161 Sarukkai, S. 10 – 14, 161 Schneider, D. M. 35 – 9, 161 Sen, A. 117, 161 settlement societies 18, 61 – 2, 64, 71, 144, 155; see also civilizations; ‘non-modern’ civilizations; plantation Shah, A. M. 83, 161 Shah, S. P. 90, 94, 113, 161 Shamsul, A. B. ix, 90, 106, 123, 132, 161 Sharma, K. N. 55 – 6, 161 Singapore 69 – 70, 75 – 6, 80, 138, 150, 152 – 3, 156 – 7 Singer, M. 29, 64, 161 – 2 Singh, A. ix, 113 – 14, 156, 162 Singh, K. S. 57, 157, 162 Singh, Y. 30, 31, 34 – 5, 51, 62, 83, 108, 162 Sinha, S.47, 57 – 8, 162 social anthropology of India 21, 65, 154; American anthropology 36 – 7; complex societies 49, 50, 53, 57, 63, 148, 151, 158, 164; continuity and change 1 – 2, 43, 49, 73; ethnosociology 149; functionalism and culture history 22; structural functionalism 26 – 7,

42; structuralism 30, 33, 35 – 7, 42, 61; time dimension 43, 53 socio-economic mobility 81, 110, 112, 122, 133 – 4; see also Malaysia; South Africa South Africa ix, 4, 72, 74 – 6, 78 – 80, 90, 92, 94, 104 – 8, 110 – 18, 126, 142 – 3, 150, 153, 155 – 6, 159 South African Indians 112, 115 Southeast Asia 66, 75 – 6, 80, 100 – 1, 109, 121, 141, 150, 156 Sri Lanka 71, 75 – 6, 94, 100, 115, 142, 160 Srinivas, M. N. 5, 14, 27, 29, 162 Stenson, M. 89, 125, 162 Steward, J. H. 99, 162 Stockholm syndrome 107, 110, 112, 118 Strawson, P. 85, 163 Subrahmanyam, S. 99, 100, 163 subversive etymologies 20 Tamil 4, 38, 66, 69 – 70, 76, 78, 82, 93 – 4, 98, 109, 111, 117, 120, 121 – 6, 129 – 36, 150, 152, 157, 159, 164 Tax, S. 109, 163 Thompson, E. T. 99, 163 Tonnies, F. 105, 163 transnationalism 4, 75, 97 – 100, 103 transnationalist analysis 4, 98 – 100, 103; see also methodological nationalism Trinidad & Tobago 18, 66, 71 – 2, 76 – 7, 86, 113, 143, 160 Uberoi, J. P. S. 15, 40, 163 United Kingdom (U. K.) 18, 66 – 7, 72, 76, 81, 83, 90 United States of Americas (U. S. A.) 18, 66 – 7, 72, 76, 78, 83, 90 – 1, 94, 98, 102, 106 – 7, 113, 118, 120, 126, 141 – 2, 144, 160 Vahed, G. 104 – 5, 113, 150, 163 vertical and lateral axes 70, 72 Vertovec, S. 4, 6, 63, 71, 163 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 71 Voigt-Graf, C. 79, 163

168

INDEX

Wang, G. W. 67 – 8, 70, 163 Weber, M. 6, 7, 84, 90, 105 – 6, 135, 164 Werbner, P. 81, 164 Willford, A. 4, 98, 164 Williams, B. F. 102, 114, 164

Wimmer, A. 4, 97 – 8, 164 Wittgenstein, L. 43, 88, 92, 164 Wong, Dehua 84, 118, 164 Woon, Y. 138, 164 Worsley, P. M. 56 – 7, 106, 164

169