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Indian
Diaspora, Old and New: Culture, Class and Mobility
Abstract
By Professor R. K. Jain
The lecture aims at exploring the connections between old and
new Indian Diaspora, viz., the labour Diaspora of the 19th and
early 20th centuries and the ‘knowledge worker’ Diaspora to
industrially developed countries from the mid-twentieth century
onwards and continuing to this day. The connection is sought in
three dimensions, namely, culture, class and mobility in the
Diaspora space. The continuities and discontinuities are
delineated with specific reference to the Diaspora experiences
of South Indians in Malaysia (a population gaining mobility most
recently through a partial dismantling of the plantation
system), the East Indians in Trinidad (a population beginning to
gain mobility from the status of plantation labour to a class of
cane-farmers in the early twentieth century) and Information
Technology workers from India into Australia from the 1980s
onwards.
The
relationship between the variables of culture, on the one hand,
and class and mobility, on the other, is analysed in the dual
framework of ‘networks’ and ‘the diasporic imaginary’. The
hiatus between the longing and belonging in this group as well
as the affilial ties with the parent country have been
investigated. The paper looks at the conflicts resultant from
the intermingling of cultures in the three settings and how
‘Indian’ culture is used for maintenance of separate identities.
The increasing prominence of ‘circulation’ through the use of
globalized communication technology leads to a socio-cultural
configuration of the diaspora space where homeland and host
society relations – and the lateral links within the diaspora –
take on a seamless transnational character. The contrast between
the nation-state reference with regard to diaspora Indian
identity and transnational, yet ethnic, networks among the
Indians in Australia is noteworthy. The paper ends by
pinpointing the substantive and conceptual problematic in this
area of studies. In pursuance of this last, concluding
observation, illustrations have been drawn from the entire
globalized Indian diasporic field in addition to the three
locations selected for detailed examination.
Time- space
specific instances are what the paper has and it shows a concern
for the contemporary spatial-temporal pattern of study. The
paper adopts a comparative perspective keeping in view the
differences in space, time and circumstances of the three
studies.
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