Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora 9781138942899, 9781315672571

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ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF THE INDIAN DIASPORA

The geographical diversity of the Indian diaspora has been shaped against the backdrop of the historical forces of colonialism, nationalism and neoliberal globalization. In each of these global moments, the demand for Indian workers has created the multiple global pathways of the Indian diaspora. The Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora introduces readers to the contexts and histories that constitute the Indian diaspora. It brings together scholars from different parts of the globe, representing various disciplines, and covers extensive spatial and temporal terrain. Contributors draw from a variety of archives and intellectual perspectives in order to map the narratives of the Indian diaspora. The topics covered range from the history of diasporic communities, activism, identity, gender, politics, labour, policy, violence, performance, literature and branding. The handbook analyses a wide array of issues and debates and is organized in six parts: • • • • • •

Histories and trajectories Diaspora and infrastructures Cultural dynamics Representation and identity Politics of belonging Networked subjectivities and transnationalism.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of the diverse social, cultural and economic contexts that frame diasporic practices, this key reference work will reinvigorate discussions about the Indian diaspora, its global presence and trajectories. It will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and students interested in studying South Asia in general and the Indian diaspora in particular. Radha Sarma Hegde is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, USA. Her research interests focus on issues of migration, transnational feminism, globalization and media. She is the author of Mediating Migration (2016), and currently co-editor of the journal Feminist Media Studies. Ajaya Kumar Sahoo is Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora, University of Hyderabad, India. His research interests include Indian diaspora and transnationalism. His recent co-edited books include Indian Transnationalism Online (2014) and Transnational Migrations (2009). He is the editor of the journal South Asian Diaspora.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF THE INDIAN DIASPORA

Edited by Radha Sarma Hegde and Ajaya Kumar Sahoo

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 selection and editorial material, Radha Sarma Hegde and Ajaya Kumar Sahoo; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Radha Sarma Hegde and Ajaya Kumar Sahoo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted 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 Names: Hegde, Radha Sarma, 1953 - editor. | Sahoo, Ajaya Kumar, editor. Title: Routledge handbook of the Indian diaspora/[edited by] Radha Sarma Hegde and Ajaya Kumar Sahoo. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017019720 | ISBN 9781138942899 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315672571 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: East Indian diaspora. | East Indians–Foreign countries. Classification: LCC DS432.5.R68 2018 | DDC 909/.0491411–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019720 ISBN: 978-1-138-94289-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-67257-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK

CONTENTS

List of illustrations List of contributors List of abbreviations Acknowledgements

ix xi xvii xix

Introduction Radha S. Hegde and Ajaya K. Sahoo

1

PART 1

Histories and trajectories

15

1 Indian servitude in the British empire Vinay Lal

17

2 Race, ethnicity and conflict in the Indian diaspora Brij Maharaj

28

3 Writing indenture history through testimonios and oral narratives Vijay Mishra

39

4 Coolitude meets indianité: postcolonial kala pani writings in French Brinda J. Mehta

51

5 Out of India: East Africa and its South Asian diasporas Sana Aiyar v

62

Contents PART II

Diaspora and infrastructures

75

6 Labour policy and global Indian diaspora SaunJuhi Verma

77

7 Paradigms, policies, and patterns of Indian diaspora investments Daniel Naujoks

90

8 Transnational diaspora organizations and India’s development Rina Agarwala

104

9 Money flows, gender and family among Indian migrants to Australia Supriya Singh

117

PART III

Cultural dynamics

129

10 Programming Bollywood: media and the Indian-American diaspora, 1965–2010 Aswin Punathambekar

131

11 Migratory South Asian performances: between nationalism and assimilation Priya Srinivasan

143

12 Musical performances in the Indian diaspora Tina K. Ramnarine

156

13 Transnational Bollywood assemblages in Singapore Anjali Gera Roy

170

14 Diasporic visual cultures of Indian fashion and beauty Vanita Reddy

183

PART IV

Representation and identity

201

15 Poetic politics: from Ghadar to the Indian Workers Association Virinder S. Kalra

203

16 South Asian women and work in the diaspora Tania Das Gupta

216

vi

Contents

17 Of intersecting oppressions: domestic violence and the Indian diaspora Rupaleem Bhuyan and Susan Ramsundarsingh

228

18 Celebrating Indian culture: festival spaces and entangled lives in Darwin, North Australia Michele Lobo

241

19 Softening India abroad: representations of India and its diaspora in the Canadian press Huzan Dordi and Margaret Walton-Roberts

252

PART V

Politics of belonging

267

20 Renewing diasporic bonds and the global branding of India Radha S. Hegde

269

21 Performing Indian American ethnicity in mainstream America Bandana Purkayastha, Shweta Majumdar Adur and Koyel Khan 22 Home, belonging and the city in the Anglo-Indian diaspora Jayani Bonnerjee 23 Memories and apprehensions: temporalities of queer South Asian belonging and activism in the diaspora Shweta Majumdar Adur

282

294

304

PART VI

Networked subjectivities and transnationalism

315

24 Indians in Australia: understanding the changing face of a community Michiel Baas

317

25 Networks, caste, and transnational identities Goolam Vahed

330

26 Geographies of Indian transnationalism Carmen Voigt-Graf

341

vii

Contents

27 Of kaleidoscopic mothers and diasporic twists: the mother/daughter plot in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri Delphine Munos 28 Diasporic subjectivity: of loss, memory, being and becoming Mala Pandurang Glossary Index

355

366

377 379

viii

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 7.1 7.2 7.3 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9 19.1 19.2 19.3 26.1 26.2 26.3 26.4

NRI foreign direct investment inflows into India (1991–2015) Outstanding NRI deposits (1991–2015) Monthly portfolio investment assets held by NRIs (2012–2015) Malay girl against the size-zero heroine of Kambakkht Ishq in the Jade Cinema Rang Fab On a Roll: Chandni Chowk to Chowringhee Dance Club: Dhoom Unsuitable Girls: most reluctant housekeeper Unsuitable Girls: most apprehensive fiancée Unsuitable Girls: most defiant mother Upping the Aunty: Poonam Aunty Upping the Aunty: Fara Aunty Upping the Aunty: Lovelina Aunty Upping the Aunty: Gowrie Aunty Upping the Aunty: Kavita Aunty Upping the Aunty: Arun Aunty Annual breakdown of articles categorized as ‘soft power’ Annual breakdown of articles categorized as ‘deficient state’ Annual breakdown of ‘deficient state’ articles related to diaspora A model of the Punjabi transnational community A model of the Kannadiga transnational community A model of the Indo-Fijian transnational community Abstract models of transnational spaces based on the Indian experience in Australia

96 97 98 174 175 176 180 189 189 190 192 193 194 195 196 197 256 257 257 346 347 348 350

Tables 7.1 Portfolio investments: annual average of assets under control by NRIs 8.1 Distribution of organization type in interview sample vs. inventory ix

99 108

List of illustrations

9.1 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5

The Indian migration project, Australia, 2005–2014 Australia-, China- and India-born as part of Australian population Indian students in Australia Median age India-born population Gender among India-born Indian students spread: institutional types

119 321 322 323 324 325

Box 26.1 The spatial components of a geography of transnationalism

x

343

CONTRIBUTORS

Shweta Majumdar Adur is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles. Before this, she was an Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State University, Fullerton, USA. She completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, human rights and immigration. Her dissertation examines queer South Asian organizing in the US. She has authored several publications, including ‘On the Edges of Belonging: Indian American Dalits, Queers, Guest Workers and Questions of Ethnic Belonging’ (Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(4), 2013), and co-authored As the Leaves Turn Gold (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). She has been actively involved with several development projects in India and with UN Women South Asia. Rina Agarwala is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. Her research has examined how vulnerable populations assert their rights through social movements. Her co-edited volume, Whatever Happened to Class? Reflections from South Asia (Routledge, 2008), explores how class-based analysis better understands the contemporary challenges faced by urban workers, agricultural workers and the middle classes in India and Pakistan. Her recent book, Informal Labour, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India (Cambridge University Press, 2013), examines how India’s informal workers are launching alternative labour movements that use the power of their votes to attain social welfare. Sana Aiyar is an Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Her broad research and teaching interests lie in the regional and transnational history of South Asia and South Asian diasporas, with a particular focus on colonial and postcolonial politics and society in the Indian Ocean. Her research has appeared in several journals including the American Historical Review and Modern Asian Studies, and her first book, Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora, was published by Harvard University Press in 2015. Michiel Baas is currently a Research Fellow at the Asian Migration Cluster, National University of Singapore. Previously, Dr Baas was a coordinator with the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden, the Netherlands), as well as lecturer with the Anthropology-Sociology xi

List of contributors

department of the University of Amsterdam, coordinator with the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research and coordinator with the Eutopia Institute (Amsterdam). He received both his PhD and MA in Anthropology/Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. Rupaleem Bhuyan currently works at the University of Toronto, Canada where she teaches community practice and social justice advocacy to future social workers. Since 1991, she has been part of the anti-violence against women movement, working in collaboration with indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities. Her current research with the Mothers Project examines how Canada’s immigration system produces gendered forms of inequality that intersect with the spectrum of violence against women. Jayani Bonnerjee is Assistant Professor at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India. She is a cultural geographer with research and teaching interests in postcolonial urbanism and critical geographies of diaspora. Her doctoral (Queen Mary, University of London) and postdoctoral work (Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS, Singapore and Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi) has focused on issues of identity and belonging for Calcutta’s Anglo-Indian and Chinese communities. Her work has been published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies, South Asian Diaspora and Global Networks. Tania Das Gupta is Professor in the Department of Equity Studies, York University, Canada. She has published widely on South Asian diaspora, race and racism, anti-racism, immigration and refugee issues, state policies, community activism, and women, work and families. Her publications include Real Nurses and Others: Racism in Nursing (Fernwood, 2009); Racism and Paid Work (University of Toronto Press, 1995); and Learning from Our History: Community Development by Immigrant Women in Ontario, 1958–86 (Cross Cultural Community Centre, 1986). Huzan Dordi is an educator and human geographer who gained his MA in Geography at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. His research interests focus on geopolitics and the Indian diaspora. The chapter in this book is based on his MA research, which explored India’s projection of ‘soft power’ globally, especially through the Indian diaspora. Currently he teaches in Toronto, Canada. He completed his Bachelors of Arts (BA Hons) in History and Geography, and Bachelors of Education (BEd) at York University, Canada. Radha S. Hegde is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, USA. Her research and teaching focus on migration, media flows, globalization and transnational feminism. She is the author of Mediating Migration (Polity Press, 2016) and editor of Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures (NYU Press, 2011). She is currently co-editor of the journal Feminist Media Studies. Virinder S. Kalra is Professor of Sociology at Warwick University, UK. His research interests are in the area of social movements and cultures of popular resistance as it pertains to South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. His most recent book is Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach (Bloomsbury Press, 2015). Koyel Khan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, USA. She is presently conducting research on the influence of neoliberal globalization and nationalism in the practice of Indian classical dance. xii

List of contributors

Vinay Lal is a writer, blogger, cultural critic, public commentator, and Professor of History and Asian American Studies at UCLA, USA. His sixteen authored and edited books include The Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the New Global Economy (Pluto Press, 2002), The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (Oxford, 2005), Political Hinduism: The Religious Imagination in Public Spheres (Oxford, 2009) and the two-volume Oxford Anthology of the Modern Indian City (Oxford, 2013). His intellectual interests include Indian history, global politics, historiography, popular culture and the politics of knowledge systems. Michele Lobo is an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellow (ARC DECRA) at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Deakin University, Australia. She is a social and cultural geographer who explores whiteness, ethnic/ethno-religious diversity, indigeneity and shared belonging in cities. She is the author of ‘Reimagining Citizenship in Suburban Australia’ (ACRAWSA, e-journal, 6(1), 2009), Migration, Citizenship and Intercultural Relations: Looking through the Lens of Social Inclusion (Ashgate, 2011) and co-author of Intercultural Relations in a Global World (Common Ground Publishing, 2011). She has recently published in Social and Cultural Geography (2014), Emotion, Space and Society (2014), Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies (2015), Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (2015), Journal of Cultural Geography (2015) and Geographical Research (2016). Brij Maharaj is a Professor of Geography at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has received widespread recognition for his research on urban politics, segregation, local economic development, migration and diasporas, religion and development, and has published over 120 scholarly papers in renowned journals such as Urban Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, Political Geography, Urban Geography, Antipode, Polity and Space, Geoforum and GeoJournal, as well as five co-edited book collections. Brinda J. Mehta is the Germaine Thompson Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Mills College in Oakland, California, USA. She is the author of Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence (Routledge, 2014); Notions of Identity: Diaspora and Gender in Caribbean Women’s Writing (Palgrave, 2009); Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing (Syracuse University Press, 2007); and Diasporic (Dis)locations: Indo Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani (University of West Indies Press, 2004). She has published over fifty articles on postcolonial African and Caribbean literature and Arab women’s writings that have appeared in several national and international peer-reviewed journals. Vijay Mishra is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. He holds doctorates from the Australian National University and Oxford. He has published widely on the gothic, devotional poetics, postcolonial and Australian literature, Bollywood cinema, multiculturalism and the Indian diaspora. He is a Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy. Delphine Munos is an FRS-FNRS postdoctoral researcher in the English Department at the University of Liège, Belgium. She has published in the field of American and postcolonial literatures, diaspora studies and South Asian studies. Among her publications are the monograph After Melancholia: A Reappraisal of Second-Generation Diasporic Subjectivity in the Work of Jhumpa Lahiri (Brill, ex-Rodopi, 2013) and ‘Mapping Diasporic Subjectivities’ (2014), a special issue of South Asian Diaspora that she guest-edited with Mala Pandurang. Forthcoming is ‘Minority Genres in Postcolonial Literatures’, a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing guest-edited with Bénédicte Ledent. xiii

List of contributors

Daniel Naujoks teaches international development, public policy, international relations and migration at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and at The New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs. He has published widely on the effects of migration and citizenship on social, economic and political development, ethnic identity and the role and genesis of public and citizenship policies. This includes his book Migration, Citizenship, and Development: Diasporic Membership Policies and Overseas Indians in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2013). In addition, he regularly advises governments and the United Nations on issues of migration, diaspora engagement, displacement and development. Mala Pandurang is a Professor and Head of the Department of English at Dr BMN College, Mumbai, India (affiliated to SNDT Women’s University). She is a postdoctoral fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has taught as Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and is also a recipient of an in-UK research grant from the Charles Wallace Trust. She is the Reviews Editor of the Journal of South Asian Diaspora (Routledge) and series editor of Postcolonial Lives (Brill). Aswin Punathambekar is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry (NYU Press, 2013) and co-editor of Global Bollywood (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Television at Large in South Asia (Routledge, 2013). He is Associate Editor of the journal Media, Culture and Society and co-edits the Critical Cultural Communication book series for NYU Press. He is currently working on his next book, provisionally titled Mobile Publics: Popular Culture and Politics in Digital India. Bandana Purkayastha is a Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut, USA. Her research on the intersections of gender/racism/class/age; transnationalism; violence and peace; and human rights has appeared in ten books and thirty-five articles and chapters since 2000. Her recent books are The Human Rights Enterprise (Polity, 2015); Voices of Internally Displaced Persons (Frontpage, 2015); and Human Trafficking (Frontpage, 2015). Further details appear at www.sociology.uconn.edu/purkayastha. She has received many local and national awards for scholarship, teaching and community work. Tina K. Ramnarine’s research focuses on performance, globalization, identity politics and environmental issues. Publications include the books Creating Their Own Space: The Development of an Indian-Caribbean Musical Tradition (University of West Indies Press, 2001), Ilmatar’s Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music (Chicago University Press, 2003), Beautiful Cosmos: Performance and Belonging in the Caribbean Diaspora (Pluto Press, 2007), as well as the edited volumes Musical Performance in the Diaspora (Routledge, 2007) and Global Perspectives on Orchestras: Essays on Collective Creativity and Social Agency (Oxford University Press, 2017). She has held academic appointments in both music and anthropology and is currently Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. Susan Ramsundarsingh is currently a PhD student at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Canada where she is studying oppression of social service users by social service organizations. Vanita Reddy is an Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University, with faculty affiliations in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute. She is xiv

List of contributors

the author of Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity, and South Asian American Culture (Temple University Press, 2016). Her articles have appeared in the journals South Asian Popular Culture, Contemporary Literature, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, and the Journal of Asian American Studies. She is co-editing an issue of Scholar and Feminist Online called ‘Feminist and Queer Afro-Asian Formations’, (forthcoming, 2017). This special issue emerges out of her current book-in-progress, which examines possibilities for cross-racial affiliations between the South Asian diasporic and other racialized populations from a queer feminist perspective. Anjali Gera Roy is a Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. She has published 100 essays in literary, film and cultural studies in reputed journals and anthologies. She is the author of Cinema of Enchantment: Perso-Arabic Genealogies of the Hindi Masala film (Orient Blackswan, 2015) and Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond (Ashgate, 2010). In addition, she has edited Imagining Punjab, Punjabi, Punjabiat in the Transnational Era (Routledge, 2015) and The Magic of Bollywood: At Home and Abroad (Sage, 2012) and co-edited (with Chua Beng Huat) The Travels of Indian Cinema: From Bombay to LA (Oxford University Press, 2012) and (with Nandi Bhatia) Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement and Resettlement (Pearson Longman, 2008). Ajaya K. Sahoo teaches at the Centre for Study of Indian Diaspora, University of Hyderabad, India. His research interests include the Indian diaspora and transnationalism. He has co-edited Diasporas and Transnationalisms (Routledge, 2017), Indian Transnationalism Online (Ashgate, 2014), Transnational Migrations (Routledge, 2009), Indian Diaspora and Transnationalism (Rawat, 2012), and Tracing an Indian Diaspora (Sage, 2008). He is Editor of the journal South Asian Diaspora. Supriya Singh is a Professor of Sociology of Communications at RMIT University, Australia. Her research interests cover financial inclusion; the sociology of money and banking; communication, globalization, migration and the transnational family. Her recent books are Globalization and Money: A Global South Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) and The Girls Ate Last (Angsana Publications, 2013). Her latest book Money, Migration and Family: India to Australia (2016) was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Priya Srinivasan is an independent scholar and artist based in Melbourne, Australia, whose research uses critical feminist performance ethnography to explore the inter-relations between migration, history and labouring bodies. Using the notion of ‘bodily archive’, she explores the labour of stories, histories and power sedimented on dancing bodies. She has worked as an experimental dance/theatre choreographer developing the form of ‘talking dances’ in Chicago, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Melbourne. Goolam Vahed is a Professor in the Department of History, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He received his PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. His research interests include identity formation, citizenship, ethnicity, migration and transnationalism among Indian South Africans and the role of sport and culture in South African society. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and his recent co-authored books are Schooling Muslims in Natal: Identity, State and the Orient Islamic Educational Institute (KwaZulu-Natal University Press, 2015), Crossing Space and Time in the Indian Ocean: Early Indian Traders in Natal – A Biographical Study (Unisa Press, 2015) and The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire (Stanford University Press, 2016). xv

List of contributors

SaunJuhi Verma, Assistant Professor of Labour Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, is a sociologist by training with expertise in immigration, labour, law, race and gender. Her research record has centred upon evaluation of immigration policies, particularly modes of surveillance and policing of migrants in a global context. Her book manuscript, Black Gold, Brown Labour, is the first to identify contemporary forms of indentured labour that are concealed within state authorized immigration programmes. Her second book project, supported by Fulbright, evaluates policy design by inquiring into India’s biometric ID and E-Migrate programmes that regulate migration between migrants and foreign employers. Carmen Voigt-Graf is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Research Institute in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, as well as a Fellow at the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University. She has previously worked in different roles and organizations in several Pacific Island countries including in Fiji for the University of the South Pacific and as Economic Adviser for the Office of the Chief Trade Adviser in Vanuatu. Her areas of research interest include the Indian diaspora, transnationalism, labour mobility and migration. Over the past fifteen years, she has also consulted for various development partners in the region. Margaret Walton-Roberts is a Professor in the Geography and Environmental Studies department at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Ontario, Canada. Her research addresses Indian immigrant networks and settlement in Canada, and the impact of transnational networks in both source and destination locales. She has published a number of articles and book chapters highlighting the role of immigration and remittances in transnational community formation and maintenance, including work on health philanthropy, remittance-led village projects in Punjab, and explorations of the role of the state and community in the gendered nature of transnational relations.

xvi

ABBREVIATIONS

ABS ANC ASSOCHAM BBC BBN BIT BJP CBSO CCC CEPA CII CIOP DIPP FATCA FDI FIA FIAV FICCI FPI GCC GDP GOI GOPIO GTA ICT IIFA IMA IPUMS IT IWA MASALA

Australian Bureau of Statistics African National Congress Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India British Broadcasting Corporation Bombay Broadcasting Network Bilateral Investment Treaty Bharatriya Janata Party City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Canadian Commerce Chamber Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Confederation of Indian Industries Comparative Immigrant Organization Project Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Foreign Direct Investment Federation of Indian Associations Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry Foreign Portfolio Investment Gulf Cooperation Council Gross Domestic Product Government of India Global Organization for People of Indian Origin Greater Toronto Area Information and Communication Technology International Indian Film Academy India Mahila Association Integrated Public Use Microdata Series Information Technology Indian Workers’ Association Massachusetts Area South Asian Lambda Association xvii

List of abbreviations

MCFSS MEA MIT MNC MOIA MOSAIC MP NRG NRI NRIO NRO OCB OCI OIFC PBD PIO PR QSANN RBI RN RSS SALGA SAMYO SAWAN TIFF TOIFA UAE UK UNDESA USAID US VADHA VCASAA VET VHP VOD WHO WTO

Multi-Cultural Family Support Services Ministry of External Affairs Massachusetts Institute of Technology Multinational Corporation Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs Multilingual Orientation Services Association for Immigrant Communities Member of Parliament Non-Resident Gujarati Non-Resident Indians Non Resident Indians Online Non-Resident Ordinary Overseas Corporate Bodies Overseas Citizens of India Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Persons of Indian Origin Permanent Residency Queer South Asian National Network Reserve Bank of India Registered Nurse Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association South Asian Music Youth Orchestra South Asian Women Action Network Toronto International Film Festival Times of India Film Awards United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs US Agency for International Development United States Victoria and Dow Hill Association Vancouver Custody and Access Support and Advocacy Association Vocational Education and Training Vishva Hindu Parishad Video-on-Demand World Health Organization World Trade Organization

xviii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank all the authors for their insightful contributions to this Handbook. We deeply appreciate the scholarly effort and work that has gone into this collaborative project. We especially thank the authors for their patience and swift responses to our editorial queries. We would like to thank Anne Pasek in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University for her careful reading and editing of the chapters. Thanks to Jigna Kotecha also from Media, Culture and Communication at New York University who helped us efficiently with last minute production details. A special thanks to Anindita Shome, doctoral student, Centre for Study of Indian Diaspora, University of Hyderabad, for her editorial help. Thanks to Soumi Sarkar (Independent photographer, NYC) for the cover photograph. At Routledge, our sincere thanks goes to Dorothea Schaefter, Senior Editor, Asian Studies and her editorial assistants Sophie Iddamalgoda and Lily Brown for their support and encouragement that made this Handbook possible. 12 October 2016 Radha S. Hegde Ajaya K. Sahoo

xix

INTRODUCTION Radha S. Hegde and Ajaya K. Sahoo

Diasporas are complex social formations shaped by political imaginaries and defined by the materialities of national borders and economies. Scholars across disciplines have grappled with the concept of diaspora and its paradigmatic constructions of forced dispersal, nostalgia and imagined homelands.1 The term diaspora is evoked as an umbrella or catch-all term, an analytical category, or a heuristic. Alternatively, it is critiqued for collapsing and conflating distinct experiences of mobility. Recently, more scholarly attention has been paid to complicate the term in order to loosen the stable connection between diasporic communities and places of origin. With radical changes in the conditions of migration under neoliberal globalization, there is also a recognition of the transnational politics and cultural contradictions that frame diasporic lives. These experiences of border crossing and relocations raise questions that interrupt assumptions about nationality, citizenship and belonging. This Handbook is an effort to contextualize these questions with regard to the diverse experiences and particular histories that constitute the Indian diaspora. The geographical diversity of the Indian diaspora has been shaped against the backdrop of the historical forces of colonialism, nationalism and neoliberal globalization. In each of these global conjunctures, the demand for workers has led the Indian diaspora to various locations, each with its particular sets of challenges. This in turn, has created a multiplicity of diasporic experiences, cultures and practices. Commenting on the diverse streams of flexible labour that characterize the diaspora, Koshy (2008, 3) notes: “No other diaspora offers this comprehensive a view of the continuous renovations in forms and modes of migrant labour because no other diasporic population has been at the centre of these shifts for such an extended period of time.” Although each stream of Indian migration is distinct, the historical particularities of diasporic mobility connect and intersect on different levels. In the various nations to which they have moved, Indians have forged networks of affiliation and a visible diasporic presence. The chapters of this Handbook introduce readers to historical, social and economic contexts that frame the cultures and practices of the Indian diaspora. Diasporas and nations are bound together through the articulation of difference and citizenship. While diasporic groups define their identity in transnational terms, nations have historically depended on diasporic groups in order to strengthen hegemonic versions of citizenship and nationalism (Behdad, 2005). In recent years, the geopolitical context and the rise of anti-immigrant discourses have created intense displays of nationalism along with a climate of suspicion around 1

Radha S. Hegde and Ajaya K. Sahoo

immigrants and minority groups in the West (Appadurai, 2006). At the same time, countries of origin like India are paying close attention to the diaspora as potential investors, in order to accelerate the country’s own development and position in the global economy (Kapur, 2010). The steady focus on diasporic communities to advance different types of national agendas is not new, but the attention has clearly assumed new inflections in the current global context. The manner in which immigrants are being hailed, recruited and folded into a variety of national imaginaries has led to flexible forms of citizenship (Ong, 1999) which are perceived as either advantageous or threatening (Maira, 2009). For example, the flexibility of diasporic affiliation and continuing loyalties to the homeland are considered an asset by countries like India, whereas the dual affiliations of immigrants are often regarded as a point of suspicion in the West. This leads to the question of how diasporic communities are named in prevailing social and political discourse. The act of naming, whether by the state, census bureaus, activists or the community themselves, is a form of either recognition or misrecognition. The naming of communities is strategic, in that it can either narrow the focus of attention or broaden the site of identification. The use of South Asian as the broad term to preface the study of the diaspora from the subcontinent gestures towards greater regional inclusivity. The term South Asian is also used by immigrant activists to go beyond nationality groupings in order to promote a wider political alliance. In contrast, the term Asian Indian was coined by the US Census in 1980 as an umbrella term to refer to immigrants from the subcontinent. In the post 9/11 context, the use of the term desi has evolved as a term of racial identification used by the community in contrast to the bureaucratic terms of identification.2 The Indian government is also politically interested in the use of the term Indian to name and unify immigrants who claim their origins within the currently defined borders of India. Naming also activates particular lines of inquiry. While sensitive to these histories of naming, we recoup the term Indian diaspora in order to particularize diasporic experiences with an explicit focus on the nation, its geographies and borders. In the current moment, when nations and political parties are marshalling their interpretations of the past in order to manipulate the present, we feel there are specificities with respect to India that need to be examined. This move is not about claiming an essentialized Indian perspective on diaspora, but rather to show how the nation as a political entity and cartographic formation informs the lives, cultures and the challenges of diasporic communities. Diasporas and nations have historically come together around states of being such as the quality of Indianness. As Shukla (2003, 23) argues, the diaspora reproduces itself through “intensified investments in Indianness”. With the imagination entrenched in the practice of everyday life (Appadurai, 1996), Indians in the diaspora actively and continually reinvent the idea of belonging in transnational terms. There are multiple Indias that are reproduced, normalized and mobilized by the diaspora and by the nation(s) they inhabit. These representations of India are claimed to unite communities around cultural practices and also to impose hegemonic beliefs and values. Evolving forms of media and technology have historically enabled the travel and reproduction of national ideologies through transnational diasporic circuits (Anderson, 1983). Today media and technology have redefined the terms and conditions of the diasporic experience (Hegde, 2016). Diasporas represent communicative sites of intense heterogeneity which render legible the political disposition of nations. Advancing a strong case for the use of diaspora space as a conceptual category, Brah (1996, 242) writes: “Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural, and psychic processes”. The chapters that follow examine the Indian diaspora not as a site of authenticity but as one of entanglement. The goal of this Handbook is to set a dialogue in motion about a range of questions and issues that frame the history and the identity of the Indian diaspora. In order to provide a 2

Introduction

backdrop and contextualize the journeys and pathways described by the authors, we next trace a very brief history of the mobility of Indian diasporic communities.

Tracking histories Given its geographical location, India has a long history of migration and mobility. In terms of sheer numbers, Indians today constitute the third largest group of diasporics living outside their homeland, next to the British and the Chinese. The people of Indian origin, with nearly 25 million plus in population, have settled in over 100 countries and constitute more than 40 per cent of the population in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam (see Gautam, 2013). Although much smaller in numbers, they are still a visible minority in Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda, the UK, the US and Canada. There is strong scholarly consensus that the emigration of Indians can be broadly captured in three distinct historical time frames (see Dubey, 2003; Jain, 1993; Sahoo, 2006) covering the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods.

Precolonial migration Trade and religious propagation were the main reasons for early emigration from India. According to historical and archival data, the global mobility of Indians can be traced to the first century AD, when merchants, princes, priests, poets and artisans journeyed to East Africa and Southeast Asian countries and forged cultural ties in these places (see MEA, 2002; Suryanarayan, 2003). Prior to the sixteenth century, according to Kaur (2008), Indian migratory movements within the Asian region were limited to mercantile or religious travel in the region, which pre-dated the arrival of European commercial interests. Due to its strategic location, the Indian subcontinent has been a central node in the steady outward flow of people, ideologies and commodities (Selvakumar, 2011). The maritime history of precolonial India shows evidence of continuous contact between the Kingdoms of the Coromandel Coast and the islands of South East Asia (Jayaram, 2004). Drawing support from archaeological evidence, Shanmugam (2009) argues that during the Chola period, from the ninth to the thirteenth century AD, the Southeast Asia region became a thriving market for traders, especially from South India. The Cholas, among the most powerful rulers of South India, exerted their maritime influence from the Coromandel Coast across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. During this period, port towns such as Kaveripattinam and Nagapattinam flourished and enabled trade and commerce (Devare, 2009). With an infrastructure in place, the ambitions of Indian merchants grew grander and more global. Scholars speculate that these merchants were attracted by the vast resources available in Southeast Asia, but also realized that the region served as a gateway to trade with China (Guy, 2011). With the slow development of these trade routes and contacts, it is believed that merchants from what is now Gujarat, Bengal and Tamil Nadu settled down in the port cities of Southeast Asia. Together with trade and commerce, the merchants had a great deal of cultural influence on life in these locations and considerable economic power as well (Markovits, 2000). According to Van der Veer (1995, 4), “the pervasiveness of precolonial migration inside and outside of India may at least lead us to question the radical modernity of the experience of displacement, disjuncture, and diaspora”.

Colonial migration Multiple historical events and developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries created the conditions for the emigration of large numbers of Indians to different parts of the world. 3

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European imperialist expansion depended on both the movement and regulation of the bodies of the colonized. At the height of colonial rule, India was firmly entrenched in British colonial expansionist projects and economic schemes which spanned the whole of the Empire’s territorial possessions. According to Brown (2007, 14): India was at the heart of this deepening global interconnection, and became increasingly significant for Britain as a source of raw materials, as [a] market for manufactured goods, a destination for capital investment, and a source of labour for other parts of the Empire. New plantations and other commercial ventures in the colonies, aided by emerging transportation infrastructures, created the need for large supplies of labour. Indians filled a variety of labour needs for the British Empire, which required various types of skills ranging from farmers, plantation workers, soldiers (sepoys), sailors (lascars), dock workers and nannies (ayahs), to clerks in the civil services. However, it was mostly the unskilled, indentured workers who represented the most dramatic numbers of Indians enlisted to work overseas in the colonies. For the better part of the nineteenth century, Indian workers were transported to distant places to work in British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Suriname, Mauritius, Fiji and Natal (South Africa). The abolition of slavery in the British, French and Dutch colonies, respectively in 1834, 1846 and 1873, led to severe shortages of labour to work in the sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa and rubber plantations in the colonies. Mahmud (2012, 16) notes that colonial planters perceived their success as resting upon “a critical ratio between abundant land and cheap labour – a ratio which slavery had served well and which after abolition needed to be replaced”. Looking for alternative sources of labour, the colonial government imported Indians under the designation of indentured labour. Scholars have characterized the indentured labour as “a new form of slavery” (Tinker, 1974, xiv) or as “a bridge between slavery and modern forms of contract labour” (Mahmud, 2012, 15). While there were variations, the indentured labour system was primarily a contractual arrangement with penal sanctions to work in a foreign country under specified terms (Goss & Lindquist, 2000). The Netherlands and France, which replicated the British system, also relied on Indian workers (see Naujoks, 2009). The emigration of indentured labour to places in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean continued up to the early twentieth century with approximately 1.5 million Indians leaving India under contracts of indenture (see Clarke et al., 1990). The dire situation that prevailed in India at that time due to the combination of colonial rule, famine and natural calamities had destroyed cottage industries, wiped out the rural economies and forced workers to seek employment under the indenture system. At the same time, the West, riding the wave of industrial development, deemed Indians to be a hardworking and malleable workforce. As a result, the British, the French, the Dutch and the Portuguese all sought Indian skilled labour for development of plantations and the agricultural economies of their territories. As Bahadur (2014, xx) writes: “These were the first groups of Indians abroad in any significant numbers, the vanguard of a larger, broader diaspora that India presently views with pride, courts and cultivates, but who were denigrated at the time.” Upon their arrival in the colonies, the indentured workers were assigned to plantations to which they were bound for five or more years. Isolated in the new foreign locations, the Indians were also controlled by restrictions imposed on their movements. Although they were promised fair wages and a return voyage to India in exchange for a predetermined number of years of work, very few of these labourers ever returned to India. One can only surmise that their desire to better their lives and the reality of the dismal situation in India forced them to endure the hardship of life in these plantations. Once in these situations of indenture, the colonial 4

Introduction

apparatus shaped both their work and the ways in which their bodies and identities were rendered visible. For example, Raghuram and Sahoo (2008, 6) note how diasporic identities were produced: “Imperial machinations forced diasporic identifications through racial classifications. People were often required to perform their diasporic affiliation, to be marked through their migratory trajectory, to submerge other vectors of difference and to play out the imagined markers of diasporic culture.” Emigration to Sri Lanka, Burma and Malaya presents a marked difference in contrast to the indentured labour migration to the African and Caribbean countries. All the migrants to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Malaya were from the southern parts of India and were recruited mainly by agents or overseers known as the Kangani. The Indians worked on the tea, coffee and rubber plantations. During the period from 1852 to 1937, 1.5 million Indians went to Ceylon, 2 million to Malaya, and 2.5 million to Burma (Davis, 1951, 104). After 1920, the Kangani migration (totalling around 6 million) gradually gave way to individual or un-recruited, free migration primarily due to the sharp fall in demand for Indian labour. Each of these streams of labour flows from India is embedded within the economic and social realities of the colonial project. There is definitely a need, as Carter (2008) argues, for more comparative approaches to the study of the mobilization of Indian labour during this time frame.

Postcolonial migration With the onset of the world wars, labour migration from India almost came to a halt. At the end of the Second World War, the changes in the political scenario reshuffled the flow of migrants and the processes of border control. Following Indian independence, the migration from India shifted course in terms of both geography and demographics. It was now headed mainly to the developed countries of the West and Australia, and the focus was mainly about the mobility of the skilled and professional diaspora. The influence of the global economy and its markets significantly reworked the Indian diasporic narrative in the post-independence context. While the terms of labour are vastly different from the earlier migration of indentured labour, there are new vectors of power and control to contend with. Indians from other parts of the world, especially from the former colonies, started emigrating to the West. Political upheavals, violence and resistance to the presence of the Indian diaspora also led to new patterns of mobility. A clear example is the case of the expulsion of Asians from Uganda in the 1970s which led to the exodus of Indians to the West. In addition, there has been large-scale migration of skilled and unskilled labourers to the Gulf countries since the 1970s. It is argued that the steep increase in oil prices and the consequent earnings of large revenues accelerated the process of industrialization and social change in the GCC states.3 This was characterized by massive investment in social and economic infrastructure necessitating the service of large numbers of immigrant workers.4 In summary, the Indian diasporic story is spread over complex routes and global pathways. The earlier diasporic stream, which migrated to British, French and Dutch colonies during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as indentured and Kangani labourers, is often described as the ‘old diaspora’. The more recent streams of skilled migration to industrially developed countries of Europe and North America during the postcolonial era rest on markedly different political contexts which have to be historicized comparatively. Wherever Indians have migrated and settled, they have created multicultural spaces and social networks, and forged communities through economic activity and cultural practices. As Mishra (1996) notes, the histories of Indian diasporic movement draw on two archives which he terms diasporas of exclusivism and diasporas of the border. The older diasporas of classic capitalism, according to him, were self-contained ‘little Indias’ in the colonies, in contrast 5

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to the diasporas of advanced capital in the mid-to-late twentieth century who moved to the metropolitan centres of the West. These diasporas, although historically separate, do have several points of overlap; hence according to Mishra (1996), they should be viewed as interlinked. The politics of adaptation have changed over time as has also the relationship between the various transnational networks of the Indian diaspora and the homeland.

Overview The chapters featured in this Handbook cover a variety of topics including immigration, transnationalism, identity, performance, religion, politics, citizenship, gender, sexuality, labour and more. We bring together scholars from different parts of the globe, representing various disciplines including sociology, anthropology, history, labour studies, political science, media and communication studies, cultural studies, philosophy, English and comparative literature.

Histories and trajectories Our opening part presents five chapters that speak to the complex global trajectories and transnational histories of the Indian diaspora. Despite the overwhelming push by political groups and factions to resurrect simplistic and often celebratory histories of the diaspora, in reality the histories of Indian diasporic experiences are far from being linear or singular. In this first part, the focus is on documenting histories that are elided or are invisible due to the layers of hegemonic retellings of the diasporic saga. In his chapter, Lal provides a nuanced account of the intersecting transnational histories that frame the experiences of indentured labour from India. Colonialism, imperial expansion, transportation, economic turbulence, natural disasters and personal traumas have all impinged on creating what he calls one of the most significant chapters in the global migration of unfree labour. Maharaj in his chapter traces the continuities that have defined the racial and class positionalities of the diaspora in the colonial and postcolonial phases of history. Maharaj elaborates on the marginalization and identity politics that have defined diasporic life in multiple geographical sites where the histories of indentured labour have played out. His detailed tracking of the history shows us that polarization along the lines of race and ethnicity has in fact become more entrenched in the postcolonial era, necessitating greater scrutiny of the current history and politics of racialization. Mishra’s chapter highlights the voice of an indentured worker, Sanadhya, in the plantations of Fiji, whose testimonios highlight the material conditions of labour and the memories of this subaltern community. Mishra argues that testimonios and songs capture the sensory details of trauma and loss, and hence are important sites from which to reconstruct a history of the plantation diaspora. Mehta’s chapter contributes to our understanding of the traumas of indenture and the crossing of the dark waters, kala pani, from postcolonial writings in French from Mauritius and the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In her close reading of these writings, Mehta asserts that the francophone kala pani writings make visible the lives of the migrant underclass, as both victims and survivors of colonial and national history. By introducing subaltern perspectives, these authors complicate and add a necessary provocation to the study of diaspora. Challenging narrow definitions of diaspora, Aiyar discusses the competing scales, spaces and sites of diasporic belonging by using oceanic crossings and interregional connections as a compelling point of entry. Placing the Indian diasporic presence at the centre of studies of nationalism and race, according to Aiyar, constitutes a significant historiographic shift – one that she argues brings together South Asian, African and diasporic studies and is attentive to local and transnational dynamics. 6

Introduction

Diaspora and infrastructures The global neoliberal economy’s prioritization of temporary work significantly impacted the flow of labour from India. This part examines various types of political formations and social structures that regulate these flows. In a multi-sited ethnography that spans the US, India and the Middle East, Verma’s work demonstrates that employers make strategic use of the legal infrastructures to employ migrant labour. Employers cultivate business relationships with migration industry providers to fulfil their needs for experienced and disciplined migrants. This, in turn, has led to an expansion of labour brokerage agencies which service the global economy with a shifting labour pool. Examining infrastructures and state policies which encourage diasporic investments, the next chapter by Naujoks provides a detailed historical account and survey of how the state has, over time, created places, platforms and channels of communication to bring the diaspora into a national narrative of growth. There is the assumption that the non-resident Indian (NRI) investor is motivated by more than just financial interests when it comes to investing in development efforts in the home country. The state in its rhetorical reach definitely plays up that factor. As Naujoks shows, flagship initiatives of the current Indian government incorporate NRI investment matters into general policy. Organizations formed along religious and communal lines influence the diaspora to get involved in social projects in India. Agarwala’s chapter elaborates on how Indian-American organizations work to assist their own social constituency in India and the US adhering to their development ideology and social identity affiliations. Leveraging their socio-economic status in the US, these diasporic groups vary both in the type of projects they fund and the nature of advocacy efforts they engage in. Singh’s chapter explores the role of gender in the realm of finance and the diaspora. Drawing on research conducted with the Indian diaspora in Australia, she shows how normative authority around money matters is gendered within Indian families. She argues that scholarship has to pay attention to the way in which gender, finance and family intersect in the context of migration.

Cultural dynamics This part explores the intersection of cultural reproduction, mediation and national logics. The terrain of the cultural becomes the site where the politics of belonging and ideologies of nationalism are enacted and reproduced in the everyday. The diaspora’s dreams, desires and longings are translated, commodified and recreated in various media practices and platforms. Being fully connected to India today, diasporic communities are avid consumers of Indian media and hence constitute a significant demographic segment for the global media industries. In his chapter, Punathambekar claims that diasporic media initiatives today are no longer exilic or interstitial, rather they need to be understood against the backdrop of the interconnections between global media capitals such as Bombay, New York City and Los Angeles. Mainstream global media ventures, he argues, not only define diasporic media circulation but strategically steer different visions of the diaspora. In her chapter, Srinivasan moves us to the terrain of the performative and reads the dancing body as a site where one can see the play and tension between cultural nationalism, religion and multiculturalism. Examining the ways in which classical dance forms like Bharathanatyam are taught and practised in the diasporic context allows Srinivasan to show how the immigrant body navigates the past and present and negotiates a corporeal politics of assimilation. The theme of identity politics and performance is further explored by Ramnarine in the context of music and music-making in the diaspora. She examines the broad spectrum of 7

Radha S. Hegde and Ajaya K. Sahoo

musical practices in the diaspora and how music circulates transnationally between India and the diaspora through media, performance and social networks. Chutney, for example, which emerged as a popular musical genre in the 1970s in conjunction with Caribbean identity politics, soon spread to other global regions following diasporic pathways. Ramnarine discusses how Bollywood draws on the soundscapes of the diaspora and how this, in turn, has reconfigured not only music in the diaspora but also the relationship between the diaspora and the nation. The pervasive influence of Bollywood on the diasporic sensorium is the subject of Roy’s chapter. Viewing cinema as an assemblage, the chapter analyses the manner in which bodies and spaces respond and yield to the sensory appeal of Bollywood as it spills over into the everyday life of the Indian diaspora in Singapore. As Roy describes the reterritorialization of sensations, she reminds us about the complex ways in which circuits of desire and capitalism intersect in these global flows of media and diasporic communities. She evokes the strong sensory details of memories of movie-going experiences of the diaspora in Singapore and the forms of sociality constructed around Bollywood. In her chapter, Reddy turns our attention to the site of fashion and the intersection of diasporic visual culture and embodied practices. Through a critical examination of media platforms and visual artworks, Reddy shows how fashion and visual aesthetics can become a site of resistance, challenging the normative boundaries of the Indian nation as represented in the figure of the upwardly mobile, Hindu NRI male patriarch. The critical analysis of media and the heterogenous aesthetic strategies in Reddy’s chapter push the theoretical debate on the visuality of diasporic belonging.

Representation and identity This part coheres around Hall’s (1990) astute reminder that cultural identities are not a fixed essence standing apart from history. Hall argues that “cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made, within the discourses of history and culture. Not an essence but a positioning” (1990, 226). The chapters in this part capture the shifting politics of identity constituted along multiple intersecting axes and within frameworks and regimes of representation. While the nature of diasporic organizing has changed over time in response to the exigencies of the moment, there are also striking continuities in terms of the issues and political spirit that animates this activism. Kalra traces these ideological commitments and continuities between two organizations and the discourses that have shaped the political identity of the diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic. He shows how the Ghadar party formed in the US in the early part of the twentieth century provided the inspiration for the formation of the Indian Workers’ Association (GB) in Britain in 1938. The subject of gender and the challenges faced by women in the diaspora are taken up by the next two chapters. Over time and across geographical contexts, diasporic women have typically been responsible for the work of cultural reproduction within the family structure. In Orientalist representations which paint India as regressive, Indian women are cast quite frequently as passive, subservient or exotic. These monolithic constructions of diasporic women have consequences in terms of services provided and employment opportunities. Through an extensive review, Das Gupta shows how the typecasting of diasporic women impacts their job opportunities and their career paths. At the same time, far from being passive, Indian diasporic women have had a long history of organizing and fighting for their rights as women and as racialized workers and immigrants. Diasporic organizing around domestic violence in the US and Canada is the focus of Bhuyan and Ramsundarsingh’s chapter. In order to address the problem of domestic violence in the Indian communities in North America, Bhuyan and Ramsundarsingh argue that South Asian activists 8

Introduction

have to strategically grapple with representational frameworks as well as deep structural issues including immigration, labour issues and forms of racism. Hence the authors note that anti-violence interventions have to be designed at multiple levels. More recent forms of digital advocacy are in fact offering some innovative approaches to raise public consciousness about gendered violence in the diaspora. Shifting the gaze to visceral forms of racism in the context of a small northern Australian town, the chapter by Lobo explores Indian festivals as performative spaces of celebration and interracial encounters. In smaller diasporic festival spaces in the town of Darwin, informal encounters between groups enable and facilitate multicultural exchange. In contrast in the more commercialized spaces of celebration backed by corporate sponsors, there is a commodification and freezing of cultures. Ultimately as Lobo shows in her chapter, big commercial festival ventures end up reaffirming the multiculturalist discourse and a white/ethnic divide. The identity of the diaspora is shaped against the backdrop of dominant representations of the community. In a content analysis of two Canadian newspapers, Dordi and Walton-Roberts show how reporting about the diaspora and about India merge and blur. The authors argue that both are represented within the framework of soft power, hard power and the evocation of a deficient state. While India is increasingly turning its attention on the diaspora to publicize the nation’s own global arrival, Canadian media, according to Dordi and Walton-Roberts, continue to connect any negative news about the diaspora back to India and some Indian cultural norm rather than to contextualizing diasporic news in terms of immigration and relocation.

Politics of belonging This part takes up th