The problem

DESPITE a long history of exchange and migration, it is only recently that Indians abroad have started attracting attention. Unlike the Chinese who, despite sharing the Indian obsession with self, the people and the land, have long had a policy framework for overseas Chinese, leveraging the expatriate community for ‘national’ ends, the Indians have so far failed to even comprehensively map the settlements/communities abroad, far less integrate them in an overarching vision.

Possibly this is because the first substantial migrations abroad were part of the colonial, indentured labour arrangements of the 19th century. Those dragooned into the plantations of East and South Africa, the West and East Indies, were after all lower caste and class peasants and labourers, ‘unworthy’ of the attention of our rulers and elite. In the countries of their residence they usually occupied the lower rung. Little surprise that in a status conscious people, they rarely figured in the mental landscape. Only after Gandhi organized the girmityas in South Africa in the early years of the last century did the situation start changing.

The situation today is very different, primarily because of the reported successes of the diaspora in the Silicon Valley or that of Indian professionals more generally in the West. Equally important is the flow of remittances from the Gulf. Suddenly the overseas Indian, the Pravasi Bharatiya is the toast of the town. Not only is Bollywood now making films to primarily cater to these audiences, the government is facilitating networks of People of Indian Origin (PIOs) as advocacy groups to influence policy in the countries of their residence. Alongside celebrating a Pravasi Diwas, for the first time the Indian state has initiated the policy of dual citizenship, of course only for the visibly successful in the West. It appears that more than success at home, recognition abroad is now the dominant marker of value.

And yet, the current excitement with the NRI is inordinately tilted towards the ‘successful’ expatriate in the West, essentially the UK and North America. The millions in the Gulf continue to be valued only as a market and a source of steady remittances. The early lot, the first stream of contract labour abroad, remain poor cousins, even in countries where their numbers have given them a political role. Remember Fiji and its deposed prime minister of Indian origin; Mahendra Chaudhury’s attempts to drum up support in his country of origin came a miserable cropper. Or what Idi Amin did to the Indian community in Uganda nearly three decades back. And who remembers Cheddi Jagan in Guyana?

In a country and a culture coming to terms with globalization and seeking to define a presence beyond its borders, both this lack of knowledge and a distorted engagement is troubling. Even in the West, all that we seem to be aware of, and revel in, are the Indians who have made good, not the many more working at low end jobs or in the shadowy grey market. Equally distressing is our naive belief that all those of Indian origin should subserve Indian interests, as defined by the regime in power. Or that what they need and desire are dollops of Indian (read Hindi and Hindu) culture.

Nothing captures this distorted understanding and relationship better than the world of knowledge and ideas. The first flush of professional outmigration – engineers, doctors, scientists – was treated as a brain drain, how the Indian state through its educational infrastructure was subsidizing development abroad. Often, those who settled abroad were classified as selfish and self-serving, betraying the homeland. Now, not only are they more valued but it is their intellectual labour which defines research fashion and priorities. Be it literature or films, social science theorizing or managerial/entrepreneurial models – experience abroad is valorized and sought to be transplanted back home. Why, even Sanatan Dharma – the rituals, temple architecture – is increasingly being moulded in the image of the guru/cult abroad.

It is insufficiently appreciated that the diaspora abroad is helping construct a diaspora at home, the non-resident Indian creating a strata of resident non-Indians. At its best, the exchange can and should contribute to enthusing dynamism into a static culture; it can also lead to a strata of ‘successful’ Indians seceding from the rest of the country with the children of our elite firmly set on outmigration, not just for jobs and earning, but even school education, their consumption patterns and lifestyle choices modelled on the ‘richer’ cousins who have ‘made it’. And now with the outsourcing jobs in call centres altering even speech patterns and accents it is worth thinking about the ‘new’ Indian in the making. In itself this process is only to be expected in an increasingly integrating world. Nevertheless, as the Mahatma repeatedly reminded us, unless we are firmly planted in our soil, the winds of change can blow us off our feet.

It is unclear how these processes of exchange and interculture will define and influence us, particularly as Indian communities settle in diverse settings. How often do we think about the Indian communities in Malaysia or the more recent settlements in Thailand, Japan and South Korea. As we move beyond capital flows and lobby groups and the inordinate attention showered on the successful groupings in the West, we will be forced to redefine not only our notions/models of success, but work through processes of integration and exclusion, even re-imagine received ideas of nation, loyalty and belonging. We who continue to debate the ‘foreign’ origins of our prime ministerial candidates and apply a cricket-loyalty test on our Muslim communities need to ask ourselves the meaning of dual citizenship and inviting Indian origin citizens of other countries to contribute to the homeland.

This issue of Seminar engages with questions thrown up by the diaspora and diasporic imagination.